Welcome to Crackers and Curry, in which we will choose a topic to debate each week.
From political issues to social ills to economic topics, we just love to argue for the sake of debate (regardless of what our actual opinions may be).
Sudeep: American hegemony has ravaged foreign oilfields, plantations, tribes and cultures. It has fed off of prosperous economies and made countless nations barren. Out of this wealth, America has built jungles of industry filled with endless factories, tall buildings and suburban castles.
But this prosperity is for a privileged few. Every day American embassies reject countless visa applications. Border guards turn back thousands of eager workers. Those with citizenship, green cards or work permits are allowed in. The remainder of the world is left to rot in poverty.
So why not open American borders? Why not give the poor from foreign countries the ability to better their lives? The lack of jobs and inadequate access to resources condemns thousands to poverty; all this can be avoided if America opens its gates. The United States owes the world its wealth and infrastructure.
Immigration restrictions are one of the worst forms of institutionalized discrimination and are an economically inefficient means to reach xenophobic ends. If we apply this economic liberalism of free trade to immigration policy, we will doubtlessly see prices fall and growth explode. The best workers will get the best jobs. Employers will choose amongst diligent millions. Industrious laborers from the developing world will be given jobs that they deserve, all the while providing vital services to Americans at lower costs.
We live in a world where borders are breaking, where cultures are mingling. It is now time to seriously discuss the end of immigration restriction. To keep people out of America is to hold back development, to sustain poverty and inequality. Open borders and a free movement of labor are not only ethical, inclusive necessities in a globalized world, but also the means to provide countless benefits to the American people.
Peter: Is the United States an evil monster bent on economically exploiting all the hardworking people of both the free and less-free worlds? Maybe, maybe not. But what we're discussing is a different issue: whether its borders should be opened so that any person can enter. As Austin Powers once said, "I want a toilet made of solid gold, but it's just not in the cards now, is it?" Opening the floodgates to all immigrants would create domestic and international problems.
I'm not an economics major, but I know supply and demand. With millions of new sources of labor, wages would drop sharply. Housing and commodity prices would rise; roads and public transport would congest, leading to a huge reduction in standards of living. And how could we cope with treating and caring for millions of new citizens in an already-flawed health insurance system? Mother Earth already hates America enough -more people would mean more cars, more industry and more pollution.
Is it even the case that opening borders would help most other countries? Supposing that the United States allows all the most able-bodied laborers and most skilled workers to enter its market, who will be left to drive industry and pull developing countries out of poverty? If all the brightest doctors move to the United States searching for opportunity, who will be left to treat the millions of malnourished and sick across the globe? Since World War II, the United States has admitted more refugees than any other country and is extremely generous in donating foreign aid. Maybe it's not enough, but it's a start.
Sudeep Bhatia is a junior majoring in philosophy; Peter Radosevich is a junior majoring in political science. They can be reached at Sudeep.Bhatia@tufts.edu and Peter.Radosevich@tufts.edu, respectively.
