Comment by runjake
3 months ago
From a US perspective, just up until a decade ago, it was a sentiment that left-center perspective that people like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had.
I was caught quite off-guard by this new "open borders" perspective. It doesn't seem sustainable at all.
Who supports "open borders" and what do they support exactly?
Radiolab (the podcast) did a good series on border policy that was pretty informative.
IIRC, the US-Mexico border was never open, but it was quite porous. People would come to the US, work for a season to make some money, then go home.
Then once border security started to be tightened, leaving was too risky so people would stay leading to a huge increase in the number of undocumented people living in the US.
To expand on this. California has the majority of illegal migrants. A significant portion of them are "seasonal" fruit pickers where there exist some migrant farmer visas for them, but not nearly enough. Now should we have American citizens/PR holders doing these jobs? Maybe, but it's pretty hard to get Americans to do this back breaking work in the hot sun for a few weeks, travelling from farm to farm until all the fruit is picked. American fruit is really only as affordable (and available) as it is thanks to all this migrant seasonal labour.
I think there's probably some leftist argument against this system on account of how we're taking advantage of poor countries and something something workers rights, but I think removing the ability to leave, to go home is the worst of both worlds.
Strict borders have only existed for ~100 years, and many were drawn without much regard for the people living there, often constructed with intention of religious segregation, and to maintain europe's global superiority
They run counter to the notion of sovereignty and local agency which we value greatly in the US
The irrationality of strict country borders and heavy migration controls will emerge as a heavy global challenge due to economic and climate migration and aging populations
I don't think we have a good answer for what replaces them, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to state that hasty decisions made after WWI and WWII should forever govern global human freedoms - and we need a better approach than war to renegotiate some of this
Part of the reason this thread and this topic is so fraught is there are many people, like you, who are willingly and confidently lying about history. Strict borders have existed since ancient times. There are physical markers of them all over Europe that are more than 1000 years old. You can see other borders from space. This idea that only in the 20th century did this idea emerge is so wrong that it’s got the history completely and totally inverted. Why make stuff up like this?
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> Who supports "open borders"
It's a very prevalent idea among US immigration activists and left-leaning people.
> what do they support exactly
Generally speaking, that people can move anywhere, if they want to. This article/interview/book covers it in more depth:
https://www.nyclu.org/podcast/the-case-for-open-borders
* * *
The obvious solution to the problem of abuse of the asylum system (which is in fact a real problem) is to hire more immigration judges so that claims are processed in a timely manner. Apart from getting rid of the asylum process entirely, that's the only long term solution. It's something Joe Biden made progress on (though he did overstate his progress), and Donald Trump reversed.
It doesn't show up in the short term numbers because it is a long-term solution. But Americans aren't interested in long-term solutions.
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Abolishing ICE and demilitarizing borders is not the same thing as supporting open borders.
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It’s shorthand for the policies of the Biden administration, who oversaw an unprecedented level of immigration.
Biden. His policies led to a huge increase in illegal immigration.
Look at the huge jump due to his policies: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20240127_EPC...
The same was not true for Obama, who was actually much better than Bush.
Biden did not support "open borders", nor did he cause the immigration surges during his term. CATO of all places refutes both of these ideas:
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
(Also, FWIW, those immigration surges were good things (for the US), and likely helped the US stick the "soft landing" instead of slipping into a post-covid recession)
A better chart: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/f3fb/live/1ca3d...
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What was the policy change though?
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the graph actually makes it look like the jump was due to Trump's policies, since the spike started in his term. if anything the graph shows that Biden policies arrested it shortly after. I recall reading deportations were actually very high during Biden's term.
Biden, his party, and some Republicans worked for years on the toughest border legislation ever endorsed by a Democratic president. Trump demanded it be shot down so he'd still have an issue to campaign on.
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The current Mayor of New York City and three candidates that just won congressional primaries in the city belong to a political party called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They will be joining two more DSA members in congress. This is the DSA's platform on immigration:
> Allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls. Demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.
https://platform.dsausa.org/foreign-policy/
In other words, give labor the same mobility as capital. Nothing inherently unreasonable about that.
Note they say “to seek employment” and “without restrictive border controls”, not “for any purpose” and “without border controls”. This does not mean they’re advocating to let in convicted murderers or people who just want to migrate for welfare benefits. Calling it “open borders” is an exaggeration in absolute terms, though it is for sure accurate as a relative comparison to what we have now.
Also, their political party, as such, is the Democrats. DSA is not a political party. But yeah they are members of DSA as well as being Democrats.
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That may be, but everyone is afraid to openly criticize it because they're afraid of being accused as racists.
It's not just talking about it. It's how and also how much you talk about it.
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what planet are you living on? “border control with pathways for immigration” (and variants) polls consistently high among both US parties
Except for the majority of voters who elected Trump.
> It’s not, it’s only the far-left’s desire
Bernie Sanders (since you're presumably talking about the US) doesn't even support open immigration or H-1Bs, let alone open borders.
Bernie isn't the only member of the left and has positions that are a little idiosyncratic among that group; this is one area where he diverges.
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Perfectly encapsulating how silly it is that so many posters in this thread are trying to make immigration policy a left vs right thing.
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The far left as represented by Joe Biden’s administration.
Biden wasn't "far left". The "far left" in US politics is basically Bernie Sanders and AOC's "squad", neither of which have ever come close to running the country.
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The Biden admin was not far-left. Biden was basically a mainline Liberal Democrat and much closer to the center than far-left. The far-left basically hates mainline Liberal Democrats like Biden.
nobody wakes up in syria and thinks "drowning in the mediterranean sounds like a fun way to fulfill the far-left's desire." people leave because the alternative is worse, and the alternative being worse is often something the west had a hand in. quick tour of the "desire" pipeline: iraq 2003, invaded over weapons that didn't exist, army disbanded, vacuum becomes ISIS. syria, proxy-funded civil war, 6+ million refugees, the actual engine of the 2015 europe wave. libya 2011, NATO topples gaddafi with no plan for after, failed state and migration corridor. afghanistan, twenty year occupation then an abrupt exit. the migration is downstream of the bombing. you don't get to set the kitchen on fire and then file a complaint about people leaving the building
and that's before the boring stuff that drives migration everywhere and always, wage gaps, no economy, dead farmland, family already abroad, the same reasons europeans showed up in the americas by the tens of millions without anyone filing it under "desire." you can have a real argument about capacity and integration, how many people a system absorbs and how fast, thats legitimate. but "it's the far-left's desire" mistakes the symptom for the cause, the people making that trip have their own reasons that have nothing to do with anyone's domestic politics
Ooo ooo don’t forget the US’s hand in the South American drug trade, or toppling numerous South American governments because we didn’t like who was in charge, even if it had been done democratically!
To think “the west” could make so many messes and not worry about cleaning up after ourselves - the absolute hubris!
From the Wikipedia article:
> Markus Allard initiated heavy debate in 2025 by claiming that Sweden is "the land for/belongs to the Swedes"
> In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes.
I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out what these are dog whistles for, and equating my vehement disagreement with it as being in favor of "open borders" is absurd.
It doesn't sound much of a dog whistle? More pretty plain spoken. I think Sweden had one of the lowest crime and high trust societies and then admitted a lot of Somali refugees and now has gang warfare and much rape from the guests. Not sure it's that ridiculous to suggest they go home?
I am confused. Are you using multiple HN accounts or something? I was not reply to the saghm account and your saghm account isn't even present up the thread.
No, this is my only HN account. I'm equally confused why you think that claiming that being in favor of "open borders" being a common perspective wouldn't generate reactions from the type of people holding the views that you mischaracterize as that.
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