The Case for Open Borders

Deconstructed

The Intercept

News

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amid ongoing congressional negotiations for a new immigration bill, a bipartisan effort is underway to deter migration through measures such as immediate detention and deportation, as well as more stringent restrictions on asylum-seekers. This week on Deconstructed, John Washington, a staff writer at Arizona Luminaria and contributor for The Intercept, argues the humane — and economically sound — solution is to open the border. Washington joins Ryan Grim to discuss his new book, “The Case for Open Borders,” which takes a historical look at migration and the current crisis. Washington asserts that free and unrestricted movement of people across borders strengthens security, fosters economic growth globally, and can address climate change challenges.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, welcome back to deconstructed. I'm Ryan Grimm, and today we're going to be talking about the border.
0:07.5	It's a huge issue here in Washington. I've been predicting for months that nothing is going to come from this because nobody really
0:15.2	has incentives to get it done or I should say Republicans don't really have incentives to get it done.
0:20.8	They would much rather continue to have Biden talk about a
0:24.7	crisis, he used the word crisis this week, talk about a crisis on the border, run
0:29.7	against that crisis, and then maybe do something, maybe not do something when they take power but power. that and Mitch McConnell then conveyed it to his Republican conference that, look, we don't
0:44.7	actually want to fix this quote unquote problem.
0:47.7	So now joined today by John Washington, who's the author of the new book which which is out on Tuesday, you can pre-order it now.
0:54.6	It's called the case for open borders, and that's why I kind of put problem in quotes there,
1:00.3	because I personally understand that as a political matter in this political moment
1:06.4	it's pretty untenable to be arguing in the mainstream for open borders. On the
1:12.0	other hand open borders are basically what we had all throughout
1:14.4	the 19th century. Europe has open borders. You can just drive right from France to
1:18.8	Spain. You can drive from Poland all the way to France and it doesn't really seem to cause them a whole lot of
1:24.2	problems. But setting all that aside for our later conversation with author John Washington,
1:30.0	John, I wanted to first ask you about what you make of the kind of facets of the deal that have been leaked into the press.
1:39.0	Now I call it a deal, it's still in negotiations and I don't think it actually will become law for the reasons I said but we have gotten some some nuggets of
1:47.7	We know what Democrats are willing to agree to and any any of it jump out at you is particularly revealing.
1:54.8	Thanks for having me, Ryan. You know, you mentioned the lack of incentives for the Republicans.
2:00.7	I think there's sort of a lack of incentive for the Democrats as well.
2:05.0	They're in a corner on this. The only way that they have been trying to get out of the situation at the border is to implement further crackdowns, which is revealing in that they are playing politics with this.
2:20.0	They are trying to appease the Republicans, appease the right in order to gain some political points.
	...

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