Immigration
Should people be free to choose the country in which they live?
Representing the sides
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Guest contributions to this debate:
America’s refugee policy is damaging to the world and to itself, says Donald Kerwin
Our response to the refugee crisis will be the measure of our humanity, writes Angelina Jolie
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In the fantasy world, we create “nations” and imagine ourselves as ongoing parts of them to assuage our fears of death, even at the cost of millions of lives in war and inane policies that lock people up for movement without a pass. In the real world, we acknowledge our mortality, and use rationality so as to protect the planet and its inhabitants from the genuine harms of ignorance and avarice.
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It is one of the mistakes of the cosmopolitan worldview to assume that liberal institutions and successful societies (like those most The Economist readers live in) are part of the established heritage of all of humanity. They are not. They remain precious and the inheritance of only a minority of humans. It would be an act not of generosity but of extreme irresponsibility to jeopardise this inheritance by abolishing national borders.