Open the gates

In recent decades, supporters of liberal democracy and free enterprise have occasionally discussed a concept called the “gates test” as a way of demonstrating the
inferiority of authoritarian regimes.

The idea is that a good way to tell where people really want to live is to "open the gates and see which way they run."

This might be East Germany’s opening of the Brandenburg Gate, which set off a tremendous chain reaction in 1989, or North Korea potentially ending its ban on emigration and the U.S. removing its caps on immigration, both of which I’m still waiting for.

Those who discuss the gates test point to various examples from history that demonstrate its validity. The most famous is that, when they were free to do so, after Columbus “opened the gates,” millions of Europeans left behind the poverty and persecution of their native countries for the greater freedom and tolerance found in the Americas.

I agree with those who have employed this concept before that conducting the gates test can indicate which places people prefer and, by extension, which economic and political systems tend to make those places desirable.

I am more interested, however, in considering what it means for these figurative (and often literal) gates to be closed, as well as what implications that has for the moral aspect of the concept.

A country that keeps its "gates" closed in order to keep its people inside, whether with physical or legal barriers, or both, is restricting their freedom of movement and effectively imprisoning them.

This is true whether or not anyone actually wants to leave, although it is safe to assume that in a country where the government tries to prevent its people from leaving, many of them want to do just that.

By the same token, a country that keeps its "gates" closed in order to keep foreigners out is also restricting freedom of movement, but, instead of imprisoning them, is effectively denying wrongfully imprisoned people refuge from their oppressors.

Even when the people who want to migrate to a country that is keeping them out are not being kept in their countries by force, the country denying entry is still violating the would-be immigrants’ right to freedom of movement.

If we accept the premise that actively harming someone is less excusable than passively neglecting to help someone being harmed, we can conclude that the regime that imprisons its people is more in the wrong than one that merely denies those prisoners asylum.

Nevertheless, the fact that the imprisoner is worse does not make the asylum-denier’s actions commendable.

Rather, given the fact that the cost of granting asylum to the oppressed would be extremely small (equal to the cost of ending efforts to keep law-abiding foreigners out), it hardly seems defensible to maintain a system with effects that deny millions of people refuge.

Some may object that I am overlooking the costs of providing public services to all of the new immigrants, but that objection assumes that we would need to spend more than we already do in order to absorb the influx.

First, I submit that the anticipated problem of needing to spend more on social programs can be solved by ceasing to enroll new citizens in such programs. If we think it necessary, we can grandfather in those already benefiting from them.

Second, I’m confident that we could continue to provide adequate national defense with the money we currently spend even if our population doubled, especially since so much of what we currently spend goes toward conflicts in Asia and Africa that are far from essential to defending this country.

I believe that a proper understanding of what it means to keep the gates open, combined with a respect for freedom of movement, should lead all countries using force to keep their people from emigrating and all countries using force to keep foreigners from immigrating to cease their efforts at once.

­— jarlower@indiana.edu