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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?
How do you oppose immigration and borders?
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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