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A review by pink_distro
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan
1.0
we definitely need to tear down the border regime of today, but this book is capitalist ridiculousness and has some serious problems. read "Border & Rule" by Harsha Walia to see why
the good: debunks SOME right wing anti-immigration talking points using statistics, and rightly describes the current world border regime as a system of global apartheid against the global poor.
now for the bad. first off, he's an economist and the entire book basically only uses statistics (and occasional hypothetical, abstract philosophy debates). this means that when hes discussing culture or politics or ethics, the insights are very shallow and just plain wrong. his ENTIRE conception of wellbeing and happiness in society is based on the fact that open borders would increase global productivity, producing trillions of dollars of more commodities and services before. obviously that would have many benefits, but he just takes it as a given that GDP = good & happiness. ignoring the fact that global northern / western hyper-consumption is hurdling us towards climate collapse.
second, he accepts so many horrible right wing premises and proposes that we try to 'soothe their concerns' through concessions he calls "keyhole solutions." some of his actual responses are essentially the following: 'too many people think immigrants are an economic burden? let's just tax them at higher rates and restrict their access to public benefits! do you think immigrants are savages who hate freedom? don't worry, they barely vote anyways, and we can always impose cultural literacy & english fluency tests. think immigrants will bring crime? we can just ban everyone with criminal records!' It's all so othering, condescending, and outright racist (it's particularly islamophobic as well). Not only is this "open border" proposal looking less and less open by the page, this is all a total ethical and political dead end. he claims that this would all be justified because it's MORE fair and prosperous than the status quo of global apartheid. ethically, even if that were the case, why TF is he so willing to compromise on basic equality & human rights for migrants? and politically, imposing a deeper domestic apartheid system to address the complaints of racists will NEVER WORK. it would just create a material system that deepens the divisions between immigrants and non-immigrants, and fuel racists' anti-immigrant hate even more.
third, he never once questions what caused the current global division of wealth. he rightly says that the border maintains that division, but never goes deeper. in reality, work by Harsha Walia and many others shows that borders are one enforcement mechanism in a matrix of global racial capitalism. western colonialism and enslavement plundered the planet, and now those countries use sanctions, coups, military hegemony, and institutions like the IMF and World Bank to ensure economic extraction from the global south continues apace. Walia explains this all beautifully in the book "Border & Rule" that is a must read. in this book he brings up the US' "national security" budget as an example of a benign social service, when it is a central part of maintaining the global apartheid system he claims to be against.
in this book he posits open borders as a capitalist's dream -- the ultimate deregulated market that would vastly increase productivity. and in a way it is. ultimately, capitalism always needs an underclass to toil away and produce surplus value for the owning class. in our current system, borders are an essential part of that division. faced with open borders, hundreds of millions of people would shuffle around. capitalist exploitation may likely decrease in its margins. but there would still be a few billionaires and millions who can hardly put food on the table. capitalists would still demand that sweatshops put somewhere. with open borders as Caplan sees it, perhaps less of those sweatshops would be concentrated in "Exclusive Economic Zones" in Bangladesh. maybe more would be concentrated in certain neighborhoods populated by non-citizen immigrants in the US, who pay higher taxes, can't get medicare, can't vote, and maybe even can't unionize — who knows what "keyhole solutions" he will accept next.
forget open borders, let's abolish borders. as Harsha Walia writes: "while open borders might mean freer movement across nations in a world otherwise still configured under the status quo, to abolish the border would mean emancipating ourselves from all the unfreedoms it upholds... Abolishing borders can secure these propositions: the freedom to stay, meaning that no one is forcibly displaced from their homes and lands [through climate disaster, free trade policies, settler-colonialism, gentrification, etc.], and the freedom to move with safety and dignity." https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/there-is-no-migrant-crisis/
the good: debunks SOME right wing anti-immigration talking points using statistics, and rightly describes the current world border regime as a system of global apartheid against the global poor.
now for the bad. first off, he's an economist and the entire book basically only uses statistics (and occasional hypothetical, abstract philosophy debates). this means that when hes discussing culture or politics or ethics, the insights are very shallow and just plain wrong. his ENTIRE conception of wellbeing and happiness in society is based on the fact that open borders would increase global productivity, producing trillions of dollars of more commodities and services before. obviously that would have many benefits, but he just takes it as a given that GDP = good & happiness. ignoring the fact that global northern / western hyper-consumption is hurdling us towards climate collapse.
second, he accepts so many horrible right wing premises and proposes that we try to 'soothe their concerns' through concessions he calls "keyhole solutions." some of his actual responses are essentially the following: 'too many people think immigrants are an economic burden? let's just tax them at higher rates and restrict their access to public benefits! do you think immigrants are savages who hate freedom? don't worry, they barely vote anyways, and we can always impose cultural literacy & english fluency tests. think immigrants will bring crime? we can just ban everyone with criminal records!' It's all so othering, condescending, and outright racist (it's particularly islamophobic as well). Not only is this "open border" proposal looking less and less open by the page, this is all a total ethical and political dead end. he claims that this would all be justified because it's MORE fair and prosperous than the status quo of global apartheid. ethically, even if that were the case, why TF is he so willing to compromise on basic equality & human rights for migrants? and politically, imposing a deeper domestic apartheid system to address the complaints of racists will NEVER WORK. it would just create a material system that deepens the divisions between immigrants and non-immigrants, and fuel racists' anti-immigrant hate even more.
third, he never once questions what caused the current global division of wealth. he rightly says that the border maintains that division, but never goes deeper. in reality, work by Harsha Walia and many others shows that borders are one enforcement mechanism in a matrix of global racial capitalism. western colonialism and enslavement plundered the planet, and now those countries use sanctions, coups, military hegemony, and institutions like the IMF and World Bank to ensure economic extraction from the global south continues apace. Walia explains this all beautifully in the book "Border & Rule" that is a must read. in this book he brings up the US' "national security" budget as an example of a benign social service, when it is a central part of maintaining the global apartheid system he claims to be against.
in this book he posits open borders as a capitalist's dream -- the ultimate deregulated market that would vastly increase productivity. and in a way it is. ultimately, capitalism always needs an underclass to toil away and produce surplus value for the owning class. in our current system, borders are an essential part of that division. faced with open borders, hundreds of millions of people would shuffle around. capitalist exploitation may likely decrease in its margins. but there would still be a few billionaires and millions who can hardly put food on the table. capitalists would still demand that sweatshops put somewhere. with open borders as Caplan sees it, perhaps less of those sweatshops would be concentrated in "Exclusive Economic Zones" in Bangladesh. maybe more would be concentrated in certain neighborhoods populated by non-citizen immigrants in the US, who pay higher taxes, can't get medicare, can't vote, and maybe even can't unionize — who knows what "keyhole solutions" he will accept next.
forget open borders, let's abolish borders. as Harsha Walia writes: "while open borders might mean freer movement across nations in a world otherwise still configured under the status quo, to abolish the border would mean emancipating ourselves from all the unfreedoms it upholds... Abolishing borders can secure these propositions: the freedom to stay, meaning that no one is forcibly displaced from their homes and lands [through climate disaster, free trade policies, settler-colonialism, gentrification, etc.], and the freedom to move with safety and dignity." https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/there-is-no-migrant-crisis/