Immigrationality

gistfile1.txt

1. Where is the problem?

There is lot of talk about tightening borders of late.
Right wing parties blame immigrants for anything from crime to unemployment
to the bankrupcy of social services to the disintegration of society which they
claim was taking place.
A end-of world vibe seems to spread among their ranks, while they argue that
we were in a dog-eat-dog world.

Is there really a immigration-caused crime problem?
Are immigrants "stealing" jobs?
Are social services heading for bankrupcy, and are immigrant loafers the cause?
These are the questions we need to answer positively, if we seriously want to
argue to solve these problems through tighter borders.

1.1. Crimmigration

Why should crime be an immigration related issue?
Are immigrants largely criminal?
No, they are for the most part nice people like the rest of us.
Are there criminal enterprises that profit from immigration?
Sure, human trafficking is a form of immigration, though nobody would suggest
that the victims of traffickers are criminals.
They are victims.
And there is smuggling, which might depend on a constant stream of couriers,
but usually tourist are much better suited for the task.
Anyway, to conclude from the existance of criminal structures that depend on
immigration that immigration is the source of these structures is a non sequitur.

We can look at crime from an economic standpoint.
A life of crime is a high risk, high yield investment, although the risks are often
higher than the return.
Crime only flourishes, when earning an income through legal means has become
sufficiently difficult or unobtainable.
In short, it only pays to rob and burglarize when running from the police is less
difficult than earning a good living through legal means.
Are fair work opportunities for immigrants rare and repercussions if caught
negligible, then immigrants might become more likely to commit crime, though
this has less to do with their immigrant status, than with the difficulty of earning
a living.

1.2. Job Stealing

Interestingly enough, are proponents of tighter borders often especially
adamant, that immigrants must be able to support themselves.
They argue, that immigrants without the means or skills to support themselves
would just become a burden to society by collecting unemployment benefits.
This would be perfectly alright, if they wouldn't blame immigrants of stealing
jobs from the native workforce.
How can immigrants support themselves if they are not supposed to work in
a paid job?
It is a logical contradiction to demand from immigrants that they support
themselves, but not to take up any paid work.

Now, are immigrants really stealing jobs from the native workforce?
No.
If the local economy prefers to employ cheap, and often unskilled laborers,
over the native workforce, then this economy is not exactly playing nicely,
and should be looked at.
The local enterprises are making the decision to employ immigrants and
saving on salaries.
It is not like the immigrants have an interest to provide underpaid labor.
It is their lack of skills and abundance that allows local companies to force the
prices down to the disadvantage of immigrants and the local workforce.
The local cooperations should reprioritize their relationship with the native
workforce over stock revenue.
 
1.3. Social Services Bankrupcy

We cannot hope to keep all immigrants without a job forever, and ask them
to support themselves.
One way how they can get out of this trap is by applying for social benefits.
Currently social services are under strain in almost every country, but
immigration makes up just a small percentage of the money paid by social
services.
Giving immigrants desirable opportunities to earn a living will cut these
benefit payments dramatically.

It must also be said, that the social services are usually paid through public
debt, also known as inflation.
Therefore, all budget decisions are doubly a product of politics.
Immigrants have virtually no influence on these decisions.
Inflation might not be the best way to finance social services, but it is still
the most worthy cause to justify inflation.
Bailout programmes for private sector enterprises are much more
objectionable.

2. Measure

2.1. Can we achieve tight borders

The proposal to tighten down national or supernational borders, e.g. the EU
border, is ultimately a futile endeavor.
Every nation or political region will still want to allow tourists, trade,
diplomacy, highly-qualified and menial workers, and asylum seekers to enter.
To keep out tourists would decimate any countries tourism sector and leave
a large number unemployed.
(Rendering immigration-blamed unemployment even worse.)
Today's living standards depend on international trade.
It also depends heavily on cheap labor to do the dirtywork and the free
movement of brains to drive progress.
As long as we are unwilling to skip our coffees, chocolate and live without
computers, trade must continue.
Since we want neither the absence of tourism, nor the consequences of no trade,
not to mention wars, diplomacy must stay.
Finally, we do proud ourselves of our humanitarian qualities, in short, that we
aren't nazi-ish brutes.
Now, tourist and work visas can be overstaid, diplomatic status given for
creative reasons, and trade even requires occasional visits of foreign
representatives.
All of them could go into hiding. There is no way to track these people for
eventual deportation.
To have anything even remotely similar to a tight border, the entire physical
border must be superveiled and patroled.
Adding the costs of sucha measure to the absence of trade and tourism prosperity
really leaves but one conclusion.
The costs outweigh any possible benefit.

2.2. Reaction tardiness

A closed border does not diminish the attractiveness of living in a country,
but just of the attractiveness of the journey there.
As long as a country is attractive, some people will try to sneak in.
By pushing prospective immigrants to go to greather length, they will have to
keep up inventing new tricks to cross the border.
In turn more resources are needed to control the border.
Costs rise.
A continuing armsrace ensues.
A endless series of more or less successful actions on both sides is the result.
In any case, the immigrants are forcing the border control's hand.
The border control has a disadvantage, since they can only fight the
immigrants when they make their move.
They are always one step behind the immigrants.
This leads to the question:
Is one willing to put control over the border budget in foreign hands?

2.3. Outcome distribution

There is a disbalance between what both sides, the separatist country and
the prospective immigrants can achieve.
The best outcome the country can hope for, is that it can keep everybody
out for some given price, and that this price is not too high.
In the worst case the country pays a horrendously high price, but fails to
keep the immigrants out.
It's outcome spectrum lies between a reasonable price and a ridiculous waste
of resources.
The immigrants however either win a new, more positive existance, or go back
to their old lives.
Their outcome spectrum lies between loosing nothing and a huge win.

The world isn't an exact place.
On average the outcomes for both lies somewhere between the ends
of the outcome spectrum. 
On average the country looses.
On average the immigrant wins.
It's a sucker's game, that any country should refuse to play.

2.4. Problem Solving vs Problem Export

If tight borders worked, and immigration was the cause of all the problems
usually discussed in this context, limiting immigration or even deporting
people might actually do what is expected from it.
Except, the immigrants keep returning again and again and run up the costs
of autorities.
Yes, the immigration would be managable, but the situation would not have
been defused.
Why play a game that is not winnable?

A much better solution would be to export solutions.
Helping other countries to give people better perspectives might be a
cheaper solution in the long run.
However, this isn't an easy task, and all the details have to be done right.
Existing student exchange programmes for example are only available to
students with exceptionally good grades.
These students often end up staying in their host country, because to local
employers they are more attractive than the local students, who have
mostly normal grades.
Smart immigrants are a much bigger problem than cheap workers.
Cheap workers fill the menial jobs that no local wants to do.
Smart immigrants take the jobs every local would like to have, and leave
them without prospects.
Local university graduates are usually not happy to do menial work, nor
are they always well suited to work abroad.
Most study programmes are industry oriented and therefore to some degree
location specific.
The best thing would be to build and run universities and other schools
abroad with programmes that are of local value.
Exchange students should be average, but willing to become teachers in
their own countries to replace the foreign guest teachers.
Actually, it doesn't matter if tight borders work or not.
As long as people's perspectives abroad are improved, they don't need to
immigrate to any other place.
Conversly, the local people from the original immigration country might
emigrate if their local perspectives are declining.
Building up foreign places can be like an insurance for bad times.

2.5. Nation Concept

The concept of a nation is a rather new invention and goes back to the
industrial age.
Before that, there were numerous little kingdoms scattered everywhere.
Borders were short enough and trade small enough in volume to allow the
local king or baron to keep an eye on all movements across the border.
Back then movement of goods and people was havily taxed.
People would not travel unless it was really necessary.
Plus, live in the neighbour kingdom was on average as drab and and hard
as anywhere else.
Migration only occured in the context of wars, but if they did, the
scale was massive.
Modern migration is nowhere near as grand and disruptive as it was.

The nation as we know it was introduced in a relatively short time.
Obviously, the concept of an uniform political zone existed long before
that, e.g. in the roman empire, but it was always clear that this was
not a rigid situation, but a constant process, hence the romann legions
stationed along the borders of the roman empire.
Armed conflicts were common.
The roman empire used it's far-away provinces as a buffer against
invaders and to isolate it's core from the negative effects of the wars.
This is a very different concept than that of nations.

Nationbuilding was largely a legal and economic process.
Concentrating territory required a single, common legal standard and
processes, but allowed to abolishing customs within the territory and
therefore to profit from a larger domestic market.
This is basically the same idea as breaking down national borders today
to profit from an internatonal market, but on a smaller scale.
In order to gather support for the changes that needed to be made to
law and business practices, popular support was rallied through the
emphasis of a common culture.
Folk tales and the works of composers were collected and published by
editors, the same way as lawyers on the continent codified laws and
published comprehensive volumes of all national laws, e.g. the french
code civil.
It did not matter if there had actually been a common culture in the
first place, because it did after these works were published.
After the necessary changes were made and the understanding of the own
nation as a economically, legally and politically uniform space sown in
it's people's minds, the process took off, more or less self-driving.
The current interest in free international trade is only as strong as it
is, because it is nothing else than the logical continuation of the same
basic principles.

Now, the nation is still the most powerful entity in existance today, but
there is no reason why this couldn't change.
The nation concept might disappear as fast as it was conceived.
Only contemporary politics and political theory mistake the concept of
nations for the only viable alternative.
The cyberspace has long developed in a nationless space, governed not by
politics, but by technical feasibility, personal contribution, and largely
popularity.
Without the dedication the early engineers put into it, the internet would
not have gotten of the ground.
Since then, individuals have changed the face of the net again and again.
The invention of search engines changed the net from a network of bulletin
boards into a collection of notepads.
Along came the dynamic web and multimedia, and everybody can now be a
makeshift tv station.

There is no guarantee, that solving problems in the current system is
cheaper than reinventing a new and better political system.
Continuing to think in the current boundaries is definitively rather limiting
access to creative solutions than supporting finding solutions.
The internet has already proved, that it's openness to change and outside
influence leads to all sorts of solutions to problems and even problems that
don't exist yet.
It would certainly be a foolish decision to ignore such powerful lessons of
the capabilities of open systems for the problem at hand.

2.6. Diversity

What does it mean, when a country is described as having a rich culture?
Usually, having a rich culture refers to foreign influences, a mix of
cultures and a liberal attitude.
The regular trott of a homogenous society does not lend itself as
birthplace of new traditions and ideas.
It is the need for adaption, the challenge of change or even the threat of
outside influence that drives the cultural process.
A diverse culture therefore is a rich culture.
A country kept clean and sterile of anything new is a cultureless place.
A sterile country is also a country which is the most endangered from
actual degeneration, while a culturally diverse country already posseses
the means to change and adapt instead of perish.

2.7. Personal Freedom / Human Rights

Personal freedom can only effectively be realized, when they people
involved can move about freely.
Freedom in a box, even if that box is country-sized is not freedom.
It is a generous prison.
It is lavish packaging around a little privatized freedom.

2.8. Nationbuilding through Immigration

2.9. Cause or Consequence?

2.10. Age Distributions and Marrygration