It probably does give an advantage. The reality is, every single country has a finite capacity and a finite amount of resources. Those are managed and procured by the taxes paid by its citizens. In the modern age when travel is easy, fast, and cheap, it does make sense to have some sort of control mechanism to limit how many “non-contributors” may come in to use the country’s resources, otherwise you risk getting your systems overburdened because they’re being utilized by a lot more people than they are meant to.
This is not an easy problem to solve at all. An idealistic “let’s get rid of the borders” will have very real consequences in the real world, and probably won’t work very well as long as some countries are significantly and objectively better places to live than others.
The reality is, every single country has a finite capacity and a finite amount of resources.
Sort of but not really? It’s a talking point that tends to get used by xenophobes and nationalists a lot, that sounds obviously true on the surface, but never stands up to much scrutiny whenever you examine it on a case-by-case basis.
Basic scrutiny? Like it usually turns out that “capacity” is measured by a self-serving and short-sighted metric, and you could easily find space and resources for more if there were the political will to do so.
“finite” stands up to that scrutiny, but it also doesn’t mean a lot. The volume of space within 1m of any photon ever emitted from the Sun is finite, but it’s not small on many scales.
If you have an additional 3% of the population come in as new immigrants, no one would even notice resources were spread more thin, just like they don’t notice a 3% inflation most years. I don’t think most countries are experiencing that level of immigration, including extra-legal immigration.
What does not stand up to scrutiny is a general “immigration is bad” thing. Immigration is great if you allow people who are willing and able to contribute to your country in, and implement some measures to help them integrate into your country so they can make a life for themselves and start being productive members as quickly and efficiently as possible. Then it works, and when it works it can work very well.
But that itself, choosing who can and cannot get in, who can/will be a productive new member of your society is border control. Basically you have to control the entry so that you can give your systems and infrastructure and society the time and opportunity to gradually develop along.
It probably does give an advantage. The reality is, every single country has a finite capacity and a finite amount of resources. Those are managed and procured by the taxes paid by its citizens. In the modern age when travel is easy, fast, and cheap, it does make sense to have some sort of control mechanism to limit how many “non-contributors” may come in to use the country’s resources, otherwise you risk getting your systems overburdened because they’re being utilized by a lot more people than they are meant to.
This is not an easy problem to solve at all. An idealistic “let’s get rid of the borders” will have very real consequences in the real world, and probably won’t work very well as long as some countries are significantly and objectively better places to live than others.
Sort of but not really? It’s a talking point that tends to get used by xenophobes and nationalists a lot, that sounds obviously true on the surface, but never stands up to much scrutiny whenever you examine it on a case-by-case basis.
Like what kind of scrutiny?
Basic scrutiny? Like it usually turns out that “capacity” is measured by a self-serving and short-sighted metric, and you could easily find space and resources for more if there were the political will to do so.
“finite” stands up to that scrutiny, but it also doesn’t mean a lot. The volume of space within 1m of any photon ever emitted from the Sun is finite, but it’s not small on many scales.
If you have an additional 3% of the population come in as new immigrants, no one would even notice resources were spread more thin, just like they don’t notice a 3% inflation most years. I don’t think most countries are experiencing that level of immigration, including extra-legal immigration.
What does not stand up to scrutiny is a general “immigration is bad” thing. Immigration is great if you allow people who are willing and able to contribute to your country in, and implement some measures to help them integrate into your country so they can make a life for themselves and start being productive members as quickly and efficiently as possible. Then it works, and when it works it can work very well.
But that itself, choosing who can and cannot get in, who can/will be a productive new member of your society is border control. Basically you have to control the entry so that you can give your systems and infrastructure and society the time and opportunity to gradually develop along.