Border Crossings

Listening to all the politicians and groups barking about illegal immigration, I can’t help but think that the entire debate is based on a the false premise of the nation-state, a premise that has become increasingly irrelevant in a globalized world. We like to think that a nation can seal itself off from the rest of the world and limit access to “our” territory and resources. Just as the nation-state became a reality in the 16th and 17th Centuries, I think that globalism and the technologies supporting globalism are now superceding the nation-state as the basis for organized society.

In many respects the waves of immigration from the Third to the First Worlds are the result of the latter’s aggressive expansion and colonialism in the past few centuries. By occupying and exploiting much of the world, Europe and the United States destroyed indigenous cultures that were self supporting and self-limiting. In the 21st Century the world is now faced with large populations unable to feed or support themselves in their traditional homelands. These economic refugees do what human beings have done for millennia: they move on, seeking places where they can support themselves. In the era of the nation-state, these migrations are restricted by political boundaries.

Or we like to think that. Any resident of southern Arizona can tell you that this migration is a well established fact. Like water running downhill, economic refugees move toward opportunity. The tide of humanity now flowing north from Mexico reflects a simple fact of life. Mexico cannot support its population, so Mexicans move to the United States where there is ample need for neo-slaves to serve businesses unwilling to pay US citizens a wage they will accept. Europe faces a similar migration as excess populations move toward opportunity. It’s as simple as Economics 101.

So I don’t see any hope for the United States or any nation stopping this migration. Our attempts so far have been pretty ineffective, even with the growth of the police state at the border with all of its attendant militarization. In the name of protecting our borders, we are destroying fragile ecosystems in Organ Pipe National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge with ATV’s and vehicles. Illegal immigrants are trashing our national forests to escape the dragnet. Border communities suffer from crime and property destruction in the lawless environment that prevails there. It’s a pretty ugly scene.

Contrast this migration with the ease of moving capital. Money moves pretty much at will, to wherever it finds the best return. Conservatives like to call this the free market, a market that doesn’t apply to labor. It never has. This capital flow has the effect of immiserating workers left behind as their opportunities for making a living decline. Which brings me to Karl Marx, who predicted that workers would revolt as capital became more and more concentrated and their prospects became ever worse. His predictions weren’t exactly accurate but he wasn’t wholly wrong, either. Capitalism proved to be far more supple and his workers’ paradise never really happened. But the trend is still there: increasing polarization of wealth and resources reduces economic opportunity. Sooner or later, those of us who are hogging all the resources will have to contend with the masses who have less and less and ultimately decide they have nothing to lose. The world saw a small example of the consequences on September 11, 2001.

That’s why I no longer believe in nation-states and closed borders. They are an artificial construct that allows the rich to exploit others. The major powers of the past three centuries (read: us) used their (our) technological, military and economic advantage to exploit the rest of the world to create the vast wealth we now enjoy. The idea that we have no obligation to the descendants of those whom we pillaged and enslaved, that they have no claim to “our” resources is laughable, especially in light of the neo-colonialism that replaced overt colonialism after World War II.

Open borders would allow labor to move toward opportunity. More important, it offers opportunity to manage the flow of immigrants. Instead of illegal immigrants, who have no rights and protection, we would have legal workers with some leverage in their dealings with employers. Instead of coming into the United States under the radar, immigrants would enter through border crossings where officials could screen out the criminals and potential terrorists. (Yeah, I know, they would still try to sneak in but there would be far fewer of them.)

The wave of immigration sweeping over America’s (and other First World nations’) borders is as old as human existence even as it characterizes the modern world. We can either deal with it honestly and humanely or try to wall ourselves off from it. The latter approach has a certain nationalistic appeal but in the long run, only the former offers anything like a realistic solution.