The Case for Open Borders

by John Washington

Let’s return to the idea of terra nullius. Imagine a subaltern subject—a poor migrant, an asylum seeker, an Indigenous person looking to walk freely through the land—making such a claim. Imagine them saying, “Well, the border isn’t really a fixed thing. It’s selectively permeable, and this land you are now living in, where your families and homes and lives and dreams all dwell, we see as empty, uninhabited. And we’re going to decide to move the border a few miles away, and now we will claim, by decree—because we value our own legal, religious, and cultural institutions and practices more than yours—who is allowed to stay, who is permitted to cross, and where the boundaries are and how they will be enforced.” Imagine them saying, as did the government of Australia, that they must populate or perish. Imagine a Nigerien migrant landing on Italy’s Lampedusa Island and claiming that she had discovered it. Imagine her spouting off the requerimiento. Imagine a Guatemalan woman saying that if the residents of Texas don’t readily and completely submit to her ruler and become their subject, she will kill them, rape their wives, take their land by force, and enslave them. Imagine a Hazara refugee docking on one of Australia’s islands, firing off three volleys, and saying the land is now his. Imagine the full power of the government’s response. But we don’t have to imagine it. Every day we see the enormous anti-migrant and anti-human machinery of Italy, the European Union, Australia, ...

Yeah. We get it. It was wrong in the past. It will be wrong today. What argument are we getting from this?