Opening the Floodgates
Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Laws
NYU Press: Critical America Series (Release Date: 10/1/2007). Click here to pre-order.
Finally, an unflinching response to immigration alarmists! This brilliant, challenging book outlines an immigration proposal based on the reality that migration flows are not regulated by border enforcement but by social, economic, and political pressures.
—Mary Romero, author of Maid in the USA
Seeking to re-imagine the meaning and significance of the international border, Opening the Floodgates makes a case for eliminating the border as a legal construct that impedes the movement of people into this country.
Open migration policies deserve fuller analysis, particularly on the eve of a presidential election. Kevin R. Johnson offers an alternative vision of how U.S. borders might be reconfigured, grounded in moral, economic, and policy arguments for open borders. Importantly, liberalizing migration through an open borders policy would recognize that the enforcement of closed borders cannot stifle the strong, perhaps irresistible, economic, social, and political pressures that fuel international migration.
Controversially, Johnson suggests that open borders are entirely consistent with efforts to prevent terrorism that have dominated immigration enforcement since the events of September 11, 2001. More liberal migration, he suggests, would allow for full attention to be paid to the true dangers to public safety and national security.
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