Are there additional national security concerns with open borders?
I'm aware of the positive economic impact that comes with the free movement of labor, but recently the push back I have seen on this topic has shifted from "they are taking our jobs"/overstating Borjas' conclusions to "the terrorists will flood in and murder us all".
Being ignorant on the literature related to immigration and national security, I was curious if there has been any studies or attempts to quantify if this is a real issue or just peoples' xenophonic intuition. My assumption is the latter but I frankly don't have anything to back up that thought at the moment.
Posted May 25, 2017, 11:54 PM UTC
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Almost all recent terrorists have been long-term citizens as opposed to recent immigrants. Really makes you think about how foreigners are being treated.
So no there really isn't any justification.
Exactly. One of the biggest crimes of conservative refugee policy is that it hurts national security by giving politicians an excuse to ignore the much more complicated problem of homegrown terrorism.
Isnt there a counterfactual problem here though? How do we know that our current border policies aren't keeping potential terrorists at bay? It doesn't seem particularly likely, but I think its a point that still needs to be addressed.
Or it makes you think about the Saudi owned mosques they go to, the Qatari news outlets they listen to, and the twitter feeds from their home countires they read. The blame is on no one but the terrorists, and their recruiters. Saying westerners treat foreigners badly is not even true.
I mean perfectly happy and well adjusted people don't seem to just get radicalized out of no where.
Not to say western society is to blame, but these things don't just happen in a vacuum.
I can't say I know why they turn to extremist propaganda. It could be poverity, alienation, or even just that they were indoctrinated into islam and took it to it's logical conclusion.