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A Somali-Swede’s reflections on open borders

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This is a personal anecdote post and is a continuation of the series started with an earlier post. The opinions here are not necessarily the same as those expressed by the regular blogging staff at Open Borders. However, we think personal experiences of immigration can still offer interesting perspectives to consider within the wider context of the evidence for and against open borders.

In the 80s in Somalia my father financed an opposition organization hoping to unseat the president Siad Barre. As I, being only a child at that time, do not remember any of the happenings, stories were told to me. Sometime in January 1990 my father, a regular business man, along with other business men, was assassinated in a bomb attack commanded by the president. Shortly thereafter a civil war broke where war lords fought each other over power, so naturally, citizens, or at least those who could, had to flee. Many crossed the borders to Ethiopia and Kenya. While some stayed in Ethiopia and Kenya, many continued their journey to Europe, North America and elsewhere. After fleeing from border to border, my family, consisting of me, my mother and four siblings, made it to Sweden.

I remember coming to a refugee camp in Malmö, Skåne, which is in the southern part of Sweden. We got two rooms to share in a corridor where we jointly had access to a kitchen and a common room, even the bathrooms were jointly shared. Like a student corridor only with less partying.

It took some while to find the right place to live, we moved from town to town until we ended up in Örebro where we stayed the longest. I hated having to change school all the time. However, my mother always reminded me that our situations were different from my friends’ situation.

When I think back, I had never had a problem adapting to our new home. I was a child when we came to Sweden, so naturally it was easier for me to adapt than it was for my older brother, and easier for my older brother than it was for my mother. There were some cultural differences as I remember, but nothing that I ever thought of when I was out in the society, at school, with friends and so on. Only when I was at home as my family is Muslim, meaning that the rules at home and school differed greatly. I had no problem combining the two; I had a school identity and a home identity. Two contesting identities so to speak, so in the end I chose one I firmly believe is the correct one for me.

To further my identity anecdote, a year ago at a Poli-Sci seminar we discussed multiculturalism and what it means. Specifically we discussed what should be done in a society of multiculturalism. Should the state do something or not? Previously we were told to read a few philosophers standpoints on the subject. Students started discussing and to keep it brief some argued for a better integration while some argued for assimilation. I myself argued for neither.

We were told to read philosophers representing different viewpoints in the book Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader edited by Colin Farrelly (Amazon paperback). Some of the philosophers argued for state action. Kymlicka argued in favor of group right, meaning that it is the state’s job to preserve every group’s way of life in society. Taylor stressed the importance of recognition, arguing that misrecognition can inflict harm on people. Parekh pragmatically argued in favor of an open discussion with no further agenda. The authors who are in favor of state action failed to convince me how recognizing special group rights were to be done without misrecognizing another. As I was about to lose both hope and interest I started reading the last chapter. There I found someone who had a convincing proposal. Chandran Kukathas. He argued that if the state has liberal institutions, it does not have to do anything.

Here’s why:

The reason why liberalism does not have a problem with multiculturalism is that liberalism is itself, fundamentally, a theory of multiculturalism. This is because liberalism is essentially a theory about pluralism; and multiculturalism, is, in the end, a species of pluralism. Liberalism is one of the modern world’s responses—indeed, its most plausible response—to the fact of moral, religious, and cultural diversity. Its response has been to say that diversity should be accommodated, and differences tolerated; that a more complete social unity, marked by a uniform and common culture that integrates and harmonizes the interests of individual and community, is unattainable and undesirable; that division, conflict and competition would always be present in human society, and the task of political institutions is to always palliate a condition they cannot cure. Political institutions would be liberal institutions if they left people to pursue their own ends, whether separately or in concert with others, under the rule of law. (Kukathas, Contemporary Political Theory, 2004, p.289)

While that sounds completely rational, here’s what frightens most people. “It [Liberal institution] offers the opportunity, under a state indifferent to the ways or the goals of the different peoples living under the law, for people to coexist and for their different arts and letters and sciences to flourish (or die out) with them.” (Kukathas, Contemporary Political Theory, 2004, p. 294) What frightens people, I suspect, is the possibility of their culture dying out. To get back to my identity anecdote, not preserving our culture is what made my mother the coercive mother she has been throughout my entire upbringing in Sweden. She did her best to remind that we are Somalis and that our culture is Somali. After school she refused to let me play with my friends, I stayed home, and she arranged Somali playmates for me. Only the problem was that I knew my friends at school better than I did my forced playmates, so naturally I did not enjoy playing with them. Preserving my Somali identity was more important to my mother than letting me have a sense of individuality. Recently as the nationalist party, Swedish democrats, grew in popularity, it struck me how similar their views are to my mother’s; they, in favor of preserving the Swedish culture, and my mother, the Somali culture. Out of fear of others, groups tend to alienate themselves. Not much can be done about my mother or Swedish democrats except for asking them to expand their horizons. It is therefore my firm belief that the state should do nothing but to let each group or individual pursue their ends separately, under the rule of law, as Kukathas suggested.

There are two frequently discussed topics related to immigrants in Sweden, apart from blowing crimes committed by immigrants out of proportion through media, which I will not discuss here. The two are the so called generous welfare system and segregation.

Let’s discuss the welfare system first. I am against the welfare system for moral reasons as I do not endorse coerced redistribution of wealth (just to be clear). One day at one of my poli-sci seminars, I went out to the smoking area, for a cigarette, at the same time as my classmate, a Swedish guy from the southern suburbs of Stockholm. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he never spoke during our seminars. He told me that his views are not welcome as is he is not the political correct type. I jokingly said, “You’re not a weird neo-nazi, are you?” He said, “no, but I would want immigrants to assimilate to my culture or to kindly leave my country.” I had never heard people say such a thing before. I did not get upset, people say all sorts of infantile things. I tried talking to him about diversity in individuals instead of cultures. He did not argue against individual diversity so that gave me the chance to explain that it isn’t that different from multiculturalism. He then admitted that he had no problems with multiculturalism per se, but that he did not want immigrants to come here and cheat off the welfare system. Once that was clear for both of us, we discussed whether he thought that cheating off the system was inherently immigrant behavior. We googled a few scandals (thank God for Google) and saw that many who cheated were also Swedish. He tried to excuse the Swedes who cheated, but the sound of his voice was not as convincing as he stuttered throughout the excuses. I then told him that, yes, some immigrants cheat the system, but so do some Swedes. Bad people can be found in all cultures, there’s nothing inherently bad with one culture. If anything, the welfare system should be abolished or at least significantly reduced, so that those who cheat do not get the chance to cheat, and those who desperately need it can be funded by private donations.

Segregation is not such a big deal. People live in different areas. That’s all. Among those who oppose certain people living in certain areas, seek for one group to influence the other group, often the group they perceive as successful. I’ll let you decide whether that sounds good or not.

Segregation causes people to know more about a certain culture and less about another. It’s not that different from a book you read and book you did not read. So if someone refers to the book you did not read you just stand there clueless. While people often admit that they don’t know a thing about a book they didn’t read, they often speak of other cultures in a polarizing way and this even more because they read certain aspects in media, where they report about an immigrant committing a petty crime. Media is supposed to report unusual happenings and not every day life stories, so I’m not accusing media of polarizing (that may happen among weird journals). This is not something that happens only among Swedes, it happens among immigrants too.

A while ago I lived in Rinkeby, a place where the inhabitants are almost 90 per cent immigrants. I had been at school with some Swedish friends and asked them to tag along to my place. Everyone started excusing themselves and while I understood why, I just laughed about it. One of the guys said, “well, Ladan, it’s okay to hang out with you because you’re not like a typical immigrant, you’re like us, but we’d rather not go to that place.” At a later time in Rinkeby I was hanging out with my foreign friends and people started discussing differences between Swedes and immigrants. They were all joking and laughing about it, saying things like, “oh Swedes are boring, I don’t get their humor. One of their childhood friend is Swedish. So I asked them, why they didn’t find her boring and everyone agreed that Johanna is different, “she’s not like the typical Swede, and she is more like us”.

So in the end people seemed, according to my observation, to be much more relaxed around people they know or can use social references with. Even among my friends who study different fields do not get it each other entirely. I often hear someone who studies politics complaining about how boring it is to talk with someone who studies mechanical engineering, because that person did not get him or her when they tried to discuss Skinner’s theory on Republicanism.

People are different in many ways, and while they should remain different we should all work on being tolerant towards those who are different from us. Diversity is great; it means that we are all free to pursue our own ends. Even if we all lived in one big area, erased borders, domestically or internationally, we’d still be different. Diversity should not worry us, once we become too alike, that should worry us.

Allow Renewals for Guest Worker Visas

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This post was originally published at the Cato-at-Liberty blog here and is reproduced with the author’s permission.

Reforming low-skilled guest worker visas is a vitally important part of immigration reform. It will substantially reduce unauthorized immigration by providing a lawful pathway to enter and reenter the U.S. To that specific end, an effective guest worker visa has to be designed to address how migrant and guest workers actually behave. Allowing a guest worker visa to be renewed multiple times for each worker, assuming the worker follows the law when in the U.S., will decrease the incentives to migrate unlawfully. For each theory of migrant movement, allowing a guest worker visa to be renewed multiple times is compatible with migrant actions and will decrease unauthorized immigration. Here are the theories:

Target Income Theory

Under the target income theory, migrants come to the U.S. to meet a specific monetary or life goal, like starting a business or buying a house back home, that they would be unable to meet in their home country. Upon reaching the monetary threshold for that goal, they return home. According to this theory, a recession in the U.S. would cause migrants to stay longer until they meet their targeted goal, while higher migrant wages or an economic boom would make them return sooner.

If a migrant behaves according to this theory, he will work until the goal is met. Let’s say a guest worker visa allows a migrant to work in the U.S. for 10 years but no longer. If, at the end of that period, the migrant requires 2 more years of work to reach his income goal, the migrant will be tempted to overstay and work illegally until the goal is met. In this case, allowing the guest worker to legally stay longer and meet his goal will decrease the incentive to overstay on the visa. If the target income theory explains migrant behavior, allowing many visa renewals will help decrease unauthorized immigration. Renewable visas will allow immigrants to satisfy their income goal and return home.

Disappointment Theory

According to this theory, migrants return home if the economic conditions in the U.S. are less favorable than they imagined, or if the economic conditions in their home country improve. Migrants would prefer to return when conditions improve, at least temporarily, but many stay in the U.S. longer because it is difficult for them to reenter should they ever want to. The depth of migrant social networks in their home and destination countries greatly influence this effect.

Guest worker visas that could be renewed multiple times will incentivize migrants to return home when conditions there improve because they will not fear being stuck there if they deteriorate.

Circular Migration Theory

To distinguish circular migration from the disappointment theory above, migrants come to the U.S. for seasonal or yearly work but move back and forth as labor demand for their occupations changes. Beginning in 1986, this circular movement between Mexico and the U.S. was interrupted with expanded border security that increased the length of time that unauthorized migrants stayed here, which in turn increased the likelihood that they would settle permanently. Because migrants suddenly faced the possibility of being stuck in Mexico if they ever left, they decided to stay and work.

If those migrants had a lawful way to cross the border, many would have returned to Mexico just as they did when the Bracero Program offered a visa to do just that. Renewable guest worker visas will allow some legal migrants to move back and forth for seasonal labor, lessening the incentive to illegally stay once here.

Conclusion

Migrants come for different reasons. Migrant actions might exhibit some or all of these theories, or enter the U.S. with one in mind and then switch to another during their stay. No matter which theory provides a better explanation of why migrants come, making the visa renewable as many times as possible will substantially decrease the incentive to migrate illegally or overstay a visa.

Creating a guest worker visa that can be renewed multiple times will allow migrants to legally work in the U.S., leave while preserving the possibility of legal return, and thus reduce unlawful entry and visa overstays. A flexible and numerically large guest worker visa program will substantially reduce the supply of unauthorized immigrants by channeling them into the legal market. The more times that such a visa can be renewed, the more effective it will be at decreasing unauthorized immigration.

America Can Aid Syrians Without Military Intervention

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FINANCIAL INTEREST DISCLOSURE: Nowrasteh has a paid job as immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute (since April 15, 2012), and formerly had a similar role at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This post was originally published at the Huffington Post website here and is reproduced with the author’s permission.

The Syrian civil war has killed over 100,000 people and displaced as many as seven million — about one-third of Syria’s population. Russia’s offer to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control may stop American military involvement, but the humanitarian crisis remains. The good news is military involvement isn’t necessary to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Instead, we can allow Syrian emigration to the U.S.

The number of refugees grows daily. Non-Muslim Syrians, who make up 13-to-15 percent of the population, are at particular risk. Christians, Druzes, and the non-religious face attacks from many rebel groups who are motivated by a violent interpretation of Sunni Islam. For instance, rebels from the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group recently conquered the Aramaic speaking Christian town of Maaloula — forcing most of the population to flee with only a handful of nuns and orphans left behind.

But Muslim Syrians are in grave danger as well. A mere 13 percent of Syrians — including President Bashar Assad and his government — are Shiites, compared to 74 percent who are Sunnis. Sunnis form the core of the rebellion, while Shiites generally support the government. Warring factions drawn along sectarian lines will extend and deepen the violence, killing non-combatants of all faiths in the cross-fire.

These conditions prompted a mass exodus from Syria, and it’s likely to continue. As the director-general of Sweden’s Migration Board, Anders Danielsson, has said: “The conflict in Syria has heated up, to put it mildly… we can assume that it’s not going to be resolved in the foreseeable future.”

Of the seven million displaced Syrians, two million have left the country altogether. So far, neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have taken in more than 1.7 million of the refugees. Sweden has announced that it will grant permanent residency to the 14,700 Syrian refugees already there, as well as some subsequent arrivals. Germany has also decided to take in 5,000 Syrian refugees.

In contrast, in 2011 and 2012, the U.S. allowed just 374 Syrians to gain asylum status, while only 60 refugees were approved. The Obama Administration has announced plans to let in 2,000 refugees — but those are only promises. Syrians already in the U.S. are allowed to stay and work under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — as are many Haitians, Somalis, and others whose home countries are devastated, but that doesn’t help those trying to flee their war-torn country.

The United States used to be the world’s safety net for refugees, especially religious ones. The Pilgrims fled the Netherlands, Irish Catholics escaped English oppression, Jews from Eastern Europe escaped pogroms, and Armenians fled genocide and war to settle in California. But then America changed its immigration laws in 1921, and the government shamefully turned away German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Chinese fleeing the Japanese invasion.

The United States could help avoid an even worse humanitarian crisis in Syria by guaranteeing TPS status to all peaceful Syrians who make it to the U.S. It’s important to note that TPS is not a green card and cannot lead toward citizenship. Furthermore, any war criminals or individuals affiliated with criminal or terrorist activity would be excluded. TPS status could be a game-changer for Syrians and it could be done just by changing a few words in the U.S. code.

This sounds simple, but there will undoubtedly be questions about the results of such a move. How will the Syrians fare once they are in the United States? The answer: pretty well.

Syrian refugees would not burden the welfare state, since they would only have access to public education for their children and Emergency Medical Assistance. In fact, they’d likely find work, which is the best vehicle toward cultural and economic integration. According to a government report in 2010, 58 percent of recent adult refugees were employed — a rate higher than the U.S. born population. In Sweden, by contrast, only 30 percent of all immigrants are working even after they’ve been in the country several years.

Syrians in particular have proven successful in the U.S. Americans of Syrian descent have an average income of $56,000 and 66 percent of Syrian adults are in the workforce – higher than the 63 percent for U.S.-born Americans.

Allowing Syrians to get TPS upon landing in America is a cheap and effective way for Congress to limit the scale of the humanitarian disaster in Syria. President Obama and Congress’ interest in Syria is likely fleeting and focused primarily on WMDs, but the violence isn’t. TPS is already keeping some Syrians out of harm’s way. It’s time that Congress allows TPS to save more lives.

Open Borders note: See also Paul Crider’s blog post Taking our humanitarian impulses seriously.

The photograph of Syrian refugee children in Jordan that appears above this post was taken by Russell Watkins, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Weekly link roundup 13

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Here’s our weekly installment of links from around the web (see here for all link roundups). As usual, linking does not imply endorsement.

Uphold the rule of law, and let your illegal immigrants stay

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A common restrictionist trope is that allowing people who have settled unlawfully to regularise their legal status would be an intolerable departure from legal tradition and the rule of law. But in his recent book Immigrants and the Right to Stay, philosopher Joseph Carens demonstrates that the opposite is true: our legal and moral traditions demand a rules-based system for regularising the unauthorised. Justice and the rule of law are perverted when they deny people due process and instead offer them justice so delayed that to call it anything but denied would make the term “delay” a mockery.

Carens’s basic contention: anyone who has lived in a community for a certain period of time can be reasonably considered a member of that community and should be afforded similar rights as other members of that community. This sounds rather abstract, so let me put this to you: someone is a pillar of your community. Attends your religious services, well, religiously. Always ready to lend a helping hand when a neighbour could use it. Always the first to chip in a donation for someone in need. Never in trouble with the law. One day, the authorities raid his home and evict him, on the grounds that a long, long time ago, he didn’t fill out the right form allowing him to join this community. Not that he murdered someone; not that he trafficked drugs; he filled out the wrong forms, and that makes him “illegal”.

Carens’s contention, which makes eminent sense, is that your status as part of a community of people does not flow from a piece of paper. It flows from your contributions to and standing with your peers. We do not gain our humanity, our family, our friends, our neighbours from the law. We learn about and make our families, friends, and neighbours long before the law ever got or gets involved. In his book, Carens notes that the British immigration authorities once tried to deport an 80-year-old woman who had lived in the United Kingdom her entire adult life, and only public outrage stopped them. If living somewhere for 60 years makes you a member of the community, Carens notes, then might not a shorter time period still grant you similar standing? He ultimately proposes a waiting period of 5 to 7 years. Irrespective of what the right period should be, the principle is clear: living somewhere in peace with your fellow man eventually makes you a part of that community. The law cannot tear that community apart without tearing up basic morality.

Carens notes that tradition is on his side: that even countries like the US, where today any amnesty is seen as taboo by many, have a long history of allowing people who have lived there for a certain period of time to regularise. Even today, many countries have ongoing rules-based regularisation regimes: simply identify yourself to the authorities, present proof you’ve lived peacefully in the community long enough, and the sword of Damocles over your head is lifted.

Basic legal principles are on Carens’s side too: typically, the statute of limitations on most crimes isn’t more than a few decades, and for many crimes it’s under a decade. (The statute of limitations refers to the period of time after a crime after which the state can no longer prosecute you for it.) In most jurisdictions, only the worst crimes, such as murder, don’t have a statute of limitations. As I’ve written before, the US legal system treats crossing an imaginary line (which harms nobody) as a crime worse than exploiting children for sex. US law essentially sends the message that crossing a border illegally is worse than filming child pornography or committing murder!

And regardless of what harm may inherently occur from crossing an invisible and arbitrary line, I certainly don’t think you can reasonably compare it to filming child pornography or murder. The primary “harm” of non-violent border crossing is economic competition between foreigners and natives. But how is Josef “stealing” a job from Joe supposed to be harming Joe, while John taking a job Joe could have taken isn’t any harm at all? Why do we criminalise Josef from earning an honest living because it might “harm” someone, while we allow Johns to steal jobs from Joes every day? Competing on a level playing field is not an infringement of anyone’s legal rights, unless you believe some people are less human than others.

And yet dehumanisation of the foreign-born is yet another message which the legal system sends: we give inanimate objects more rights than people. The robot that “steals” your society’s jobs has an easier time getting into the country than a foreign-born person who might be able to do that robot’s job for even cheaper. And what does that robot contribute to your society? Maybe it creates jobs for robotics maintenance crews, but that’s about it. The human being is a living, organic part of our community — he or she creates jobs for and immeasurably enriches the lives of landlords, restauranteurs, hairdressers, community organisers. Despite this, most countries’ laws look more kindly on importing inanimate objects that “destroy” jobs than they do on allowing free people to come in and “create” service jobs. And we have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that this legal system makes moral sense: I once asked a free trade advocate why he opposes liberalisation of immigration laws. He proudly told me that it was because he believes, I quote, “people are not commodities.”

Sure, you can pretend your legal system humanely does allow immigrants to come. But most people consider waiting a year for any government document a rather intolerable delay. For many immigrants — on occasion, even the spouses and children of citizens — a year’s wait is far better than anything they got. Some immigrants to the US are getting their visas today after waiting in the “queue” for over two decades. Many of the “queues” for US visas are backlogged by decades — 80 years in some cases. And the US has one of the better immigration systems out there! Is it even right to speak of a queue for immigration to the UK, when the government’s avowed goal is to cut net immigration essentially to 0 — and it has every intention of accomplishing this by hook or by crook, regardless of how many families and communities and jobs it must destroy? If the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied” was not coined to describe the world’s immigration laws, it seems remarkably apt.

The world’s numerous legal systems have tried to ban many things in the past. They have experimented with banning various sexual acts among consenting adults, banning alcohol production/distribution, banning interracial families. They have tried and they have failed. What we find is that pretending to enforce the unenforceable only engenders disrespect for the law. It makes a mockery of the rule of law when we concoct laws that cannot be enforced. Now, these are not laws that many people were willing to risk their lives to violate — yet these laws could not stand. Meanwhile, every single day, innocent people around the world risk death in deserts or on the high seas to get into countries that offer them no legal way to enter. What hope have we of ever enforcing a law that bans innocent, hardworking people from supporting themselves and taking care of their families?

Moralists and conservatives often worry about what message the law is sending. I have to agree: what message does the law send when it deports a mother for caring for her children? When it denies the husband a visa to live with his wife? When it tells the hardworking wage-earner, “Sorry — the queue is 50 years long, don’t even dare send an employer your CV”? We are making a mockery of fundamental morality when we criminalise the family and we criminalise honest wages. As Carens says, the law is violating social reality.

Yes, the message is supposed to be: when crossing made-up lines on the map, identify yourself to the proper authorities. Somehow this is a crime worse than exploiting children for sex, and at least as bad as murder. If that is the message the law wants to send, ok. But if our message really is that innocent people identify themselves properly, why not allow them to do so? If this really is your concern, what do you have against allowing people to identify themselves after they have entered — or simply allowing people to enter and identify themselves at regular ports of entry, instead of making them wait in a queue that’s so long, it shouldn’t be called a queue at all?

There are a lot of things we could do to move to a more just legal system, one offering all people the due process they deserve. But Carens’s moral and philosophical case for ongoing regularisations intrigues me, precisely because it so neatly reconciles many of the moral absurdities of arbitrary immigration restrictions with the rule of law. Offering people a transparent legal process to acknowledge their standing as contributors to our society and community resonates with the principles of justice. The punishment fits the crime, if you can call crossing a made-up line a crime at all.

We wouldn’t send people to jail 40 years after the fact for a speeding ticket. So why would we wreck families and communities years or decades after the fact? When we are presented with such absurdities, as shown in the case of the grandmother facing deportation from Britain, we recoil because we recognise that the law is destroying the community and imposing a punishment all out of proportion to the offense. A legal mechanism for regularising “illegals” should be essential for any civilised society. If we can’t have truly open borders, we should at least have an immigration regime that doesn’t make a mockery of the rule of law. Only barbarians believe the law should send the message that the just reward for doing our job or taking care of our family is deportation and exile from the place we call home.