Open Borders Persuasion Bleg

More or less the same sentiment as gwern.

But I’d be really happy to hear your thoughts on the effects of an abrupt opening of borders as they play out over time, preferably with some thick sociological/SciFi description of how cultures and institutions would adapt.

My initial intuition is that rates matter, as do the sorts of political factors that libertarian economists might wish away with the borders themselves.

More or less the same sentiment as gwern.

But I’d be really happy to hear your thoughts on the effects of an abrupt opening of borders as they play out over time, preferably with some thick sociological/SciFi description of how cultures and institutions would adapt.

My initial intuition is that rates matter, as do the sorts of political factors that libertarian economists might wish away with the borders themselves.

Somewhat. I already supported mostly open borders. Your econtalk podcast gave me the final shove.

I am still unconvinced that the median immigrant to the USA is a net positive for the economy.

I always agreed with your premise but you’ve significantly changed my perception of the importance of this issue relative to others.

Not much, as I already agreed with your position.

What your blog posts here have shown me, however, is the fact that people don’t base their political opinions on facts or logic. You post very strong data on why immigration is good for both individuals and nations. The negative reactions to that are, almost without exception, simply statements that immigration is bad. There are no data to support these negative reactions and only rarely does anyone try to point out flaws in either your data or your logic. They simply say you are wrong, demonstrating clearly that they are ignoring the facts that contradict their preconceived notions.

So I guess I’d say you haven’t changed my mind on immigration issues, but you have changed my views on human psychology. As a result of your immigration posts and the negative reactions to them, I have delved much more into the study of psychology of political beliefs.

If you’re willing to share the blame with Don Boudreaux and Russ Roberts, I’ll say you’ve all had a huge effect on me. I’m a naturalized citizen myself and so is my husband (we’re from different countries).

I was all for immigration, but not exactly open immigration and mostly because of the growing welfare state. I have personally seen immigrants abuse the system with shocking gall. However, if they’re going to hasten the collapse of that disaster, so much the better and, on net, they aren’t coming here for the welfare. We certainly didn’t.

BTW, I’m also beginning to think that physical immigration is not as important as it used to be and will become less important in the future. Technology has already gone a long way and will go a longer way still in killing distance and borders. At least I hope so, humanity is unlikely to rid itself of the racism and tribalism that fuels anti-immigration demands any time soon.

I think you’ve been quite persuasive, with the caveat that you can’t easily use reason to argue someone out of a position they didn’t use reason to get themselves into. (Which is to say, you’ve been about as persuasive as I can expect someone to be when dealing with what is fundamentally an emotional/aesthetic decision.)

I think you have been more persuasive in making me raise the relative importance I place on immigration.

I agree with a previous commenter that your EconTalk podcast was superb. I had already come around to a pro-open borders position prior to that as part of my own growth from conservatism to libertarianism, but I really love how you structured that argument.

Personally, I had already supported open borders before reading your arguments, but now I think the issue is more important than I used to. I’ve also successfully used your arguments to convince people that were previously against open borders.

You’ve convinced me that relative to current policy, the derivative of net humanitarian gain with respect to immigration is positive. You have not provided any evidence, to my knowledge, of where the inflection point is.

You haven’t so much changed my views as made me attach much more importance to this issue relative to others.

I’ve never been in favor of immigration restrictions, but you’ve succeeded not only in convincing me that this issue is the most important policy issue facing the United States, but also in arming me with my best arguments on the topic.

I was familiar with the large productivity disparities for workers in different places before reading you. Overall, your blogging has made me more negative towards open borders. Partly this is because of your work on voting and how political externalities get worse as we consider migrants like those which would come under open borders. It seems like there is a large risk of undermining the distinctive features of the rich countries by diluting their political and institutional differences, as gwern mentions above.

Also, from a utilitarian-leaning perspective, the cost-benefit standard you have offered for assessing immigration restrictions sounds very ominous: you have suggested that because of libertarian deontological reasons there should be open borders unless the costs are 10 (!!!) times the benefits. Given the billions of potential migrants under open borders, the results could be incredibly catastrophic for global institutions, growth, and long-term welfare while still passing your test.

Since you claim to be so indifferent to whether migration helps or hurts, it’s hard for those who are focused on what would actually make things better overall to trust that your analysis is unbiased.

I’m not for open borders (although I support fairly high (Canadian) levels of immigration).

Bryan’s arguments have made it clear that (1) the society that I appreciate could not survive open borders (destruction of the welfare system or two-tier citizenship are both antithetical to my personal happiness) and (2) that the cost of non-open borders is very high to non-citizens. It has forced me to acknowledge that I am a citizen-ist to a far greater degree than I originally would have realized.

I was already pretty pro-immigration before I started reading EconLog four years ago but I’ve become more radical since then. I don’t want you to get a big head, but your arguments are among the best I’ve read (Michael Huemer’s essay on the subject is pretty good, too).

The main thing I’ve learned from reading your posts is how petty the complaints are from your detractors. I love the talk about the political externalities of immigration, as if electing democrats over republicans was so much worse that we could stop someone from moving here because of their future party affiliation.

Since as a commenter I’ve tried to make open borders my pet issue, I have been on your side the whole time.

But one thing you did do is lead me to consider moral arguments again. Certainly open borders is the only answer from a moral or individual rights perspective. But, finding such exchanges short and fruitless, I had focused on economic arguments because they could more readily be debated from common premises.

Your posts, in contrast, have added new dimensions to the moral arguments that expand their foundation and allow more common ground with opponents.

I’ve generally found you very convincing on your moral points.

However, I’ve also observed a real reluctance on your part to address your opponents strongest arguments. In particular, you tend to gloss over political and welfare externalities.

I should be very easy to convince. A large fraction of my friends are immigrants. I started a company (now defunct) overseas and I’d love to bring some of my old employees over. It would be really satisfying if my moral and personal views were well supported by the data. But they don’t seem to be.

I strongly suggest that you directly engage your critics (Tino Sanandaji, for example) and address their strongest arguments. That would (assuming your facts stand up) go a long way towards convincing me, at least.

As both an advocate of open borders and a long term migrant worker myself, there wasn’t much left of which to be persuaded. Still I thought your summary was the most comprehensive and convincing I’ve seen. I think it will help me to argue better with others in the future.

I think you do a good job of taking down the traditional arguments, but that’s easy when everyone’s being rationally irrational right? To convince me you need to give a real non-hand-waving treatment to the political externality argument. Neither of the options the political system are offering involve creating a non-voting citizen class for immigrants and their descendants.

Bryan, do you think if the U.S. and Mexico (or wherever) were suddenly merged and elections were held, total production would go up after that? If you say “we’d be under a worse regime, but they’d be under a better one, the political center of gravity doesn’t move so it’s neutral,” then I say the sum of two exponential functions has end behavior equal to the faster one because after a while it’s arbitrarily larger than the slower one.

As far as your arguments that immigrants don’t vote as much or that they have status quo bias: sure but that’s short term. Aren’t we already seeing dems benefiting a lot from latino migration especially in California? There’s no point in leveraging up the benefits of (relatively) good gov’t if you can’t preserve the regime that was worth leveraging, right?

BTW great blog, you’re awesome. Keep blowing up every pillar of current popular dogma. Health care next?

It’s the culture that is important.

I’m with Sailer.

For me, personally–Significant negative effect towards open borders. I very much respect your arguments on a lot of topics (e.g., education and signaling) and if someone of your intelligence can only come up with arguments of the level you (and to be fair, Vipul Naik) have, then I think the open borders case is extremely weak. To echo gwern in different words, the nation state has been successful by specifically creating a coherent body of citizens and building universal, self-beneficial institutions. If immigrants (like myself) are educated and skilled like in Canada’s system, I can (and do) buy the argument that this could be beneficial to the host nation.

However, your arguments have time and time again ignored the obvious strong points restrictionists raise (ie., low IQ, low skill immigration is not the same or as valuable as high IQ immigration with most illegals especially a net drain on the taxpayer; the 1890s were a far different economy than our present-day stagnant economy which is already facing rising inequality; raising standards in other nations is just as (or more) beneficial as open borders; no nation state has ever survived an open borders or high immigration society; diversity weakens institutions (some of them, etc.). Just lots and lots of reiteration of how much value *1* generic immigrant in a highly dubious study now produces and so presumably how much value a *whole bunch* of immigrants would produce.

Overall, if you can’t do better than quoting abstract moral theories (which also imply a lot of other more pertinent conclusions than the one you selectively choose that gives you cheaper nannies and burdens working class Americans with the externalities or weak academic evidence, then I think you have only strengthened opposition.

For me, your posts on free immigration have helped solidfy my position. I agree with you that borders should be open. I would still like to see some system where we know who comes in and out but I dont think there should be any quota restrictions and if you want to move here than you should be allowed to. I was watching a video from LearnLiberty on the 10 principles of classical liberalism and one of them was freedom of movement. It is in my opinion a quitessential human right to be able to move to somewhere else without having to be hassled by the government. I have looked back at my progression from a conservative who favored putting troops on the border to a libertarian where I now favor open borders. And the one thing that always stuck with me is being consistent. I viewed conservativsm and progressivism as being inconsistent. They both talk about freedom but they only mean “their” freedom. Where as libertarians, when they speak of freedom, actually mean it. The other two only mean freedom when it comes to their favored way of life.

Eli Dourado’s Smash the New Aristocracy was what really convinced me that immigration policy is the moral issue of our time. But I’d say that my move towards supporting totally open borders has had a lot to do with your blogging on the issue.

(For background, with the exception of a brief conservative phase, I used to weakly support moderately relaxed immigration restrictions.)

Your blogging hasn’t changed my views so much as informed and strengthened them. I was already favorably inclined toward free immigration, but the arguments and evidence that you bring to bear have bolstered my conviction that immigration restrictions are a monstrous evil. Your recent article in CATO is a perfect example of the compelling moral case that you make on behalf of people who wish to immigrate.

I’m very much in favor of relaxing immigration restrictions, Bryan_Caplan, but gwern beat me to it: all you do is say why immigration is good in the abstract, without addressing the hard issue of where you have to stop it (or making the case that you never have to!): that is, how do you know when to slow it down to the point that immigrants aren’t undoing the very memes that made the country worth immigrating to in the first place.

(Can we call that the hipster critique? “I came to this country *before* it was cool!”)

You have, from time to time, refuted concerns about related “political externalities” of immigration … for existing levels. These results are not, however, robust for the general case of letting everyone come to America who wants to.

I’m sure that your idea of “open borders” stops *somewhere* short of “Allow the Chinese Army to ‘peacefully immigrate’ to strategic locations, shortly before becoming unpeaceful and rendering America defenseless.” Where is that point, and why?

Hi Bryan,

I think you have more non-libertarian readers than you may think.

I myself identify as a conservative, and I identify you as one of my favorite bloggers/authors.

To the point, then: I’ve read everything you’ve written here on immigration and, I’m sorry to say, I still find the case very weak. I have not budged, not even a little, in favor of open borders. In fact, seeing how unpersuasive the arguments for it are has, if anything, made me more against open borders than I was before.

Regardless of how you judge those like me – prejudiced, nationalist-egoist, etc. – I just think this open borders stuff is a loser. The only way it will even come close to happening is if we’re bombed back into the Stone Age. And maybe not even then.

I already agreed with you wholeheartedly on liberal grounds.

Now I feel I can say open borders is required by egalitarianism and utilitarianism as well – which is a very powerful argument to have.

As some other commenters have said, comment sections on your posts prove that many of your readers basically ignore what you say and reiterate their unjustified prejudices time after time.

I am someone who would like to see our approach to immigration liberalized. A huge increase in immigration would bring some benefits but it would also create problems, especially for the communities that face the biggest influx.

Bryan, the fact that you so thoroughly trivialize these problems makes you a lot less persuasive to me. If you aspire to go beyond preaching to the choir taking people’s objections more seriously wold help a lot.

Your argument for open borders seems to boil down to the following: the immigrants would be much better off in America and other developed nations. Therefore, the benefit to them is so great that it trumps any right of the native population to limit immigration.

I find this deeply unconvincing.It’s like arguing that a homeless man would be much better off living in my basement than on the street. Therefore, my family’s preferences about privacy, space and security are irrelevant. I don’t believe that as it applies to my home nor as it applies to my country.

Very persuasive. I agreed with you before I knew your opinions based on the simple logic of the matter. But your thought experiments and your framing of the issue are really compelling. I recall an EconTalk with Russ Roberts that was really good.

You might want to spend some time persuading people in terms of their own moral traditions. I agree with you based on the cosmopolitan notion, but for those who don’t share it I think it’s worth driving home the point on their own terms. For example, I really don’t think there’s any good reason for a Catholic, conservative or otherwise, to be anti immigration. It’s against our ethos to begin with, and when you frame it from a social justice perspective it is very compelling. And liberals in the Catholic tradition may find in immigration a cause that is now tragically unheeded.

I think this is an issue where you could change some minds and actually make an impact. This is a simple act of federal law and with enough awareness, it only takes one shot.

I’d say rather persuasive as well. (Haven’t really had the time to look through the comments to see what the consensus is.)

I’ve been relatively open to immigration for a while, but mostly in the minor sense of increasing H-1B visas and importing more skilled workers. However, you and Michael Clemens have really opened my eyes to the possibilities of, and the necessity in promoting, open borders.

While I was somewhat pro higher immigration before, your work has convinced me to write and talk more about it.

I’ve been for open borders since I was 19 (fifteen years). I’m a Christian and I’ll confirm that Christianity does imply this. See what the Bible has to say about the resident alien. Or consider “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” along with the Good Samaritan parable with which Jesus illustrates it. I could hardly have been influenced further in that direction, but your writings gave me confidence and inspiration. Some readers seem to be put off by the tone of moral superiority, but sorry, it’s just not possible to pretend that nationalists aren’t at a lower moral level. Moral disdain is one of the chief instruments by which great social evils, say slavery or racism (or I would mischievous add foreign policy isolationism after Munich) are overcome. People can lie to themselves for a while that they’re not getting crushed in the moral debates, but eventually they get tired of it and turn to the truth.

As someone who already believed in the moral and efficiency case for immigration, you strengthened my conviction.

Then Steve Sailer changed my mind. You nor anyone else has explained why the Sailer types are wrong about the long-run consequences of immigration from 3rd world countries.

You strengthen the conviction of believes, but Sailer changes minds.

I’ve always been for completely open borders, in both directions – but not under the current system. One would need to limit the political influence some way. Personally, I would get rid of minimum voting ages and residency requirements and move to a simple “Have you paid net positive taxes of $X in total?” $X should be set so that virtually everyone can vote eventually, and retired people can continue to vote until their lifetime is a net drag on the economy.

This blog talked me out of favoring more open immigration. It was a combination of steadfast refusal to engage in the numbers and data and the choice of global welfare as opposed to American welfare or more specifically, my welfare, as the relevant metric. Frankly, the opposition is more convincing.

I _am_ a fricking immigrant and EconLog has convinced me we should have less immigration, favor skills more then we presently do, and perhaps charge immigrants directly or auction immigration slots. The gains from immigration should accrue primarily to citizens.

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring this comment. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

Extremely. I was once a virulent anti-immigration advocate who cheered the building of the border wall and the efforts of private citizens to patrol the borders. That has all changed, almost exclusively because of your blog posts here, Bryan (with assistance from David Henderson). As a result of my regular visits here, I have completely changed my point of view. You challenged my position, and forced me to think and re-think the ‘whys’.

I believe there is room for discussion as to how to bring more immigrants in. However, I am now convinced of the moral superiority of the open borders position. Hats off to you, sir.

I have paid a great deal of attention to your arguments, but they haven’t persuaded me for two reasons:

Your moral case is nearly pure utilitarianism, but that obviously reduces to an absurdity of self-abnegation (so long as one person on Earth is poorer than you, you must give him your wealth– and I neglect the question of interpersonal utility comparisons) so it disappoints your own quest for universally applicable principles. To paper over the weakness of your moral argument, you always resort to claiming that anyone who wants to restrict immigration also necessarily wants to exile or even liquidate some portion of existing citizens. That pleases your cheering section, but is simply untrue– and unworthy; why must you put such nasty words into your opponents’ mouths? You also ask readers/listeners to imagine themselves exiled for no reason, then tell them that forbidding strangers to immigrate is exactly the same, which is an emotional tactic, not a logical or philosophical one– and again unworthy. To be more persuasive, address real arguments, not hysterical strawmen.

Second, you tout absurd empirical arguments that mass immigration will be ultra-beneficial and ignore all contrary arguments. You would be more persuasive if you at least acknowleged the arguments against your position, even if you went on to claim the balance of arguments tipped to your side. For example, you have been repeating the claim that open immigration would immediately double world GDP. In your own comments section I just pointed out how absurd Vipul Naik’s own favorite reference for that assertion (Michael Clemens’ paper) is– to get a 20~60% gain in world GDP would apparently require 84 poor million people to move to California (and proportionately equal numbers of poor people to move to every other rich region, city, whatever) and all find highly-paid industrial jobs just waiting for them there, though they bring no industrial capital with them. Like most of your empirical assertions, the proposition falls apart as soon as it is critically-examined because too many immigration boosters apparently think their good moral intentions absolve them of any duty to intellectual honesty (such as considering the question of capital base, which an economist probably would if he were writing about some unemotional subject). Other commenters have already noted that you refuse to acknowledge any of: differences among immigrants modulating the consequences of letting any particular group of them in; likely effects of immigration on citizens’ (or even additional immigrants’) surplus from existing institutions; immigrants’ demand for capital-destroying transfer payments from current citizens; and so-forth.

(Let me say some more about “doubling world GDP.” The average world annual GDP growth rate seems to have been a bit more than 2.5% over the last several decades. Call it 2.5% which by the rule of 70 will double GDP for us in 28 years. Now, that will not double per-capita GDP because of population growth, but it does show that to be of dramatic benefit, unrestricted migration would have to double world GDP a lot faster than normal growth– say, in 5 or 10 years instead of 28. However, for migration to increase world GDP so rapidly, the migrants would have to move quickly and find new jobs quickly. That would require a very rapid increase in destination-country industrial capital, yet no immigration-booster has offered any plausible source for all that new capital. There is no great demand for unskilled workers in the rich countries’ existing industrial plant (low wages prove that demand for low-skilled labor is minimal).

(In rich countries you can’t even get bureaucratic approval to build a new oil refinery or housing tract in less than ten years, so how would infrastructure to support 2.6 billion poor people newly arrived in rich countries (Clemens’ estimate) get built? “Oh,” you say, “we will abolish domestic red tape at the same time we open the borders.” Okay, but that proposal vitiates your basic claim that the only reason poor people are poor is that they live under bad institutions, which we should correct by inviting them to live under* our institutions. Our bureacracy is part of our institutions! If we must remold our institutions to accomodate the migrants, how can you be confident we won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?

(Even a few minutes’ consideration shows that estimates of gigantic rapid gains in world GDP from migration are absurd. I think it is more likely that massive migration would reduce world GDP by disrupting industrial activity in rich countries.

(Also, just as population growth could cause per-capita GDP growth to lag total GDP growth over the long term, rapid population growth due to increased fertility of poor-to-rich-country migrants would likely sap the per-capita benefits of any sudden GDP expansion from migration (if such were even possible). The US and EU experience since 1965 is that immigrants from poor countries have much higher TFR’s than both natives and compatriots who remain in the source country. This isn’t surprising, really– when people with no cultural predjudices against large families suddenly find themselves richer, they have more kids. Any TFR-inhibiting effects of wealth (“demographic transition,” anyone?) don’t kick in for another generation or two.)

*Live under and help (re-)shape our institutions, I say, even though you claim immigrants will not affect institutions while you say simultaneously that rich countries should nearly quadruple their populations by accepting enough immigrants (per Clemens) to “double world GDP.” I can’t imagine 30 million Californians (for example) keepng 84 million immigrants out of politics for very long.

Ghost of Christmas Past:

Clemens cites 5 different research papers for his estimates on the impact of full and partial liberalisation of border restrictions. Funny how none of the 10+ authors of these papers, or the peer reviewers who signed off on publication of these papers, caught the ostensibly elementary “errors” you point out. Funny how all the economists who signed off on a petition calling for looser immigration policies have fallen prey to the same “errors”: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1727

johnleemk, I do not rely on appeal to authority (as you apparently wish to. What do you think of “peer reviewed” global-warming hysteria?).

I show, immediately and transparently, that Clemens’ numbers are absurd. Go to Clemens’ paper (linked above). Read the first few pages. Observe how he derives his estimate. Recognize that his estimate demands the migration of 3/7 of world population. Observe also that he simply assumes the rich countries will provide jobs (at slowly declining wage rates) to all those (billions of) people immediately. I have quoted Clemens fairly and extended his calculations fairly. They clearly lead to an absurd conclusion. (Follow the link to my comment yesterday on Clemens’ paper.)

In my last comment I showed that “doubling world GDP” much faster than the current growth trend requires absurd assumptions about the availability of capital other than “human capital” (unless you want to posit very rapid technological change, but Clemens offers no such assumptions, and I suggest mass migration would retard rather than accellerate technological growth).

I expect Clemens represents the sources he cites fairly. If his calculations reflect theirs, and he reaches absurd conclusions, then their conclusions must also be absurd.

Furthermore, I show that it is ridiculous to assert (based on Clemens and his sources) that mass migration will greatly increase world GDP in a short time while simultaneously maintaining that the migrants will not influence the “institutions” of their new homes. Clemens’ calculations require an approximate quadrupling of rich-country populations. No reasonable analyst could expect almost three new residents for every one old resident to have no effect on local culture or politics. (Not to mention destroying the standard of living of current rich-country citizens.)

Clemens and (I figure he cites them fairly) his sources may all be wrong because, I speculate, they are “results driven,” more interested in moral preening than rational analysis. They all implicitly assume that rich countries have vast underutilized* capital other than “human capital” so those countries could immediately employ vast new quantities of labor at high wages. They do not explore or offer any foundation for that assumption. The current difference in wages for the marginal worker doesn’t support their point because demand curves slope downward. Clemens acknowledges that, but simply posits a long, flat slope for that curve which when examined closely is obviously absurd.

Instead of trying to thump me with the old “all my favorite sources agree with me” stick, I suggest you try to show why my calculations based on Clemens’ are wrong– I don’t think you can (other than in irrelevant details– let me be the first to point out that I got California’s current population wrong, it’s 37 million not 30 million, but since I was mostly writing about ratios that doesn’t matter– my “84 million” Clemens’-program immigrants would just become 100 million without difference in effects).

*Some people might contend that the capital tied up in rich-country citizens’ spacious comfy homes full of redundant furniture (even poor people in rich countries often have separate chairs for dining, watching TV, doing bench or desk work, and taking off their shoes), expansive public parks, many automobiles, TV’s, computers, bass boats, and so-forth is “underutilized.” Perhaps all that “underutilized” capital could be, er, “repurposed” to raise the living standards of migrants from poor countries. However, forcing that would seem to violate the libertarian principle of respect for property and personal autonomy.

Ghost:

I have read his paper multiple times, and your comments as well. I still don’t see what is so terribly absurd about the paper. Open borders would both increase world GDP dramatically and lead to large amounts of people moving to the developed world. That’s not an absurd conclusion, but you professed to be shocked at the idea that 1% of the world’s population might find it desirable to move to California, and that this would be necessary to accomplish the changes in economic output implied by open borders. As far as the math goes, colour me unimpressed.

Nowhere in Clemens’s paper does he suggest that the gains from open border come from immigrants taking high-skilled blue- or white-collar jobs. In most cases the immigrants from developing countries would be doing similar jobs as they would have done at home. The notion that demand for additional labour is low is laughable; the press is full of stories about fruit withering on the vine across the US without immigrant labourers to pick them. It is economically more profitable for farmers to let their crop spoil than to hire Americans to pick the fruit.

And turning away more labour because it requires capital is like turning away more imported machinery because it requires maintenance. And considering you are the one arguing by implication that South Africa would have been better off preserving apartheid, I don’t think I’m the one being absurd.

I had backed off that a little bit, but you personally have pushed me far to the other side. Realizing how arbitrary political boundaries are for the sale of goods and services, how is labor any different? That is how I frame it now. The “two consenting adults” thought process if you will.

Not that I do not sympathize with that view; it is infuriating that something as arbitrary as national boundaries can keep two consenting adults apart on whatever level. But the reality is that its not just two consenting adults, but a whole bunch of externalities are involved as well. As annoying as borders are, the complete lack of them would be a complete disaster for any group of people currently fencing off a well cultivated piece of land.

The crux of the matter is that I think it is a fallacy to assume that there is fairness to be found in either position; open or closed borders, or anything inbetween. It is not unlike to question; ‘should the government make red or blue cars?’. None of the above. There is no correct answer to these questions in a command economy, nor is there anything resembling a correct answer to questions of association, in a society that is not in any meaningful sense stooled on voluntary association.

You’ve indirectly been anti-persuasive for me, I’m afraid. I’ve gone from “extremely strongly pro-open-borders” to “weakly pro-open-borders, but we really need to figure out how to cope with any negative externalities”, due in part to reading and formulating arguments based on your interlocutors’ disagreement.

E.g.: why would anyone *want* to move from one location to another? Typically because of better society (politics, economy, culture), not better climate, right? Yet if the society is just a function of the people at each location, then “worse locations spread people to better locations” may not be a good way to evolve those functions. (note that immigration restrictions don’t totally fix this problem: it exists whether “locations” means “countries” or even just “states” or “municipalities”).

Count me as someone whose position has moved closer to yours, Bryan.

No, I’m not moved to change my position. Open borders would, in my view, decrease my quality of life by (for starters) decreasing open space, driving down wages, increase the need for government-provided services, and, perhaps most importantly, decreasing pressure on the source countries to continue improving their own political systems and societies. We can’t forever be the safety valve for badly run countries.

I am for immigration reform. A PhD should come with a green card. Have more than a $1m in liquid assets, then come on in. Bringing over grandma and all the cousins? Not so much.

Deeply unconvincing. More, I’d say you have made me *more* skeptical of large scale immigration. I have articulated why in some detail on a few of DRH’s threads. In short you want to argue from (non-existent) principles and a perch of an assumed moral high ground. I see this as a way of evading concrete concerns, which heightens my skepticism. Analogies to apartheid don’t help.

Sorry, but you did ask.

Wow. I’m surprised at the breadth of answers here. Since I was converted by Bryan (and others) from a “secure the borders” type to the complete opposite point of view, I expected that my answer would be somewhere near the median.

I think you’ve been very persuasive.

Since reading econlog i’ve gone from relatively indifferent to extremely pro-open border. I’d give econlog credit for at least 50% of my change in opinion.

It is always plump white rich pompous chappies like Caplan who support open borders, since they are not on the bleeding edge of the inflow of resent-filled minorities.

I already thought that having more open borders simply seemed like the fair thing to do. But Bryan’s arguments persuaded me that it was a much more important and urgent issue than I previously thought.

I also found reading a lot of the responses made to Bryan’s arguments eye-opening. They revealed to me an unpleasant side of humanity that uses political debates as an excuse to denigrate and insult whole classes of people in order to give themselves a mild status boost. To this day the knowledge that places like vdare.com exist makes me physically ill. I have to remind myself that most opponents of immigration are decent folks who are just a little misguided, and that the unpleasant people are a tiny minority.

I also think reading Bryan strengthened my support of open borders because I got to see him engage in arguments against it. This made me feel like I held a view that had been tested against adversity and come out on top.