Tag Archives: China

Open borders between hostile nations

This blog post is an expanded version of a comment I posted on the Open Borders Action Group. It’s about whether hostile nations can or should have open borders, and how close a world would be to open borders if countries had open borders for all countries except those where they had nation-to-nation hostility.

In principle, one might say that having open borders with all countries except the few that the nation is officially hostile to is almost as good as having complete open borders. In most cases, a given nation is hostile to only one or two other nations, so curtailing the freedom to move to those specific nations is not that big an imposition. After all, if two nations with populations of a hundred million each closed their borders only to each other, that still leaves the residents of each nation access to the remaining ~7 billion of the world’s population and over 90% of the world economy. Isn’t that close enough to open borders?

In practice, though, countries with hostile relations aren’t random pairings — often the hostile relations are linked with shared cultural elements, a common language, family ties across the border, and interest in specific geographic locations. This is partly because hostilities arise from war, secession, or controversial historical reconfigurations of boundaries that failed to account for realities on the ground, often because it’s intrinsically impossible (see here, here, and here for more on how borders have been drawn historically around the world). Thus, cutting off people’s access to the hostile nation is a disproportionately large imposition relative to what the population sizes alone would suggest.

Now, it could still be argued that in some cases, the existential threat of free movement is so severe that, unfortunate as it is, free migration between the hostile nations cannot be permitted. But, as with many arguments to close borders, such arguments should be examined critically and appropriate keyhole solutions worked out wherever possible.

An additional point: looking at the most challenging situations for open borders can help us test the limits of the strength of the case for open borders. It can help explain just how far we believe the right to migrate stretches, and just where people who claim to be open borders advocates draw the line. I carried out a similar exercise earlier when considering denial of migration for people based on their criminal records.

Special dangers

Special benefits

High levels of cultural exchange, family ties, and commercial interaction give people in both countries vested interests in the preservation and safety of members of the other country. Free migration and free trade can facilitate these and make the world safer and more prosperous.

It’s not clear whether government leaders want these benefits. Those who derive their power from aggressive hawkish stances may find their authority undermined by friendly ties with hostile neighbors. But not all politicians fit this category. Further, politicians can sometimes combine hawkish rhetoric with the promotion of cultural interchange, getting the best of both worlds: the economic and cultural benefits and the support of people who care about national pride.

Temporary diplomatic standoffs

In cases where nations have temporary diplomatic standoffs over the actions of national leaders that don’t necessarily have popular support in either country, it doesn’t make sense to curtail migration — it’s highly unlikely that individuals in the country bear each other much ill-will. Ending free movement might turn a temporary standoff into long-term rivalry. Examples of such temporary standoffs arise when a government in one country clandestinely (often without the knowledge or support of its own citizens) supports a rebel faction, or an incumbent who eventually gets deposed, during infighting in the other country. The focus in this post is not on such instances but rather on cases where there seem to be enduring feuds based on long-term grievances. This article on how the West should respond to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine makes a similar point.

Some examples

The following are some examples of hostile nations that may be considered tough cases for the open borders paradigm:

  • North Korea and South Korea: This example is perhaps too unusual, because the main constraint here is not immigration restrictions but emigration restrictions put in place by North Korea. For more on North Korea, see here.
  • India and Pakistan: The countries were created as a result of the 1947 Partition of India, with a lot of bloodshed accompanying the creation. There is considerable mutual hostility over the disputed territory of Kashmir. More on India and Pakistan in a separate blog post. You can also get a good historical primer on the countries here.
  • Israel and Palestine: This is a highly asymmetric situation in many ways. Israel is internationally recognized and has considerably greater military might. Palestine is not internationally recognized and does not have a strong government, but there have been many suicide terrorists from the area attacking locations in Israel. We hope to write more, but for now, you might want to check out this post.
  • Russia and its neighbors (Ukraine, Georgia): There are land disputes between Russia and some of its neighbors, due to inherently contested boundaries. You might want to check out co-blogger Nathan Smith’s post, and we hope to write more about these issues later. This article (also linked from the temporary diplomatic standoffs section of the post) has an interesting relevant quote:

    Georgian policy towards Putin is a good example, I think. The Georgian government abolished visas for Russian tourists in spite of the tough relations between the two countries. Lots of Russians had an opportunity to see with their own eyes what was really happening in Georgia and how the market-oriented anti-corruption reforms affected the society.

  • Armenia and Azerbaijan: There may be more about these countries on our blog later. Some good articles to read are here, here, and here.
  • China and Taiwan: We’ll have more about this pair of countries on our blog later. Some good initial articles to read are here, here, here, here, and here.

There are many other examples of countries that have disputes over specific territories. There are also some examples of intranational borders to keep competing factions within a country from attacking or getting into conflicts with each other. Examples include the peace line in Northern Ireland and the green line in Lebanon.

We hope to explore these situations in greater depth in future blog posts. Any other examples of hostile nations worth discussing? Any historical examples? Any general considerations I missed in my opening remarks above?

Helping North Korean refugees: an evaluation

Roughly speaking, we can estimate the value of rescuing people from a totalitarian regime or otherwise dysfunctional system by considering the difference between the quality of life they’d experience once rescued and the quality of life they’d experience if not rescued. Given how unchanging life is in North Korea, the quality of life they’d experience if not rescued is about the same as the quality of life they were leading prior to being rescued.

North Korea seems a particularly promising place because we have good reason both to believe that people lead low-quality lives there currently, and that they are likely to lead high-quality lives if they are successfully rescued (though there are some important caveats to the latter).

Life in North Korea at present

Estimates put GDP (PPP) per capita in North Korea at around $1800 per year. This is not the lowest in the world, but it’s at the low end; the poorer countries are mainly Haiti, Afghanistan, and some small countries, most of them in Africa. Further, because of the closed and highly restrictive nature of the North Korean economy, prospects for economic growth in North Korea look bleak unless there is some kind of political change.

Potential for North Korean who escape

In general, there are serious questions about the extent to which refugees will be able to adapt to their new enviroments. Although life for them will most likely be better than where they came from, the size of the gap depends on a number of factors. Below, I list some factors to consider:

  • According to official estimates, North Korea has a 99% national literacy rate. This is better than the global literacy rate (estimated at 84%) and dramatically better than literacy rates in other countries with incomes in a similar ballpark. For comparison, Nigeria and India, both large countries that are wealthier per capita than North Korea, have literacy rates 61.3% and 73.8% according to this table.
  • However, the official statistics are hard to interpret, because literacy could be defined in many different ways and statistics are hard to corroborate in a country where there is little scope for outsiders to independently verify claims.
  • Further, it seems that most North Koreans don’t learn any language other than Korean, which makes it difficult for them to immediately settle anywhere other than South Korea.
  • The educational system in North Korea indoctrinates people into worshipping their leaders and often teaches blatant falsehoods to boost national glory and prevent people from being attracted to knowledge that might undermine the regime. Thus, people have to “unlearn” a lot when they move out of North Korea. This might be an argument in favor of rescuing people when they are younger.
  • The anecdotal story of Joseph Kim (video) suggests that many North Koreans are unable to put their best in school because they are constantly looking for food and battling hunger — a concern similar to that in many other countries. Joseph Kim describes himself as having been a F student back in elementary school in North Korea, and he says he didn’t even go to middle school. Upon moving to the United States, Joseph Kim was able to turn around his academic performance. It’s unclear how unusual he is relative to other potential North Korean refugees.
  • Genetically, North Koreans are quite similar, probably indistinguishable, from South Koreans. Thus, to the extent that we consider South Korea’s rapid recent economic growth and technological progress as being linked to genetic potential, this is an argument in favor of North Koreans having huge potential when they leave. Whether this counterbalances the concerns surrounding indoctrination and wasted childhoods is unclear. Note also that at the individual level, higher IQ doesn’t lead to substantially higher earnings or life satisfaction, so this connection is not that strong.
  • There is some weak evidence of high ability for North Koreans, but it is hard to interpret. North Korea, despite having a population of only 25 million, consistently does well at the International Mathematical Olympiad (here are their historical scores). There were some accusations of cheating in 1991 and 2010, but these were not well-substantiated and in any case the consistently good performance over many years is not explained. However, it seems that, since North Korean education stops after grade 10, the IMO team gets intensive separate training (i.e., they study primarily for Olympiads, rather than juggle that with schoolwork). This arguably gives them an advantage over people in other countries for whom excelling in Olympiads is just one of many things they are juggling. There is little evidence of other significant accomplishment, but the indoctrination and the closed nature of the society probably explains that completely. Also note that Communist countries have historically performed well at mathematics. Part of the reason may be that the regime is happy to encourage mathematical excellence, considering mathematics a relatively harmless outlet for intellectual curiosity that would not threaten the regime’s indoctrination attempts.
  • The North Korean regime ruthlessly prevents people from escaping, both by suppressing information and by using physical force. Thus, the set of people who manage to successfully escape are likely to be highly selected. This could be an argument that strengthens the case for rescuing people (since the people rescued are likely to have unique talents that make them likely to both gain and contribute more once they have escaped), but it could also be an argument for diminishing returns from scaling up rescue operations (as rescue becomes accessible to people who are not that well-selected). Note that diminishing returns could still be pretty huge returns in absolute terms — it’s just that extrapolating from the gains to current refugees might lead one to overstate returns.

Escaping and returning

Do those who escape from North Korea regret it? Surprisingly, many do desire to return, and some sneak back in.

It is very, very difficult to escape directly across the border from North Korea to South Korea. The typical route for defectors is to escape to China and from there to other places (Mongolia, South Korea, Thailand). One escape route is to China, then Mongolia (via the Gobi desert), where they are arrested by the Mongolian government and deported to South Korea.

Those who manage to escape to China but aren’t able to escape further have to live underground as illegal immigrants, in constant fear of deportation. Here’s what Wikipedia says about North Korean defectors in China:

In China there are 20,000−30,000 North Korean refugees.[citation needed] There was a continued decline in the number of North Korean refugees in China, with around 11,000 in the country at year’s end,[when?][13][14] mostly in the northeast, making them the largest population outside of North Korea; these are not typically considered to be members of the ethnic Korean community, and the Chinese census does not count them as such. Some North Korean refugees who are unable to obtain transport to South Korea marry ethnic Koreans in China and settle there; they blend into the community but are subject to deportation if discovered by the authorities. Those who have found ‘escape brokers’, try to enter the South Korean consulate in Shenyang. In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened the security and increased the number of police outside the consulate.

Today there are new ways of getting into South Korea. One is to follow the route to the Mongolian border; another is the route to southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, who welcome the North Korean defectors.[15]

According to a source from 2005, “60 to 70% of the defectors [in China] are women, 70 to 80% of whom are victims of human trafficking.”[16] Most of the clients of North Korean women are Chinese citizens of Korean descent, largely elderly bachelors.[17] Violent abuse starts in apartments near the border with China, from where the women are then moved to cities further away to work as sex slaves. Chinese authorities arrest and repatriate these North Korean victims. North Korean authorities keep repatriates in penal labour colonies (and/or execute them) and execute the Chinese-fathered babies “to protect North Korean pure blood” and force abortions on pregnant repatriates who are not executed.[16]

China refuses to grant refugee status to North Korean defectors and considers them illegal economic migrants. The Chinese authorities arrest and deport hundreds of defectors back into North Korea, sometimes in mass immigration sweeps. Chinese citizens caught aiding defectors face fines and imprisonment. In February 2012, Chinese authorities repatriated North Korean defectors being held in Shenyang and five defectors in Changchun from the same location. The case of the 24 detainees, who have been held since early February garnered international attention due to the North’s reported harsh punishment of those who attempted to defect. Beijing repatriates North Korean refugees under a deal made with Pyongyang, its ally. Human rights activists say those repatriated face harsh punishment including torture and imprisonment in labor camps.[18]

North Koreans are escaping the impoverished country every day, across the heavily guarded border to mainland China to avoid persecution and starvation. The escapees might face death, if returned to their homeland. South Korean human rights activists are continuing to stage hunger strikes and appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Council to urge China to stop the deportation of the refugees.[19][20][21]

Human rights organizations have compiled a list of hundreds of North Korean defectors repatriated by China.[22][23] For some of them the fate after repatriation to North Korea is described, ranging from torture, detention or prison camp to execution. The list also includes humanitarian workers, who were assassinated or abducted by North Korean agents for helping refugees.

Thus, simply escaping to China is not much good. It’s a first step, but one that can easily be reversed without complementary steps.

Many people from North Korea currently living in South Korea evince desires to return. Commonly cited reasons include:

  • Many of them are saddled with the debt they had to pay to the people who smuggled them out. Although the South Korean government does give them some money to get started with their new lives (about $3,000 according to a comment in a discussion of LiNK on the Open Borders Action Group) this isn’t enough to repay the debt (about $7000).
  • They miss their families acutely. The situation for North Koreans is considerably harder than for migrants from other countries because of the absence of communication channels with their relatives. Also, unlike migrants from other countries, they cannot easily send remittances to their family. (There do exist informal channels of smuggling in foreign currencies, but these are quite costly because of the clandestine nature of operations).
  • Those who escape as children often have difficulty adjusting to South Korea’s highly competitive educational system. Coming from a place with low educational standards and significant indoctrination, they find it hard to readjust to the intellectual expectations in South Korea. Affirmative action (intended to help them) often places them in universities with higher academic standards than they are prepared for.
  • The ones who escape as adults often lack the necessary skills to get good jobs in the South Korean economy, and they have difficulty affording the high living costs, particularly housing costs.

See here, here, and here for more.

The cost of rescue and resettlement

Obviously, one factor that would go into determining whether rescuing people from North Korea is cost-effective is the cost of rescue and resettlement. I’ve been told that people who pay for smugglers generally pay about $7,000 to get all the way to South Korea (it’s cheaper to get to China alone, but, as noted above, that is often not enough and could even make things worse). Liberty in North Korea claim that they can execute a rescue for $2,500. Their 2012 budget is about a million dollars, of which about $149,000 were spent directly on rescuing 40 people (average about $3,700). The figure of $2,500 may reflect cost reductions since then. If we assume that their entire budget was necessary in order to facilitate the existing rescues, the effective cost per rescue comes at $25,000. It’s unclear how to interpret the figures, because of many hidden costs and questions regarding the scalability of operations. I would expect the cost of rescue to range between $2,500 and $100,000 per person for the next few thousand people to be rescued. At the lower end of the estimate range, it seems that the cost of rescue is very small relative to the other considerations, so that even a slight net of benefits relative to costs makes rescuing people arguably competitive with GiveDirectly. At the higher end (which is probably more realistic), it does start becoming comparable with the net of other costs and benefits, though I still think rescues are potentially cost-competitive with other philanthropic options (but more on this later).

Spending resources on better resettlement might help increase the value of rescues (by reducing the rate at which people regret their decision to migrate), so that might need to be factored into the total cost of rescues but also increase the benefits from rescues.

Other factors

Some other considerations:

  • More rescues mean that the world gets a better understanding of life in North Korea.
  • Existing rescues may facilitate further rescues, and also facilitate political change in North Korea as more people in North Korea get to learn more about the world outside.
  • An increase in rescues could lead to further tightening of the border, specifically the North Korean border with China, further immiserating the population.
  • The South Korean government and society get a sense of the challenges that they might face under an eventual reunification.

Start-Up Cities Along the Border

Open border advocates have long sought to promote open border policies in immigrant recipient countries but success has been mixed at best. Occasionally immigration policies are relaxed and sometimes they are restricted. Despite the countless energy and effort expanded, it is unclear whether the world is moving towards open borders. It may be time to consider directing efforts  towards the governments of migrant sending countries. Specifically, it may be time to lobby for the creation of start-up cities along the borders of the first world in places such as Mexico, Turkey, and Morocco.

Start-up cities are regions which remain under the jurisdiction of their host country but which are allowed a large degree of autonomy in domestic affairs and have their own independent legal and economic institutions. Start-up cities may even be allowed to operate under a different legal system than their host nation. Leading the development of start-up cities is the central American country of Honduras, which is currently setting up the framework for the creation of several start-up cities. The details of the Honduran start-up cities are still to be decided but once completed they will give Honduran citizens the opportunity to decide under which set of institutions they wish to live under.

Start-up cities are related to but distinct from charter cities, which have been discussed on the site before. Paul Romer, a Stanford Economist, first showcased his idea of charter cities on a TED talk in 2009. Romer’s charter cities though relied on help from the first world to get started up and in some variations the charter cities were administered by foreign governments. One of his examples was Canadian administration of a charter city in Cuba. Start-up cities (I take the term from Chapman University Law Professor Tom Bell), on the other hand, are initiated by and remain fully under the control of the host country. I suspect many migrants from and residents of the third world prefer the latter option. It is difficult to explain to a first world audience, but colonialism is still very much in the collective memory of the third world and anything with the trappings of colonialism will be met with heavy resistance. It is for this reason why I believe that, if they are to succeed, start-up cities will have to rely on existing overseas populations to help provide the expertise needed. This is not to say that expertise cannot be drawn from elsewhere, but it would be of great political aide nonetheless if it were perceived that start-up cities were under the control of natives.

Mexico, and other traditional emigrant countries, could pass legislation to create start-up cities that allowed its citizens to live in institutions similar to its northern neighbor, the United States, whilst still remaining in Mexican soil. Indeed countries like Mexico have a comparative advantage when it comes to creating start-up cities; they already have a large population of overseas citizens who are used to living under such institutions and therefore better able to re-create them elsewhere.

The creation of start-up cities should be favorable to all stake holders, including traditional opponents of open borders.

Migrants do not leave their homelands without reluctance. Migrants do not pack up and move their lives thousand of miles away out of whim or as a rite of passage. Migrants leave their countries of birth out of economic necessity or in order to escape  dangers to their safety. If a viable option allowed for them to continue residing in their homeland but under better institutions, many would prefer this option than migration to a foreign land.

Even migrants who have already migrated would be tempted by the lure of start-up cities in their countries of origin. Many migrants live as second or third class citizens with reduced civil liberties and limits on the economic activities they can undertake. Start up cities would enable migrants an opportunity to exert rights as fully fledged citizens and enter their elected profession with minimized legal obstacles.

Host countries should be favorable of start up-cities as it would create a wealthy region to draw tax revenues from. Start-up cities should be created in regions with low levels of populations or require that populated regions opt into them through referendum. This will ensure that minimal land disputes arise from the creation of start-up cities.

Traditional opponents of immigration should favor start-up cities as it allows them a method to rid themselves of migrants. Opponents of migration who recognize the economic value of immigration but who oppose migration out of cultural concern should favor start-up cities as a method that lets them to do business with migrants without having to live among them. Start-up cities could be created along the the border of the first world, but would be located on the third world side of the border and should therefore qualm fears by traditional opponents of migration that migration will lead to territorial losses.

Mexico is a prime candidate for the creation of start-up cities. Maquiladoras, special economic zones where Mexican labor works using capital from the United States, already litter the US-Mexican border. Maquiladoras already allow Mexicans to partially enjoy US economic institutions. Start-up cities would be a natural evolution and allow Mexicans not only to work under US institutions full time, but to live under them. Mexico also has the benefit of having a large overseas population whose expertise living under better institutions could be used to create start-up cities. Using expertise from fellow Mexicans should reduce the potential of a start-up city being mistakenly identified as an attempt to colonize the country. Mexicans would enjoy the benefits of US institutions but without reliance on US authorities to provide them. Mexico is also a prime candidate because its overseas population retains voting rights in Mexican politics and can therefore exert political pressure for the establishment of start-up cities.

Mexico is not the sole country in a favorable position for start-up cities. Turkey, with its large established overseas population in Germany and its favorable location next to the European Union is also a prime candidate as well. As is Morocco. Morocco actually presents a unique case in that it has two Spanish enclave cities, Cueta and Melilla, on its end of the sea. Both cities have high rates of illegal immigrants crossing over to enjoy Spanish institutions. The Moroccan government would do well to create start-up cities to provide better institutions for its people.

Start-up cities needn’t be located along the border of the first world. I propose this only because I believe those regions closest to the first world have a comparative advantage in regards to having overseas citizens with the knowledge necessary to recreate the desired institutions and due to geographic proximity that should favor trade.

Start-up cities are not without their flaws. Countries such as Mexico may be willing to allow start-up cities to adopt economic institutions different from the rest of country, but they may grow concerned about allowing such cities to have different political systems. Residents of start up cities may enjoy greater freedom than their counterparts elsewhere in the country, but they will still have to make certain concessions in order to appease current political elites. The current situation in Hong Kong (an example we’ve discussed before) provides us a case example of this. Hong Kong was an British settlement in China and was only transferred to Chinese authorities in 1997. British institutions allowed Hong Kong to flourish rapidly and in recognition of this the mainland government has allowed Hong Kong to retain a high degree of autonomy in its economic institutions. It has also tried to mimick the institutions that allowed Hong Kong to grow elsewhere in China through the creation of special economic zones. However it has also attempted to exert greater power over Hong Kong’s political  institutions. This suggests that the citizens of start-up cities will have to actively fight off attempts to curb their autonomy.

Start-up cities may also fail to provide the necessary institutions to all would-be migrants. Mexican nationals would benefit from the creation of start-up cities along the US border, but the Mexican government may be reluctant to allow Honduran or Guatemalans to reside in Mexico. It would be preferable if start-up cities were granted the freedom to set their own migration policies, but its unclear if this is politically possible. Hopefully the advent of start-up cities in some countries would exert pressure on other countries to follow suit.

Despite these flaws I believe that start-up cities are worth further attention by open border advocates. Efforts to convince the first world of the benefits of open borders should be continued, but it may be time to see if we can gain greater returns on our efforts by directing resources towards third world governments.

Poverty, International Aid and Immigration

One of the main justifications for supporting open borders is that it has the potential to alleviate poverty.  But opening borders is not the first thing that comes to mind when people think of poverty reduction measures.  Most people tend to think of international aid programs. Trouble is, international aid isn’t that effective.

For a quick primer, see this report published by the Center for Global Development. The main points include the following:

  • International aid has four main objectives: stimulation of economic growth, strengthening local institutions, immediate humanitarian relief, and economic stabilization after a shock.
  • The evidence accumulated from numerous studies is that there is basically no correlation between international aid and economic growth even though many countries receive over 10% of their gross national income in aid annually.
  • Donors are faced with a significant Principal-Agent problem, which results in a lot of aid ending up in the hands of corrupt officials and useless bureaucrats, or being wasted in some other way.
  • There is some evidence that aid is (slightly) more effective when given to countries with better governance and policies in place, but this does not always correlate with who needs aid the most.

Basically, international aid doesn’t work that well in the long run. Interestingly, this does not mean that we are losing the war on poverty. In fact, according to this article in the economist, the world met the millennium challenge goal of cutting poverty in half between 1990 and 2015 five years early.  So how did it happen?

In a word, China. We are all familiar with the story of China by now. After China adopted meaningful economic reforms in the 1970’s, their economy exploded and millions of people got jobs in new industries making goods that are exported across the world.  What we don’t always take into account is that this massive economic growth depends on a massive level of economic migration.  Chinese cities have over 250 million migrant workers.  Some estimates claim that another 250 million will move to the city by 2025.  China’s migrant population will soon be greater than the entire population of the US.

China has hundreds of millions of internal migrants despite the fact that the government does not allow its citizens to freely move around the country.  Chinese migrant workers live under conditions similar to illegal immigrants in this country.  Millions of migrant worker children are not even allowed to attend school even though China’s leaders know that their urban industries depend on migrant labor.  Migration has been vital to China’s economic growth, but there is massive bureaucratic resistance to granting these migrants basic rights because of the strain it would put on local welfare and education systems.  Sound familiar?  Still, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese have decided it is better for them to live on the margins of an industrialized economy than to risk starvation in a backward agricultural area.

Despite government attempts to prevent it, migration has been a fundamental part of how the world has cut poverty in half.  The explanation is pretty simple. Prior to industrialization, pretty much everyone lives in poverty.  Individuals in agricultural societies don’t produce very much, and they are fairly evenly distributed across the land. Individuals who specialize in a modern economy are very productive but they need to live in close proximity to other people. Thus industrialization goes hand in hand with massive rural-urban migration.

China isn’t the only country that has been transformed by internal migration. 30 percent of India’s population are migrants, as that countries citizens search for better conditions. In Brazil, the urban population went from 36% to 81% of the total in the second half on the 20th century.  And of course, the United States has experienced several periods of migration that shaped our nation’s history.

When we talk about poverty reduction, migration should be the first word that comes to mind.  Of course, the movements discussed here have been internal.  Internal migration is a bigger factor than international immigration in global poverty reduction because it is easier for people to move around within their own countries (despite restrictions, as in China).  A few countries have both the massive rural populations and dynamic urban production centers that make economy changing rural-urban migration possible.  But many areas of the world are being choked off either because their rural population has nowhere to go or their aging economy lacks an influx of new workers.

The benefit of open borders is that it allows the process of industrialization and poverty reduction to proceed without artificial barriers.  The China miracle could become a comprehensive global solution to poverty.

 

“Brain drain” does not harm political activism: my experience, and open borders

I just picked up my copy of the latest edition of The Economist, which had plenty to say about the recent elections in Malaysia (see this story, for instance). I’ve been asked to comment on this from an open borders standpoint — specifically, on how being a Malaysian living overseas has affected my ability to contribute to the political life of my nation. A common concern raised about open borders is that permitting migration more broadly might delay political reform in dysfunctional countries. I think I am well-placed to discuss this: this was the second Malaysian election in my adult life, and also the second I’ve participated in from overseas.

When I was a student during the last Malaysian national elections in 2008, I contributed financially to the causes I support. I also helped write campaign communications material, and I had no issues following the campaign from my university’s New Hampshire campus. Throughout the time I’ve been in the US, I’ve stayed abreast of Malaysian affairs, and for a few years, penned a regular column on Malaysian politics for a popular news website .

It’s actually remarkable how to a significant degree, online news and social media have made it easy to keep one’s thumb on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Sometimes readers would ask me how I knew what people were thinking or feeling back home, and it almost felt cheap to say that I just read blog comments or listened to what people were saying on Facebook. Of course, it also helped that I spent a few weeks at home whenever I had vacation time. This recent election, I similarly helped by donating money to the candidates I supported. Coincidentally, I donated to one of these candidates because another Malaysian currently living and working in Mongolia prodded me to, and offered to match my donation.

But beyond these basic things, which I could have done from Antarctica, I also plugged into the Malaysian diaspora in the US. There aren’t many of us here, but for the past 5 years in a row, I’ve helped organise a conference on Malaysian affairs in the northeast (and advised others as they began to organise similar gatherings in the midwest and west coast) — the Malaysia Forum. I organised and attended demonstrations in Washington, DC and New York City demanding a fairer political process.

I still remember how only a couple days after moving into my apartment near Washington, DC I was preparing a poster saying “Where is MY vote?” — a reference to how Malaysian policy then disenfranchised most citizens living overseas. I don’t think any of us at that demonstration outside the Malaysian embassy in DC less than two years ago expected that by this election, we would have the right to vote. And yet, our struggle came through. We were part of a global movement holding simultaneous rallies, in Kuala Lumpur and across the globe, for free and fair elections in Malaysia. At the same time I demonstrated in Washington, I had friends gathering and marching in London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. The global synchronicity of it lent a powerful impetus to the movement; it was inspiring to Malaysians to think that scattered across our planet, there were Malaysian citizens sharing in the same struggle for democracy in our country. This election, I not only voted for the first time in my life at our embassy in Washington, but I also served as an election observer.

There is a concern that under open borders, people would flee dysfunctional countries instead of trying to fix them, this “brain drain” dooming these countries to failure in perpetuity. This concern is definitely applicable to Malaysia, and it’s something Malaysians openly wonder about and discuss all the time. (If you doubt me, come on over to next year’s Malaysia Forum and listen in.) The size of our diaspora perennially raises concerns that bad government policies are driving Malaysians away — which itself puts paid to the suggestion that emigration papers over domestic political problems.

Moreover, it’s not enough to suggest that apathetic Malaysians are disproportionately represented among emigrants as proof that permitting such migration is an issue. After all, there’s a selection bias going on: would the kind of people who leave Malaysia because they don’t care about it start caring about the country if immigration restrictions forced them to stay back? On the flip side, would the kind of people who love Malaysia but decide to leave it for other reasons stop loving their country?

I think these questions speak for themselves. But some further historical evidence unique to the Malaysian context: the overseas Chinese and Indian communities in Malaysia were extremely politically active in their homelands up until World War II. Sun Yat-Sen paid frequent visits to Malaysia to fundraise and organise, and Jawaharlal Nehru toured Malaysia to drum up political awareness. With a modicum of open borders, people were able to travel and so stay in touch with affairs of their respective homelands. Nowadays with the internet, there is absolutely no reason one can’t play an active role in the political life of one’s home, even from afar.

Another curious political event of note: the affiliates of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang / Guomindang) and the Indian Congress Party in Malaysia eventually morphed into the Malaysian Chinese Association and Malaysian Indian Congress. Both went on to fight for Malaysian independence from the British, and remain influential Malaysian political parties today. It is not easy to classify political participation as an either/or thing.

Migration is a socially complex phenomenon. Not all who leave choose to do so permanently. Many return. Some stay. I have met many Malaysians in the US who, for various reasons, have wound up staying here and may wind up dying here. Perhaps their children will grow up as Americans rather than Malaysians (something I personally, at this point in time, can’t conceive of doing as a parent). But they have impressed on me their love for Malaysia despite spending years, if not decades, away from home.

There is no denying that living away from one’s homeland is tough, whether or not you have line of sight to eventually returning home. There are certainly things I could have contributed in this past election had I been home, instead of in the US. But I confess I do not see how forcing me to remain in Malaysia instead of being in the US would have made the political life of my country significantly better off. Neither do I see how forcing the thousands of Malaysians who have left the country to instead stay behind our country’s arbitrary borders would have made things significantly better.

Malaysia may be a unique case because we are a partially democratic country, and so overseas Malaysians have more opportunities to plug into the political struggles of our homeland. But neither pre-WWII China or India were democratic, and yet the Chinese and Indian diasporas stayed looped into the struggles of their respective home countries. One would not refuse refuge to someone fleeing North Korea. The US has open borders for Cubans who can make it to US soil, and Cuban-Americans continue to be vocal about the affairs of their ancestral homeland.

My suggestion is that political involvement primarily depends on how much you care about the issues at hand, not where you are. It might be that where you are affects your ability to hear about the issues, and thus how much you care about them. But that was not much of an excuse when the borders were open enough to let dissidents like Nehru travel, and it certainly isn’t much of an excuse now when we have the internet and Facebook connecting us to far-flung friends and family.

If anything, because of how it promotes exchanges of ideas and commerce, open borders arguably lends greater impetus to far-flung political movements: I earn far more in the US than I could in Malaysia, and can remit my income to Malaysian causes I support. The ideas I learn of in the US are ideas I can translate to a Malaysian context — and similarly I can transmit Malaysian ideas to my US friends and colleagues. Malaysian opposition leaders Anwar Ibrahim (a former Georgetown professor) and Lim Guan Eng (a former Australian student) are fond of quoting American figures like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr. In a world where ideas are free to roam, it hardly seems right to keep the people behind them in a cage.