Are “Open Borders” Really So Bad?

Often, advocacy groups use extreme and false descriptions of their adversaries positions to frighten people. An example of this is the NRA telling people that supporters of gun-control want to “take all of your guns”. That’s not true. There is no mainstream proposal to do anything like that.

We may want to take guns away from violent felons who post about eating human hearts on Facebook along with pictures of their nachos (I assume the nachos are the appetizer and the hearts are the main course, but I’m open to persuasion on that). But nobody wants to take BB guns away from little old ladies who use them to shoot local birds and threaten their grandchildren, and nobody wants to stop Mitt Romney from hunting “varmints”. That’s just something they say to scare you out of supporting ANY gun restrictions.

Another issue on which the exaggerate-to-frighten technique is used is immigration. When I tune into Fox News for my nightly dose of “The Brown People are Coming!!!”, I am told by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and and the perpetually squinting Elizabeth McDonald, that the “left” wants “open borders”.

Again, this is an effort to terrify the bejesus out of you, and most people, being very attached to their bejesuses, respond as intended. The phrase “open borders” is supposed to conjure images of hordes of non-English-speaking…