From Bryan Caplan’s latest piece on ‘The Prohibition of Evacuation’:
In practice, of course, the world's governments brutally discourage cross-national evacuation. Suppose you foresee natural or social disaster for your country. If you wisely try to get out Dodge, the world's immigration restrictions dog you at every turn. Once disaster hits, you might be able to apply for refugee status. But as we've seen, that's a long shot. The safe countries may eventually take you in if the mood strikes them. But it's an uphill political battle. Whatever you think about immigration in general, desperate refugees look like a big burden on taxpayers.
The root problem, of course, is that governments spurn the logic of international evacuation. Instead of encouraging non-citizens to leave dangerous countries post-haste, they impose deadly bureaucratic delays. And when a refugee crisis emerges, safe countries are shocked - shocked! - by the horror. Their complicity - the fact that their own immigration restrictions prevented the refugees from saving themselves back when their was still time - never enters their minds.
My point, as usual, is that open borders is justice, not charity. Saving perfect strangers may be a matter of charity. But letting strangers save themselves with the willing assistance of people other than yourself is a matter a justice.
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