Introducing Michael Carey

We’re happy to announce that Michael (Mike) Carey will be joining Open Borders: The Case as an occasional blogger. As our site expands its contributor vase, we are trying to incorporate a diverse perspectives and writing styles that may differ from what readers have seen so far on this site (potential writers on this site need not always agree as shown in this comment thread).

Mike is a math teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah where he works with a diverse group of students including many children of undocumented immigrants and refugees from Africa. In addition, he also works as a Judge Advocate in the Air Force Reserve.

Prior to becoming a teacher, Mike was a C-130 pilot in the Air Force. He has a BS in mathematics from Brigham Young University, and MS in Physics from North Carolina State and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Mike writes about education reform, politics, and economics at his blog, www.ergoscribo.com. He became an ardent supporter of open borders after reading the work of development economist Lant Pritchett, who has shown that relaxing border restrictions could be the most effective way of relieving world poverty. Through his work with students, he has also become intimately aware of the tragic circumstances that result from the deportation of immigrant families.

His first post will be published soon.

REMINDER: If you’re interested in blogging for the site in any capacity, please fill out  our potential guest blogger contact form.

Introducing Sebastian Nickel

We’re glad to announce that Sebastian Nickel will be joining our website as an occasional blogger, adding to a steadily growing list of contributors to this website.

Sebastian works as a freelance translator and studies mathematics at The Open University. He is a citizen of Switzerland and Germany, was born and raised in Luxembourg, has lived in several European countries, and has previously completed a degree in psychology at the Université Paris 8. He has recently migrated from London, UK to Berlin, Germany.

Sebastian’s interests range widely across cognitive science, economics and moral and political philosophy. He has blogged sporadically on these topics at Seb’s Cogblog.

As far back as he can remember, Sebastian has always considered migration restrictions morally unacceptable. More recently, he has been persuaded by the writings of Bryan Caplan that open borders is probably the single most important policy issue of our time. He’s further been inspired by the Open Borders community to engage in personal efforts to try and help change the public perception of migration restrictions. He is particularly interested in exploring the philosophy and the psychology of countries and citizenship, with their typically assumed ramifications. He will also aim to bring a European perspective to our website.

His first post will be published soon.

Plug: If you’re interested in blogging for Open Borders in any capacity, consider filling in our potential guest blogger contact form.

Introducing John Roccia

We’re happy to announce that John Roccia will be joining Open Borders as an occasional blogger. John is a passionate believer in open borders, coming at the issue from a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist moral perspective. He also actively spreads the message of liberty on Reddit. An earlier blog post by Vipul Naik was written in response to one of the questions John raised regarding open borders.

John’s writings for the blog will aim to convey the ideas related to open borders in a layperson-friendly manner without compromising on the radicalism of the vision. He hopes to explore a number of the moral and practical questions surrounding open borders and make the case for open borders advocacy as an effective form of philanthropy.

Introducing Grieve Chelwa

We’re happy to announce that Grieve Chelwa will be joining Open Borders as an occasional blogger. Grieve Chelwa is currently a PhD student in economics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Grieve has worked and lived in 5 African countries, in four of those as an immigrant. He is originally from Zambia.

Grieve believes strongly in the ability of open borders to transform lives just as his eventual immigration to South Africa transformed his. Grieve’s posts for Open Borders will focus on writing about immigration from a non-US perspective.

Introducing Adam Gurri

We’re happy to announce that Adam Gurri will be joining Open Borders as an occasional blogger. Adam Gurri works in digital advertising and has an MA in economics from George Mason University (where Bryan Caplan, Donald Boudreaux, and many other open borders advocates teach). His father’s family migrated to the United States from Cuba, fleeing Castro shortly after the revolution. His great-grandparents on his mother’s side all came here from Russia, seeking refuge from political persecution and institutionalized antisemitism. On his own blog and at The Umlaut, he writes primarily about technology and society.

Adam is a champion of open borders. He feels that the persecuted and desperately poor of the world ought to be extended the same opportunities that his own family was lucky enough to have. In his posts for the Open Borders blog, he will be exploring history for what it can teach us about the effects of loosening immigration restrictions, as well as the moral case for open borders.

Introducing Joel Newman

We’re happy to announce that Joel Newman will join Open Borders as a regular blogger. Joel Newman has a bachelor’s degree in history from Pomona College and works as a teacher in Beaverton, Oregon. He is completing a book calling for open borders. He plans to write posts about various moral and practical arguments in favor of open borders.

Joel is the first blogger at Open Borders who contacted us of his own initiative for the blogging role, and also the first blogger here who does not comment on EconLog. All other recruits so far have been people we came to know of and touched base with through the comments space on EconLog. Thus, he’s likely to bring a new and somewhat different perspective to the case for open borders than most of the regular and guest bloggers on the site so far. Joel has written about open borders in other venues in the past, including in the magazine of Pomona College, his undergraduate alma mater.

Introducing Chris Hendrix

Three weeks ago, we introduced John Lee, whom Vipul had discovered in the EconLog comments and invited to join the Open Borders blog. John has since published a number of posts on Open Borders and actively participated in many comment threads. We’re happy to announce a new Open Borders blogger: Chris Hendrix. Vipul discovered Chris in the EconLog comments (here , here (quoted in its entirety in Vipul’s blog post on the libertarian priority list), and here, for starters) and was so impressed that he invited Chris to join the Open Borders blog. Chris has graciously agreed, and his first blog post will be published soon.

Chris is a Masters student in history in Atlanta, Georgia. He plans to use his blog posts to combine historical analysis with economic, moral, and political arguments to better understand and explore the consequences of open borders. We already have some posts on the history of borders, but Chris will hopefully bring a new level of rigor and detail to this neglected aspect of the case for open borders.

Welcome to the blog, Chris!

Introducing John Lee

The first blog post on the Open Borders blog (written by Vipul Naik) was published back on March 18, 2012. Shortly thereafter, Nathan Smith joined with an inaugural blog post on Hong Kong. Alex Nowrasteh, also an open borders advocate, agreed to have his writings re-posted on the Open Borders blog, making a total of three bloggers on the site.

We’re glad to announce that a new person will shortly be joining the Open Borders blog. This is John Lee, a Malaysian working for a US bank. John has written a lot about Malaysia-specific issues — you can read more about these at his blog-cum-website. He’s also been advocating open borders and engaging restrictionist arguments in the comments section on EconLog, which is how we discovered him. John will bring a unique cross-national perspective to his blog posts. His first blog post should appear in a couple of days.

Welcome, John!