promethea.incorporated

argumate:

voximperatoris:

@argumate:

Indeed, the nativists I’ve privately and publicly encountered routinely claim we're already in a world of open borders, and insist I’m just a more honest version of Obama or Merkel. […]

The sad reality is that mainstream pro-immigration thinkers favor moving from our current world of 98% closed borders to maybe 97% closed borders.  But xenophobia is so rampant that even these tepid reforms sound like the end of the world to at least a quarter of American natives.  

I think the argument for open borders needs more than a bunch of economists saying it will boost GDP when they have been wrong on such issues before.

There needs to be a vision of the future world, and it needs to be compelling and desirable and attractive to people, even if it’s a little exaggerated.

Telling people your nominal wages will go down but your real purchasing power will increase! sounds bad even if it’s true, and it’s hardly compelling.

When a substantial fraction of the population is already uneasy about current immigration levels, upping them by a factor of 50 or so needs groundwork.

Tying it in with infrastructure projects, perhaps?

Meanwhile we immigrants are like “what the fuck open borders is obviously a compelling and desirable and attractive vision of the future world in itself, why would anyone need any more reason for it?”

(especially when we know how inhumane the asylum process is and how regular immigration quota systems assume DIN-standardized lives instead of crazy trans girls whose backgrounds are as much of a mess as their brains but who have what it actually takes despite lacking in Official Papers)

Now the question is: could we combine open borders with magic inflation tricks to make people’s nominal wages not go down so the silly people will not be upset?