Open Borders, Global Future

An important essay by Brian Murphy at opendemocracy.net:

At least 200 million of the world’s people – between 3% and 5% of its total population – are currently on the move outside their country of origin. Many of these would have preferred to stay where they were if they could. Another untold number would move if they could, but can’t. Many simply are looking for better opportunities, as human beings have done for millennia. The realities of globalisation – economic, environmental, familial – mean that these numbers are bound to increase.

Migration is perhaps the major issue of our times. It is an issue that dominates the daily lives of people around the world – those who are in transit, and those they leave behind – and preoccupies governments everywhere. At the same time, the measures that have been put in place to deal with migration, and those measures being contemplated, are woefully inadequate. Closing and militarising borders, restricting mobility, criminalising movement, incarcerating and deporting those who somehow manage to arrive in the places closed to them, is not an effective response to the phenomenon of widespread “irregular” global migration; it is merely one more tragic element of the phenomenon itself. It is not working, for migrants, or for the countries trying to control the influx of migrants they see as a “threat”. And it is not going to work no matter how much more money, arms and surveillance equipment are invested in border control. Click here for the rest of the piece.

bh