A few weeks ago, the comment was made in class that people
might be better off if our poor were refugees of hunger in each other’s
countries. This article makes the case not precisely for this circumstance, but
for the opening of all borders, everywhere. The potentials of this as laid out
in the article are mouth-watering: a doubled world GDP, incredible amounts of
anti-poverty aid happening naturally as border disparities normalize, and
freedom from expensive vigilance of borders and those that cross them. It seems
that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, except perhaps for some
fragile, internal perception of ourselves. While this article is written very
broadly and the opening of all borders is by no means yet a thing which could
happen practically in the near future, it does raise many interesting
questions. What would be threatened by such an action? Our culture, our ‘way-of-life’?
Surely not. More likely our homogeneity, our us-versus-them mentality, our
racism, our xenophobia. We could be forced to become, as in the final words of
the article, “a world unafraid of itself”.
The Case for Getting Rid of Borders
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