As we march on through another election year, we can expect immigration to be at the forefront of the political agenda once again. The entire world and its dog must be aware of Donald Trump’s stance on the issue. The front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination, is well known for his “Big, beautiful wall”. Standing at over 452 miles long, its pretty hard to miss!
But it may come as a surprise to learn that Joe Biden, Trump’s likely opponent, is also keen to secure the USA’s border with Mexico.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him, (and) deployed the most agents ever – more than 23,000 – to address the situation at the border,” according to a White House briefing. “(The Biden-Harris) budget includes nearly $25b for US Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
Trump’s wall was certainly expensive. It cost a cool $15billion. That’s enough to build at least 79 hospitals, according to Joss Sheldon’s new book “FREEDOM: The Case For Open Borders”. But Biden’s budget has been far greater than that. Biden is currently spending $25billion to police immigration each year. For the same amount of money you could treat 173,000 cancer patients every twelve months.
It’s a subject Sheldon lays out in the introduction to his new manifesto. Every four years we’re presented with a choice between two candidates, both of whom are willing to squander massive amounts of taxpayer money on border control. We’re never presented with the alternative option: opening our borders; granting people the freedom to live, travel, study, work and retire wherever they choose.
Such a policy wouldn’t only save us a fortune. It’d actually make us money.
“In 2019, the average foreigner in the Statespaid $165.52 moreto the state than they received in return,” writes Sheldon. “Immigrants paid almost $500m more in Social Security than they took out of the system, between 1998 and 2022. Their net contribution is expected to top the $2t mark by 2072.”
Foreign nationals do the jobs that locals are often unwilling to do: they move around from place to place to pick crops, work the nightshifts, and do dangerous and grubby tasks. They also do the work we’re unable to do ourselves. Immigrants take up leading positions in science and medicine, and they file a disproportionate number of patent applications.
Immigrants are more likely to be of a working age, and they’re more likely to be employed. But the story doesn’t end there. That’s because foreigners are also more likely to open businesses that employ local people, and those firms pay slightly higher wages than their rivals. Some of those immigrant-founded companies, such as YouTube, provide a platform which enables other people to create jobs for themselves. And sometimes they create entire industries. In one of the highlights of the book, Sheldon retells the story of Hollywood; of how a ragtag bunch of Jewish refugees on the run from the antisemitism of Eastern Europe, arrived in America with barely a cent to their name, faced down even more discrimination, ploughed on ahead, opened up their own movie houses, “Mom-and-pop stores, the size of regular shops”, upsized, expanded into chains, and eventually headed west, where they created the modern movie industry. Hollywood currently employs 640,500 workers.
You might think that political leaders would be bending over backwards to attract more such people; to create more jobs for local people, and invent more new industries in underdeveloped regions.
“This is where the lunacy really begins to dawn,” Sheldon concludes. “In order to stop people from entering the country – enriching its culture, opening businesses, creating jobs, pushing up wages, fuelling growth, and paying a disproportionate amount of tax – the American authorities are paying an unfathomable amount of money, which could’ve been used to build hundreds of hospitals, and save millions of people from cancer!”
It’s something worth bearing in mind, the next time we go to the polls. Is it really worth spending so much money, to stop people from coming here and making our country a better place? Wouldn’t it be better to welcome our new arrivals with open arms, and save ourselves a fortune in the process?
America was built by immigrants, as Sheldon so expertly explains in his opening chapter, “The History Of Movement”; a tour de force which argues that “everything has always been moving” from the Big Bang to the present day. And indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that American presidents went out of their way to celebrate these new arrivals. George W. Bush has gone on the record, saying “I’ve seen what they (Mexicans) add to our country. They bring to America the values of faith in God, love of family, hard work, and self-reliance – the values that made us a great nation.” Barack Obama once opined, “We are and always will be a nation of immigrants.”
It’s unlikely that we’ll hear similar such sentiments at the upcoming election. It’s unlikely that we’ll have the option to vote for open borders. But that doesn’t mean we should lose hope.
It’s that precious commodity that laces the pages of “FREEDOM: The Case For Open Borders”. It’s a manifesto of hope, which encourages the reader to dream of a world in which humans live together as a global family; unhindered by national borders which dictate who can be rich and who must endure a life of poverty. It’s thorough; covering everything from genetics to Old Testament scripture, nomadism to fish and chips. And, most importantly, it’s a pretty entertaining tome; taking a convoluted subject, and breaking it down into bite-sized chunks; telling things in a storybook fashion that will appeal to fans of literature as well as history and politics.
“FREEDOM: The Case For Open Borders” will be released on the 29th February 2024. It’s available to pre-order from Amazon, Apple, Google Play and Barnes & Noble today.
