“Imagine moving from Nigeria to Nebraska as freely as one might move from Massachusetts to Maine.”
NY Times opinion writer Farhad Manjoo says it’s time for the Democratic Party, or some brave person in it, to drag the Overton Window to the left on immigration. He believes there’s a solid case to be made for open borders and it’s time someone made it.
Imagine radically shifting our stance toward outsiders from one of suspicion to one of warm embrace. Imagine that if you passed a minimal background check, you’d be free to live, work, pay taxes and die in the United States. Imagine moving from Nigeria to Nebraska as freely as one might move from Massachusetts to Maine.
There’s a witheringly obvious moral, economic, strategic and cultural case for open borders, and we have a political opportunity to push it. As Democrats jockey for the presidency, there’s room for a brave politician to oppose President Trump’s racist immigration rhetoric not just by fighting his wall and calling for the abolishment of I. C. E. but also by making a proactive and affirmative case for the vast expansion of immigration.
He’s certainly playing up the bright side of this politically, but the actual reasoning is a bit, err, confused.
When you see the immigration system up close, you’re confronted with its bottomless unfairness. The system assumes that people born outside our borders are less deserving of basic rights than those inside. My native-born American friends did not seem to me to warrant any more dignity than my South African ones; according to this nation’s founding documents, we were all created equal.
