As we head into another nauseating campaign season, Republicans would like you to believe that the U.S. border is “open” and that this somehow poses an existential risk to the country. Democrats go out of their way not to engage, let alone propose a counternarrative, which in their minds is electorally prudent but really makes the problem worse. As a result, there is a broad perception that anyone can waltz through any port of entry, find employment, and make a new life. Let’s be clear: That’s bullshit.
It’s true that migrants are crossing into the U.S. in larger numbers than before from Central America but also west Africa, Southeast Asia, and beyond.
It’s also true that there is no monolithic wall stretching from one coast to the other: A Trump-era effort by border vigilantes to build one unraveled spectacularly when its GoFundMe campaign was revealed to have been fraudulent.
But the notion that our border — any border, really — is open could not be further from the truth. In fact, with the exception of an (expired) pandemic-era policy during which people could be automatically turned away, and Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy (ruled unconstitutional), the border has never been less open. And that’s the case around the world. There is no country or territory barring the high Arctic where anyone can go seek shelter, even as a record number of people are on the move from poverty, climate change, war, discrimination, or political persecution.
The only way out — and in — is to catch a lucky break, or to break the rules entirely.
Which should push us to wonder: What if it weren’t this way? What if we faced the fictitiousness of borders head-on, and opened the border in earnest? What could possibly go wrong?
Not much, it turns out — and you don’t even have to be a radical leftist to see the appeal. Open immigration is one of those issues that, empirically speaking, is so advantageous that it creates some strange bedfellows indeed. In a new book, The Case for Open Borders, journalist John Washington convincingly lays out the case for open borders in terms anyone with three brain cells can grasp.
First, if not foremost: Immigration is good for national economies. Foreign workers don’t take away jobs as much as they grow the pie. They create opportunities for everyone. A popular line among business-minded centrists is that half of the Fortune 500’s companies were founded by immigrants or their children. To be clear, that should not be the only reason to let more people in — but it doesn’t hurt, either, especially when you consider that immigrants also pay taxes, contribute to social security, and have kids, helping to maintain a population that would otherwise be shrinking.
Washington also notes that opening the border will not necessarily mean that everyone will suddenly come. Au contraire: Most people don’t want to leave their homes and families and communities unless they have to. For those who do leave, their remittances — the money they send to poor countries from richer ones — help out tremendously on the other end. In fact, these cash flows are one of the more significant reducers of inequality among states, which allows people to stay where they are if they so choose and not emigrate out of desperation.
Open borders obviously mean that more people can enjoy more freedom, which any morally consistent libertarian (all six of them) can endorse. From the perspective of labor, they will also, down the line, give workers more bargaining power: Without the constraints of work permits and travel restrictions, labor can be more united.
A new film comedy, Problemista, reveals the absurdity of work restrictions for immigrants in particular. Importantly, it shows how closed borders affect everyone but the ultra-ultra-rich. Its protagonist is Alejandro, a college-educated son of Salvadoran artists who has his heart set on becoming a toy designer in New York City. The movie revolves around his efforts to secure a U.S. work visa in 30 days after being fired from his job at a cryogenics company.
It’s a simple enough proposition on paper, but, as it turns out, an incredibly complex endeavor in real life that shows that the border is less a straight line and more of a marathon-length gauntlet. Alejandro learns that the system is rigged against immigrants — even the “good” kind, like him. In his case, he can’t apply for the jobs he wants without being in the United States — a place he cannot legally work in without a visa, which is expensive and time-consuming to obtain, not to mention bureaucratically daunting. The problem is, he has no money, he’s running out of time, and the bureaucrats — the state! — couldn’t care less. Leaning heavily on the twin motifs of the cubicle and the hourglass, the film draws not-so-subtle parallels between the likelihood of cryogenic technology to reanimate dead bodies and the ease with which a foreign artist can obtain a visa to work in the U.S.
In the movie, Alejandro manages to stay, but this is also a plot in which cryogenics actually work. In other words: It’s a movie. In real life, for most people, what happens is this:
People make long journeys by plane, by sea, and by foot to arrive at an airport, seaport, or for the most unlucky, the southern U.S. border, which – surprise! — is closed. Ports of entry, at San Ysidro, California, or Brownsville, Texas, are intensely guarded. Stretches that aren’t equipped with customs and border patrol facilities are under high-tech surveillance 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If migrants do manage to cross over — either by announcing themselves to an agent and jumping through the requisite bureaucratic hurdles or managing to avoid them by making themselves as invisible as possible for as long as they can — many of them must scramble to get by for months or years without a valid work permit. What’s more, any place within a hundred miles of the border is known to civil rights advocates as a “constitution-free zone” because of the leeway customs and border agents are granted under federal law: They may board buses or trains and search vehicles without warrants. Two-thirds of the U.S. population, and ten of the country’s biggest cities, are subsumed by such a zone. Wherever you go, there is the border.
Most of those who do obtain work permits, from credentialed professionals to individuals entering under a short-term waiver, don’t have the professional freedom of movement that their U.S.-born counterparts enjoy because they are dependent on an employer’s sponsorship. As a result, many are exploited but, fearful of losing their job and their visa, won’t say a word. In 2024, most Americans agree that discrimination based on sex or race in the workplace should remain illegal, and that someone shouldn’t lose out on a job for having the wrong anatomy or appearance. Few realize that discrimination based on nationality is not just allowed, but legally mandated; in fact, most of the time, a business couldn’t hire a foreign worker if they tried, and must resort to a lottery system.
To borrow from Problemista: There’s no time. There’s no money. The state doesn’t care. And until borders are truly open, the only way out — and in — is either to catch a lucky break, or to break the rules entirely.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a contributing editor to Lux and the author of The Cosmopolites (2015) and The Hidden Globe (October 2024.)
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