Covid-19 Makes The Case For Open Borders
As the crisis of the Covid-19 virus ravages the globe, healthcare systems are overwhelmed and economies worldwide are tanking. Countries scrambling to contain the pandemic implemented travel bans and shut their borders to certain countries. Domestically, there have been reports of hate crimes against Asians as fear gives rise to the overt xenophobia and Orientalism that lay right below the surface. These occurrences are neither unexpected or new for it has been the pattern of history. Since the advent of international trade, the world continues to grow more interconnected and governments’ simultaneous reliance and reactionary attitudes towards it has not ceased. Countries love to take full advantage of the global network as it benefits them economically while disparaging the cultural, human element of it.
This, as you may believe, is hypocritical, but more importantly it is unsustainable. The world will continue to become more technologically advanced and with the globe’s continued embrace of capitalism, we will do so more rapidly. It is virtually impossible to stop the comings and goings of people without kneecapping your own economy. Then why is it that countries are so afraid of people entering the country? To that, we should look at America’s own history with segregation.
After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Jim Crow laws were enacted to keep black Americans in separate societies for fear of a degeneration of “white culture.” Even after Jim Crow was abolished in 1965, redlining and school segregation had altered the social landscape too deeply to have eradicated segregation completely. Even today, school desegregation is one of the most contentious issues among (liberal) communities much for the same reason Jim Crow was enacted in the first place: Fear of degeneration.
This fear flies in the face of research around desegregation. It has been found that desegregation not only has an almost miraculous effect on the newly integrated black students’ lives generationally, but it has no detrimental effect on the white students. Related to that is housing segregation: Public funds are cut off from poor black communities, which leads to a cycle of poverty, creating the racial wealth gap we see today. Even counter arguments about building “black wealth” by keeping money in black communities are not effective at closing this gap and only further entrench the status quo. The only solution to building everybody up and prospering as a society is full desegregation. By doing so we link our lives to each other and are forced to share the resources and consequences of our actions, incentivizing collective well-being over individual ones. On a global scale this means open borders.
Enter Covid-19.
As the pandemic continues to mount an ever increasing death toll and ground life around the world to a screeching halt, it is not hyperbolic to say that society has shifted. Many Americans have begun to truly understand (a little too late) the importance of universal healthcare, a strong social safety net, and a living wage. It has reinforced the idea that an economy is not run by CEOs, but by workers. It has brought together scientists from all over the globe, exchanging research and information, to create a vaccine not for personal gain, but solely for the benefit of humankind. If the coronavirus has taught us any lesson, it is that we must act with the collective interest over the individual interest.
While temporarily shutting borders to prevent the spread of the virus may be wise, reactionary attitudes will be detrimental in the long term. This pandemic is only the tip of the ice berg for what may come in the future and the world must be ready to act collectively or suffer a major collapse, worse than what has befallen us now. Opening the borders is a crucial part of our preparation.
A major proponent of immigration fear-mongers is that open borders will flood thriving nations with “low skilled” or “undesirable” migrants from poorer nations. To this, first, I would say that low skilled workers are actually not undesirable at all, but then I would urge them to interrogate why these migrants are leaving their countries in the first place. The notion that people will simply leave their family, friends, culture, language, and heritage just for the slim prospect of getting richer is an absolute myth. That may have been the case in the mid 19th century when America incentivized such immigration (by literally giving away free—stolen—land), but no such grand incentives exist today. Instead many migrants, especially those at our Southern border, are here as refugees from conditions largely of our own making. The refugees that triggered Ukip’s racist Brexit campaign were fleeing the Syrian civil war, also due in part by ourselves. If we continue to intervene in foreign affairs (and in some cases, we must), we have to be willing to share those consequences as well. By opening the borders and making it easier for migrants to cross, we will be disincentivized to create situations that will produce refugees in the first place.
This extends to the existential threat of climate change. By nations opening their borders, we will all share in the responsibility to do everything in our power to prevent the large scale displacement that will follow climate catastrophes. It will mobilize countries to take the climate crisis seriously because one nation’s folly will have global ramifications. There are already parts of the world where climate refugees are being created and it will only get worse if we do nothing. The climate catastrophe will be unimaginably worse than this pandemic. Opening the borders will force us to act.
Open borders would also lift poorer nations out of poverty. If some nations are so desirable where the economic or social disparities between the host nation and the native nation is great enough for people to migrate en masse, the other nations should be incentivized to aid the poorer nation.
What I am essentially advocating for is a European Union-style open borders world. However, unlike the EU, member nations should unify their tax codes to prevent shelters for corporate tax evasion/fraud (but I’m getting off topic…). Obviously, the EU isn’t perfect (the Greek bailout comes to mind) and there will be new issues that must be dealt with upon opening the borders, however it is an important step toward global unity. It is a good faith commitment to collective responsibility.
With open borders, people may be worried about a loss of a national culture or a melting pot of cultures so many that none are recognizable. Well, the best way to keep people in their own countries is by a commitment to help them. When Greece’s economy collapsed in 2009, “we were not flooded by Greeks when they were, really, ultra poor,” states French Nobel winning economist Esther Duflo. These are nations with open borders policies between them. The vast majority of people do not elect to uproot their lives to start new ones in a completely new country unless they have to and even then, they rarely do so.
Regardless, we must release this very toxic fear of change from our political discourse. Not only is it unfounded, but change itself is nothing to fear. The cultures we hold dear to us and the ones that we grew up with were all new and strange at one point in history. It is important to preserve as much of the human experience as possible, but it is also worth thinking about how we go about integrating the new ones for a sustainable world. What are the beautiful cultures we have yet to create that are being denied by a segregated world?
Do I believe open borders will be implemented? With our current world leaders, absolutely not. Not in my lifetime. However, we must get away from the belief that this is pie-in-the-sky thinking. If somebody told you 3 months ago that every government around the world would self impose a halt on all economic activity willfully throwing ourselves into the largest depression in modern history, and every American would receive $1200 in cash (Universal basic income, is that you?), would you have believed them? It is only impossible because governments are too preoccupied with nationalistic short term priorities and fail to see the larger crises just beyond the horizon. This pandemic has shown that that approach is incredibly dangerous. We can do it if we work together. We must do it if we hope to survive. If we actually cared about preserving our own cultures, we should think about how to preserve humanity first.
