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WSJ runs this story (alternative MSN same text)
HONG KONG—Japanese citizen Midori Nishida was checking in to a flight in Hong Kong in November to visit her parents on Saipan, a U.S. island in the Pacific, when airline staff made an unusual demand. She had to take a pregnancy test if she wanted to board.
Ms. Nishida, 25 years old, was escorted to a public rest room and handed a strip to urinate on.
The test was part of the response of one airline, Hong Kong Express Airways, to immigration concerns in Saipan. The island has become a destination for women intending to give birth on U.S. territory, making their babies eligible for American citizenship. In 2018, more tourists than residents gave birth in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, in which Saipan is the largest island.
Pregnant foreigners aren't barred from entering the U.S., or from giving birth in U.S. territory. But immigration authorities can turn away visitors if they are found to be lying about their purpose of travel, or if they come to the U.S. planning to have a medical procedure, such as giving birth, but can't prove they have the funds to pay for it.
Airlines are required to take back passengers who are denied entry—an incentive to ensure that those who board their flights are likely to be deemed admissible to the U.S.
One would think the birth tourism was reaching crisis levels in Saipan; but TFA has a chart showing 582 births by tourists in 2018.
Heck, looks like even Trump's businesses are happy to oblige if the price is right.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @05:29PM (23 children)
Inasmuch as there's ever been an immigration crisis not specifically caused by war refugees fleeing a blasted hellscape.
The goal of strict immigration policies is almost never any useful material end, but almost always the fear that somewhere, someday, someone "unworthy" might get some benefit they don't "deserve". Trying to embed that incredibly stupid fear into the language of universal laws is impossible, so you end up with quotas, walls, and concentration camps.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by slinches on Friday January 17 2020, @05:53PM (10 children)
The goal of immigration policies is to know who you are letting into the country (i.e. those who want to be part of our country rather than our enemies) and limiting the flow so that it can be planned for instead of overwhelming social and economic systems to the point of instability.
You can be pro-immigration while still recognizing how problematic open borders would be.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @06:30PM (9 children)
You could theoretically say that I suppose. But why does the open border between maryland(the richest state in the nation per capita) and west virginia(the poorest) with an income disparity of almost 100% higher incomes, not create that super instability that would socially destroy those states?
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday January 17 2020, @07:07PM
Someone from WV moving to MD isn't going to get a huge boost in standard of living by doing the same job in a different place. There are higher-paying jobs in MD that build up the per capita numbers, but that doesn't create an incentive for people who aren't qualified for those jobs. MD almost certainly has a higher cost of living too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by slinches on Friday January 17 2020, @07:08PM (7 children)
Because those states (along with 48 others) have agreed to share enough common legal structure and government to allow that. Open borders without a voluntarily agreed to system of governance would be chaos.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @08:25PM (6 children)
I submit that that is vague enough to be useless.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 17 2020, @08:46PM (5 children)
Okay ... if that's too vague, then so is the whole concept of open borders.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @09:03PM
It's fairly specific, the laws surrounding excessive and totalitarian policing of people crossing imaginary lines is just as amoral as totalitarian policing within those lines.
Now, I may have a bit of a convert's zeal here. I wasn't particular interested, specifically, in open borders, until the concentration camps. That's definitely what crossed the line to "oh these people have no limits and need to be stopped and nothing they say is of any value to anyone"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:01PM (3 children)
Yes. it is. What does "Open borders" mean? The only folks I've ever heard talking about such a thing are those who are against "open borders."
In the EU and the US, there is freedom of movement between internal states. I imagine that's true in Australia and some other places too. Is that what you mean by "open borders?" No? I don't think you do.
However, I've *never* heard anyone call for "open" borders between nations. As such, the vagueness stems from the fact that it's a straw man, given that no one actually supports such a thing.
Have fun knocking it down.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:12AM (2 children)
See also Schengen agreement. Since 1985.
Some say Brexit is caused by its consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:22AM (1 child)
Gosh. I should have mentioned the EU (which is what the Schengen Agreement was about) in my post.
Oh, wait. I did.
What's more, the UK is not, and never has been, party to the Schengen Convention [wikipedia.org]. As such, the Schengen Convention is irrelevant to the UK or Brexit.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:38AM
No, you didn't. If you indeed wanted to mean "countries of Europe are states", based on the fact that each country in Europe is a nation, then your comment is self-contradictory once you wrote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @06:08PM (4 children)
It's to avoid insanely high taxes and property prices matched with hordes of homeless shitting in the streets and leaving drug paraphernalia everywhere. Ie, extreme wealth inequality.
It is so easy to predict the end result of your favored policies.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @06:26PM (3 children)
Things I'm 100% certain of:
1. You've never read a single goddamn immigration law in your life
2. You're very good at making predictions
3. You've never ever ever even once checked if a single prediction you've made turned out to be right.
Your fucking policies already created hell. We're living in it, restriction after restriction after restriction, quota, fence followed by "virtual wall" followed by wall, having no rights within 100 miles of a border, concentration camps. None of it, not a single goddamn bit of it has done anything but create suffering. There's not a police state totalitarian enough for you psychos to actually be satisfied.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @07:10PM (2 children)
Those arent my policies. My policy would be open borders, minimal taxes, and government doesnt give out any free shit. Basically government is the biggest gang around, and all they do is put down other gangs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:53PM (1 child)
In fairness, putting down other gangs is the single most important function of government. If that breaks down you wind up like Somalia, where every two-bit dictator-wannabe with some followers tries to be king of the trash heap. That never ends well for anyone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:21PM
It ended better for Somalia than the government [wikipedia.org] did.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @06:31PM (4 children)
Sorry, no. The reason for immigration policy is to maintain sovereignty. Without individual sovereign nations, we start moving towards globalism. Under globalism, there would be no place to run, no place to hide. There's a duality here that's lost on a lot of people. By keeping people out, we preserve a system that makes it possible for people to get out. Some people naively think that breaking down all the borders would give us global Finland. They don't consider that it might give us global North Korea.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday January 17 2020, @07:10PM (1 child)
They said "The goal of strict immigration policies".
The stupidest thing about these immigration debates is that people always seem to think the only options are "nobody gets in" and "give free citizenship, healthcare, and Big Macs to everybody who can hobble across this line in the desert".
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @10:17PM
I mean, to be fair to them, I probbably count as radical. I wouldn't really put myself in the middle or center of the issue. Most middle-ground positions seem to lack any real convictions besides appeasing the "we're being invaded" side without articulating an actual ideology or meaningful goal to support the resulting centrist position. It tends to result in positions like "Enforce the laws we have"(which are mostly horrendously baseless) or "Lets set quotas to some smallish sounding number"
I'm not fundamentally averse to compromise, conceptually, but it's also not gonna come into the conversation pre-compromised. I want to see a reality based argument for any border-related protection you want to persist.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:15PM
Bad for criminals, eh? Especially tax-dodgers, pedophiles, or Republicans in general, and more especially war criminals, like many Americans. Sovereignty seems to be a racket.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:15AM
LOL. Because you actually can do it today, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:00AM (1 child)
Invasive species are invasive species, war refugees or not. Ruining other habitats is their nature, and recall the tale of the Scorpion and the Frog.
It is in the best interest of other species worldwide to keep invasive species in their own habitat rather than let them spread indiscriminately wherever the hell they please. For example, the Squat Brown (Co-)Cane Toads (Brownicus Menascis) to the immediate South of America and the Round-Capped Hornbill Seagull (Siegel Hookrhinostacus) accidentally introduced to America from Eurasia.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:04AM
Always exploring new depths in being an asshole.