this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Y'all - look, downvote all you want, but the main problem with no-borders immigration is that it does allow those willing and wanting to do harm to other people and the country to do whatever they want. And there's fucking enough of those already with the white supremacists.
Overland migration into the US is also very much not limited to people from countries in the Western Hemisphere. I have been told 3 separate times by people in West Africa and Turkey (guy was Syrian but in Turkey) that "you just fly to Mexico and you get in!" I didn't even ask - people just were excited to tell me after asking where I'm from.
Two issues that happen across Africa where borders are only for foreigners is that 1) all those JNIM/ISGS/ISIS/Al Shebab/Boko Haram guys go anywhere they want and no one stops them, and 2) human trafficking rings have no limits or friction. Most modern-day slavery exists in corridors where there's basically free movement across borders because you just get off the bus, walk 20 meters into the bush, walk across the border, and walk back to the road and get on the bust again. Half of those victims are children. Don't gotta own an island to traffic humans.
These are not related to economic issues, wages, dog whistle racism, etc. These are objective problems that are global in scope anywhere with a situation like this. There are no easy solutions. But the friction of knowing who comes and goes into the country reduces both of those.
Feel free to try and change my mind on this if you want, but having personally crossed borders on foot myself, intentionally and even on accident, y'all gotta bring some sources and logic.
It is interesting that you ask for sources and logic while relying heavily on a false equivalence. Using the specific geopolitical instability and porous borders of West Africa as a proxy for US immigration policy is a classic strawman. The administrative and security infrastructure of the US is not comparable to a region where groups like Boko Haram operate across vast, ungoverned territories, and suggesting the two situations are "objective" mirrors of one another ignores the vastly different historical and logistical realities at play. If we are going to apply actual logic to the concept of "harm to the country," we have to look at the data regarding who truly threatens American safety. Historically, the most devastating attacks on US soil were carried out by individuals who entered the country legally, such as the 9/11 hijackers. Furthermore, the most pressing threats to domestic stability in recent years have come from within, including the January 6th insurrection and the violence seen in the streets of Minneapolis. Even the most prolific human trafficking and abuse networks, such as the Epstein case, operated entirely within the legal and elite structures of the country rather than through people walking through the bush. This suggests that "knowing who comes and goes" is a superficial fix for a much deeper, often homegrown, security issue. Finally, it is logically inconsistent to discuss a migration crisis without acknowledging the role the US plays in creating the "push factors" that drive it. The instability in the nations these immigrants are fleeing is frequently a direct byproduct of American drug consumption, which fuels the cartels, and decades of US meddling in the governments of the Western Hemisphere. From the 1954 Guatemalan coup to the long history of the School of the Americas, the US has often been the primary architect of the chaos it now attempts to border itself against. If you want to talk about objective problems, you have to start with the fact that these people are at the doorstep of the very nation that destabilized their own.
Actually true