The Case for Open Borders by John Washington

If you’re a liberal who’s interested in becoming a radical progressive, this is a good book for you. If you’re anyone else, you’re probably not the target audience.

I found the book frustrating in a lot of ways.

I hoped the author would consider the benefits of borders and weight them against the harms and make the case that the harms outweigh the benefits. Instead, the author was unable or unwilling to see any legitimate reason for a nation to enforce limits or criteria on who may enter.

Instead of evaluating pros and cons, the author enumerates all the harms of border control and concludes that we should abolish borders because they have negative effects. This is basically like arguing that because you sometimes forget your keys and can’t use your car, we should just get rid of car keys and make cars accessible to any person who wants to use one.

When people talk about “Chesterton’s Fence,” it’s about this exact situation. Every country has borders, and there are reasons why those borders exist. It’s silly to talk about eliminating borders without acknowledging why virtually every civilization created them in the first place:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

“Chesterton’s Fence,” by G.K. Chesterton

The author also assumes that the reader shares some particularly extreme worldviews, such as that capitalism shouldn’t exist and that Western countries have an obligation to provide not just free passsage, but travel assistance and social welfare to any person anywhere in the world who wants to relocate to the US or Europe.

I did learn some interesting details that improved my understanding of immigration, but overall, I felt like the author and I differed too much in fundamental beliefs about citizenship, so the arguments didn’t resonate with me.

What I Liked 🔗︎

• It’s available as a DRM-free ebook. I never see that for books I find in the bookstore.
• The last section of the book felt well-argued and not appeals to emotion.
• It included interesting historical examples of rapid migration that I wasn’t aware of.

What I Disliked 🔗︎

• The arguments are lacking in nuance. The author only considers the harms of immigration policies and uses that to justify abolishing them without considering any benefits.
• The author repeatedly claims that borders are unnecessary but has no examples of any modern society with open borders or any explanation for why no country adopts such a policy.
• The author is uncharitable in painting proponents of immigration controls. They’re presented as seething xenophobes or greedy elites.
• The author largely ignores any criticism of open borders or studies contradicting his beliefs.
  • Almost all studies he discusses are from pro-immigration organizations or libertarian think tanks.
• Most of the people he quotes aren’t policy experts but philosophers, poets, and activists.
• He takes bizarre extreme positions, such as arguing that even illegal immigrants who commit violent crime don’t deserve arrest.
  • He claims that if an immigrant commits a violent crime, it was probably America’s fault for not setting up that immigrant for success.
• He casually dismisses the idea that restricting entry to a country is like controlling access to a private home, but I finished the book still feeling like the motivations for securing a private home are similar to securing a country’s border.
• The author repeatedly makes the argument that borders aren’t “real” because they’re defined arbitrarily and change over time. Because of this, the author asserts that they’re not legitimate.
  • Similarly, he argues that borders are often imperfect and interfere with historical behavior of human tribes or animal species. And because they’re imperfect, they should not exist at all.
• Author often lumps together legal and illegal immigration when he wants to demonstrate benefits rather than addressing whether the benefits are mostly from legal immigration.
• The causality is questionable.
  • The author points to economic increase after migration and credits migration with the economic boom, but it seems just as likely that the economic boom was what caused the immigration.
• The book has poor sourcing and often refers to studies without specifically citing them, making it difficult to check claims.
• Argues that borders cause violence rather than prevent it.
  • In the context of places like Israel, it’s absurd to imagine there would be peace if Israel simply stopped defending its borders.

Key Takeaways 🔗︎

Immigration in the US 🔗︎

• Between 1800 - 1900, 75% of all global immigration was into the US.
• The US deports more people than any other country.

Arguments for relaxing restrictions on US immigration 🔗︎

Ed: The author provides many more arguments than this, but these were the ones that I found compelling.

• The US has destabilized many other countries through diplomatic policies and active intervention.
  • We therefore have an obligation to residents in those countries to offer a safe place to live.
• Western countries contribute to climate change more severely than most impoverished countries.
  • Global warming is making some areas of the world uninhabitable.
  • The US has a responsibility to people who have been displaced from their homes due to climate change.

Displacement of Native Americans 🔗︎

• Forced removal of Native Americans during the 1830s cost about $1T in 2023 dollars.
• In 1836, 40% of federal spending was on deportation of Native Americans.

Immigrant detention centers in the US 🔗︎

• In 2019, the US spent $11M/day on immigrant detention centers.
• 62% of detention beds are in private, for-profit prisons.

Impact on wages and unemployment 🔗︎

• 2007 study by Giovanni Peri found that immigration does not increase unemployment or reduce wages.
• Undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits.
  • The author cites as evidence the leaked HHS report on immigrants’ impact on tax revenue.
  • Ed: From reading some of these studies about tax revenue vs. consumption of public resources, I’m skeptical.
    • The studies often consider time windows when immigrants are working age, which is when they contribute most in taxes and consume least in public support. They don’t capture the costs of sustaining their health in old age or of additional load on the school system when their kids enter school.
    • It also seems impossible to get an accurate accounting of how much a particular person paid in sales tax, especially when so much of their finances are under the table. And it’s similarly hard to decide what portion of public resources a particular person is consuming, especially for things like school where they need additional support from not speaking the language.

1929 Mexican Repatriation Act 🔗︎

• 1929 Mexican Repatriation Act deported 2M people.
  • Many of those displaced were legal US citizens.
  • A 2017 analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that cities that enforced repatriation more intensely suffered more economically.

1980 Mariel Boatlift 🔗︎

• In 1979, a series of agricultural crises hit Cuba along with fishing limitations due to diplomatic failures.
  • As a result, the Cuban economy was struggling, and thousands of Cubans were trying to escape the country.
• Jimmy Carter tried to undermine the Cuban government by highlighting how many Cubans were trying to leave.
• In response to Carter, Fidel Castro publicly announced that any Cubans could leave the country if their relatives in the US picked them up from the Mariel port in Cuba.
• Due to the US Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans get a green card after only a year of residency and could get work authorization immediately regardless of how they arrived.
• 125k Cubans migrated from Cuba to Florida in 1980.
  • 100k of that migration happened in just 6 weeks.
• The migration increased Miami’s labor force by 7%.
  • It was a 20% increase in Miami’s Cuban labor force.
• Before the boatlift, Miami was the US city with the highest proportion of foreign workers at 35.5%.
  • #2 was LA at 22%.
• Over the next five years in Miami:
  • Wages for black workers increased.
  • Wages for non-Cuban Latinos stayed steady.
  • Wages for pre-existing Cubans fell.
  • Author doesn’t mention the impact on wages for white workers, but a 1996 study by a Cuban-American economist suggests that it negatively impacted wages for the native population.

Mass migration to Israel 🔗︎

• From 1989 to 1995, 610k people migrated from Russia to Israel, increasing population by 12%.
  • Wages increased and unemployment dropped.

Immigration and terrorism 🔗︎

• A 2023 Cato Institute study found that nobody who entered US illegally has committed an act of terror.
  • Nine people were arrested for plotting one.

Radcliffe line 🔗︎

• In 1947, British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe was assigned to divide up Punjab and Bengal, as UK was abdicating rule of India.
• Radcliffe divided the region by religion between India and Pakistan, but it was impossible to create a simple line border, so there were enclosed parts that were exceptions.
  • Dahala Khagrabari is a particularly interesting exception. It’s a pocket of Indian territory within Bangladeshi territory within Indian territory.
• The Radcliffe Line displaced 14 million people and subsequent conflicts killed up to 2 million.
• The Radcliffe line stops in Kashmir, as Radcliffe left India and Pakistan to figure out the rest.
  • That led to a war and the Line of Control, which is a de facto border but still not legally recognized.

US capacity for migrants 🔗︎

• 75% of US population lives on 3.5% of its land.
• The US population could triple and be less crowded than France.
• Thomas Sowell observed that the entire world population could fit in Texas with single-family homes and yards.
  • This was in the early 80s when the world population was about half what it is now, so I think you could currently fit everyone in tiny houses.
• US has low population density relative to most other countries.

  Country	Population Density (per sq mi)
  US	86
  France	350
  Belgium	976
  Bangladesh	2,980
  Singapore	20,000

Americans overestimate immigrants 🔗︎

• 2021 Cato study found Americans think 40% of US population is first-generation immigrants, but the actual number is 14%.
  • Ed: This is such a bizarre finding that I looked up the actual study to see if the question was worded confusingly. It seems unambiguous.

    If you were to estimate, about what percentage of the US population are immigrants (were born in another country)?