📓 In your handwritten notebooks

Feb – March 21 2026, pp. 29–32 — Immigration policy → open PDF p35 (file not included in this release)

Index: Personal Journal

Cameraman Has MELTDOWN Over Conversation About Islamic Immigration

Anti-immigration / restrictionist arguments (as stated in the transcript)

1) Core claim: illegal border-crossing is a serious violation of sovereignty and law

Law-breaking frame: Crossing without authorization is “breaking the law,” so the person crossing is “not the innocent one” and should face repercussions.
Sovereignty frame: A nation is a bounded political community with the right to set rules for entry: “This is our nation. These are our borders.”
Responsibility shift: Once a country announces its rules, someone who chooses to cross anyway is at fault for the resulting confrontation (“they put themselves in this position”).

2) Deterrence claim: enforcement must be harsh enough to restore respect for the law

Fear/respect mechanism: If penalties are mild, people won’t “respect and fear the law,” so consequences must be “raised up.”
Escalation logic: Because illegal entry continues, current enforcement is framed as insufficient; therefore, more severe enforcement is implied as necessary.

3) “Extreme measure” proposal (violence at the border) as the “only solution”

Moratorium + lethal force is floated explicitly: “you have to have a moratorium… if people try to come to the border you have to shoot them.”
This is justified (in the speaker’s framing) as a last-resort solution when other policies are seen as ineffective.

4) Demographic/cultural preservation arguments

Demography overwhelm concern: A country may limit numbers because it doesn’t want its “demography to be overwhelmed in 10, 20 years.”
Culture/people continuity: “This is our country. We want it our way, our culture, and our people.”
Not-uniquely-white claim: The speaker argues that resistance to demographic change is a “human thing,” not specifically “white racial.”

5) Security/crime framing (including hypotheticals)

Vetting emphasis: A key distinction is drawn between being “pro-immigrant” and “pro legal immigration,” while “vehemently opposed to illegal immigration.”
Worst-case hypotheticals: “Boatloads of rapists, murderers, and pedophiles” are used to argue that borders must be enforceable in practice.
Muslim crime-stat claim: The speaker asserts (without providing evidence in the excerpt) disproportionate sex crimes by “Muslim migrants” in parts of Western Europe and asks if the other side accepts it.

6) Critique of the opposing side as unrealistic / unlimited

No upper limit framing: The cameraman is pressed repeatedly on whether there is any numerical ceiling; the restrictionist side treats “no upper limit” as proof the opposing view collapses sovereignty and policy realism.
Prediction of consequences: “You’re going to get the society that you want” is used as a warning: the future will reveal negative outcomes.

Pro-immigration / expansive-immigration arguments (as stated in the transcript)

1) Core moral claim: migration (especially refuge) is a human right

Human right frame: “Immigration is a human right,” including the right to leave war-torn or violent conditions to build a better life.
Refugee emphasis: The “refugee fleeing violence” is treated as the paradigmatic case that morally overrides strict border exclusion.

2) Legal/moral critique: “illegal vs legal” is arbitrary given restrictive systems

Arbitrariness of law: Laws are described as “malleable,” with historical analogies to unjust laws (e.g., segregation-era restrictions).
Misnomer claim: If legal pathways are minimal or inaccessible, “illegal immigration becomes a misnomer,” and the real issue is opposition to immigration as such, not illegality.
Structural barrier argument: Legal immigration is portrayed as requiring money/resources and governments “only allow a small amount,” making “all immigration illegal” in effect for many.

3) Violence/rhetoric critique: lethal border enforcement is morally equivalent to political violence

Consistency objection: You can’t denounce a political murder (Charlie Kirk) while advocating violence (“shooting people”) against those you label political enemies.
Proportionality argument: Even if crossing is a rule violation, shooting is grossly disproportionate—compared to how society treats minor crimes (speeding/shoplifting).

4) Empirical claim: undocumented immigrants are not a crime threat (and may reduce crime)

Crime-rate claim: “Undocumented immigrants commit less crimes and less violent crimes” (asserted for the U.S., suggested similar for Western Europe).
Pushback on “takeover” narrative: Muslims are said to be a small share (roughly “5–10%”) and more often targets of hate crimes than perpetrators, so “oppressing 80%” is framed as factually unsupported.

5) Historical responsibility / imperialism argument: rich countries helped create the refugee flows

Causal responsibility: Western interventions (especially the U.S. and allies) are said to have killed large numbers and destabilized regions, producing refugees.
Hypocrisy charge: It’s “hypocritical” to deny entry when the receiving countries contributed to conditions causing flight.
Colonial/imperial context: Migration direction is linked to imperial history and global inequality (people move toward “where all the goodies are,” and the question becomes why those places are stable/wealthy).

6) Anti-bigotry frame: restrictionism is rooted in racism/Islamophobia

Motivation diagnosis: The restrictionist narrative is described as fear-driven (“I’m scared of Muslims and I don’t want to live with them”).
Race-as-social-construct move: Race is framed as a social construct with shifting boundaries; thus hostility to a religious group can operate as racialization in practice.
Analogy to exclusionary regimes: Closing borders and demographic preservation rhetoric is compared to Jim Crow-style logic (exclusion framed as “freedom” for the in-group).

7) Policy-ish stance offered (while resisting the “problem” premise)

Vetting concession: The cameraman says he can “meet halfway” with a vetting process, but argues current systems exclude by quota more than by individualized risk.
Treatment of illegal entry: If a workable legal process existed, unauthorized entry should be treated as a minor offense with non-lethal enforcement (detain/apprehend; potentially deport in some cases), not violence.
Extreme-hypothetical handling: For “known criminals,” he’s “sympathetic” to denial/detention/deportation if there’s evidence; he repeatedly rejects treating the hypothetical as representative.

The main fault lines between the two sides (what they’re actually arguing about)

A) What borders are

Restrictionist: Borders express sovereign ownership and collective self-determination; violation is serious.
Expansive: Borders are often instruments of exclusion/oppression; the moral baseline is freedom of movement and refuge.

B) What “illegal” means

Restrictionist: Illegal means knowingly breaking democratically set rules.
Expansive: Illegal is often a label created by restrictive policy; if legal routes are blocked, “illegality” is manufactured.

C) Proportionality and the legitimacy of force

Restrictionist: Harsh deterrence may be necessary to preserve law’s authority (even if unpleasant).
Expansive: Violence is inherently illegitimate and morally akin to political murder; enforcement must be non-lethal and proportionate.

D) The “facts” dispute

Restrictionist: Leans on claims about crime (especially sexual crime) and demographic change.
Expansive: Leans on claims about lower immigrant crime rates, minority status of Muslims, and hate-crime targeting—plus historical causality (war/imperialism).

E) The moral priority

Restrictionist: Protect the existing polity, culture, and future stability.
Expansive: Protect human mobility, refuge, and equal moral worth over national preference.

Rhetorical moves used (helpful for your notes)

Restrictionist: “simple yes/no” demands; extreme hypotheticals (“boatloads of rapists”); deterrence logic; demographic tipping-point warnings; “you’ll get the society you want” prophecy.
Expansive: analogies to Jim Crow/unjust laws; consistency attack (political violence vs border violence); reframing the premise (“not a problem”); structural critique of legal pathways; moral-historical causality (imperialism produces refugees).

Research

Near-Open Border Regimes and What They Actually Show.pdf (file not included in this release)
Immigration in Practice - research synthesis.pdf (file not included in this release)

The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration - National Academies.pdf (file not included in this release)

The Wage Impact of the Marielitos - A Reappraisal - Borjas (NBER w21588).pdf (file not included in this release)
UndocumentedandCrimeRate-OEP-Unformatted-Final.pdf (file not included in this release)

texas-crime.pdf

Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020
Debunking the Myth of the ‘Migrant Crime Wave’
w31440.pdf
https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-have-lower-incarceration-rate-native-born-americans-even-when-excluding-black
Open Borders: The Case | “The Efficient, Egalitarian, Libertarian, Utilitarian Way to Double World GDP” — Bryan Caplan

U.S./West caused Immigration due to Wars

Below is a fact-check of the three sub-claims, plus solid counterarguments you can use without denying that outside powers sometimes contribute to displacement.

1) “Causal responsibility: Western interventions killed large numbers and destabilized regions, producing refugees.”

What’s broadly supported

War and state collapse create forced displacement at scale. UNHCR’s latest global trends report attributes the record level of forced displacement to persecution, conflict, violence, and human-rights violations (end of 2024: 123.2 million forcibly displaced). Source: https://www.unhcr.org/us/global-trends
Some large refugee crises are linked to conflicts where Western states intervened militarily or politically. Iraq is a common example: UNHCR reporting during the height of violence estimated millions displaced, including millions who fled to neighboring states. Source (UNHCR estimate reported in BMJ): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1962848/
There is credible scholarship finding that certain kinds of external security involvement (including military aid) can correlate with higher refugee flows (mechanisms: intensified conflict, repression capacity, or prolonged war). Example working-paper style research summary: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395366220_Aid_and_Exodus_US_Military_Assistance_and_Refugee_Flows_to_the_United_States

What’s often overstated or missing

“The West caused most refugee flows” is not supported as a general claim. The biggest displacement drivers in recent years include wars where Western intervention is not the main causal driver (e.g., Sudan, Ukraine), and UN summaries emphasize those ongoing conflicts as major contributors to rising refugee numbers. Source: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/refugees
Attribution is usually multi-causal. In Syria, for example, the crisis is widely traced to domestic repression and civil war dynamics (violent crackdown in 2011 escalating into civil war), with many external actors later shaping the war’s course. Source (overview): https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/
Counterfactual uncertainty matters. Even if an intervention worsened outcomes, it does not automatically follow that non-intervention would have produced fewer refugees (some interventions stop massacres or shorten wars; others do the opposite). That’s why serious analyses usually avoid monocausal language.

Counterarguments you can use (without handwaving)

Proximate-cause argument: The immediate cause of flight is typically persecution/violence by local or regional actors (regimes, militias, insurgents). External states may be contributory, but the agents directly generating refugees are usually domestic belligerents.
Many major refugee crises are not “Western-intervention-made.” The “imperialism caused the refugee wave” frame doesn’t fit key contemporary drivers like Sudan and Ukraine. (UN framing emphasizes these as primary recent drivers.) https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/refugees
Interventions sometimes reduce displacement. The relevant question isn’t “intervention vs no intervention,” but which policy mix (diplomacy, sanctions, peacekeeping, asylum processing, humanitarian corridors, reconstruction support) plausibly reduces violence fastest.

2) “Hypocrisy: It’s hypocritical to deny entry when receiving countries contributed to conditions causing flight.”

What’s morally plausible

There is a coherent moral intuition of negative responsibility: if your actions foreseeably helped destabilize a region, you have special obligations to mitigate harm (including admitting refugees or funding protection). This is a standard “you broke it, you help fix it” argument.

**What’s weak as a factual or policy conclusion

Hypocrisy ≠ obligation to open borders. Even if a country bears partial responsibility, the policy implication could be aid, resettlement quotas, regional protection, or reconstruction, not unlimited admission.
Responsibility is diffuse. Refugee-producing conflicts usually involve multiple states and actors (regional powers, factions, transnational networks). That makes “you caused it, so you must admit them” hard to allocate cleanly.

Counterarguments you can use

Remedy can be non-admission. A state can accept responsibility primarily through funding UNHCR, supporting host countries, and stabilizing/conflict-resolution efforts, not necessarily large-scale entry. UNHCR’s mandate and financing needs make this a concrete alternative. https://www.unhcr.org/us/global-trends
Capacity and institutional legitimacy matter. States have obligations to refugees, but also obligations to citizens and to maintaining a stable system that can sustain future humanitarian commitments. Policy can legitimately consider integration capacity, security screening, and social cohesion, without it being “hypocrisy.”
Special obligation doesn’t mean sole obligation. Neighboring countries often host the majority of refugees; wealthy countries’ duties can be framed as burden-sharing rather than “you must be the destination.”

3) “Colonial/imperial context: migration direction is linked to imperial history and global inequality (‘where the goodies are’).”

What’s supported (with important caveats)

Economic differentials and stability are major pull factors for many forms of migration (especially non-refugee migration).
Historical ties can matter (language, diaspora networks, legal pathways, education systems), which can shape where people try to go.

What’s often missing

Most refugees do not go to rich Western states. A large share are hosted in neighboring countries or within their own countries (IDPs). This complicates “they all move toward the imperial core for the goodies” as a general description of refugee movement. UNHCR’s global trends materials repeatedly emphasize the scale of regional hosting. https://www.unhcr.org/us/global-trends
Refugees ≠ migrants. Refugee flows are disproportionately driven by safety, proximity, and immediate feasibility, not maximizing income.

Counterarguments you can use

Nearest-safe-place logic: Refugee flight is usually toward the closest viable safety, not the richest country. That’s why neighboring states carry much of the burden and why “imperial magnets” is an incomplete model for refugee flows. https://www.unhcr.org/us/global-trends
Governance-first explanation: A lot of “why they are stable/wealthy” is explained by institutions, rule of law, state capacity, and social trust, not only extraction or colonial legacy. Colonial history can be a factor, but it’s not a sufficient explanation.
Agency and responsibility in origin states: Corruption, repression, sectarian politics, and civil conflict are not reducible to Western causation; treating them that way can become a kind of soft determinism that denies local agency.

A tight, balanced way to state the strongest version of each side

Best version of the “historical responsibility” argument

Forced displacement is driven by conflict and repression; when rich states materially contribute to wars, coups, or prolonged instability, they incur special duties to protect those harmed—via resettlement, asylum access, and serious burden-sharing.

Best version of the counterargument

Refugee crises are typically multi-causal, with proximate responsibility resting primarily on domestic and regional actors. Wealthy countries may owe help, but “help” does not logically entail open-ended admission; it can be met through targeted resettlement, regional support, and conflict-resolution, while maintaining lawful, capacity-based border and asylum systems.

Analyzing Crime Stats

Immigrants, Undocumented Immigration, Crime, and Incarceration — Consolidated Report (Obsidian)

Scope of this report

This report consolidates everything we covered in this chat about:

Gunadi (2021, Oxford Economic Papers) on undocumented immigration and crime/incarceration proxies
NBER w31440 (revised 2024) on the long-run immigrant–U.S.-born incarceration gap (1870–2020)
How results change when you change the benchmark from “all U.S.-born men” to U.S.-born white men (your “remove Black men” framing)
What we can and cannot infer about doing that same benchmark change for the other studies discussed
The immigrant-origin (region) breakdown available from the NBER paper
A curated set of more current supporting / disputing sources we referenced online

A. Gunadi (2021) — undocumented immigrants and crime/institutionalization

A1) What the study claims (headline results)

Study: Chloe Gunadi, Oxford Economic Papers (published 2021).
The paper makes two key claims:

Institutionalization proxy (individual-level): Using ACS microdata and an imputation method for undocumented status, undocumented immigrants are less likely to be “institutionalized” (used as a proxy for incarceration, focusing on men ages 18–40).
Crime rates (state-level panel, causal attempt): Across U.S. states, higher undocumented shares do not robustly increase overall violent or property crime rates. In some instrument/outcome combinations, estimates are negative (suggesting decreases), but many results are imprecise and mixed across specifications.

A2) Why “institutionalization” is used and what it means

In Census/ACS-type data, institutionalization includes prisons/jails but can also include other institutions.
To make it a closer proxy for incarceration, the analysis focuses on men 18–40, where institutionalization is overwhelmingly incarceration in practice.

A3) How “undocumented status” is measured (and the key risk)

ACS does not directly label “undocumented.”
The study imputes undocumented status using available indicators and residual methods.
The paper warns that misclassification is possible (some legally present people may be classified as undocumented), which could bias estimates in the direction of finding undocumented immigrants “less crime-prone” if misclassified legal residents are especially low-risk.

A4) “Removing Black men” (benchmark shift) in Gunadi

What you asked conceptually maps to: compare undocumented immigrants to U.S.-born whites instead of all U.S.-born.

Gunadi includes race controls in regression specifications, which helps reduce compositional confounding, but that is not the same as changing the benchmark group.
The paper does not present a clean published set of results where the “native” benchmark is restricted to U.S.-born whites only, so we cannot compute the exact “undocumented vs U.S.-born white” gap from the paper’s toplines alone.
Directionally, if you removed U.S.-born Black men from the native benchmark, the native institutionalization rate would likely fall, and the undocumented–native gap would likely shrink.

B. NBER w31440 (revised March 2024) — long-run immigrant incarceration gap, 1870–2020

B1) What the paper claims (core findings)

Paper: “Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020” (NBER Working Paper w31440; revised March 2024).
PDF: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w31440.pdf
Key claims:

Persistent pattern: Immigrant men have had lower incarceration rates than U.S.-born men across the full span 1870–2020 (their constructed historical series).
Post-1960 divergence: The gap grows substantially starting around 1960 and remains large through the modern era.
Magnitude today (headline summaries):
- Immigrants are about 50–60% less likely to be incarcerated than all U.S.-born men (modern period summary).
- Immigrants are about 15–30% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born white men (alternative benchmark summary).
  The paper also summarizes this as roughly ~30% lower compared to U.S.-born whites in the abstract-level framing.
Across origins: The lower-incarceration pattern appears across major sending regions, with important nuance for Mexico/Central America in the post-2005 period (see below).
Not explained away by composition: Adjusting for observables (age, marital status, state, race, education) does not eliminate the modern gap.
Deportation is not the main explanation: The timing does not match (gap begins decades before large deportation surges), and a gap exists among immigrant U.S. citizens (who are not deportable).
Immigration detention confound (post-2005): The paper emphasizes that part of the measured “incarceration” for some groups—especially Mexican and Central American immigrants—reflects detention in large federal immigration facilities in certain localities. Excluding areas with large ICE facilities reduces or removes much of the post-2005 “excess” relative to U.S.-born whites.

B2) What “remove Black men” changes in the NBER paper (explicitly answered)

Your question (“If you remove the crime from black men, how do the statistics change?”) maps most cleanly in this paper to:

Compare immigrants to all U.S.-born men vs compare immigrants to U.S.-born white men.
What changes:
The immigrant advantage is largest when comparing to all U.S.-born men (because that benchmark includes groups with higher incarceration rates, for many reasons).
The immigrant advantage is smaller but still present when comparing to U.S.-born white men.
Reported headline change:
From roughly 50–60% lower (vs all U.S.-born men)
to roughly 15–30% lower (vs U.S.-born white men).
Important precision:
The paper is about incarceration, not crime per se. Incarceration reflects crime plus the entire criminal-justice process (policing, charging, plea bargaining, sentencing), and for noncitizens, immigration enforcement and detention can matter.

C. “Remove Black men” benchmark shift in the other studies discussed

C1) Texas administrative-data arrest/conviction studies (status-linked)

We discussed work that uses Texas administrative records with immigration-status indicators (often summarized as showing undocumented immigrants have lower felony arrest/conviction rates than native-born citizens, at least in Texas).
Key references we used:

PNAS / PMC version (Texas felony arrests; status-linked comparisons): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7768760/
Cato update using Texas homicide convictions: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022
CIS critique of Texas crime-data interpretations: https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/texas-crime.pdf
How “remove Black men” applies there:
These Texas studies generally report native-born citizen rates vs legal immigrant vs undocumented.
If you restrict the native-born benchmark to U.S.-born whites, the native-born benchmark rate would likely fall, so the undocumented-vs-native gap would shrink mechanically.
But the published toplines we discussed do not provide a full “native-born whites only” benchmark table, so we cannot quantify the exact “undocumented vs U.S.-born whites” comparison from the headline results alone without re-tabulation.

Some work examines whether states with rising undocumented populations see rising violent/property crime.

Here, “remove Black men” doesn’t map cleanly to a benchmark swap, because the dependent variable is usually state crime rate totals, not “native arrest rate.”
The analogous operation would be “subtract crimes committed by Black men from state crime totals,” which is typically not feasible with standard state crime-rate datasets and is not how these panel models are constructed in the published work.

D. NBER region-of-origin breakdown, and comparisons to U.S.-born whites

D1) Overall comparison to U.S.-born whites (explicit summary)

NBER w31440 explicitly says: comparing immigrants to U.S.-born white men reduces the gap, but immigrants remain less incarcerated by roughly 15–30% “today.”
PDF: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w31440.pdf

D2) Region-of-origin ranking (what the main PDF supports cleanly)

The main PDF’s figures show immigrant incarceration rates by origin over time. While the paper’s region-level figures are visual (not all values tabulated), the key qualitative takeaways we stated earlier are:

Old Europeans: lower than U.S.-born whites today
New Europeans: lower than U.S.-born whites today
Chinese: much lower than U.S.-born whites today
Rest of world: lower than U.S.-born whites today
Mexican & Central American: can appear higher than U.S.-born whites post-2005 in the raw series, but this is heavily affected by immigration detention geography; excluding large ICE-facility areas reduces that pattern substantially.
PDF: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w31440.pdf

D3) Approximate 2019 origin-group levels (read off the figure; not exact)

From visual inspection of the main figure (men 18–40; per 100k), you can infer a rough ordering:

U.S.-born (all): highest (roughly high-2000s per 100k)
All immigrants: much lower (roughly mid-1000s per 100k)
Chinese: lowest (very low hundreds per 100k)
Old/New Europeans and “rest of world”: generally below the all-immigrant average and far below U.S.-born
Mexican & Central American: higher than most other immigrant groups, closer to U.S.-born levels in the late 2000s/2010s, with the detention caveat noted above
Because these are figure read-offs, treat them as directional and order-of-magnitude, not precise point estimates.

E. More current supporting or disputing work referenced online

E1) Supporting (recent, widely cited)

Texas administrative-status felony arrest comparisons (peer-reviewed; status-linked):

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7768760/

NBER long-run incarceration gap (immigrants overall; revised 2024):

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w31440.pdf

Brennan Center synthesis on migrants and crime (contextual, not undocumented-specific):

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-myth-migrant-crime-wave

Migration Policy Institute explainer that links out to key studies:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/immigrants-and-crime

E2) Disputing / critique sources referenced

CIS critique of Texas crime-data interpretations:

https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/texas-crime.pdf

Cato Texas homicide conviction update (policy analysis; not peer-reviewed, but transparent and current):

https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022
(These last two are ideologically different institutions; reading them together helps you see the main points of disagreement: classification, denominators, what counts as “crime” vs immigration detention, and whether Texas generalizes.)

F. Practical “how to interpret” summary

F1) What is most solid across everything discussed

Across multiple approaches (national historical incarceration series; ACS-based institutionalization proxies; Texas administrative status-linked records), the dominant empirical pattern is that immigrants are not more incarcerated than the U.S.-born and often are substantially less.

F2) What changes when you “remove Black men” from the benchmark

Doing that reduces the immigrant advantage numerically because the benchmark incarceration rate drops.
In the NBER paper, this benchmark shift is explicit: the gap shrinks from roughly 50–60% lower (vs all U.S.-born men) to roughly 15–30% lower (vs U.S.-born white men), but remains negative (immigrants still lower).

F3) What remains uncertain / contested

Incarceration is not identical to crime; it reflects the justice process and can be affected by enforcement and immigration detention.
Region-of-origin comparisons for Mexico/Central America in the post-2005 era are especially sensitive to whether immigration detention is being counted as “incarceration.”

G. Links used in this chat (copy-friendly)

NBER w31440 PDF: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w31440.pdf
NBER w31440 page: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31440
Texas status-linked arrests (PMC/PNAS version): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7768760/
Cato Texas homicide convictions (2013–2022): https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022
CIS Texas crime critique PDF: https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/texas-crime.pdf
Brennan Center migrant crime-wave analysis: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-myth-migrant-crime-wave
Migration Policy Institute immigrants & crime explainer: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/immigrants-and-crime

H. If you want to extend this note (next steps you can do)

If you want exact “immigrant-origin vs U.S.-born whites” numbers (not figure read-offs), the cleanest route is to pull the online appendix referenced by NBER w31440 and extract the benchmarked series that compares to U.S.-born whites.
If you want “remove Black men” quantified for Texas status-linked studies, you’d need a table re-run with the native-born benchmark restricted to U.S.-born whites (or a decomposition using race-specific native rates).

Legal/Moral

Here’s the idea in its strongest form, where it comes from intellectually, and the best “yes, but” objections to it.

The idea, clarified

The claim isn’t “laws don’t matter.” It’s closer to:

Legality is not a moral trump card when the law is shaped by politics, fear, or exclusion.
If a society deliberately keeps legal entry channels tiny, slow, or unattainable, then calling the resulting flows “illegal” functions less as a neutral description and more as a delegitimizing label.
Therefore, a lot of “illegal vs legal” rhetoric may be masking a deeper disagreement: not about process, but about whether these people should be allowed in at all.
That’s a legal-moral critique of how categories get used, not just a policy complaint.

Intellectual roots and “family tree”

You can see this argument emerging from a few overlapping traditions:

1) Natural law and unjust-law arguments

This is the classic move: a law can be legally valid yet morally corrupt. The segregation analogy is doing that work: legality ≠ justice.

Root intuition: moral legitimacy comes from something deeper than procedure—human dignity, fairness, equal standing.

2) Legal realism / critical legal studies (CLS)

Legal realism: law often reflects power, incentives, and institutional interests, not pure reason. CLS pushes further: “neutral” legal categories can encode hierarchies.

Root intuition: “illegal” can be a political status produced by rule design, not a natural moral fact.

3) Republican freedom / domination (neo-republicanism)

Freedom isn’t just absence of interference; it’s absence of arbitrary power. If the state designs a system where entry is effectively impossible for certain groups, those groups are subject to domination by rulemaking they can’t reasonably comply with.

Root intuition: when rules are structured to be unmeetable, “you broke the rule” feels like blaming the victim of domination.

4) Liberal egalitarian and cosmopolitan arguments

Some strands emphasize that life prospects are massively shaped by birthplace, which is morally arbitrary. If borders lock in that lottery too tightly, then “illegality” looks like enforcement of a morally arbitrary privilege.

Root intuition: restricting movement needs strong justification because it entrenches unequal opportunity.

5) Civil disobedience / necessity arguments (adjacent)

Less about immigrants’ rights in the abstract, more about hard cases: survival, family unity, fleeing violence, or economic desperation. When compliance is impossible and stakes are high, breaking the rule can be framed as morally excusable.

Root intuition: we excuse certain lawbreaking when law creates impossible or cruel choices.

Pro arguments (what’s compelling here)

A) “Illegal” is partly a product of policy design

If legal channels are extremely narrow relative to real demand—especially for low-wage labor, family ties, or asylum-adjacent cases—then “illegal immigration” can look like a foreseeable outcome engineered by restriction, not purely individual wrongdoing.

B) The moral content of “illegal” is doing extra work

In public debate, “illegal” often carries an implied moral conclusion: unworthy, criminal, contemptible. But many immigration violations are civil or administrative in nature, and the moral story is mixed: working, paying taxes, raising kids, obeying most laws, etc.

C) A “process” argument can conceal a “preferences” argument

Sometimes people say “I’m fine with immigration, just do it legally,” while supporting policies that make legality rare. The critique exposes possible inconsistency: if you close the doors and then condemn people for coming through windows, “legality” is functioning as a rhetorical shield.

D) The “unjust law” analogy has real force in principle

Even if immigration restrictions aren’t equivalent to segregation, the form of the reasoning is coherent: you can challenge the moral legitimacy of a law by pointing to arbitrariness, discrimination, or cruelty in its design or application.

E) Structural barriers are real, and they’re uneven

Money, education, employer sponsorship, paperwork, waiting times, legal counsel—these all advantage the already-advantaged. So “legal immigration” can look like an avenue for those with resources, while others are effectively excluded.

Con arguments (the strongest pushbacks)

A) “Arbitrary” is doing too much work

All law is, in one sense, contingent and changeable; that doesn’t make it morally void. The key question is: arbitrary compared to what standard?

A critic will say: borders and membership rules are inherently political; not “arbitrary” in the sense of random or baseless, but grounded in self-determination, security, fiscal capacity, and social trust.

B) “Misnomer” overreaches

Even if pathways are limited, “illegal” still describes a real fact: a rule was violated. Calling it a misnomer can sound like “if the law is hard, it’s not really a law,” which many will reject.

More defensible version: “illegal” is descriptively accurate but morally overloaded and often selectively applied.

C) Moral permission doesn’t scale into policy permission

Hard cases (survival, coercion, fleeing danger) can justify exceptions, but opponents will say: making this the general frame risks turning sympathy into an open-ended right, undermining the ability to set enforceable rules at all.

D) System-level consequences matter morally

Even if individual choices are understandable, states worry about effects: wage impacts at the bottom, housing strain, service burdens, political backlash, and incentives for future flows.

A critic argues: you can’t judge immigration solely at the level of the migrant’s motives; you also have to judge it at the level of collective obligations and long-run sustainability.

E) “You just oppose immigration” can be unfair mind-reading

Some people genuinely support immigration but prioritize:

controlled numbers,
skill mix,
public consent,
security vetting,
avoiding line-jumping relative to people waiting abroad.
They’ll say the critique collapses real distinctions into “you’re anti-immigrant,” which can shut down good-faith disagreement.

F) The segregation analogy can backfire

The analogy is structurally illuminating (law can be unjust), but historically loaded comparisons can look like they’re equating border control with racial caste, which many will see as category error. Even sympathetic listeners may still reject the rhetoric.

Where the argument is strongest vs weakest

Strongest when:

Legal routes are effectively closed for large classes of people while labor demand is tacitly welcomed.
Enforcement is selective or politicized.
The rhetoric treats “illegal” as a character judgment rather than a status.
There are compelling necessity/family-unity cases.
Weakest when:
There are clear, workable legal channels but people choose illegal entry primarily to bypass waits/criteria.
The claim slides into “laws are arbitrary, therefore irrelevant,” which undermines rule-of-law legitimacy.
It ignores system-level constraints and democratic consent.

A tightened version that avoids the easy rebuttals

If you want this idea to be sharper and harder to dismiss, it often lands better as:

“Illegality is real, but the moral condemnation attached to it is often disproportionate and politically instrumental.”
“When a system predictably produces ‘illegality’ at scale, the moral spotlight should include the system designers, not only the individuals.”
“The core dispute is often about acceptable levels and types of immigration; ‘do it legally’ is sometimes a proxy rather than the real argument.”
If you want, I can rewrite your bullet list into a single compact paragraph that preserves the logic but avoids the “misnomer” overclaim while keeping the moral critique intact.

Deep Research

Modern Advocates of Open Entry and Settlement.pdf (file not included in this release)

Modern advocates of open entry and settlement

Executive summary

“Open borders” in contemporary scholarship is not a single policy blueprint but a family of positions that share one core thesis: routine state exclusion of peaceful would-be migrants requires extraordinary justification—moral, democratic, and/or economic. 1

Modern advocates of open entry/settlement tend to cluster into seven recognizable argument camps:

Liberal-egalitarian: Borders distribute life chances based on morally arbitrary birth; consistent liberal equality therefore supports (at minimum) a strong presumption for open admission. 2
Democratic legitimacy / border coercion: Border enforcement coerces outsiders; if democratic legitimacy requires justification to those subject to coercion, unilateral border control is illegitimate without broader inclusion in justification. 3
Economic-development / “place premium”: Migration barriers are among the world’s largest distortions; freer mobility could yield very large global gains compared with liberalizing goods/capital alone. 4
Keyhole-solutions pragmatism: Keep near-open movement as the baseline while addressing specific worries (fiscal, wages, voting rights) with targeted “keyhole” institutional designs rather than broad exclusion. 5
Citizenship-as-inherited-advantage: Birthright citizenship functions like inherited property, entrenching global inequality; open entry or deep reforms to membership allocation follow from this diagnosis. 6
Freedom-from-control critique: Immigration control expands surveillance and coercion over insiders; thus restriction threatens liberal freedom even for citizens. 7
Religious/humanitarian: Migrants possess inherent dignity and strong moral claims; many religious institutions emphasize duties to welcome/protect while often also affirming some right of states to regulate for the common good. 8

Policy-wise, contemporary “open entry” proposals vary from presumptive admission to work-first high-volume visas to regional free movement and asylum expansion. A recurring design tension is whether to separate (a) residence/work rights from (b) welfare access and (c) political rights, using staged access to preserve welfare-state politics and democratic stability—or whether staged rights create an unacceptable two-tier society. 9

Empirically, the mainstream synthesis literature most relevant to open-entry debates is nuanced: immigration’s average effects on native wages/employment tend to be small, but distributional impacts can concentrate on specific groups; fiscal impacts depend heavily on age/skill composition and accounting horizon; and research syntheses generally do not support simple “immigrants increase crime” generalizations. 10

Real-world precedents (notably Schengen, plus regional regimes like ECOWAS and MERCOSUR residence agreements) show that large-scale mobility is administratively possible, but requires governance scaffolding (documentation, coordination, enforcement cooperation) and often retains emergency mechanisms for internal controls. 11

Conceptual map of open entry

Open-entry arguments typically target one or more of these “moral choke points”:

Arbitrariness: birthplace and citizenship inheritance allocate opportunity like a lottery. 12
Coercion and standing: border enforcement uses threats/force; outsiders have standing to demand justification. 13
Massive welfare stakes: mobility yields large gains for migrants and potentially large global output increases. 14
Internal liberty costs: to control outsiders, states often monitor insiders (employment, housing, identity checks). 15
Humanitarian duty: at minimum, strong duties toward refugees and people seeking survival/rights protection. 16

A key clarifier: international human-rights law strongly protects the right to leave any country and the right to seek asylum—but does not straightforwardly codify a universal right to enter and settle in any country of choice, which is why much of open-entry argumentation is philosophical rather than strictly legal. 17

timeline
title Major publications shaping modern open entry debates (late 20th–21st c.)
1983 : Walzer — Spheres of Justice (membership, bounded community)
1987 : Carens — “Aliens and Citizens” (liberal equality → strong presumption for open borders)
1990 : Card — Mariel Boatlift study (canonical labor-market natural experiment)
2008 : Wellman — “Immigration and Freedom of Association” (right to exclude)
2008 : Abizadeh — “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion” (unilateral control illegitimate)
2009 : Shachar — The Birthright Lottery (citizenship as inherited property)
2011 : Clemens — “Trillion-Dollar Bills…” (mobility barriers as colossal distortion)
2013 : Carens — The Ethics of Immigration (book-length treatment)
2013 : Collier — Exodus (managed migration; cohesion/brain drain concerns)
2015 : Borjas — Mariel reappraisal (distributional wage effects debate)
2016 : Miller — Strangers in Our Midst (self-determination & limits)
2016 : NASEM — Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (major synthesis)
2019 : Peri & Yasenov — Mariel synthetic control (reassessment)
2019 : Caplan & Weinersmith — Open Borders (popularization + keyhole logic)
2021 : Kukathas — Immigration and Freedom (control threatens insiders’ liberty)

Leading advocates and their argument structures

The subsections below are organized by camp. Each includes a short bio, signature claim, key works (URLs in inline code for Obsidian), a one-sentence critique, and the requested “Claims → Assumptions → Evidence demanded → Rhetorical tactics” map.

Liberal-egalitarian open entry

Thinker: Joseph Carens18 19
Short bio: Political theorist and professor (University of Toronto profile). 19
Signature claim: If we take liberal equality seriously, then the moral case for routine exclusion is weak; major ethical theories can converge on a strong presumption for open borders. 20
Key works (primary): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/aliens-and-citizens-the-case-for-open-borders/5B0946DEB5203B576657C506C58F0FD6 21; https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199933839 19
One-sentence critique: Critics argue the argument can be “too ideal-theoretic,” underweighting transition constraints (political backlash, welfare-state feasibility, integration capacity) even if the end-state ideal is morally attractive. 22

Claims: Exclusion based mainly on birthplace is morally suspect; the default should be admission unless strong harm-based reasons justify restriction. 23
Assumptions: Equal moral worth applies across borders in ways that constrain state discretion; citizenship birthright is not a sufficient moral reason for exclusion. 12
Evidence demanded: Credible evidence of large, non-mitigable harms from openness that cannot be addressed by narrower tools than exclusion. 24
Rhetorical tactics: “Convergence” framing (multiple moral theories push toward openness) and analogy to internal freedom of movement. 23

Democratic legitimacy and border coercion

Thinker: Arash Abizadeh25 26
Short bio: Political philosopher and theorist (McGill profile emphasizes democratic theory, boundaries, immigration). 26
Signature claim: Border regimes are coercively enforced; democratic legitimacy principles imply outsiders subject to coercion must be included in the justificatory process—undermining unilateral border control. 27
Key works (primary): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591707310090 28
One-sentence critique: A common rebuttal is that “exclusion” is not the kind of coercion that triggers democratic inclusion, or that “all subject to coercion” principles give counterintuitive boundary results. 22

Claims: Unilateral border control is democratically illegitimate when it coerces foreigners without including them in collective self-rule about that coercion. 28
Assumptions: Democratic legitimacy is sensitive to coercion (“all subjected” or related principles) and borders are coercively maintained—not merely non-association. 13
Evidence demanded: A principled account of why border coercion is exempt from democratic justification constraints applied domestically. 29
Rhetorical tactics: Boundary-problem framing (“who is the demos?”) and moral standing arguments that shift the burden of proof to restrictionists. 30

Economic-development and “place premium” open entry

Thinker: Michael Clemens31 32
Short bio: Economist specializing in migration and development (Center for Global Development profile). 32
Signature claim: Migration barriers are likely among the world’s largest economic distortions; estimates suggest removing barriers could yield gains that are large fractions of world GDP, dwarfing many other liberalization reforms. 33
Key works (primary / peer-reviewed): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.3.83 34; “place premium” working paper hub: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/place-premium-wage-differences-identical-workers-across-us-border-working-paper-148 35
One-sentence critique: Skeptics argue that large-scale mobility could change institutions and political equilibria, so “static” place-premium-based gains may not scale linearly. 36

Claims: Opening labor mobility is among the highest-leverage anti-poverty reforms because location drives huge income differences. 33
Assumptions: A significant portion of wage gaps is place/institution-driven (not purely worker inherent productivity), and receiving-country institutions remain robust under higher mobility. 14
Evidence demanded: Credible identification of (a) selection vs place effects, and (b) political-economy constraints (welfare state, backlash) that mediate whether large gains are realizable. 37
Rhetorical tactics: “Trillion-dollar bills” metaphor and comparative framing (“bigger than gains from trade liberalization”). 38

Keyhole-solutions open entry and popularization

Thinker: Bryan Caplan39 40
Short bio: Economist (George Mason University faculty profile) and prominent public advocate of open borders. 41
Signature claim: The moral and economic case for open borders is strong; many objections can be addressed with targeted “keyhole solutions” rather than broad exclusion. 42
Key works (primary): https://openborderscomic.com/ 43; GMU profile: https://economics.gmu.edu/people/bcaplan 40
One-sentence critique: Critics argue keyhole designs (staged benefits, restricted voting) can be administratively complex and risk legitimizing durable second-class status. 44

Claims: If specific harms exist (fiscal costs, wage pressure, political instability), address them directly while keeping movement broadly free. 45
Assumptions: Many harms are localized/mitigable; liberal states can design compensation and phased-access schemes that preserve both high mobility and social stability. 46
Evidence demanded: Evidence that harms are (a) severe, (b) unmitigable via targeted policy, and (c) uniquely prevented by exclusion rather than by labor, fiscal, or political-inclusion reforms. 47
Rhetorical tactics: “Meet the objection” structure (wages, welfare, crime, culture), plus analogies to internal free movement and “regulatory” framing (immigration controls as labor regulation). 48

Citizenship-as-inherited-advantage arguments

Thinker: Ayelet Shachar49 50
Short bio: Legal scholar (Berkeley Law faculty profile; also University of Toronto law/political science profile). 51
Signature claim: Birthright citizenship in affluent states functions like inherited property (“birthright lottery”), reproducing global inequality; reforming membership allocation is a core justice task. 52
Key works (primary): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674032712 53
One-sentence critique: Communitarian critics respond that citizenship is not merely distributive property; it is also constitutive of collective self-rule and special obligations, which the inheritance analogy can understate. 54

Claims: The moral problem is not only at the border checkpoint; it is the inherited institutional sorting of persons into unequal opportunity sets. 52
Assumptions: Birth-based membership allocation is morally analogous to inheritance in its arbitrariness and distributive consequences. 55
Evidence demanded: Evidence that birthright membership is the dominant driver of opportunity inequality and that feasible reforms (including more open entry) meaningfully address it without collapsing governance capacity. 56
Rhetorical tactics: “Lottery/inheritance” framing and shifting focus from border lines to membership institutions. 52

Freedom-from-control arguments

Thinker: Chandran Kukathas57 58
Short bio: Political theorist (SMU faculty profile), known for work on liberalism and the “open society” critique of control regimes. 59
Signature claim: The greater threat comes not from immigration but from immigration control, which requires monitoring and constraining insiders and normalizes brutality and surveillance. 15
Key works (primary): https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16rdcgw 60 (book access page); SMU repository pointer: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2919/ 61; note: direct Princeton UP page exists but is blocked to this tool by robots.txt (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691189680/immigration-and-freedom) (access unspecified). 62
One-sentence critique: Critics argue that rule-of-law enforcement can be designed in less liberty-eroding ways than Kukathas implies, and that some border governance is compatible with liberal freedom. 63

Claims: Immigration restriction often implies internal policing (employment, housing, identity), producing a “surveillance society” that undermines freedom. 15
Assumptions: Enforcement spillovers are structural, not accidental; controlling outsiders requires controlling citizens’ associations (work, rent, educate, trade). 15
Evidence demanded: Evidence that high-restriction regimes can scale without significant civil-liberty costs and that those costs are outweighed by benefits (security, cohesion, fiscal sustainability). 64
Rhetorical tactics: Inversion (“restrictionist policies threaten citizens”), plus concrete enforcement examples illustrating coercion beyond the border. 65

Religious and humanitarian open entry discourse

Representative institutions: Holy See66; United Nations67; World Council of Churches68 69
Signature claim: Migrants possess inherent dignity and strong moral claims to protection and humane treatment; prosperous societies have heightened duties, though many religious authorities also affirm some state power to regulate borders for the common good. 8
Key texts (primary):

Catechism §2241 https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_4/v_the_authorities_in_civil_society.html 70
UDHR and Article 13/14 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights 71
WCC “People on the Move” statement https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-people-on-the-move-migrants-and-refugees 72
One-sentence critique: Critics note that humanitarian language can under-specify governance tradeoffs (capacity, security screening, fiscal constraints), requiring translation into operational policy (e.g., admissions criteria, integration support, enforcement limits). 73

Claims:

States must respect basic rights and human dignity of migrants; prosperous nations have duties to welcome within capacity. 74
International norms protect exit and asylum-seeking, underwriting “open-doors” impulses especially for refugees. 75

Assumptions: Moral duties cross borders; “common good” includes noncitizens in meaningful ways; human dignity is not contingent on legal status. 76
Evidence demanded: Capacity and burden-sharing evidence (“to the extent they are able”), plus proof that restrictive enforcement is necessary and proportionate rather than punitive. 77
Rhetorical tactics: Dignity-first framing and condemnation of dehumanization; frequent use of universalist language that treats migration as morally salient in itself. 78

Policy models and package comparison

Policy debates among open-entry advocates often turn less on “open vs closed” and more on what rights come with entry (work, welfare, political participation) and what enforcement is legitimate for the narrow exclusion list. 79

Core policy models in the open-entry ecosystem:

Presumptive admission: admit by default subject to narrow individualized exclusions (serious security threats, demonstrable dangerousness) and due process. 80
Work-first mobility: broad legal access to work/residence at scale; membership and benefits can be phased. 81
Large visa expansion: increase legal channels so irregular entry becomes less necessary; often treated as a politically feasible path toward openness. 82
Keyhole solutions: keep high admission, but redesign policies around the specific feared mechanism (wages, fiscal costs, political stability). 83
Staged welfare / staged citizenship: delayed access to certain benefits or voting in exchange for near-open movement; hotly contested inside the movement. 84
Asylum expansion and faster processing: strengthen and operationalize the right to seek asylum; reduce harmful waiting and backlogs. 85

Comparative table of policy packages


policy name	admission rules	welfare access	political rights timing	enforcement focus	main proponents	pros/cons
Presumptive admission with narrow exclusions	default “yes”; exclusions limited and individualized; due process emphasized 86	generally standard access, possibly after short residence 87	usual naturalization timelines; some argue for faster inclusion of long-term residents 88	targeted screening, ordinary criminal justice, anti-exploitation enforcement 89	Carens-style liberal egalitarianism; rights-based theorists sympathetic to harm-limited exclusion 80	pros: minimal categorical exclusion; cons: “narrow” exclusions can expand in practice 90
Work-first high-mobility visas	very large legal work/residence permits 91	staged or contribution-tied access to some benefits 92	franchise often delayed; citizenship after longer residence 84	channel-building + labor standards; shift enforcement from migrants to exploiters 93	economists emphasizing large gains (Clemens-adjacent); keyhole pragmatists 94	pros: reduces irregularity; captures major gains; cons: risk of durable second-class labor if rights weak 84
Keyhole open entry bundle	keep borders broadly open; tailor constraints to specific harms 83	adjustable (waiting periods, levies, eligibility rules) 46	adjustable (delayed voting, residency prerequisites) 84	harm-specific tools; emphasize lawful channels and rights protections 83	Caplan-style advocacy and allied policy writers 95	pros: targets objections directly; cons: can be administratively heavy and morally controversial 84
Citizenship/status reform (membership focus)	often compatible with high entry; focus is reforming inherited membership and “bordering” 52	varies; often linked to redistribution proposals and global justice mechanisms 96	often supports pathways to membership based on genuine connection (not birth alone) 52	not principally enforcement-centered; more institutional redesign 52	Shachar-style frameworks 97	pros: targets root arbitrariness; cons: does not by itself specify entry capacity or screening rules 73
Freedom-from-control minimal restriction	openness favored to avoid internal surveillance spillovers 15	typically unspecified; concern is coercion costs of control regimes 65	typically unspecified; focus is liberty tradeoff rather than citizenship theory 98	reduce internal policing; prioritize civil liberties and association freedom 15	Kukathas 99	pros: highlights hidden costs; cons: critics argue it underspecifies legitimate security/fiscal governance 64
Asylum-maximalist “open doors”	broaden protection and access to procedures; strong non-refoulement implementation 75	benefits typically after recognition; pre-recognition access varies by country 100	political rights follow ordinary residence/citizenship rules 101	capacity in adjudication, reception, and integration; reduce backlogs 102	humanitarian/religious institutions; some egalitarians emphasize forced migration duties 78	pros: strongest legal-moral footing; cons: does not fully address economic-mobility justice for non-refugees 103

Empirical evidence and what it does and does not show

Empirical research is most informative when it is matched to a specific mechanism that open-entry opponents and proponents dispute: wages, fiscal balance, crime, and institutional/political stability. 10

Economic gains and Clemens-style “large fractions of world GDP” claims

The strongest widely cited “big gains” claim in the open-entry literature is that barriers to labor mobility generate extremely large global deadweight losses; Clemens argues estimated gains from reducing migration barriers are plausibly very large—often presented as large fractions of world GDP, and much larger than gains from eliminating remaining goods/capital barriers. 38

The conceptual empirical backbone is the “place premium” approach: wage differences for observably similar workers across borders are large, suggesting location/institutions drive a significant share of income differences. 104

A key caution from the same research ecosystem is that fiscal and distributional impacts vary with migrant composition and policy design; even if global gains are large, domestic political feasibility may depend on managing concentrated losses. 105

Labor-market impacts in destination countries

A canonical natural experiment remains the Mariel Boatlift: David Card106 famously reported little effect on wages/unemployment for less-skilled workers in Miami after the 1980 influx (as analyzed using CPS data). 107

George Borjas108 reanalyzed Mariel, arguing for a substantial negative wage effect for a narrowly defined group of non-Hispanic male high-school dropouts, emphasizing skill matching and subgroup selection. 109

Later work by Giovanni Peri110 and Vasil Yasenov111 applies synthetic control methods and finds no significant wage effect for the comparison group they emphasize, highlighting sensitivity to method and sample selection. 112

Major synthesis work by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine113 concludes that, overall, long-run wage/employment impacts on native-born workers are small, with negative impacts most likely for prior immigrants or certain low-skill subgroups; it also emphasizes positive contributions to long-run growth. 114

Fiscal impacts and welfare-state concerns

The National Academies synthesis emphasizes a common pattern in fiscal accounting: first-generation immigrants can be net fiscal costs in static accounting largely due to state/local education costs for children, while the second generation often becomes among the strongest fiscal contributors. 115

OECD cross-country work (including the International Migration Outlook fiscal chapter tradition) commonly finds fiscal impacts of immigration are close to zero on average across OECD countries, with substantial cross-country variation explained by labor-market integration and immigrant age structure. 116

These results are frequently invoked by open-entry advocates to argue that “fiscal collapse” is not an inevitable consequence of immigration, but critics counter that marginal impacts under current managed systems may not extrapolate to genuinely open entry—hence the popularity of staged welfare designs among keyhole advocates. 117

Crime and public safety

A high-citation review by Graham Ousey118 and Charis Kubrin119 (Annual Review of Criminology) synthesizes a large body of macrosocial research and reports that immigration and crime are often not positively related, and in many studies are null or negative, while noting heterogeneity and methodological challenges. 120

Open-entry advocates frequently use such syntheses to reject generalized “immigrants drive crime” narratives; restrictionist critics often shift to narrower claims (particular contexts, offenses, or rapid inflows), or to institutional capacity arguments (screening/assimilation). 121

Objections and counterarguments

This section covers the named prominent critics and how open-entry advocates typically respond.

Membership and self-determination

Critic: Michael Walzer122 123
Short bio: Political theorist associated with the Institute for Advanced Study. 123
Signature claim: Bounded membership is a condition for distributive justice and collective self-rule; communities may control admissions to sustain shared purposes. 124
Key works (primary): Spheres of Justice125 (publisher/info varies; excerpt commonly circulated): https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/BordersWalzer.pdf 126
One-sentence critique: Open-entry theorists argue “self-determination” does not entail wide discretion to exclude peaceful opportunity-seekers, and that long-term residents generate membership claims that boundedness arguments must still respect. 23

Claims: States may restrict immigration to preserve the “self” in self-determination. 127
Assumptions: Political community is morally special; obligations are thicker to co-members; membership boundaries are legitimate objects of collective choice. 54
Evidence demanded (by Walzer-style critics): Evidence that open entry does not dissolve shared institutions/solidarity necessary for egalitarian democracy and welfare states. 128
Rhetorical tactics: “Community as association” and “shared life” framing; emphasis on membership as constitutive rather than merely distributive. 127

Freedom of association and a right to exclude

Critic: Christopher Heath Wellman129 130
Short bio: Philosopher at Washington University in St. Louis (faculty page). 130
Signature claim: A legitimate state has a presumptive right to control immigration grounded in citizens’ freedom of association, paralleling the right of associations to choose their members. 131
Key works (primary): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/592311 132; debate book with Phillip Cole133: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199731732 134
One-sentence critique: Open-entry critics argue the state–club analogy is morally incomplete because states coercively govern territory and residents, and because exclusion imposes severe harms not parallel to private association decisions. 135

Claims: Legitimate states may exclude even many desperate would-be entrants, as an implication of associative freedom. 136
Assumptions: States are morally relevantly similar to associations; collective autonomy includes selecting members. 137
Evidence demanded (by Wellman-style critics): A principled line showing why association-based autonomy does not justify border discretion, or why state coercion changes the analogy decisively. 135
Rhetorical tactics: “Club analogy” and focus on legitimacy of the state as a rights-protecting agent entitled to defend autonomy. 138

Liberal nationalism and feasibility constraints

Critic: David Miller139 140
Short bio: Political theorist at Oxford (Nuffield/Faculty profiles). 141
Signature claim: Democratic states have a right to control immigration to preserve self-determination and sustain equal treatment commitments, while still carrying strong duties to refugees and those in urgent need. 142
Key works (primary): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674986787 143; Oxford archive chapter: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a072319a-4e17-4d82-9ccf-520d17bf70eb/files/rt148fh621 144
One-sentence critique: Open-entry theorists argue Miller’s feasibility emphasis risks building current political preferences into moral principles, and that his framework can underweight the scale of harm imposed by exclusion. 145

Claims: The right to exit is strong; the right to enter is not general; states may limit immigration to maintain democratic and distributive institutions. 146
Assumptions: Egalitarian democracy requires bounded solidarity; large-scale immigration can affect the character of political community; feasibility is morally relevant. 147
Evidence demanded (by Miller-style critics): Evidence that open entry is compatible with sustained equal treatment and welfare-state legitimacy under realistic political conditions. 92
Rhetorical tactics: “Realism” and “context of justice” framing; comparison to domestic obligations and the demandingness of citizenship rights. 148

Distributional wage effects skepticism

Critic: George Borjas108 149
Short bio: Economist at Harvard Kennedy School (faculty profile). 150
Signature claim: Even if aggregate gains exist, immigration can redistribute income away from low-skill competing workers; empirical identification should focus on skill-matched groups where displacement pressure is most plausible. 151
Key works (primary): Mariel reappraisal NBER working paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21588 152; journal version: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019793917692945 153
One-sentence critique: Open-entry-aligned economists argue the most negative estimates can reflect fragile subgroup definitions and that longer-run equilibria, capital adjustment, and city comparisons often moderate effects. 112

Claims: Immigration can reduce wages for directly competing low-skill workers in certain contexts; policy should treat distribution seriously. 154
Assumptions: Labor markets are segmented by skill; short-run supply shocks can have meaningful localized effects; distributional justice matters politically and ethically. 155
Evidence demanded (by Borjas-style critics): Robust causal evidence on the lowest-skill tails and on substitution patterns (native internal migration, sectoral changes), not just averages. 156
Rhetorical tactics: “Who loses?” framing; insistence on subgroup matching and skepticism about aggregate-welfare rhetoric. 155

Social cohesion and managed migration

Critic: Paul Collier157 158
Short bio: Development economist; profiles and reviews describe his focus on migration’s effects on migrants, origin countries, and host societies. 159
Signature claim: Migration creates benefits but also costs (including potential effects on cohesion and origin-country “brain drain”); policy should strike a managed balance rather than defaulting to near-unlimited movement. 160
Key works (primary): Exodus161 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exodus-9780190231484 162; review in Migration Studies: https://academic.oup.com/migration/article-abstract/1/3/375/951665 163
One-sentence critique: Open-entry advocates argue Collier’s risk emphasis can lean on speculative political-economy mechanisms and that “managed” restrictions often produce irregularity and exploitation rather than stable control. 65

Claims: Large-scale migration can strain social trust/solidarity and alter political equilibria; prudent policy may require limits and integration capacity. 164
Assumptions: Social capital and cohesiveness matter for welfare states and political stability; diversity effects can be nontrivial in the short run. 165
Evidence demanded (by Collier-style critics): Empirical support that higher diversity reduces trust/redistribution and that the effect is large enough to justify restricting movement rather than adjusting institutions. 165
Rhetorical tactics: “Balanced ledger” framing (pros/cons for sending/receiving/migrants) and appeal to political feasibility. 166

Real-world precedents and lessons

Regional free-movement regimes are the closest operational analogues to “open entry” in practice, though they are typically open within a club and restrictive at the club’s external boundary. 11

Schengen

The Schengen Area167 removes internal border checks for participating states while relying on common external-border rules and cooperation; EU sources emphasize that temporary internal border controls can be reintroduced as a last resort under serious threat conditions and must meet necessity and proportionality principles. 168

Recent EU institutional commentary (including Parliament-focused explainers) highlights reforms and ongoing tensions around internal controls and migration/security pressures, illustrating that even robust free-movement systems face recurrent political stress tests. 169

ECOWAS

Economic Community of West African States170 adopted the 1979 protocol providing phased rights of entry, residence, and establishment for community citizens; official texts describe the staged abolition of obstacles and specify rights and conditions. 171

Analytical summaries (including UN and UN-affiliated materials) emphasize phased implementation and uneven practice across states, which open-entry advocates often interpret as evidence that institutional capacity matters as much as formal legal rights. 172

MERCOSUR residence agreement

MERCOSUR173’s residence framework (often referenced as the 2002 Residence Agreement) is widely described as facilitating legal residence and work across participating states, with a pathway from temporary to permanent residence, and relatively light requirements beyond nationality plus basic documentation. 174

Because official treaty texts and translations can be harder to access in a single stable English source, many discussions rely on institutional summaries (e.g., ILO practice notes) and policy analysis (MPI), which supply operational details and implementation history. 174

Lessons for open entry advocates

Free movement is governance-heavy: Schengen’s architecture and EU legal summaries show free movement coexists with coordinated rules, shared systems, and emergency mechanisms. 168
“Open inside” can intensify “closed outside”: regional openness may shift moral and political pressure toward external border enforcement and asylum systems. 175
Implementation matters: ECOWAS experience illustrates that legal protocols can outpace administrative and political practice. 176

Intra-movement debates among open-entry advocates

Open-entry advocates disagree most sharply over three design choices.

Welfare state and redistribution

A recurring pragmatic stance is to preserve broad movement while adjusting welfare eligibility rules; this appears in keyhole-oriented proposals and in policy discussions reacting to fiscal research that finds impacts vary by age/skill/integration. 177

A core internal critique is that staged welfare access risks creating a two-tier society and undermining the egalitarian moral case for openness. 44

Political rights and democratic inclusion

Democratic-coercion theorists push toward stronger justificatory inclusion of outsiders, while keyhole pragmatists often accept delayed enfranchisement (residence now, voting later) as a stabilization device. 178

This dispute is not merely technical: it changes whether “open entry” is conceived as a pathway to equal rank membership or as persistent denizenship. 179

Exclusion lists and security screening

Most open-entry positions accept that some exclusions are legitimate (e.g., serious security threats), but differ on whether the exclusion list must be extremely narrow (rights-first) or can be broader (harm/feasibility-first). 180

Primary sources and accessible summaries to cite

This section is intentionally “Obsidian-ready”: URLs are included as inline code, and the list prioritizes primary sources, official institutional pages, and peer-reviewed research/syntheses.

Core open-entry advocates

Joseph Carens18
Primary article page: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/aliens-and-citizens-the-case-for-open-borders/5B0946DEB5203B576657C506C58F0FD6 21
Book page: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199933839 19
Arash Abizadeh25
Journal page: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591707310090 28
Faculty profile: https://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/arash-abizadeh 26
Michael Clemens31
JEP article (official): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.3.83 34
CGD place-premium hub: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/place-premium-wage-differences-identical-workers-across-us-border-working-paper-148 35
Bryan Caplan39
Project site: https://openborderscomic.com/ 43
Faculty profile: https://economics.gmu.edu/people/bcaplan 40
Ayelet Shachar49
Book page: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674032712 53
Faculty profile: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/ayelet-shachar/ 50
Chandran Kukathas57
Book access page: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16rdcgw 60
Institutional repository pointer: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2919/ 61
Princeton UP page exists but tool access is blocked by robots.txt (access unspecified): https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691189680/immigration-and-freedom 62

Major syntheses and peer-reviewed empirical anchors

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine113 report page and highlights:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-03/publication/23550 181
highlights PDF: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/23550/RiB-fiscal-immigration.pdf 182
OECD fiscal discussion (cross-country):
https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2013/06/international-migration-outlook-2013_g1g2e35e/migr_outlook-2013-en.pdf 183
Mariel Boatlift canonical papers:
Card PDF: https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf 184
Borjas NBER WP: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21588 152
Peri & Yasenov (NBER and/or journal listing): https://www.nber.org/papers/w21801 and JSTOR entry https://www.jstor.org/stable/26627853 112
Crime and immigration synthesis:
Ousey & Kubrin citation page: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3120417 and/or accessible PDF mirror (if needed) https://prohic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/82-27juli2020-ImmigrationCrimeMeta.pdf 120

Prominent critics (primary sources)

Michael Walzer122 membership excerpt: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/BordersWalzer.pdf 126
Christopher Heath Wellman129
article: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/592311 132
debate book page: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199731732 134
David Miller139
book page: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674986787 143
Oxford archive chapter: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a072319a-4e17-4d82-9ccf-520d17bf70eb/files/rt148fh621 144
George Borjas108
Mariel reappraisal: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21588 152
Paul Collier157
OUP book page: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exodus-9780190231484 162

Real-world precedent documentation

Schengen Area167
EU Home Affairs page on temporary internal controls: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen-area/temporary-reintroduction-border-control_en 185
EUR-Lex summary: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/rules-on-crossing-eu-borders.html 186
Economic Community of West African States170
official protocol PDF (ECOWAS-hosted): https://ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PROTOCOL-RELATING-TO-FREE-MOVEMENT-OF-PERSONS.pdf (access details may vary) 187
UNCTAD treaty download: https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/treaty-files/3269/download 188
Refworld entry: https://www.refworld.org/legal/agreements/ecowas/1979/en/56580 189
MERCOSUR173
MPI analysis: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/free-movement-south-america-emergence-alternative-model 190
ILO practice note: https://wwwex.ilo.org/dyn/migpractice/migmain.showPractice?p_lang=en&p_practice_id=187 191

Religious/humanitarian primary texts

Holy See66 Catechism §2241: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_4/v_the_authorities_in_civil_society.html 70
United Nations67 UDHR: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights 71
World Council of Churches68 “People on the Move”: https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-people-on-the-move-migrants-and-refugees 72
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops192 balanced stance page: https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immigration/catholic-teaching-on-immigration-and-the-movement-of-peoples 193

1 16 17 18 71 75 85 101 103 111 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

2 12 20 21 23 25 80 145 Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/aliens-and-citizens-the-case-for-open-borders/5B0946DEB5203B576657C506C58F0FD6

3 13 27 28 29 30 88 139 167 178 Democratic Theory and Border Coercion - Arash Abizadeh …

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591707310090

4 14 33 34 38 57 81 91 94 104 157 Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the …

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fjep.25.3.83

5 40 41 95 Faculty and Staff: Bryan D Caplan - Economics

https://economics.gmu.edu/people/bcaplan

6 52 53 55 56 68 97 118 The Birthright Lottery

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674032712

7 58 59 Chandran KUKATHAS - SMU Faculty Directory

https://faculty.smu.edu.sg/profile/chandran-kukathas-1946

8 69 70 74 77 V. The Authorities In Civil Society

https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_4/v_the_authorities_in_civil_society.html

9 46 65 84 93 177 Book Review - Immigration and Freedom | Global Policy Journal

https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/01/09/2021/book-review-immigration-and-freedom

10 37 47 49 82 105 114 181 The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration

https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-03/publication/23550

11 63 64 89 90 133 168 185 Temporary Reintroduction of Border Control

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen-area/temporary-reintroduction-border-control_en

15 60 98 99 110 Immigration and Freedom on JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16rdcgw

19 Joseph Carens | Department of Political Science

https://www.politics.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/joseph-carens

22 24 Is there a human right to immigrate

https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/SJ033.pdf

26 Arash Abizadeh | Political Science

https://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/arash-abizadeh

31 39 44 144 146 147 148 170 179 Controlling Immigration in the Name of Self-Determination

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3Aa072319a-4e17-4d82-9ccf-520d17bf70eb/files/rt148fh621

32 35 Michael Clemens | Center For Global Development

https://www.cgdev.org/expert/michael-clemens

36 Synthetic Control Method meets the Mariel Boatlift

https://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/mariel_may_10_2016.pdf

42 Bryan Caplan

https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/

43 45 48 66 79 83 161 Open Borders

https://openborderscomic.com/

50 51 67 Ayelet Shachar

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/ayelet-shachar/

54 124 126 127 192 Membership

https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/BordersWalzer.pdf

61 “Immigration and freedom” by Chandran KUKATHAS

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2919/

62 A collection of recent excellent (according to experts …

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1aehwsw/a_collection_of_recent_excellent_according_to/

72 76 78 Statement on People on the Move: Migrants and Refugees

https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-people-on-the-move-migrants-and-refugees

73 87 92 106 116 117 183 International Migration Outlook 2013

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2013/06/international-migration-outlook-2013_g1g2e35e/migr_outlook-2013-en.pdf

86 180 1 The Duty to Allow Harmless Migration Anna Stilz astilz@ …

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Duty-to-Allow-Harmless-Migration.pdf

96 The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality by …

https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/journal/the-birthright-lottery-citizenship-and-global-inequality-by-ayelet-shachar

100 102 EU begins gradual rollout of digital border system

https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-begins-gradual-rollout-digital-border-system-2025-10-12/

107 184 The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market …

https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf

108 163 166 Exodus: How migration is changing our world. By Paul Collier.

https://academic.oup.com/migration/article-abstract/1/3/375/951665

109 113 151 The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal George J …

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21588/revisions/w21588.rev0.pdf

112 129 Applying the Synthetic Control Method to the Mariel Boatlift

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21801

115 The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration …

https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550/chapter/2

119 122 132 138 Immigration and Freedom of Association* | Ethics

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/592311

120 173 Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Contentious Issue

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3120417

121 Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Contentious Issue

https://prohic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/82-27juli2020-ImmigrationCrimeMeta.pdf

123 Michael Walzer | School of Social Science

https://www.ias.edu/sss/faculty/walzer

125 131 136 137 Immigration and Freedom of Association* Christopher …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/592311

128 141 David Miller - Nuffield College - University of Oxford

https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/david-miller/

130 Kit Wellman | Arts & Sciences

https://artsci.washu.edu/faculty-staff/kit-wellman

134 Debating the Ethics of Immigration - Hardcover

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-the-ethics-of-immigration-9780199731732

135 Immigration, Jurisdiction, and Exclusion

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42703847

140 David Miller | Faculty of Philosophy

https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/david-miller

142 143 Strangers in Our Midst

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674986787

149 150 George Borjas | Harvard Kennedy School

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/george-borjas

152 154 155 156 The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21588

153 The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019793917692945

158 159 Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World | Oxford Martin …

https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/exodus-how-migration-is-changing-our-world

160 162 Exodus - Paul Collier

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exodus-9780190231484

164 165 Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World - Paul Collier

https://books.google.com/books/about/Exodus.html?id=IXI8DwAAQBAJ

169 Schengen: a guide to the European border-free zone | Topics

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20190612STO54307/schengen-a-guide-to-the-european-border-free-zone

171 176 188 Ecowas Protocol on persons, residence and establishment …

https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/treaty-files/3269/download

172 Free movement under ECOWAS

https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/49e479c811.pdf

174 191 Good practice - MERCOSUR Residence Agreement

https://wwwex.ilo.org/dyn/migpractice/migmain.showPractice?p_lang=en&p_practice_id=187

175 ‘The end of Schengen’: Germany’s new border controls put EU unity at risk

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/the-end-of-schengen-germanys-new-border-controls-put-eu-unity-at-risk

182 Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/23550/RiB-fiscal-immigration.pdf

186 Rules on crossing EU borders | EUR-Lex - European Union

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/rules-on-crossing-eu-borders.html

187 ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol

https://ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PROTOCOL-RELATING-TO-FREE-MOVEMENT-OF-PERSONS.pdf

189 Protocol Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Residence …

https://www.refworld.org/legal/agreements/ecowas/1979/en/56580

190 Article: Free Movement in South America: The Emerg..

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/free-movement-south-america-emergence-alternative-model

193 Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the …

https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immigration/catholic-teaching-on-immigration-and-the-movement-of-peoples