"The Case for Open Borders": Keeping only some people out

Photo from inside the library on the US-Canada border. Image source.

Here's another quote I want to share from "The Case for Open Borders". This is from pages 118-119:

Another popular defense of borders is that, as Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, "We don't have a country without a border." Similarly, Obama White House advisor Cecilia Muñoz said that "[t]here are policy decisions to be made about who should be an immigrant, and that includes removing folks who don't qualify under the law. That's, I think, just the reality of being a nation."

But how does a closed border legitimize a country? The US border is wide open to goods, money, the well connected, and the wealthy-- so why is keeping poor people out important for maintaining a nation state? Though there are no formal financial requirements for Mexicans obtaining nonimmigrant visas to enter the United States, consular officers consider a person's finances and employment before issuing a visa, and poor people almost never get the pass.

In other words, the border is supposed to keep only some people out. Compare the triple fencing, watch towers, paramilitary Border Patrol, ground sensors, drones, and billions of dollars spent keeping people out of Southern California to the Derby Line in Vermont at the northern US border, where an opera house is literally divided down the middle between United States and Canada, where the international divide is marked by a strip of black on the floor of the town library's reading room. You aren't legally permitted to enter and remain in the United States from there, but unless you're looking down, your book-browsing could take you back and forth across an international divide without any notice.

I googled this Vermont library because it sounds cool, and it turns out that now the felon is closing access from the Canadian side, because I guess we can't have nice things.

Blogaround

 Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Walmart Effect (2024, via) "In it, the economist Justin Wiltshire compares the economic trajectory of counties where a Walmart did open with counties where Walmart tried to open but failed because of local resistance. In other words, if Walmart is selecting locations based on certain hidden characteristics, these counties all should have them. Still, Wiltshire arrives at similar results: Workers in counties where a Walmart opened experienced a greater decline in earnings than they made up for with cost savings, leaving them worse off overall."

2. Against fallacy-spotting (May 4) "Most arguments are not about logical inferences. Arguments are about warring narratives. I tell a story, you tell a story, and we each decide what story is most compelling."

Also from Siggy: Why does asexual representation need to be explicit? (May 4) "So what exactly do we want asexual representation to do, and why does non-explicit representation fail to accomplish it?"

3. Not fleeing: New report shows more wealthy residents in Mass., 2 years into 'millionaire's tax' (April 28, via) "Voters narrowly approved a 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million in a statewide ballot referendum in November 2022."

4. Federal judge says results of North Carolina court race with Democrat ahead must be certified (May 6) Good news here. Hopefully this is over. I've been following this because I'm an overseas voter, and the Republican candidate was trying to get the overseas absentee ballots thrown out.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: You can leave a public comment on this proposal about Rescinding the Definition of Harm under the Endangered Species Act (via). The deadline is May 19. See this article for info about what this proposed change means: Destroying endangered species' habitat wouldn't count as 'harm' under proposed Trump rule (April 17)

2. Moving to Canada: Immigration Overview for Transgender U.S. Citizens (February 11) This is useful- it's about the reality of how immigration systems work- if you're privileged enough to be able to find a job in another country, you'll be able to immigrate and it won't be much of a problem. If you're in danger in your home country and applying for asylum, you need to know that is very tricky.

3. Fact Check: Trump's HHS Review On Trans Care Filled With Pseudoscience, Pushes Conversion Therapy (May 2) "Before delving into the document’s most egregious factual distortions, it’s worth emphasizing that it has no listed author and bears none of the hallmarks of scientific rigor. There is no evidence of peer review. Instead, the report reads less like a medical analysis and more like an anti-trans screed—politicized, inflammatory, and devoid of scholarly grounding."

Also from Erin in the Morning: "Focus On Real Issues That Matter," AZ Governor Hobbs Vetoes Anti-Trans Bills (May 6)

And: SCOTUS Allows Military Ban That Calls Trans People "Dishonorable" To Go Into Effect (May 7)

4. Trump says he's ending federal funding for NPR and PBS. They say he can't (May 2) "'CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President's authority,' the corporation wrote in a statement issued Friday morning. 'Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.'"

Hey now is a great time to donate to NPR~

5. Trump orders 100% tariff on foreign-made movies to save 'dying' Hollywood (May 6) "It was unclear if the tariffs would apply to movies on streaming services as well as those shown in theaters, or if they would be calculated based on production costs or box office revenue." What? What on earth?

6. 'We took on Trump and won': USDA will unfreeze money meant for Maine (May 5) "This development marks the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battle between the state and the Trump administration over Title IX, presidential power, and transgender athletes."

7. The ruling against Trump's law firm order shows how to respond in this moment (May 5) "As one amicus aptly put it, '[o]ur judicial system is under serious threat when determining whether to file an Amicus Curiae brief could be a career-ending decision. But, when lawyers are apprehensive about retribution simply for filing a brief adverse to the government, there is no other choice but to do so.'"

8. U.S. intelligence memo says Venezuelan government does not control Tren de Aragua gang (May 6) "The memo contradicts claims by President Trump, who has accused Maduro of controlling the gang, which Trump says is invading the U.S. The government has relied on this argument to justify the deportation of alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act."

9. Trump, asked if he has to 'uphold the Constitution,' says, 'I don't know' (May 4)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. GOP Rep. who wanted to “protect” girls from trans people arrested for preying on young girl (March 18, via) "Eichorn is a co-sponsor of S.F. 2531, a bill that would allow anyone to accuse a female athlete in school sports of being transgender. Any player accused of being trans would then have to get a signed physician’s statement indicating the athlete’s sex that is based solely on their internal and external reproductive anatomy; their naturally occurring level of testosterone; and an analysis of the student’s chromosomes."

2. Lungfish (March 17) From xkcd.

3. Jury says Greenpeace owes hundreds of millions of dollars for Dakota pipeline protest (March 19) "In the lawsuit, Energy Transfer says Greenpeace participated in a publicity campaign that hurt the project and the firm's bottom line — allegedly raising the cost of construction by at least $300 million."

4. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams return to Earth after 9 months stuck in space (March 19) Very happy to hear this! This is why I'm not going to space. I don't want to get stuck up there.

5. Ohio Appeals Court Rules Trans Care Is Healthcare, Strikes Down Ban For Trans Youth (March 19)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. As always, if the news is stressing you out, you don't have to read everything. Instead, make sure you *do* something. Make friends with immigrants, protest, donate money, check on your trans friends, etc. Here's an action item, for Americans: Submit a public comment about the Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations (via). Deadline is March 27. Here's some info on what the NEPA is: Trump Administration Seeks to Unravel NEPA 

2. Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True. (March 15) [content note: child death] "Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son."

3. I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped (March 19, via) "Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out."

4. 15 Ways You Can Fight for Democracy (March 19) 

5. March 17, 2025 (March 18) "The rejection of a government that works for all Americans in order to concentrate power in the executive branch appears to serve individuals like Musk, rather than the American people."

6. Protesters arrested after storming Trump Tower to demand release of Mahmoud Khalil (March 13, via) "'As Jews, we’re here today, mere hours before the holiday of Purim begins – a holiday where we honor Esther who used her voice to speak out and demand that the king not commit genocide,' the woman said in the video. 'Today we are using her same courage to speak out.'"

Related: ‘Rules aren’t clear anymore’: Trump crackdown on student protesters sends shock waves across US universities (March 18) "'This case sets a terrifying precedent for all students, particularly international students, particularly those on visas and green cards, but I think students in general should be horrified,' said Zaid, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution."

7. First They Came for Columbia (March 14, via) "So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change."

8. Justice Dept. says ending Louisiana petrochemical case helps ‘dismantle radical DEI programs’ (March 8) What?

9. Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites (March 19) "'And that's a tragedy because it's going to make our military weaker,' says Fulton. 'It's not just about getting rid of trans people and gay people and women and black folks. It's about getting rid of leaders. It's about disrupting units, taking people out of those units who are fully trained and fully qualified and replacing them with who? People who pass Trump's ideological test?'"

10. “Soaked in Animus”: Federal Judges Strikes Down Trump’s Trans Military Ban (March 19) "'Neither document contains any analysis nor cites any data,' Reyes writes. 'They pronounce that transgender persons are not honorable, truthful, or disciplined—but Defense counsel concedes that these assertions are pure conjecture.'"

Blogaround

1. Egypt is certified malaria-free by WHO (October 20, via) This is great!

2. Lauren Stratford, The Survivor Who Never Was (October 15) "True change cannot be built on falsehoods, and people who try to do so create more victims, not fewer."

3. China’s Solution for Trash-Strewn Mountains: Robot Dog Porters (October 24) "The four-legged robots could be seen trotting up and down the steps of Mount Tai, or Taishan, in eastern China’s Shandong province last weekend, often laden with huge bags of garbage, sparking amusement among the hordes of tourists at the site."

Also from Sixth Tone: What’s Chinese for ‘Midwest Nice’? (October 24) LOLLL oh this is so real. You text with customer service on Taobao (Chinese shopping app) and they constantly call you "qin" [亲]. A dictionary will tell you this means "dear"- and I have seen plenty of Chinese people using "dear" in English the way they use "qin", which just sounds odd, like "Dear, can you bring in these documents next week?"- but I've always felt like it shouldn't be understood as "dear" but more like a polite title you use in administrative sorts of interactions. Loved reading this article about how Chinese people also find it weird to be called "qin" on Taobao all the time.

And also: Signs of Unity: Can China’s Deaf Community Find a Common Language? (October 28) "China’s large size, coupled with a history of sign language use dating back at least 1,500 years, have made China’s sign languages especially fragmented."

4. Former envoy says Americans in Canada ‘could determine’ next president (October 20) Love this! Americans living abroad, VOTE VOTE VOTE!

5. Nazi shit (intra ecclesiam nulla salus) (October 23) "'Round them up and put them in camps' is unadorned Nazi shit. It just is. There’s no way of qualifying or caviling or weaseling out of that. 'Round them up and put them in camps' is the essence of the thing itself."

6. What NOT To Say To People Trapped In The MAGA Cult (October 24) "One day he’ll be gone [hopefully very soon] and you’ll need to be there to help them process what happened and perhaps find a way back to sanity."

7. Police and poll workers train for possible election threats (October 24) 

8. American Airlines fined $50 million for its treatment of passengers with disabilities (October 23) "Duckworth said airlines routinely damage her own wheelchairs and others. In fact, Duckworth says they broke 892 wheelchairs in a single month last year. 'Imagine if the American public saw that the airlines broke 892 pairs of legs in a single month. There would be hue and cry, but there hasn't been.'"

9. Biden apologizes for forced Native American boarding school policy that caused abuse and deaths of children (October 26) "President Joe Biden delivered an apology Friday for a United States policy that forcibly separated generations of indigenous children from their families for more than 150 years and sent them to federally backed boarding schools for forced assimilation."

10. MAGA’s Closing Argument: Dad’s Coming Home (October 28) "The core MAGA message is that all these problems are really one problem: The world feels wrong now, because people don’t know how to behave."

11. Your Fave Is Problematic Politics (October 18) "This is an annoying approach to media analysis. It is a batshit approach to getting people to vote for a candidate."

12. Relatable: AOC Doesn't Want Four More Years Of Waking Up To Trump's Bullsh*t (October 29) "We should not have to live that way again. We shouldn’t have to wake up every morning and think “OK, what’s it gonna be today?” Our elected officials shouldn’t be spending their time crafting responses to everything he says or does, only for no one to even remember what they were the next day because the next day we’re onto another horrible thing."

13. Many state abortion bans include exceptions for rape. How often are they granted? (October 26, via) "Bertram Roberts says she’s never seen anyone in that state get an exemption — for any reason, let alone rape."

14. New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism (October 25) "Indeed, an unprecedented number of Donald Trump’s closest, handpicked aides and advisors have refused to endorse him, many warning publicly that Trump was a danger to democracy. It is rare for any advisor or official so close to the president to refuse to endorse them; nearly half of Trump’s have so refused."

15. 《目标是宝可梦大师》中文版MV 腾格尔 (October 26) For fun, here's a Chinese song about pokemon!

Blogaround

1. You're single and pregnant? Now you can claim maternity benefits (August 19) An article from China, saying that now unmarried women can get maternity pay when they give birth.

On the one hand, this is great news! On the other hand, WTF, why on earth was being married a requirement for getting maternity pay??? WTF????

China: we want to encourage people to have more children
Also China: *sets up legal hurdles to make life difficult for single moms and children born "out of wedlock"*

2. Woman with disabilities nears medically assisted death after futile bid for affordable housing (April 30) and Are Canadians being driven to assisted suicide by poverty or healthcare crisis? (May 11) [content note: euthanasia, eugenics, ableism] Oh wow this is bad.

3. Doctor Reacts To Marvel Medical Scenes (MCU) (2021) "WHOA, WE DON'T DO IT LIKE THAT, BRO!"

4. Making A Murder... Scene (July 31) 1-hour-22-minute sudoku solve video.

5. The Manipulations of Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" (August 12) 1-hour-10-minute video from Jessie Gender.

Jessie's videos are very good, very in-depth, but also I totally understand if you do not want to spend 1 hour and 10 minutes of your time thinking about Matt Walsh. If you are unfortunate enough to know who Matt Walsh is, then I'm sure you can already guess what his "What is a Woman?" documentary is about, and you'd be exactly right: it's not a sincere attempt to investigate the question "what is a woman"; it's all about mocking liberals/ trans people for saying that the definitions of concepts like gender and sex are complex and there's not one simple answer.

Jessie's video examines the ways Matt treats his interviewees disrespectfully if they don't agree with him- refusing to listen to their answers, editing the video to make them look bad, asking bad-faith questions. And also, it turns out that Matt's team lied about the purpose of the documentary in order to deceive trans people/ allies into participating in the interviews.

But yeah, if you know who Matt Walsh is, none of this is surprising.

6. This tweet about student loan forgiveness:

what’s next? casting down the mighty from their thrones?? lifting up the lowly?? filling the hungry with good things?? sending the rich away empty?? slippery slope

— Erin Jean Warde (she/her) (@erinjeanwarde) August 25, 2022

(If you don't get it)

7. Google’s Revolution in Historical Research (August 18) "If I had been doing this book 25 years ago, say, in the era of BG, Before Google, there is literally no way I could have found it, not if I was a multi-millionaire antiquarian of Bruce Wayne proportions commanding legions of research assistants."

8. Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare (July 26) [content note: pregnancy loss] "It's just really unimaginable to be in a position of having to think: How close to death am I before somebody is going to take action and help me?"

9. Atheist to send Texas schools ‘In God We Trust’ signs written in Arabic (August 22) Sort of interesting how conservatives' racism/ cultural ignorance/ anti-Muslim hatred is kind of taken for granted here and not questioned... Like I agree with the point that this atheist is trying to make, but I'm not comfortable with how he builds his point on a foundation of conservatives' hatred towards Muslims, without calling it out.

10. ‘In memory of water’: The Zone Rouge and the stupidity of war (August 22) [content note: war] "The grievances that motivated World War I have faded into irrelevance, but people are still living with the consequences."

Related: Collections: No Man’s Land, Part I: The Trench Stalemate (2021) About common misconceptions about trench warfare in WWI.

Blogaround

1. Las Vegas Is Only the Deadliest Shooting in US History Because Black Lives Aren’t Counted (posted October 3) [content note: white supremacist violence]

2. How to Win at Monopoly and Lose All Your Friends (posted 2016) "If you want to see these people again, I recommend not gloating, but simply state that you're playing to win, and that it wasn't your idea to play Monopoly in the first place."

3. Just Who Was Jesus? An Exploration of Early Christianity (posted October 11) "I read the New Testament straight through probably twenty times, but each time I read it through I did so on the assumption that each book was inspired by God, and that they thus could not be in conflict." Yeppppppppppppp. So amazing the new things you learn when you're no longer required to believe the bible is inerrant.

4. Canadian Government Announces $800 Million In Reparations (posted October 9) "The welfare workers exercised these powers often; around 20,000 [Native American] children were taken away in all. This is now known as the Sixties Scoop."

5. India's Supreme Court Rules That Sex With A Bride Under 18 Is Rape (posted October 12)

6. Everyone Knew Houston’s Reservoirs Would Flood — Except for the People Who Bought Homes Inside Them (posted October 12)

7. What Filthy Old Birds Can Tell Us About Air Pollution (posted October 10) "By analyzing sooty birds housed in museum collections, scientists have been able to track patterns of US air pollution over the last 135 years."

8. A Trans Faith Resource List. List of resources related to trans people and Christianity. Very cool. :)

9. Maybe I’m Not Really Asexual, Because…: An Exploration of Doubts. Ooooh I really like this blog series! Especially Maybe I’m Not Really Asexual But It’s Really Just My Religious Upbringing, Maybe I’m Not Really Asexual Because Isn’t Everyone Like This?, and Maybe I’m Not Really Asexual Because I Have No Idea What Sexual Attraction Is So How Do I Know If I’m Feeling It Or Not. Yeppp I've been there.

10. This is still one of my favorite worship songs:


Have a good week~