Via The Skeptical Libertarian, I just watched the video below about “Laniakea: Our home supercluster.” As I pointed out in a comment on the TSL Facebook page, what’s really important here is that we now know where to build the border fence as we don’t want immigrants from the Perseus-Pisces supercluster sneaking into Laniakea and taking our jobs or sullying our culture.
In all seriousness, though, what will appropriate immigration policy be if (when?) we make contact? Suppose we make contact with an alien race that has mastered interstellar travel, and we welcome them with open arms. We also make contact with intelligent life on Mars, and the Martians object that we shouldn’t welcome aliens from another star system into our solar system. To what extent would they or wouldn’t they have an argument?
READER COMMENTS
Mike Hammock
Sep 6 2014 at 10:27am
The answer will probably depend whether their skin (or carapace) is darker than ours.
Jeremy
Sep 6 2014 at 3:05pm
But would the Martians have any ability to prohibit travel to Earth? We’re in the same Solar System, but let’s bring this down a bit. Canada and the United States are also on the same continent, yet the USA doesn’t enforce it’s demands on Canadian immigration, and vice versa. Canada is allowed to set its immigration policy for its area on the continent, and the US is allowed to set immigration policy for its area. Why wouldn’t it be the same for the Solar System in this scenario?*
*Of course, precluding that the aliens are at all humanlike in their thought processes. I’ll bet $25 that if we did encounter life, it wouldn’t be like the Vulcans of Star Trek, the Zentraedi giants of Robotech/Macross, or even the Twi’leks of Star Wars.
vikingvista
Sep 6 2014 at 3:51pm
Jeremy,
The question is more along the lines of: What is the reason Texas, or Collin County, or Walmart, or The Prairie Ridge HOA, or Fred Smith shouldn’t be able to set their own immigration policies?
Ali Bertarian
Sep 6 2014 at 4:36pm
“Suppose we make contact with an alien race that has mastered interstellar travel, and we welcome them with open arms.”
Suppose that alien race likes all the free stuff that the government will give them, and doesn’t like to follow any of the laws on their own planet. You still want them?
MikeP
Sep 6 2014 at 8:13pm
Canada is allowed to set its immigration policy for its area on the continent, and the US is allowed to set immigration policy for its area.
There is no power whatsoever granted by the Constitution for the federal government to regulate immigration. Yet somehow it isn’t California’s or Pennsylvania’s decision who can immigrate to those areas.
Comments are closed.