The Jewish case for open borders

JVL Introduction

Jewish Currents has just reposted this article which it first carried in 2019.

It is highly topical.

Greg Afinogenov’s argument is not about how much worse things have become in recent years (they have)  but rather the need to face the central question: is there such a thing as a border that is both strong and just?

Afinogenov case is that centre-left immigration arguments—which on the surface appear compatible with the pro-migrant politics of progressive Jews—rest on the same foundation as those made by the right.

He points out:

“Rank-and-file progressives don’t usually think of the immigration policies they support—expanding refugee quotas, easing restrictions on some classes of immigrants, and ending family separation—as an endorsement of detention, deportation, and racialized terror. Yet these proposals are organized around their own set of structural inclusions and exclusions, and necessitate their own rigorous policing.”

It is only relatively recently that Jews have invested in forms of national loyalty. They forget that they came to the US as penniless economic migrants not “deserving” refugees with desirable skills.

Any national “solution to Jewish vulnerability” has lost its ability to protect. We need to recognise, once again, that:

“Only an authentic internationalism that understands what we have in common with the Polish migrant laborer, the Central American refugee, and the Syrian asylum seeker can counterpose a politics of solidarity to the politics of chauvinism.”

is there such a thing as a border that is both strong and just?

RK

This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Fri 5 Jul 2019. Read the original here.