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.
I've heard a good argument for something like that - let me see if I can convey it well.
Countries have varying levels of corruption in them. See: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015#results-table . In particular, notice how high up many of the Schengen area countries are.
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.