(Image credit: Npr.org.)
A Tamil poet named Bharathiyaar that lived in the 20th century
is famous for these two lines he wrote in addition to many more pieces found in
his oeuvre:
தனியொரு
மனிதனுக்கு உணவில்லையெனில்
ஜகத்தினை அழித்திடுவோம்.
That couplet translates to, “if an individual human being
cannot find food and has to go hungry, let us destroy the world”. Though it may
sound radical on the surface, it is easy to see that the sentiment expressed is
to support & preserve individual rights without which the world is not
worth living. I have been thinking as to how this notion applies to both sides
of the immigration debate in progress all over the world. It is a pretty
complex topic. Thanks to the U.S. President Trump, it is right at the forefront
of public debate in US as well as in other parts of the world. Since people
either support or oppose immigration and don't dig deeper to understand the
complexities, debates often tend to be superficial focused on just one aspect
of the big picture. But since I have been reading articles/books pertinent to
this topic, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries and talking to
people, felt I should put my thoughts on paper for my own understanding. I am
trying to do it in three parts. In the first part I intend to explore the views
and perspectives of nationalists that support impervious borders. In the second
part I look at how well borders work and in the third and concluding part
provide solutions that will dovetail the first two parts and thus hopefully
will make logical sense to everyone. I would urge interested readers to explore
all the links sprinkled throughout the write-up. The articles, podcasts and
videos listed will certainly enrich the experience and comprehension. I have mentioned
the links inline to make sure the context is easy to understand, while they are
all listed at the end under references so that readers who prefer not to get
distracted while reading the main article can chose to explore them all in
sequence separately. If you agree/disagree with the details, send in your
thoughts. It will help me tweak & polish my understanding and perhaps help
me write something better in the future.
Why Do Closed Borders Make Sense?
A while back I read an article that explained as to why it is
not possible for us to treat people on the other side of the planet the same
way as we treat our own countrymen/women. When we push the lens further in and
look at a family level, it is easy to see that however good at heart one may
be, it is not possible for anyone to treat their neighbors as one’s own family
members living under the same roof. It may be possible to do it during short
spans of time, say when a neighbor is going through some hardship and you are
helping out. But permanently sharing all your wealth, space, time with the
neighbor's family and children as you do with your spouse/children is not
possible. Our societies themselves are not structured to support such behavior
as indicated by the way we earn money, spend on our family's needs, how we file
taxes, and so on. A similar but a bit more diluted argument can be extended to
the whole nation as it is more cohesive compared to the entire world. It is not
possible to express the same level of empathy to people in other countries as
we do with our fellow citizens. Having a sense of cohesion is mandatory for lot
of things to work. Hence we will always worry more about a single finger lost
from our body than 1000 people killed on the other side of the planet. If that
sense is diluted to make us equally egalitarian in our approach to everyone in
the world, it doesn't seem to work at all and turns into apathy. It also
eliminates the feeling of us belonging to a tight knit group making us feeling special.
While reading up on why open borders won't work, I saw lot of
arguments like this one: Switzerland is a small, beautiful, wealthy country
that has less than 9 Million people. India has 1.2 Billion people and everyone
in India would love to live in Switzerland. If there are no restrictions, all
the Indians will move to Switzerland and then there will be no
Switzerland! If we agree with these conclusions, then closed borders and
strong national identities will start to make a lot of sense. National anthems,
waving flags and talks of patriotism instill a lot of pride in people. They certainly
serve emotional needs and form cohesive societies.
About one year back I was listening to a podcast that featured
a coal miner from the state of West Virginia in the U.S. The person who spoke
was a third generation coal miner since his father and grandfather also worked
in the same mine decades past. It is not easy work. It is labor intensive while
being fraught with physical dangers of the mine collapsing, catching fire, and
emitting noxious gases. You can look up black lung
which is a common lung disease miners fall victim to as they breathe in coal
dust day in and day out while working in the mines. This particular miner also
suffered from it and was forced to retire early due to ill health. Despite all
these issues, he fondly recalled talking to another reporter few years earlier.
At that time as he was giving a tour of the mine, the visiting reporter
remarked how his miner job is similar to an astronaut’s since like an astronaut
the miner is also exploring new spaces where no human being has ever set foot in
the past! You can sense the respect he felt by that reporter’s observation so
long back.
In the years past such jobs provided decent salary in the U.S.
to lead a respectful middleclass life. These workers usually had high school
level education and with the salary they earned were able to buy a car, own a
house and put food on the table. They rightly considered themselves part of an
honest and successful workforce that helped the country thrive. You can hear
the pride in his voice and the meaning he derived from his work as he felt the
coal they were mining was powering the whole nation. This profile will apply to
a large number of blue collar workers that enjoyed good societal standing in
the years past as they were putting in decades of work in steady jobs with
excellent work ethics and raised good families. His son took up the same job as
a fourth generation miner, only to be laid off since coal mines are on the
decline as power plants have been switching to natural gas which is cheaper as
well as cleaner, making it environmentally friendly while making the business
more profitable. This is a rare combinatoric unicorn to come by. There was a
famous line in the 2012 presidential debate where Barack Obama pushed back his
rival Mitt Romney saying, "You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that
we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer
horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed.” This applies
to coal mining jobs as well as several manufacturing jobs that have evaporated from
the U.S. due to reasons like the arrival of natural gas or globalization that
has made manufacturing goods anywhere in the world and transporting them where
they are needed in large shipping container more economical than manufacturing
them where they are needed. This is all well and good as it improves the
quality of life on the whole for the whole planet. But what should the fourth
generation miner that got laid off do now? Saying he should quickly learn to
code and start working for cloud computing companies is highly impractical.
Just miles from where I live/work, there used to be a famous
steel plant called Bethlehem Steel
that was a proud symbol of American manufacturing prowess, as it delivered
steel all over the country and world for more than 100 years. It also had a
ship building business that served the world during WWII. In the late 90’s, not
be able to compete with companies like Mittal Steel of India (currently a
multinational conglomerate called ArcelorMittal), it started going down and
went bankrupt in 2003. While people all over the world feel that American
multinationals come in and destroy their national icons, the demise of
Bethlehem Steel and similar destruction of U.S. manufacturing jobs by non-U.S.
multinationals indicates that it cuts both ways. While Bethlehem Steel or coal
mining jobs may not mean much for my kids born in the last two decades, it resonates
well with people I personally know. Many of them feel that we have had too much
of globalization and so it is time for some rebalancing as the decades past
were much better in these rust belt regions
with ample middle class jobs that are nowhere to be found now.
Zooming in and listening/interacting with individuals of this
kind will crystalize the issues at an emotional level, which is very different
from logical high level analysis of abstract numbers of jobs lost/created and
so on. For this base with declining quality of life compared to their
grandparents, politicians that tell them that their suffering is all caused by
faceless people in other countries and providing solutions that promise the
return of the glory days obviating the need for them to relearn anything or
relocate to anywhere else appeal at the gut level.
This worry of outsiders taking over what we genuinely feel
belongs to us is not new or limited to the U.S. alone. More than thirty years
back, as a freshly minted Electronics & Instrumentation engineer, I joined
a company called HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) in Bangalore, India. We
were involved in designing the ALH (Advanced Light Helicopter) in that central
government owned/run company. Since it is a large public sector institution,
new employees were recruited via a nationwide entrance exam and interview, thus
attracting engineers from all over the country. I got that job through that same
selection process. But while I was working there, heard the state natives often
complaining about us ‘outsiders’ who come in from other states and take up well
paying Government jobs that should have been given to the people of Karnataka,
the state where Bangalore is located. I am not playing victim since I wasn’t
affected by such comments in any way. Neither was I a hero that addressed such
concerns and resolved issues. I don’t know what I could have done to change
anyone’s mind as I was a young engineer fresh out of college with not much
knowledge about any such policy issue. Western readers may know that India is
sort of like EU since each Indian state has its own language, food, culture,
movies and so on. Though I grew up in the state adjacent to the state where
Bangalore is located, I can't read one line of text written in the local state
language of Bangalore called Kannada. It is not even equivalent to a German
visiting France where one would at least recognize the alphabets. The Tamil
& Kannada language alphabets look as different as Japanese and Russian. So,
I did understand their point of view but thought it was ok for me to work there
since the company I was working for is a government owned national company that
could very well have been setup in the state where I was born and raised.
I worked there only for nine months before switching over to
yet another public sector company called ONGC (Oil & Natural Gas
Commission) where I was an Instrumentation maintenance engineer in an offshore
oil platform for two more years before heading to the U.S. for grad school. I
had a fantastic time in that oil platform job as a bachelor working through a
14 days on/off duty cycle that allowed me to return to my parents’ place during
the off fortnight that also helped me prepare and apply for grad school. Since
not a lot of older engineers with family wanted to work in an offshore platform
for 14 days as it took them away from family for long stretches of time, I
didn’t hear a lot of complaints about outsiders stealing jobs that should have
gone to Maharashtra state residents. The fact that the offshore platform was
located 100 miles inside the Arabian sea also helped. We interacted only with
fellow employees on a daily basis and so the platform didn’t feel like part of
the closest onshore city Bombay. But I have heard of such complaints amongst
employees working in on-shore plants in that state as well as it is one of the
richer states in India.
Even before we hit singularity (when Artificial Intelligence starts
to go past human intelligence), imagine a world where an anarchist has managed
to render all silicon CPUs in computers non-functional. Even if the world comes
up with a biological computer that substitutes well for all the computing power
that would have gone away, millions of highly trained computer engineers (both
hardware and software) will quickly lose their jobs to be replaced by this new
breed of biological engineers. In such a world, if a Trump equivalent stands up
and says, “I will isolate our country with real and virtual border walls and
bring back the internet and the IT jobs, while simultaneously destroying the
anarchists and their countries”, I am pretty sure lot of highly educated
computer engineers will vote for him!
Even if we ignore jobs and economic worries, we can see
arguments for borders and boundaries arising out of concerns in other domains.
Look through all the countries in the world and pick the top ten that are doing
very well providing excellent quality of life to its citizens sans social
unrest and in-fighting. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Japan may all come to
your mind. It is easy to notice that these are all very small countries with an
extremely homogeneous population. So, it is possible that when there is not a
lot of diversity in the population and the country is small, people don’t mind
the taxes they pay being used to support someone else that look like
themselves. Of course there are lot of other countries that are small with
homogeneous population that are still in dire straits. It is usually because a
small group that runs the country is corrupt and tends to have an iron grip on
available natural resources. But those negative examples apart, these well to
do small societies point to a successful state model with strong national
boundaries that binds the citizens well. On the other hand when the country is
large and diverse, we are often suspicious of people that don’t look like us
since we don’t understand them added to the fact that the size of the country
makes it hard to understand where the funds go to support whom, thus making the
whole governing structure suspect.
Borders can also be justified from religion, values, culture,
safety points of view. Religions are innately structured to make the followers
feel special. But irrespective of the size of a religious group in a given
country or society, it is easy to feel threatened by competing religious groups
as there is enough historical evidence to justify such fears. Christians that
form a substantial majority in the U.S. feel that their rights and values are
under perpetual threat, while Hindus that form 80% of the 1.2 Billion
population in India feel that they are under attack and so need to stand up and
protect themselves. Same goes to Jews or Muslims in different parts of the
world even if they are the majority in the country they live in. Even the
Buddhists that are supposed to be known for peace and tranquility their
religion preaches are attacking people of other religions out of fear that they
are going to get overrun. Not to be left out, atheists feel that they are
ostracized as social outcasts and it is easier to “come out” as gay than as an
atheist due to strong societal backlash.
It is easy to keep writing along similar lines about how
citizens of a country may feel their values, culture and safety gets diluted
when outsiders invade what they consider as their agreeable societies. So
whether we look at the issues on hand from economic, religious, cultural
values, country size, management ease or safety perspectives, it seems to make
good sense to have strong borders and cohesive societies.
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