Talk:Free migration

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It would be nice if someone could provide examples of open immigration. For example, if the US opened its borders to Mexico, to describe what would happen and how things would balance out. MShonle 06:08, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Re: above. What do you mean, balance out? I don't really understand how that would happen.

Anyway, are we sure that Canada offered a policy close to open immigration (for all Europeans) until the 20th century? I don't know either way, but it seems to me that, as a member of the British Empire, they would have restricted non-Anglo/Irish (perhaps French?) immigration at least until the late 19th century. I'm well aware that a lot of non-Anglo immigrants came to Canada as early as the 19th century - Ukranians and so forth - but I'm not certain that it's fair to say they had the same vastly open immigration policy for all of Europe that the US did. Anyone know for sure? Moncrief 06:20, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

By balance out I mean how we would reach a state of equilibrium... some cities would become cheaper to live in, other's would become more expensive to live in. Made me realize I should change the counter-argument to include the case where home values increase instead of decrease (done). Anyway, the ultimate result would be it wouldn't matter where you live so much, because every place would be equally attractive. But I'm not an expert in the econ side of this, so I'd rather not post. MShonle 00:52, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone object to renaming this "Freedom of Migration" or something along those lines. I was trying to google this to find essays on the subject, and using "Free immigration" found only critizism. "Freedom of Migration" gave me more hits. I'm not sure, but "Free immigration" seems like the term "Baby killers" in the abortion debate. Something only used by one side of the debate. [Not true at all MShonle ] If anyone has the correct NPOV term, please pipe up...--Zenyu 18:12, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Free immigration is the term used by its strongest advocates. It's similar to "free trade". If you search the web you'll find people talking about free trade as if it were the most evil concept known to man; but you'll also find the strongest advocates of free trade using that term too. If you want, create a new page for Freedom of Migration and have it simply redirect to this article. But the name of this article should not change because free immigration is already the neutral and academic term for the concept. MShonle 14:30, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm, well thinking about "free trade" I looked at what the Economist calls it, and it seems they call the concept "free migration". See:
So I'm changing my "Freedom of Migration" suggestion to "Free Migration", the problem with "immigration" is that it concentrates on just one side of the emmigration<-->immigration equation. The side that just happens to be the more controversial. "Freedom of Migration" is probably POV for the other side since "freedom" in English seems to have a more positive memes attached to it than "free" which tends to remind people of both the negatives and positives of allowing personal freedom. "Free Migration" also appears to turn up more useful google results. --Zenyu 18:12, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
"Free migration" sounds OK to me. (Note that only the first letter is capitalized, per our manual of style.) Please make sure to use the "move" button, rather than cutting and pasting into a new article. Thanks, -Willmcw 18:15, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
The page has been moved. Note that free immigration is still around as a redirect, as is open immigration which is another term used by advocates. MShonle 19:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
BTW, Zenyu, it sounds strange to me that you think "freedom" sounds more positive than "free" because you feel "free" gets associated with "freedom." Moreover, I think most serious discusions of the debate don't just focus on pure good versus bad; it's more that freedoms carry with them some costs (for example, less or sometimes no control) but overall the question remains "what is the most effective plan?" and liberty just seems to be the most effective overall. MShonle 04:34, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Death Penalty for emigration?

I changed

The Cold War saw a migration paradox in which the communist states forbid emigrants from leaving (on pain of death)

to

The Cold War saw a migration paradox in which the communist states forbid emigrants from leaving

While some communist states might have had the death penalty for illegal emigration, certainly not all of them did, and not for the entire cold war period.

RandomP 02:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] unreferenced since aug 2006

i'm going to be bold and remove unreferenced statements. if you want to re-insert them, please find references.

au revoir —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.112.7.212 (talk) 03:16, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] thanks, but...

i looked into one of the references and it doesn't support the statement it claims to: "Many libertarians, socialists, and anarchists advocate open immigration, notwithstanding other noteworthy differences among these three political ideologies" This sounds like the citation sill say that libertarians, sociologists, and anarchists advocate open immigration, but if you click on the link you'll see the piece is very critical of free immigration because of the effect it will have on workers. and it doesn't say anything about sociologists. could whoever inserted this citation please explain? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.112.7.212 (talk) 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC).

Shows 'socialists', but not the others. - Francis Tyers · 19:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
oops, i thought it said sociologists. its still uncited but it looks like you are working on it. i'll leave the unicted stuff in if you two agree to continue polishing?