How should we perceive Immigration?

In this article, I give a plethora of approaches to something so simple and yet such a taboo. The freedom in the movement has to be in the modern discussion of politics, for the simple reason that no country or person has the right to take away from people their basic right of looking for a new place to live. We have seen other people being able to travel almost in any place of the world and others not being able to travel to more than two countries. Freedom of movement can be the next step towards a better future for everyone and against poverty. If money moves and people cannot, not everyone might have the same right to the same financial opportunities. Certainly, we shouldn't fool ourselves. Freedom of peoples movement can be just a start and not the realisation of global equality.

Introduction

In the 21st century, regardless of where one lives or where one comes from, the scale of interaction between different countries and people has increased to an exceptional extent. All these interactions might take a plethora of forms and might have various background reasons. The forms of interactions between cultures, countries, and continents might be many, but they all have a mutual characteristic: the movement between them. Everything that might be a part of these interactions has to be moved, for the interaction to begin. From financial investments to trading products, the movement of a specific amount of financial capital or a product that equals some financial capital is necessary. Things might indeed get more complicated when the interaction might have to do with human lives and not just products or financial capital. Even in these cases, though, the movement is still essential for people to migrate. But as many as the things and lives moving between countries can be, so many are the differences in freedoms and restrictions that apply to them. Specifically, in the movement of people, even emigration and immigration could be conceived differently. Moreover, different forms of movements might have other implications to the countries between which the interactions are being committed. All these everyday routines of our entirely globalised planet, as normal as they may sound to the ears of a human who was born in the last century, still create some really tough to answer questions. Should the same restrictions and freedoms apply to all forms of movement? Or what restrictions shall we apply to the movement of people and what to the movement of financial capital, and is it fair to have different restrictions between them? Questions like these, for them to be answered, can easily open a pandora's box, full of other unanswered questions, including topics about injustice and human rights.

In this assignment, I intend to examine the different forms of movement and rules applied by the countries. Observing the different perception of countries in applications of emigration and immigration rules. Discussing the freedom of movement applied to money and the restriction applied in the movement of people exploring various arguments against or in favour of limitations in the movement of people and discussing if there must be a need for consistency in these specific movements. Focusing also on the debate about the restrictions in human movement and the effects that might have, especially on human beings, by excluding people in the many attempts to adjust and decrease the inflow of immigrants or refugees while trying to cross into a border and stay in a country's territory.

Terms of immigration

Before examining the complicated cases for consistencies in emigration and immigration as between the movement of money and movement of people. We should have a broad knowledge regarding the recent reality in immigration.

These days a country, its migration policies, or the country's government decide who has the right to enter its territory, for how long, and in general monitors the entry of all individuals, or at least that's how it's supposed to be. There are plenty of cases in which individuals are trying to cross borders in a way that a country would describe as illegal. Therefore illegal could apply to individuals generally and especially to those who might not be wanted. This term is used by many racist or at least populist politicians with an anti-immigrant agenda, as something harmful with the attempt of accusing individuals of crossing a county's borders "illegally". No matter how desperate these people might have been, what were the circumstances they had experienced, etc. However, it is a fact that if a specific population of people are considered refugees, they have the right to apply for asylum in many countries. Still, as we have experienced after the Syrian refugee crisis, this procedure might take years, for a person or a family to be accepted. For all these individuals, no matter if they are considered illegal or legal, immigrants or refugees, asylum seekers or citizens of the EU, they all have to cross a form of borders that define the start and the end of a country's jurisdiction over a territory.

In the following chapters, we will analyse arguments from various philosophers favouring or against consistency in the movement of people and money (Barry & Goodin., 1992) (Brian, 1992) (Goodin, 1992), like Barry Brian or Goodin E. Robert, and I will argue in favour of a particular consistency. In addition to observing the restrictions to immigrants worldwide through the texts of Reece Jones and Alex Sager and the dreadful consequences along with the pain that has for so many lives, (Jones, 2016) (Sager, 2020) I will argue against the system of today's borders and the restrictions to the movement of people. Concluding that in our today's globalised planet, the need for consistency in emigration and immigration and between the movement of people and financial capital and specifically free movement is integral, and that restriction can be easily the cause for many violations of human rights.

The case of consistency

Some countries can be more open to the movement of some things rather than others. More open to technologies rather than military explosives for example. Considering the case of human movement, countries can be more open to refugees and less open to immigrants. Other examples might be governments being more open to the emigration of large ethnic groups or the emigration of political dissidents rather than in other cases accepting them in terms of immigration. But if a nation has open borders maybe it must also have open borders mutually for those who emigrate and for those who immigrate. Also, if a country is opposed to importing something, they should in addition, be opposed to importing it. Consistency would require that if there is a reason to keep something outside from a country, there is the same reason for restricting exporting it. Conceive emigration and immigration policies. If a country is willing to send people to other countries, it should also be willing to receive other immigrants from any country. It is hypercritical from the United States of America to argue for the right of North Koreans to immigrate and have every single right to abandon dreadful circumstances that exist in North Korea and at the same time to exclude Mexican immigrants, use them as a topic of political crisis with and their administrations describing them as a major problem or as dangerous people who penetrate the borders. In an egalitarian way, if we want to say that all humans are equal, then we ask for equal treatment and we require a kind of consistency in which people are treated equally. Of course, the movement does not involve only human lives. Still, many things can be transported or moved between countries, sometimes by crossing physical borders or some other times imaginary ones with the help of the internet (Goodin, 1992), in case of money, particularly with the flick of the finger on the keyboard (Goodin, 1992). This is especially true when we are referring to the transfer of financial capital, not just products with a value of financial capital, which could be taxed or receive a customs charge. In such cases, should we search for a consistency between financial capital and people?

Consistency in the movement of people and money

This consistency has to do with the movement of capital and specifically finance capital which is allowed to move with no particular restrictions. We might be wondering what is so different between the movement of humans and the movement of capital to explain why consistency is not applied between the one and the other. One of the many reasons to say that both of them could belong in the same category, Is that they can be both conceived in the sense of two sides of capital with money being financial capital and people being labour capital. As they are perceived in terms of economy (Goodin, 1992). Both have an economic value that might produce some consequences. In the movement of just finance capital, contrary to the movement of people, rarely really there is any restriction (Goodin, 1992). In general, countries rarely would apply restrictions to the movement of financial capital (Barry & Goodin., 1992) and many of them are so eager to attract foreign investors and international capital that could be used for investments, that usually they are using the argument that investments could offer many advantages in the development of specific areas or maybe that could help with the creation of many jobs. For that reason, we could easily notice that countries have a quite different way of how they treat foreign financial capital with treating labour capital, meaning people from other places of the earth looking for a job. The examples can be even more evident when we observe of how a country treats a wealthy investor and how it treats, or it reacts to a person who wants to find a job and continue his life in the country. An example that shows this gap is the historical fact from the Reagan presidency in the last year of its first administration when the U.S.A. expelled around a million human lives from its territory. While the administration was bragging for its achievement of throwing outside all these illegal "aliens" (United States Department of Commerce, 1989) .In the same year, they accepted two hundred million dollars in the form of foreign investment (United States Department of Commerce, 1989) . While observing so many facts and examples, we can easily wonder, if people were money or investments, what treatment would they still get? Would politicians and local populations resent them? Since people and money both can be perceived as foreign penetrations, what are the reasons for having such a big difference in the policies applied for the movement of people and the movement of money? Why are they perceived so differently, and should they be treated in the same way?

In case that people and money can be perceived as two forms of economic capital. The proof of consistency is evident, for the reason that a country would be unreasonable to treat the same thing in different ways, to say no to one form of capital and exclude the other, since laws should apply for everyone and should not be relative to the ideological criteria of any administration or prime minister. But let's see first if they can be both perceived as capital. Again described from an economic point of view in the case of margins financial capital and labour capital complement it's other when the result it's production (Goodin, 1992). In the conception of Copp Douglas in terms of production the labour capital and financial capital are the sole inputs (Goodin, 1992). If we have a closer look to the equation, it is obvious that with no finance capital, we have no output and with zero labour we have no output (Goodin, 1992).Additionally there substituting one another, for example if we have more labour capital we need no more finance capital, and if I have more finance capital we need less labour capital in order for the production to be increased. An important fact is that along with no labour capital, we will have as a consequence zero finance capital and if we have none finance capital we will not have labour capital. To be clearer if a private clinic has no doctors meaning labour capital there would be impossible to produce any financial capital and without financial capital, for the doctors there will be no labour capital because the doctors would not get paid. This can show us that the relation of the two capitals is not only integral for the survival of both but also necessary for the economic spectrum of any society. Although these specific examples might seem truly obvious they are really helpful to see the similarity between these two capitals and to discuss the matter of consistency between the movement of money and people. They are able to substitute one another to an extent that undeveloped and developing countries if they want to build a railroad they had to ask for finance capital and labour capital from abroad in order for the structure to be delivered successfully. Since now that in the case of economics we can say obviously that finance capital and labor capital produced by humans is really similar. Maybe I should wonder if capitals should be treated in the same way by the countries, since we've seen so many similar things and products to be treated equally like food being treated as something safe to import or to export and as military equipment is something that must be treated with lots of importance and safety. And countries and governments treat the same things in the same way as a form of justice but additionally as a form of ethic. In the case that something should be treated morally only when it is treated equally and if different rules are applied for the self interest of countries we cannot say with certainty that these rules have any moral, because usually what is moral is not self interested.

Some political philosophers, for example Barry, disagree with the case of consistency between these two movements. Specifically Barry argues that any suspicion regarding inconsistency in the movement of money and the movement of people is non existent (Brian, 1992). He argues that people and money have so many differences that we could never think of consistency between those two (Brian, 1992). He supports his opinion in the two main arguments. Firstly he says that in the movement of money the two sides are getting benefited, and that this is not happening in immigration. Barry particularly is not refering to cases in which we have a forced loan, and in this case, the one side cannot benefit. So he refers to all the others. How certain are we, that in all transfers of money, apart from a forced loan or any criminal actions, both sides are getting benefited? We could use the paradigm of privatisation to see if every side is getting benefited . If we take the example of a public transportation, and we say that the country decides to relieve the public fund and privatise it. Is it sure that regarding these transactions, in which a company will buy the public service with foreign money, would be beneficial for all of the participants in this transaction? Lets take the citizens of the state for example. All ticket prices may get increased in an extent that would be impossible for the citizens to afford it. In other case, a private company might get bankrupt because it was a harmful investment. This means that not all sides in a financial transaction can get benefited.

Accordingly he says that in immigration one side might not benefit (Brian, 1992). Unfortunately for Barry in every case one side might not have the same advantages as the other and sometimes they can have both benefits or in some other times only the one side profits.In some cases of immigrants, there is a possibility living from the country's benefits and in this way might create an issue for the state. But there are many examples of immigration that both the state and the immigrants benefited. It is known that states like the Germany, France or the United States have benefited a lot from people moving and living there. We examined earlier that with no labour capital, we cannot have financial capital and the opposite. Countries will benefit a lot from immigrants and, especially in capitalistic terms cheap labour. In cases in which these countries might they have lots of simple or challenging working jobs that citizens won't be willing to take. Foreigners can always be needed, as much as it might disappoints the toxic and racist politicians, and the workers in challenging and hardworking jobs in these modern days in developed countries can also be operated by immigrants.

One more counter argument from Brian Barry is that people can influence culturally (Brian, 1992). Meaning that immigrants can influence culturally the country in which they are going to and that this is going to affect the population badly there (Brian, 1992). Referring that with financial capital this would never happen. Barry ignores the fact that people are influencing each other for years and years (Brian, 1992). Immigration is a human process in which people by migrating they influence other people, by bringing along with them their customs and ideas. I am not sure why this should have a negative perception. It is a historical truth. Barry wrongly uses colonialism as a metaphor regarding the cultural threats of immigration (Brian, 1992). But on the case of colonialism, the soldiers did not go to new lands to find a job and get familiar with the enviroment. They went to kill indigenous populations and conquer new lands. Comparing desperate people with imperialist soldiers it can be truly unreasonable. Maybe it is easier if we understand that colonialist forces didn't go to new lands to spread culture but death. For the sake of new agricultural lands and natural resourses. For his idea that money cannot change a state culturally (Brian, 1992), we might see if this is actually sensible via the results of tourism and the results of financial capital to the environment through investments. Tourism can easily change the cultural environment to specific areas and transform them from regular places to offshore or real estate utopias or dystopias, depending on what side you take in matters of ideology and political view. Financial influence evidently has influences in culture and really it is naïve to argue that the culture is not influenced by each and every thing happening to the environment. Regarding the environment, the influence that would have from the financial capital and lets say from the investments is obvious. In numerable examples investments had tragic effects to the environment and especially in examples that had to do with some natural resources and investments that are using the environment.

Consistency in immigration and emigration

Another way we can see the need for free movement of people is the need for consistency between emigration and immigration. The consistency that we mean for the emigration and immigration can be described in this sentence; in case a country supports freedom of emigration it's inevitable to support freedom of immigration (Goodin, 1992). Evidently it is at least hypocritical for countries to argue in favour of people immigrating somewhere if there is no place to immigrate to and especially when these countries do not allow people to immigrate to their land. For this case people might be free to leave a state but unable to join another. Specifically one of the biggest forms of hypocrisy is when modern day democracies blame dictatorships for not allowing people to leave the state while at the same time the democracies do not allow people to enter their borders and not only they apply harsh restrictions they call those desperate to try and cross the borders illegal aliens. In any case if a country is willing to send its people abroad to pursue a better future it must be willing to accept foreigners crossing its strict borders to pursue a better future in this country. We can easily ask ourselves, is it moral or ethical, to accept the immigration of people only when they leave your country, while excluding and attacking all the other people who are trying to do the same, but this time not in the borders of another place but actually in yours? Realistically most of the countries take decisions like these, based on their own good and need. For example, if a country wants the inflow of foreign capital, usually it permits its citizen to migrate with the purpose of getting financial capital in return, for all the money that its immigrants might send back to their families. But if we perceive the need of consistency in the application of policies, it is evident that having different policies for immigration and emigration is clearly hypocritical and clearly self-interested.

We can examine now some really helpful counter arguments from Barry to see if we should really perceive this inconsistency as unethical (Brian, 1992). He says that similarly, this particular inconsistency exists and in the case of jobs (Brian, 1992). Meaning that humans usually are free to leave from a job they don't prefer anymore, without been guaranteed that they will acquire the job that they wish. I will disagree with Barry here, for the reason that leaving a job and leaving a country it is not the same. In the sense that it is not the same getting accepting in a country and acquiring a job. In the job, for practical reasons you should own some special skills. Can we say the same thing, about immigration? And if we do, how ethical is it? If you want to have a job you could have some skills like a degree in a particular field or at least some experience previously in the same job. What skills should you have to be accepted as an immigrant? Apart from a background check to your criminal record, should every country have a different perception of the ideal immigrant and is this moral? We can usually understand that with countries applying their own individual criteria to future immigrants, we are leading towards at least a racist future. Specifically, in professions we have some criteria depending on the skills of individuals. But what criteria can we have in people desperate to find a better future with the only need of living a decent life, should we categorise them as products or should we perceive them as useful investments and prioritise their entry into our country. Imagine been a citizen and your government arguing that we must accept more doctors than bus drivers, because they are more useful. Such societies that believe in equality between the citizens, can they come out a day and say that some immigrants are more useful than others and who creates such a hierarchy? There is the possibility of states accepting people based on what they need; for example they might need more nurses and not so many architects. Would this country accept the same thing for its own people and can this distinction against people seen as moral? Maybe we might end up with countries forcing their own criteria, which can be religion, sexuality etc. for the reason that when we describe humans as people and not as workers, usually we use criteria similar to these and this can lead to a form of dystopic racism we have already observe in airport controls and citizenship procedures.

Borders and the violation of human rights

Freedom of movement can be also justified while observing the negative consequences of the borders, that should be described as the deadliest restriction in the movement of people. We do not only ask the free movement of people for the reason to have a form of consistency in the movement of people and money or emigration and immigration but also to protect persons from the violation of human rights and forms of systemic violence. Borders cannot be categorized as a safe enviroment (Sager, 2020). Oftenly they are full of guards carrying arms and they might be requred to shoot anyone who attempts to pass the border. At such an atmosphere if a person is not filling the criteria to pass the borders, he must be conceived like an illegal alien and stopped immediately. These people who try to cross the borders have been characterized in many ways by the countries and governments in order sometimes to draw the attention of the people from the suffering of these people while trying to cross from militarized zones and to characterise them as illegals or even as Trump would say drug dealers and murderers. Should we perceive these people as an inevitable situation or as any country would say have trust to the security forces? Between many of the deaths are families children and many others. How can we explain that from 2014 to 2015 3500 people died trying to cross from Marocco to europe (Brian & Laczko, 2014). Deaths like these have become so common that have created the total alienations of these people in the eyes of the everyday European. For "us" the deaths of thousands outside the borders of Europe are really something that we have no control of in the sense that it is supposed to happen, or at least that is what some people think. The fact is the militarized zones that some politicians describe as helpful and necessary for the sake of the country's protection actually are used as a way of controlling and managing the immigration rate. All borders are maybe the most militarized part of the country apart from the actual military bases. That's why borders can turn seriously violent. One of the most common way that borders are creating violence, is not the big fences and the military cars full of armed guards (Sager, 2020). But the tactic that they are pushing people from the border side and to parts of the border that are not fenced because it is impossible to be fenced. What I mean is that these places are such extreme environments that is meaningless or even unachievable to be protected (Jones, 2016). Every immigrant who cannot cross legally tries to get access to the state from these sides. Countries know about this and usually they are the first that stay relieved and observe persons risking their safety, trying to cross from natural traps for the reason that they are pushed to do so. That is the reason why these people are delivered to the hands of human traffickers, and being put into small boats crossing the waves of the Aegean pelagos and this is the reason why the media, when they are told to do so upload pictures of lifeless children in the shores of many beautiful greek islands ready to be full of tourists to support their local economies.

Implementation of freedom of movement

Freedom of movement exists as a necessity from the moral inconsistencies in the policies applied to emigration and emigration and from the movements of people and financial capital to the crimes committed against human rights in militarized zones we describe as borders and the deaths of hundreds every month. But how should we define freedom of movement and how realistic it might be? We usually forget the status of the EU in matters of immigration. For me the movement of citizens between state members can translate in freedom of movement. The citizens of course cross some checks but since they are citizens they have every right to enter by providing the necessary papers that everyone can have. This time this could be implemented for people all over the planet and not only for the citizens of the states of Europe. Everyone having the right to pass legally just by showing some specific documentation that is easy to get and having the right to work and stay for as long as she/he would like to. Alex Sager rightly for me says that we cannot expect borders to abolished from one day to the other (Sager, 2020). It is true that freedom of movent should not be perceived as the same with destroying borders. While could be with some basic checkpoint of documentation or simple checks at a criminal record, The fact is that the power in the freedom of movement can be used in turning borders non violent or at least as less violent as they can be. Stopping the meaningless deaths of people and borders becoming protection from actions like criminal trading. This realistic approach will not be a reconciliation between human rights and border violence. Rather than the application of common sense and the protection of human rights for all people in this earth. Destroying borders is not only impossible nowadays it is particularly an approach that might be irresponsible for the fact that every country has the right to use a form of protection for safety and organisational reasons . Seeing who is entering the borders for reasons like the public health system, taxes or anything else.

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Conclusion

In this essay, I just wanted to give some approaches to something so simple and yet such a taboo. The freedom in the movement has to be in the modern discussion of politics, for the simple reason that no country or person has the right to take away from people their basic right of looking for a new place to live. We have seen other people being able to travel almost in any place of the world and others not being able to travel to more than two countries. Freedom of movement can be the next step towards a better future for everyone and against poverty. If money moves and people cannot, not everyone might have the same right to the same financial opportunities. Certainly, we shouldn't fool ourselves. Freedom of peoples movement can be just a start and not the realisation of global equality. Since poverty exists in every country, the beginning is to give people the opportunity to discover a way to get out of it, even if this way is living everything that you know and becoming an immigrant.

Sergios Saropoulos

References

Barry, B. & Goodin., E. R., 1992. Free Movement ethical issues in the transnational migration of people and of money. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Brian, B., 1992. The quest for consistency : a sceptical view. B. Brian & G. E. Robert, Free Movement ethical issues in the transnational migration of people and of money. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, p. 313.

Brian, T. & Laczko, F., 2014. Fatal journeys: tracking lives lost during migration. Geneva: International organization for migration.

Goodin, E. R., 1992. if people were money.... B. Barry & G. E. Robert, Free Movement Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of people and money. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University State Press, p. 332.

Jones, R., 2016. Violent Borders refugees and the right to move.. First New York: Verso.

Sager, A., 2020. Against Borders. First London: Rowman and Littlefield International Ltd.

United States Department of Commerce, 1989. U.S Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States , Washington: Dc Government Printing Office.