DanB

(note: I have been thinking about this essay for several months; I did not realize it would turn out to be so timely). Many people in the rationality community and adjacent corners of the intellectual world are sympathetic to the idea of Open Borders. This concept can be explained easily. People in the developing world are suffering because of poverty and government oppression. When a migrant moves from a country like Guatemala to a country like the US, her economic prospects brighten dramatically. At the same time, according to OB proponents, she does not substantially reduce the well-being of the previous inhabitants of her adopted country, and may actually improve it. Even if the net benefit to the current inhabitants is zero, the fact that the immigrants accrue so much benefit, should be enough to persaude most fair-minded people that immigration is good - and in fact most people are in favor of modest immigration. The OB position takes this logic far further than most people are comfortable with, but the rationale is clear. Unfortunately, most people won't accept "scaled-up" economic arguments. If the evidence shows that immigration is mostly good, normal people will accept a modest level of immigration, but not the complete abolition of immigration restrictions. In recent times this issue has become politically polarized, but it wasn't always a clear-cut Left vs Right battle - here's Bernie Sanders deriding Open Borders as a Koch brothers proposal. Depending on your own views, you might regard the mainstream attitude as sensible, or you might regard it as cold-hearted and self-destructive. Either way, it's clear that full Open Borders isn't politically feasible in the near term. I believe there is a policy that is more likely to be politically acceptable, while also capturing many of the ethical benefits of Open Borders. That policy is Vacation - the US should vacate small strips of territory to make a space where refugee and migrant populations can constru