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What Trump is forgetting: American nations have a long history of open borders | Daniel Mendiola

Late last year, Donald Trump’s White House published a new National Security Strategy (NSS) outlining its vision for the world. At the time, the plan raised alarm for dismissing European alliances (now largely confirmed after Trump threatened Nato allies over Greenland), previewing interventions in Latin America (also largely confirmed by recent military action in Venezuela), and aligning closely with the priorities of the Kremlin.

The document also demonizes immigrants. In one widely cited passage, it even claims that “unchecked migration” has gotten so out of control that Europe is facing imminent “civilizational erasure”. On these grounds, the plan makes ending “The Era of Mass Migration” a top priority for the US.

It is one of the great marvels of our time that, in a world where governments spend more on border security than ever before, build more miles of border fencing than ever before, deploy more military-grade technology to stop migration than ever before, spend more on detention and deportation than ever before, and knowingly cause thousands of preventable deaths every year by cutting off safe routes to migrate, people in power can look at the disastrous consequences of this system and unironically proclaim: “You know what our problem is? Open borders!”

This is essentially what the NSS is saying, though, to be fair, it did not originate this marvel of modern absurdity. During the Biden administration, for example, after arrests at the border hit record highs, deportations spiked, and record numbers of asylum seekers piled into overcrowded shelters and hotels (de facto detention centers since they were not allowed to legally work or otherwise participate freely into society), a Republican senator from my home state of Texas whined that all of this amounted to a “radical experiment in open borders”. Not to be outdone, his Democratic opponent at the time made similar claims.

The NSS still distinguishes itself, however, by applying this inverted way of thinking far beyond the Biden years, even to the point of making sweeping generalizations about the history of nations. As a historian of border policy, I find this part of the NSS particularly noteworthy.

You can find the passage in question at the bottom of page 11, where the NSS blames “unchecked” migration for a host of social problems including: straining domestic resources, distorting labor markets, increasing crime, weakening social cohesion, and undermining national security. Rather than attempt to explain how immigration causes these problems, however, the argument looks for evidence in a curious reinterpretation of the past. To quote: “Throughout history, sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration and granted citizenship only rarely to foreigners, who also had to meet demanding criteria. The West’s experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom.”

To be clear, this version of history is nonsensical. My own research examines how nation states in the Americas have actually spent more time with open borders than with closed. In Latin America, many countries passed affirmative declarations protecting the right to immigrate, often going as far as to enshrine these rights in constitutions. In Central America, for example, the constitution of 1824 declared the entire region a “Sacred Asylum for all.” Far from viewing unimpeded migration as a threat to the national project, Central American policymakers proudly used open borders as a way to demonstrate the sovereignty of the newly formed government.

In the US, open borders were more of a default policy born out of the absence of legal restrictions, but this was still the case for nearly the first 150 years the country’s existence. Immigrants were by default presumed admissible, and the federal government did not implement immigration restrictions at all until until the late 19th century when it singled out Chinese immigrants for exclusion, though borders remained open otherwise, and even many Chinese were able to evade these laws by naturalizing in other countries first, such as Mexico. It was not until the 1920s that federal lawmakers experimented with a fully closed-border system (defined as a system in which any immigrant is presumed inadmissible until they demonstrate that they fit into one of the restricted, previously defined categories that would make one admissible and have that admissibility officially recognized by the state). This was a massive expansion of federal powers, and under this clunky new system, some decades saw heavier enforcement than others – especially for racialized groups such as Mexicans and Haitians – even as late as the 1980s, closed borders were flexible enough that a large-scale amnesty program could pass with relatively little controversy.

The true historical deviation of “past decades”, therefore, has NOT been open borders. In fact, the real experiment has been making them militantly closed: a trend that accelerated in 1990s under the Clinton administration and intensified even more after 9/11.

In sum, I actually agree with the NSS that our immigration system has been disastrous in the last few decades. I also agree that, in trying to envision a better future, it’s not a bad idea to take some inspiration from how early nations managed borders.

Of course, that would mean embracing the “enduring wisdom” of open borders.

It also worth noting that, according to a large body of corroborating evidence, the problems attributed to open borders by the NSS are actually caused by closed borders. Overwhelming evidence shows that immigrants do not cost the government in resources any more than citizens cost. What is costly, however, is arbitrarily rounding them up, detaining them, and deporting them. Opening borders would actually alleviate resource strains.

Closed borders also distort labor markets. With closed borders, workers lack the freedom to move around looking for the best job, yet multinational corporations are free to shop around for the “cheapest” trapped labor pool. As I have written before, this is a massive grift, hurting workers on all sides of the border. Opening borders would alleviate these distortions.

Still more, closed borders create optimal conditions for organized crime. Even though immigration itself does not increase crime – studies in the US, for example, have consistently shown that, on average, immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native-born population – the fact that vulnerable people around the world need to move for their livelihoods, yet are not allowed to do so legally, has incentivized cartels to capitalize on the situation. Opening borders would reduce organized crime.

There is also a case to be made that closed borders – or perhaps more specifically, the rhetoric calling for closed borders – actually weakens social cohesion. Studies show that people who have personal relationships or other forms of positive contact with immigrants are less likely to hold negative views toward unauthorized immigration. On the other hand, for people who lack these types of interactions, media images tend to matter more. And in the US, we are bombarded with a steady stream of defamatory news calling immigration a crisis, even from politically “neutral” outlets. Accordingly, it’s not a huge stretch to hypothesize that replacing divisive rhetoric with informed discussions on the benefits of open borders might actually strengthen social cohesion.

Finally, we are at this very moment watching closed borders undermine national security by subjecting otherwise peaceful communities to the biggest security threat of all: the state itself. When closed-border zeal causes swarms of heavily armed agents to storm into communities, separate families, detain people in dangerously deplorable conditions, and deploy increasingly unrestrained violence against people who object, no one is safer.

Given this evidence, it is all the more vexing that people in power can so easily attribute the failures of our immigration system to the specter of “open borders”. The sheer audacity of blaming something that doesn’t exist is already pretty mind-boggling. But the whole thing is even more absurd considering that closed borders are causing these problems. I have been doing my best to explain this in academic terms for quite some time, though lately I find myself turning to surrealist fiction to try to express how absurd this really is. The logic of our immigration system is backwards! How are policymakers getting away with this?

It is worth noting, however, that as of late they seem to be getting away with it a lot less. Even before the killing of Renee Good set off protests in Minneapolis, several major cities saw mass protests in favor of immigrant protections, and countless smaller towns across the country had likewise mobilized. Ultimately, these actions tell me that we are ready to have a serious conversation about the root of the problem: our failing experiment with closed borders.