The Open Borders Movement

I spoke on The 180, a Canadian radio show on CBC, on the open borders movement. Ironically, the streaming version appears not to be available to Americans. You can listen to the podcast, however. The interview starts at about 3:18. Jim Brown, the interviewer, was very gracious in letting me speak and I thought we covered a lot. Here are two lightly transcribed bits:

The problem with poverty is not that people don’t have skills it is that they are imprisoned in countries where their political or geographic institutions prevent them from making a living. When people move to the U.S. or Canada they are perfectly capable of making a decent living. It’s not that there is something wrong with the people in other countries. The poverty is the fault of the governments under which they live and the unfortunate fact that some people are just unlucky and they happen to be born in a barren region and because of the policies of other countries they can’t leave that barren region. I think that is wrong.

When someone with low skills comes into Canada that benefits people in Canada who have high skills as it helps them to focus on what they do best. As I like to put it, a gardener who works for a particle physicist is indirectly helping to unlock the secrets of the universe.

See OpenBorders.info for a superb resource on all aspects of this question.

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