The UK has obviously seen a lot of debate about immigration recently, around the Brexit referendum. I've often felt like non-EU immigration was the elephant in the room during all this.
'Leave' voters have often been portrayed as racist bigots by liberal 'Remain' voters. (I'm one of the latter, and I've been guilty of this myself at times).
But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's possible to make the liberal case for EU freedom of movement without being something of a hypocrite. And I say this as a (confused) Remain voter.
EDIT: Before anyone says, I know there is more to the EU debate than just immigration, and that not all Remainers are liberal/lefty, just as Leavers are not all right wing. But there's no denying that immigration was the main issue on many (most?) voters minds.
>> Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
Without saying that this is right, the general logic is that the countries in the EU have met certain criteria (economic, legal, etc.) in order to join the club. The citizens of these countries have mostly similar standards of living, education, judicial systems, etc. Hence, allowing free movement is not a big deal because it is assumed the citizens of one country won't move en masse to another, and if a significant number of them do, they won't be a financial burden on the host country. There are also a bunch of reciprocal and cost-sharing agreements (e.g. medical services may be charged to the country of origin, etc.)
This whole framework and inter-country cooperation doesn't exist with respect to countries outside of the EU, and that's why these countries aren't willing to take a chance with universal freedom of movement. (Just a recent example comes to mind where a bunch of non-EU migrants were deported from Greece for various violations and their country of origin refused to accept them. In the EU any member state can deport/remove citizens of another member for certain violations and the country of origin is legally required to accept them.)
Please stop using the word 'racist' where it does not apply.
The freedom of movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but on the citizenship of any of the Schengen Area countries. "Xenophobic" is a much better term here.
Furthermore, where does it say that the freedom of movement is due to some ideology which considers all nationalities to be equal, rather than just being a policy to improve the welfare and trade between EU members?
Suppose it was known that if you allowed it, millions of people with a different ideology than you would choose to become citizens of your country, and moreover that they would then enact policies you don't agree with. Typically this argument comes from the right because the currently-disallowed immigrants are low income and would favor leftist policies, but imagine the immigrants are from conservative countries and would vote to e.g. prohibit women from traveling without being accompanied by a male relative.
Is not wanting that really "xenophobic"? There is a difference between hating or fearing someone and just not wanting them to make your decisions for you.
You're right, I don't think EU freedom of movement is based on ideology. But it was definitely used as an ideological argument by both sides during the Brexit debate.
> The freedom of movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but on the citizenship of any of the Schengen Area countries.
That's true, but can't it still be considered racist? It may not be direct, intentional racism, but the net result of UK policy is that white people can enter the UK much easier than black or brown people.
If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, isn't that a sexist hiring policy?
> If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, is that a sexist hiring policy?
Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?
If you require loan applicants to have income sufficient to make the loan payments, and that is true of more white applicants than black applicants, is that a racist policy?
It would be racist to assume a black person might not have insufficient income, just because he's black and someone arbitrarily made an income statistic based in race.
You could work that same data to group people by age, gender, political bias, shoe size, arm length, eye color, favourite sport, etc and discriminate against many, many things :-) but actually you should only look at the income and decide on that.
That's a great point. I was thinking of a job where height is not an advantage, but perhaps the better analogy is to a job where height is an advantage and so the policy is not sexist/racist.
We don't really understand why some countries are corrupt, and others aren't. It might be another byproduct of industrialization and wealth, like the low birth rate and later marriage age. But, scarily, it could be a cultural accident; people in the west aren't corrupt simply because they're surrounded by others who aren't corrupt and would punish corruption.
There's other magical cultural things too - economic productivity and innovation aren't well understood either.
Anyhow, the thrust of the argument is that there's some special cultural factor that causes all sorts of incredibly valuable things to happen in countries like the UK. You don't have to bribe the police officer when you get pulled over, you can generally trust that you get what you're buying in stores, people often try to make money by innovating rather than extracting, and talking about controversial subjects gets you a discussion rather than a beating. We don't know why we have this, and opening our borders puts it at risk.
Our global system is supposedly based on something like collective
self-determination, but it’s grafted onto a map drawn by colonial
violence and pseudo-scientific ideas about Gauls and Teutons. Fascism is a
particular combination of Romantic/Victorian ambitions and modern tools
that sparks to life as the two eras grind against each other. Frankenstein
with the arms of capitalist industry and the heart of a monarchist.
Patriotic young Hitler inhaling mustard gas in the trenches, like a panel
from the first issue of a comic book.
Modern liberal states have never truly reconciled their racial character
with their democratic pretensions. I’m not clear on how such a thing
could be possible; where would a truly pluralist state draw its borders
and why? Flipping through a history book it’s hard to argue that the
nation-state system doesn’t exist for the arbitrarily divided glory of
western Europeans. The official line is that we’re supposed to ignore
that part, or be sad. But some people don’t want to ignore it and they
aren’t sad. Instead they wonder why we have the nice borders that their
conquering “ancestors” drew but all these people on the wrong sides.
If taking Mexico’s land for white people was illegitimate, then why
haven’t we given it back? And if it was legitimate, then what’s wrong
with a wall to protect our side from a reversal? The liberal patriots,
they say, are lying to themselves; there is no nationalism that is not
ethno-nationalism.
> But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
Because that right is reciprocated to British people in those countries!
But that brings us back to my original point. We end up discriminating against individuals based on which country they're from.
I'm fine with discriminating against individuals based on how "beneficial" they are as a person, provided the criteria are fair and objective.
I'm not so fine with discriminating against individuals based on how "beneficial" it was to make a deal with their country.
To give an extreme example, an illiterate, unemployed German with criminal convictions can enter and leave the UK freely, while a Nigerian brain surgeon is still going to have to jump through a lot of legal hoops to live here. How is that not unfair discrimination, or even racism?
>How is that not unfair discrimination, or even racism?
It is unfair, and it is discrimination. The benefits of having unrestricted borders with Germany are simply more valuable. Like, I'm okay with unfairly admitting an illiterate unemployed German felon if it means that we get a bunch of highly valuable movement, trade, and collaboration between our countries. The German felon is part of a valuable package of cross-border interactions, and if you're not part of the package deal, you have to convince us on your own merit.
Another tack: being a German citizen is Bayesian evidence that you're probably like the average German. How is it fair to the German to spend large quantities of time and money to prove something we already have good reason to believe is true?
> But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
I've seen this mentioned by many people; all of which said they'd voted Remain, but argue in favour of Leave in every discussion. Interesting nonetheless.
Answering the question itself: A French a German or a Romanian have the right because their countries reached and agreement with the UK. The other countries have not. That agreement is called EU.
I can't see the hypocrisy in that. If the UK doesn't like that agreement anymore they're free to walk away. Oh, wait... :-)
I'll admit I was playing devil's advocate with my arguments.
What I was trying to point out is that making a moral defense for EU freedom of movement (as many remainers did) is basically impossible without being a hypocrite. There are, of course, other reasons to defend it.
I find it an uncomfortable fact that almost all modern immigration policies judge people by where they happen to have been born rather than their personal qualities. People have taken issue with me using the word racist (I still think it applies, even if we're not strictly talking about ethnicity), so what's the correct term? Nationality-ist?
> What I was trying to point out is that making a moral defense for EU freedom of movement (as many remainers did) is basically impossible without being a hypocrite. There are, of course, other reasons to defend it.
Your logic is flawed. EU FoM is not a barrier to increase FoM by adding more countries to the FoM treaties. It is a barrier if you want to do so unilaterally: i.e. if the new FoM country doesn't meet the required criteria to join the FoM space. It's a shame because that might mean that country has a lack of human rights respect or civil liberties, so we make it more difficult for its citizens to escape... But that's why we should be mindful about refugees and asylum seekers.
Man, it's funny how some people argue that the EU is racist because of FoM (talk about twisted arguments) and then they don't want to get any refugees from non-white/non-slavic/non-catholic countries that are escaping literal hell.
Going back to FoM, one of the Brexiteers mantras was "Turkey is going to join the EU and we will get flooded!"; which would be another step in extending FoM to more countries.
Funnily enough it was the UK the one pushing for a fast Turkey accession... and in any case it's vox populi that ain't gonna happen in decades due to Turkey not meeting the requirements by a long shot.
> I find it an uncomfortable fact that almost all modern immigration policies judge people by where they happen to have been born rather than their personal qualities.
Yes, it's a shame we have to come down to that. However it seems that's the fastest way to approve FoM between countries and, you know, at least "it's not personal". I'm not trying to defend it and I wish we had something better (like FoM for all), but other systems have shown to be less fair:
And if you're in the UK surely you can watch all those Aussie Border Control shows in Dave or one of those Freeview channels - an American dude flying to Oz with his GF for holidays was refused entry because he got caught with some pot 20 years before in the US. Also there was this Aussie dude that overstayed his UK tourist Visa by something like 14 years (no kidding!) and he was sent back to Australia effectively destroying his life (friends, partner, ...) - were any of those fair? I would argue "no", other people might say "yes" - I don't really know what's the right answer, but it's clear that's not easy to decide who gets in and who does not.
Individual qualities are also subjective and subjected to other influencing factors: I'm sure you have in mind a Visa points system.
What makes you think that that's the best system? Are we good at evaluating how "good" a person is? With that points system, would we still get unqualified EU labour to fill in jobs? If we don't, those factories might actually move to the country of origin of that cheap labour, throwing a sizeable % of British workers into the benefits system (and only a part of them would be able to get out - see Thatcher's years), putting a bigger strain into the welfare system. Wait, actually that might be the Tory plan after all, destroy the welfare system :)
> People have taken issue with me using the word racist (I still think it applies, even if we're not strictly talking about ethnicity), so what's the correct term? Nationality-ist?
IMHO "racist" perfectly conveys the message and it's only challenged by those who don't want to be tagged as "racist" while being so. You could get picky and use "xenophobic" which would be the 100% right word as far as I know, but I'm on your same side on this one: Arguing that racist is not the right word is an argument usually used by racists :) and pointless.
To an extent, technology (and the internet in particular) has made the world a smaller place and reduced the significance of borders. I heard a lot of arguments during the campaign around immigration and jobs but they didn't talk about the impact of technology.
I could write more but I'd just be repeating the blog post I wrote recently (https://unop.uk/automation-and-remote-jobs/). The video in there is worth a watch if you're interested in the early days of Silicon Valley.
Nationality doesn't necessarly equate with race. For instance I'm sure that it doesn't matter if you're black or white German when receiving benefits of EU. It does matter what nationality you are.
'Leave' voters have often been portrayed as racist bigots by liberal 'Remain' voters. (I'm one of the latter, and I've been guilty of this myself at times).
But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's possible to make the liberal case for EU freedom of movement without being something of a hypocrite. And I say this as a (confused) Remain voter.
EDIT: Before anyone says, I know there is more to the EU debate than just immigration, and that not all Remainers are liberal/lefty, just as Leavers are not all right wing. But there's no denying that immigration was the main issue on many (most?) voters minds.