A couple of months ago, I attended an anti-immigration rally to counterprotest. Someone at the rally, when they saw my \u201cNo borders\u201d sign, asked me if I locked my house, telling me it\u2019s the same thing as immigration restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s why this a false equivalence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I lock my doors to protect my possessions. I don\u2019t want someone stealing my computer, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are Canada\u2019s possessions? Government buildings? No one\u2019s going to steal those. No matter how open the border is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if you consider natural resources as belonging to the Canadian government (and I don\u2019t), no one is really going to steal them. No one will steal our boreal forests or drain Great Slave Lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And speaking of keeping out crime, increasing border restrictions doesn\u2019t prevent crime. The vast majority of crime committed in Canada is by people born in Canada; immigrants are seriously underrepresented in Canadian prisons. In addition, as Canada\u2019s immigration rate has been rising over the last few decades, the crime rate has been dropping. In fact, the longer immigrants live in Canada, the lower the crime rate becomes where they live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just ridiculous to equate immigration and crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n