The idea of the foreigner—the outsider, the stranger—has been with us since we gathered in clans and huddled around campfires, guarding what was ours against others who wanted to take it from us.
The passport, however, is a modern innovation, an invention of nation-states designed, along with citizenship papers and work visas, to control where people may live and work.
Why should an accident of birth determine these things for me? So long as I keep the peace and behave properly, so long as I can support myself financially, I should be able to go where I like. These controls, I maintain, constitute a conspiracy by the nations of the world to deprive me of my human rights.
Of course, if all controls were lifted, rich countries would be inundated by people from poor countries seeking better living and working conditions, overloading local schools and hospitals, taking low-paying jobs while legitimate citizens can’t find work . . . oh, wait: the public thinks that’s already happening. [h/t to ontheleftcoast for revision]
So what would happen, actually, if immigration were decriminalized, if we had ‘free labour’ agreements, not just ‘free trade’ agreements?
Here's what would happen:
- The criminals who transport workers across national borders would be out of business, thus putting a major dent in the modern slavery problem. Instead, an employer needing workers and unable to find them locally would apply to an agency—a legitimate, regulated, tax-paying business. At the other end, someone looking for work and willing to travel would apply to one of the same agency’s overseas offices. Travel costs, wages, housing arrangements, etc., would all be handled legally and transparently. What happens if the worker is laid off? He goes back to the agency, discovers where there is a suitable job, and off he goes.
- The numbers of people trying to cross borders illegally would drop dramatically, reducing the problem to a scale that would be manageable.
- Costs to the government (border control, immigration enforcement) would drop, while revenues from taxes paid by legal workers would increase. If a ‘foreign’ worker fell ill, was injured, or was somehow unable to work at all, then the taxes he and millions like him had been paying would cover the costs.
- Abuse of workers by employers would also decrease dramatically. Minimum wages, working conditions, benefits, and contract provisions could all be enforced once citizenship is de-coupled from the right to work.
Personal experience supports my conviction that such a system is feasible. As a teacher, I’m part of a small group of workers who enjoy some degree of international mobility. There are several agencies that recruit teachers for international schools. There are standards of pay and working conditions that schools must adhere to if they hope to recruit and retain good teachers. When I’m hired, the school arranges for transportation, and covers at least some of my moving costs. At the end of my contract, I get a return flight and shipment for a reasonable amount of household goods.
There are some restrictions. As an English-speaking teacher, for example, I cannot under most circumstances obtain employment in Europe, because I don’t have an EU passport. The European Union has instituted, within its borders, basically the same arrangement that I would like to see worldwide. If I’m a good teacher, and a school in France prefers to hire me instead of various other candidates from the U.K., then they ought to be able to offer me the job. But at the moment they cannot, and this is wrong.
It’s even worse that farmworkers or custodians or gas-station attendants from Mexico cannot through a simple process find employment in the U.S., or Canada, or Russia, or Argentina, or anywhere else. A small restaurant could not afford to recruit kitchen staff from abroad, but a consortium of small restaurants in New York City, for example, certainly could, thus ensuring a reliable supply of workers and reducing the problems of finding new employees for individual restaurants. Other small businesses could cooperate similarly.
Note that the current border-control problems in the U.S. and Europe could be almost entirely eliminated if, in addition to establishing free-labour agreements, they would decriminalize illicit drugs and prostitution. In all three cases—immigration, drugs, and prostitution—prohibitive laws significantly increase the problems and the costs arising from people’s predictable desires to work, take drugs, and have sex. In all three cases, lifting the prohibitions would save money, reduce crime, raise revenues, and improve living conditions for millions of people—including drug addicts and sex workers, who could receive treatment, counselling, and support with the money saved and taxes raised by decriminalization.
Based on events to date, I am not hopeful that our current crop of nation-states will suddenly acquire common sense on these issues. In some cases, powerful people profit from the status quo. In others, deeply embedded fears are triggered by such ideas: We will be overrun by foreigners, by drug addicts, by prostitutes! (As if those folks don't already think they’re being overrun. [h/t to ontheleftcoast for revision]) Plus the first is offensive to patriotism, and the second two are offensive to religion. So I am not holding my breath.
I am seriously considering, however, bringing suit in the International Court for violation of my human rights.