The case for open borders

Read Mark Thompson on the case for open borders. We’re on exactly the same page, but he says it better than I could:

In short, to the extent the American-specific “model” is indeed fragile and complex, its success has long been predicated on the dynamism of the constantly changing demographic makeup by large-scale immigration.  There is often a tendency, when one discusses the old “melting pot” analogy, to view the US as a giant assimilation machine.  What I think we tend to forget about this is that, although immigrants to the US do typically assimilate, this process is made significantly easier by the fact that the US tends to adopt part of that immigrant culture as its own.  American culture is, quite often, little more than the amalgamation of various immigrant cultures.  Limitations on the number of immigrants we can accept thus do more harm than good to the American “model” by depriving it of some of the oxygen upon which that model has thrived, perhaps even causing it to stagnate.

And, as they say, you should read the whole thing.