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Open borders

[Tweet] MONSTER 1-Don’t Follow Me‏ @tatumjobs

NO ONE WANTS #OPENBORDERS-NO ONE

Open borders: the efficient, egalitarian, libertarian, utilitarian way to double world GDP.

► Bryan Caplan

Democrats don’t care about the impact of uncontrolled migration on your communities, your schools, your hospitals, your jobs, or your safety. Democrats put illegal immigrants before they put American citizens. What the hell is going on?

► Donald Trump at a June 20, 2018 rally at Duluth, Minnesota

There is a real concept, embraced by some people, called “open borders,” and it is this: A line between two governmental jurisdictions across which people can pass with little or no restriction; passage of goods may or may not be controlled. Most borders between states in the United States are like this (with limited exceptions, such as stops to check for banned plants when entering California). Many countries in the European Union have open borders with each other, and this approach can be found in a few other parts of the world as well.

No one in the mainstream of United States politics, however, has called for open international borders for this country. That isn’t to say the idea has no backers; check out the Twitter hashtag #OPENBORDERS and you’ll find quite a few. But at this writing, the idea isn’t close to the center of American politics, on either the left or the right, and hasn’t been seriously pursued.

Some countries, from time to time, have closed borders, an opposite to open borders, which involves banning most passage across, as in the case of the border between North and South Korea, and in some places around the Caucasus mountain countries. These are relatively uncommon globally.

The norm for international borders – the major exception being much of the European Union – is the controlled border. At a controlled border, people and goods mostly are allowed to pass, but with some limits, restrictions and in some cases prohibitions. (Carrying weapons or certain drugs across a controlled border often is forbidden, for example.) Most countries presently and for many years have exercise some control over entry and exit.

The United States does this, as it has for generations, at all of its borders. If you want to travel to or from the United States from, let’s say, Canada or Mexico, you have to pass through border security, and you might be turned down (heading either way). The United States border with Mexico sees about 350 million legal crossings every year.

It is, in the context of the nation’s history, actually a relatively new development. While customs operations (to check for taxes owed and other issues) were set up at ports almost from independents, the borders were not patrolled for many years. The first efforts at it, as a project of the Department of Commerce and Labor, did not begin until 1904, and were not significantly organized until the Labor Appropriations Act of 1924, when the Border Patrol was created to monitor both the northern and southern U.S. borders.

In the 2010s, the Border Patrol has moved into uncharted territory …

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