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Blog Prompt 7: What are the strengths of an argument applying the utilitarian calculation to open borders? Is it a good argument? How could it be better? What are its main objections?

If you come from a wealthy country with open borders, unless you seriously believe you can kill, imprison or occupy all your enemies, you have to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies – with more partners and fewer terrorists.

William j. clinton

The utilitarian case has two strong arguments. They would be, “it gives a much better quantitive sense of the importance of the open border issue.” ” It is the aspect of the moral case that most directly connects empirical claims about the effects of migration with moral assertions about migration policy. It is most grounded in real-world consequences and most sensitive to changes in the beliefs about the nature of these consequences.” These are good arguments because it touches on the importance of open border issues and the effects on migration. These arguments could be better if they weren’t easy to object. The problem with some of these arguments is they are heavily opinionated and almost biased. For example one argument from the text was that open border policies could seriously “endanger or harm” the global, social, or political order. This has been proven to be false and studies have shown “low-skilled” immigrants don’t have major effect on the rest of the economy. These arguments could be better if the used more fact. Some of the main objections would be utilitarian arguments are reflected to a citizens or territorialist arguments, and open borders is insufficiently universalist.