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Adrianna Tan

People who say ‘anyone should be able to live / work anywhere / there should be no borders’

I don’t disagree but

You’ve clearly never tried to emigrate anywhere and stuff like that feels vapid and useless

Especially to people without passport privilege

The only people who currently have the ability to live / work anywhere with somewhat open borders are global north digital nomads making their homes in the developing world, mostly without following visa or tax laws. Everybody else needs a binder full of papers and stacks of money to even exist, to make the opposite journey

It also feels like the ‘thoughts and prayers’ of the broken immigration system. It’s broken everywhere people are trying to move to. By design.

There are specific ways to improve most of them. You can advocate for immigrants by learning first about precisely how broken they are.

@skinnylatte I think for the system to perpetuate itself capital has to be more mobile than labour, otherwise exploited workers would find it easier to simply leave and thus be able to put pressure on their bosses to improve their conditions and increase their wages.

If it were possible for everyone to easily move, eventually the dire need to move may not be there.

@sashin @skinnylatte
and that's why the hardcore capitalists hate remote work.

Because it gives workers the same mobility as capital.

@laprice @sashin @skinnylatte that (as well as the entire conversation) makes so much sense!

@laprice @sashin @skinnylatte capital already has the kind of labour mobility it needs, offshoring almost everything to jurisdictions that have even worse laws. It's remote. But the offshore partner is another capitalist. The offshore labour is barred from participating the same ways onshore labour is barred from participating - procurement policy.

@sashin @skinnylatte I think one way to consider the history of the last thousand years or so is the ever-increasing mobility of wealth. It brings tremendous opportunities, and causes enormous suffering.

@skinnylatte

Gotta understand the system and its workings to materially benefit anyone, but epistemologically and rhetorically rejecting migration control (and by extension the state system that underpins it) is still meaningful, to remember that fundamentally these aren't realities but intersubjective delusions we've subordinated ourselves to.

@skinnylatte

(Speaking as brexile, green passport sponsor, prole untermensch, it's better for the soul not to internalise the bullshit even as you pick your way through the web.)

@anilmc it would feel more valid and real to me if the people doing the rejecting and the activism understood or included people of other backgrounds as well. Right now a lot of it feels very abstract to me. Especially seeing how even in ‘border control free’ EU, border controls are coming back for only some types of people. Of the wrong background and color.

@skinnylatte Well, other than people in the EU. As much criticism as I've heard over the past 5 years, the fact that people within the European Union are allowed to work and live wherever they want is amazing. 🔥

@Radgryd

*as long as they can afford it. if you are disabled or can't work and no one can support you economically in the country you want to move in, you can't.

@skinnylatte

@nlovsund @skinnylatte I specifically wrote 'are allowed to' (by EU law), of course it always depends on your circumstances.

@skinnylatte @nlovsund I am well aware of what's happening in Europe right now, but I don't know what that has to do with what I said. I clearly said for people within the EU. Which is also not a small space in the world with people from different backgrounds.

@Radgryd @skinnylatte @nlovsund

"People within the EU" includes everyone who isn't white - and we know whom the police will check in these border controls. I have sat in a train in Germany (where I'm a foreigner) and the police walked right past me.
The freedom of movement is not the same for everyone "within the EU".
Is the EU still better than what we had before? yes

@Mab_813 @skinnylatte @nlovsund@sunet.se You're absolutely right regarding racial profiling, which already happens *within* countries, not just the EU and its borders. My comment was only about 'the ability to live/work anywhere with somewhat open borders', by law, nothing more, nothing less. I think the EU is a good thing and it's important to support it. Of course that doesn't mean we're going to heal the entire world with it, especially not with the current political and economic climate here.

@skinnylatte And then sometimes the laws actually get enforced on those digital nomads and they're all Pikachu face, because they assumed that immigration laws were not for people like them.

@skinnylatte

And the majority of them are only doing that because they can no longer afford to live in the global north.

@skinnylatte perhaps the idea is not just about work places accept digital nomads, but countries to have open borders as such everyone could be able to move anywhere.

@fsniper I don’t disagree. But that’s not the reality for and it won’t be anywhere close to the reality for black and brown people in the west, who are facing increasing border controls even in places where borders are supposedly open. Like in the EU.

@skinnylatte in a non-american context, I have heard this from people actually doing activism. I do think its worth stating a value, but I do hear what you're saying very much.

@skinnylatte sounds to me like a situation where X happens, and people saying "but X shouldn't happen" don't help with fixing the mess?

@skinnylatte they're also selling everyone on the one world, one currency (trade in all your chips for blips) utopia for the handful.

@skinnylatte I feel this so much. I know I say it sometimes, but I feel like there's a much bigger difference between someone who has migrated somewhere else, dealt with the excessive bureaucracy (inside and outside of the immigration offices), had to figure out a ridiculous number of laws to possibly protect themselves (though that's not guaranteed), had to figure out how to integrate (or struggle to find ways to integrate because society feels so closed off for a number of reasons and remain feeling isolated), etc saying "there should be no borders"...

... and someone who hasn't even had a glimmer of that experience saying it. The latter feels incredibly thoughts-and-prayersy, but the former just feels like the same stress-filled frustrations in my own head.

Also loving people who go "people within the EU can live/work anywhere," and it's like... Only EU citizens who can afford that can do it. Or people who are simply granted EU citizenships (like, idk, the bastard fuck Argentinian president)... Or who have the correct amount of money and can access easy visas! Or golden visas, for that matter!

Even as a third-party national with passport privilege, I cannot simply just move somewhere other than where my residence permit allows me to live without a great deal of trouble. And having to explain that 100 times over every time I complain about some aspect of living in Slovakia (which I like, but I complain because I wish it would fucking change)... is exhausting. And if *I* can't simply do it because I don't have the bank account to allow me to, then they really need to know that people with "worse" passports than me? Are even more fucked most of the time.