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Europe’s Entry/Exit System (EES) will become fully operational from April 10, 2026, replacing passport stamps with digital records and biometric checks.
EU countries are now collecting the fingerprints of all foreign travelers. They are also taking photographs of travelers' faces. The result so far is that 2 hour lines are common for entry into the EU.
I'm generally opposed to this. For one, I'm libertarian in that I oppose most international borders. The reason is that it violates human rights for very little justified purpose. There are ways to justify borders, but no country or entity on Earth is in the position to do that at the moment. The EU does not have a moral right to do this when it won't stop 99% of the harmful immigration into the EU, which is all legal.
This measure is offensive to people with legitimate rights to travel, while not significantly affecting those coming in immorally but legally, for the maybe-upside of catching a few more street criminals trying to come in on a fake passport. Is the point of this that cocaine prices should go up even more in the EU? Why? What is the point? Who is vulnerable to cocaine addiction? Why does money need to be spent on protecting them from their own decisions?
I'm predicting this will spread, too. If the EU is collecting fingerprints of all of country X's citizens that go to it, then country X will want to collect fingerprints for all EU citizens that come into it. Otherwise the EU has an advantaged biometrics database. As a proponent of free travel, every little tin-pot government collecting vast biometrics sounds like it will chill the ease and personal security of traveling. How long until it's DNA?
I never failed to understand how libertarians could think like that. Human rights are fiction created by the state and existing only trough the state.
And it is easy to prove - take any human, do the thoroughest possible vivisection on them and you won't be able to find a single right.
I'm not a libertarian, but I am sympathetic to their position. I'm not sure I would frame the issue in terms of human rights, but I remember my youth when you could live your life without constantly showing your ID to people. I crossed between the US and Canada many times without being asked for a passport or even a driver license. I flew many times without presenting any kind of ID, let alone fingerprints.
I am not thrilled about the fact that we've drifted into a police/surveillance state type of situation. I do appreciate the lower crime rates, but I think that almost the same thing could have been accomplished if the West had stayed 90+% people of European descent.
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The classic American viewpoint is that rights are given by God. Such as this famous line.
That free will allows for bad humans to trample on god's gifts doesn't make them any less divinely bestowed to the classic American viewpoint.
"The state" is not real, outside of being what we call the most powerful and recognized dominant organization of a given area or people. It is composed of people and in the classic view it is the people's own responsibility to fight for and protect their own natural rights, granted by God, from others who mean to harm them. Hence the American revolution, usurping an abusive state for one of their own.
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States are fictions created by individuals and exist only through individuals. Go to any courthouse, police station, parliament building, do the thoroughest possible search, and you won't be able to find a single state. Just a bunch of individuals! Rights are a Schelling point that let individuals who don't call themselves members of the state regulate the behaviors of those who do. Without these Schelling points, the state is allowed to do anything whatsoever. That's obviously bad.
It may be bad, but states have always been allowed to do whatever they please.
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This applies to a ton of things though. Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, mercy, fairness, god, faith, happiness, race, love, LLCs, etc. The list goes on. Not everything is a physically existing element.
A strictly materialist viewpoint of reality is likely insufferably bleak to the point that no one alive would want to live it.
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How do you oppose immigration and borders?
That's simple, someone could support government and citizenship as an association of people with every right to exclude who they want from that association, and also believe it immoral for people to place exclusive claim on pieces of God's earth through violence.
Government and citizenship are basically "Hey guys let's make our own group with our own rules on how you can join the group". Borders are "this piece of land belongs to our group and we will hurt anyone who wants on it without permission"
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One could consistently and defensibly desire a status quo of "anyone can physically go where they please, but getting citizenship is difficult and claiming benefits in a country you're not a citizen is impossible regardless of how long you've lawfully been there" (in such a way that one simultaneously opposes immigration as it currently exists, and wishes for the abolition of borders as they currently exist).
Well, sure, but the importation of a vast worker class of laborers without rights is how you get the Emirates or Sparta. It becomes extremely unstable because you do need an extremely powerful military to suppress the strangers you’ve let in who do not incorporate full political rights. So I guess I don’t see what good it does to be logically consistent if the thought experiment falls apart five seconds later. (What does it even mean to support human rights if the majority of humans in your society can’t have them?)
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When I work in a data center, I have to hand over my ID and give a fingerprint. Otherwise, I can't enter. Have my rights been violated?
If so, which rights, and from where do those rights derive? If not, why does the same not apply to another country?
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“They already failed and let in bad people” - is not a good argument for open borders. It’s actually a good argument for being even stricter which Europe is starting to do.
I don’t think you need to refute HBD every time you argue for open borders but I don’t think you should introduce partially open borders caused bad things as an argument for open borders.
I believe in open borders for Anglo and Anglo adjacent in Anglo and Anglo adjacent countries. I believe this has logical consistency.
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I'm only libertarian up to my country's borders. It may sound counterintuitive, but borders are the most important factor when it comes to freedom. I've realized just how little most people value actual freedom, and how important it is to guard with great vigilance, power, and might, the borders around whatever little pockets of freedom we are able to establish. The reason why the U.S. has a Constitution with a Bill of Rights is that, absent that, all of our natural rights will be traded away for short-sighted wants, and these laws are only as effective as the borders that protect them from interlopers with bad intentions.
Still not sure how that idea even works. If you’re a libertarian up to the borders then you shouldn’t be a libertarian at all. Makes me think of Erdogan’s quote about democracy:
In one sense they care about freedom a lot and in another they don’t care about it at all. Most societies on Earth aren’t actively restricting people’s freedom of movement or motion, but you can feel when you can’t openly discuss a particular issue or criticize the government. And in the US the same condition is present, even with an explicit commitment to free speech. Where the difference lies is that your right to speech doesn’t protect you from criticism, lost social opportunities or other forms of non-violent retribution. What it does do is prevent the government from suppressing your right to speak.
Americans take freedom of speech for granted and don’t recognize its significance until the moment someone comes along and takes it away from them.
The current political paradigm fails though because it doesn’t recognize that borders aren’t just geographic demarcation lines. Borders are also social and economic between people in societies. When legitimacy and central authority begin to fray, governance defaults to the local. Afghan militias followed ethnic lines. In Iraq it was sectarian and it’s interesting to observe how these fiefs and warlord societies formalize into legitimate states over time. Beneath all sovereign governments you’ve still got the power networks of para-sovereigns in society that you have to deal with. They don’t own land outright but effectively control autonomous zones. Gangs do this in the west. ISIS did this in Iraq and Syria. The CCP in China did this under Mao and then successfully took over the government.
If you’ve ever read about the history of Congo they are a great case that makes the point. In the east you had rebel commanders like Laurent Nkunda and Mai-Mai leaders that acted as sovereigns. They taxed mines and border crossings and directly negotiated with multinational firms. It blurred the lines between where rebellion and legitimate rulership began.
In Liberia and Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor benefitted enormously from the blood diamond trade back in the 90’s and used widespread violence on the populations but also held territory. Even though it was brutal, one consequence that fell out of that was that it imposed discipline on the population and they built basic services and then transitioned into a formally recognized power when he won the Liberian presidency. Later he of course resigned under enormous international pressure but it was a testament to how deeply his rule became entrenched.
Modern libertarianism has basically concluded the only people capable of living in a libertarian society are whites (some factions).
That is where up to the borders I assume comes from.
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The US does this too, no? We're on this slippery slope already.
A lot of countries do this. I got fingerprinted in Argentina. I can’t remember if Mexico does it.
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I know US entry lines are usually that long, but I'm not sure if they collect finger prints. Wouldn't surprise me, the EU is generally better than the US.
Looks like you are right. The US is truly terrible.
I think ostensibly they can (are supposed to?) but certainly in my hop across the border from Canada last month I didn't get flagged for anything.
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Shout out to the nice customs people who, the one and only time I went to the US, thought it would be fun to play ping-pong with me:
- [After waiting in line] you're at the wrong window, you have to go to that one over there
- [After waiting in another line] No, you have to go to that window over there
- [One more time..., and this may or may not have been the first window I came to...] Man..., you gotta speak up for yourself, you can't let people treat you like that....
I suppose I should be grateful for the free lesson.
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