Pogrom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom 

Pogrom
Plundering the Judengasse, a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt, on 22 August 1614
Target	Predominantly Jews

A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or expulsion of an ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews. The Slavic-languages term originally entered the English language to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement). Similar attacks against Jews at other times and places also became retrospectively known as pogroms. The word is now also sometimes used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish ethnic or religious groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incidents, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.

Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev Pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906). After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amid the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918) and Kiev Pogroms (1919).

The most significant pogrom in Nazi Germany was the Kristallnacht of 1938. At least 91 Jews were killed, a further thirty thousand arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps, a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iaşi pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland. Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom and the 1947 Aleppo pogrom.

Etymology

First recorded in 1882, the Russian word pogrom (погро́м, pronounced [pɐˈgrom]) is derived from the common prefix po- (по-) and the verb gromit' (громи́ть, [grɐˈmʲitʲ]) meaning "to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently". The noun pogrom, which has a relatively short history, is used in English and many other languages as a loanword, possibly borrowed from Yiddish (where the word takes the form פאָגראָם). Its widespread circulation in today's world began with the antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire in 1881–1883.

The Hep-Hep riots in Frankfurt, 1819. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jewish man with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing spectacles, tails and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher," holds a Jewish man by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted. A contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz.

Historical background

The first recorded anti-Jewish riots took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE, followed by the more known riot of 66 CE. Other notable events took place in Europe during the Middle Ages. Jewish communities were targeted in the Black Death Jewish persecutions of 1348–1350, in Toulon in 1348, the Massacre of 1391 in Barcelona as well as in other Catalan cities, during the Erfurt massacre (1349), the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon and in Flanders, as well as the "Valentine's Day" Strasbourg pogrom of 1349. Some 510 Jewish communities were destroyed during this period, extending further to the Brussels massacre of 1370. On Holy Saturday of 1389, a pogrom began in Prague that led to the burning of the Jewish quarter, the killing of many Jews, and the suicide of many Jews trapped in the main synagogue; the number of dead was estimated at 400–500 men, women and children.

The brutal murders of Jews and Poles occurred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 in present-day Ukraine. Modern historians give estimates of the scale of the murders by Khmelnytsky's Cossacks ranging between 40,000 and 100,000 men, women and children, or perhaps many more.

The outbreak of violence against Jews (Hep-Hep riots) occurred at the beginning of the 19th century as a reaction to Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation.

Russian Empire

Victims of a pogrom in Kishinev, Bessarabia, 1903

The Russian Empire, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories in the Russian Partition that contained a large Jewish populations, during the military partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795. In conquered territories, a new political entity called the Pale of Settlement was formed in 1791 by Catherine the Great. Most Jews from the former Commonwealth were allowed to reside only within the Pale, including families expelled by royal decree from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other large Russian cities. The 1821 Odessa pogroms marked the beginning of the 19th century pogroms in Tsarist Russia; there were four more such pogroms in Odessa before the end of the century. Following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 by Narodnaya Volya – blamed on the Jews by the Russian government, anti-Jewish events turned into a wave of over 200 pogroms by their modern definition, which lasted for several years. Jewish self-governing Kehillah were abolished by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844.

The first in 20th-century Russia was the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in which 49 Jews were killed, hundreds wounded, 700 homes destroyed and 600 businesses pillaged. In the same year, pogroms took place in Gomel (Belarus), Smela, Feodosiya and Melitopol (Ukraine). Extreme savagery was typified by mutilations of the wounded. They were followed by the Zhitomir pogrom (with 29 killed), and the Kiev pogrom of October 1905 resulting in a massacre of approximately 100 Jews. In three years between 1903 and 1906, about 660 pogroms were recorded in Ukraine and Bessarabia; half a dozen more in Belorussia, carried out with the Russian government's complicity, but no anti-Jewish pogroms were recorded in Poland. At about that time, the Jewish Labor Bund began organizing armed self-defense units ready to shoot back, and the pogroms subsided for a number of years. According to professor Colin Tatz, between 1881 and 1920 there were 1,326 pogroms in Ukraine  which took the lives of 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews, leaving half a million homeless.

Eastern Europe after World War I

Map of pogroms in Ukraine between 1918 and 1920 per casualties

 

Large-scale pogroms, which began in the Russian Empire several decades earlier, intensified during the period of the Russian Civil War in the aftermath of World War I. Professor Zvi Gitelman (A Century of Ambivalence) estimated that only in 1918–1919 over 1,200 pogroms took place in Ukraine, thus amounting to the greatest slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe since 1648.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book Two Hundred Years Together provided additional statistics from research conducted by Nahum Gergel (1887–1931). Gergel counted 1,236 incidents of anti-Jewish violence and estimated that 887 mass pogroms occurred, the remainder being classified as "excesses" not assuming mass proportions. The Kiev pogroms of 1919, according to Gitelman, were the first of a subsequent wave of pogroms in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred across Ukraine. Of all the pogroms accounted for in Gergel's research:

• About 40 percent were perpetrated by the Ukrainian People's Republic forces led by Symon Petliura,
  • The Republic issued orders condemning pogroms, but lacked authority to intervene. After May 1919 the Directory lost its role as a credible governing body; almost 75 percent of pogroms occurred between May and September of that year. Thousands of Jews were killed only for being Jewish, without any political affiliations.

• 25 percent by the Ukrainian Green Army and various Ukrainian nationalist gangs,

• 17 percent by the White Army, especially the forces of Anton Denikin,

• 8.5 percent of Gergel's total was attributed to pogroms carried out by men of the Red Army (more specifically Semyon Budenny's First Cavalry, most of whose soldiers had previously served under Denikin).
  • These pogroms were not, however, sanctioned by the Bolshevik leadership; the high command "vigorously condemned these pogroms and disarmed the guilty regiments", and the pogroms would soon be condemned by Mikhail Kalinin in a speech made at a military parade in the Ukraine.

Gergel's overall figures, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the Mizrakh-Yidish Historiche Arkhiv which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in 1951 in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918–1921."

On 8 August 1919, during the Polish–Soviet War, Polish troops took over Minsk in Operation Minsk. They killed 31 Jews merely suspected of supporting the Bolshevist movement, beat and attacked many more, looted 377 Jewish-owned shops (aided by the local civilians) and ransacked many private homes. The "Morgenthau's report of October 1919 stated that there is no question that some of the Jewish leaders exaggerated these evils." According to Elissa Bemporad, the "violence endured by the Jewish population under the Poles encouraged popular support for the Red Army, as Jewish public opinion welcomed the establishment of the Belorussian SSR."

After the First World War, during the localized armed conflicts of independence, 72 Jews were killed and 443 injured in the 1918 Lwów pogrom. The following year, pogroms were reported by the New York Tribune in several cities in the newly established Second Polish Republic.

Rest of the world

A massacre of Armenians and Assyrians in the city of Adana, Ottoman Empire, April 1909

 

In the early 20th century, pogroms broke out elsewhere in the world as well. In 1904 in Ireland, the Limerick boycott caused several Jewish families to leave the town. During the 1911 Tredegar riot in Wales, Jewish homes and businesses were looted and burned over the period of a week, before the British Army was called in by then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who described the riot as a "pogrom". In 1919 there was a pogrom in Argentina, during the Tragic Week.

In the Mandatory Palestine under British administration, the Jews were targeted in the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1929 Safed pogrom. In 1934 there were pogroms against Jews in Turkey and Algeria.

Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe

Iași pogrom in Romania, June 1941

The first pogrom in Nazi Germany was the Kristallnacht, often called Pogromnacht, in which at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

During World War II, Nazi German death squads encouraged local populations in German-occupied Europe to commit pogroms against Jews. Brand new battalions of Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (trained by SD agents) were mobilized from among the German minorities.

A large number of pogroms occurred during the Holocaust at the hands of non-Germans. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iași pogrom in Romania, perpetrated by Ion Antonescu, in which as many as 13,266 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police and military officials.

On 1–2 June 1941, in the two-day Farhud pogrom in Iraq, perpetrated by Rashid Ali, Yunis al-Sabawi, and the al-Futuwa youth, "rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes". Also 300-400 non-Jewish rioters were killed in the attempt to quell the violence.

Jewish woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs during the Lviv pogroms, July 1941

In June–July 1941, encouraged by the Einsatzgruppen in the city of Lviv the Ukrainian People's Militia perpetrated two citywide pogroms in which around 6,000 Polish Jews were murdered, in retribution for alleged collaboration with the Soviet NKVD. In Lithuania, some local police led by Algirdas Klimaitis and Lithuanian partisans – consisting of LAF units reinforced by 3,600 deserters from the 29th Lithuanian Territorial Corps of the Red Army promulgated anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas along with occupying Nazis. On 25–26 June 1941, about 3,800 Jews were killed and synagogues and Jewish settlements burned.

During the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, ethnic Poles burned at least 340 Jews in a barn (Institute of National Remembrance) in the presence of Nazi German Ordnungspolizei. The role of the German Einsatzgruppe B remains the subject of debate.

After World War II

After the end of World War II, a series of violent antisemitic incidents occurred against returning Jews throughout Europe, particularly in the Soviet-occupied East where Nazi propagandists had extensively promoted the notion of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy (see Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946 and Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, 1944–1946). Anti-Jewish riots also took place in Britain in 1947.

In the Arab world, anti-Jewish rioters killed over 140 Jews in the 1945 Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania. Following the start of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, a number of anti-Jewish events occurred throughout the Arab world, some of which have been described as pogroms. In 1947, half of Aleppo's 10,000 Jews left the city in the wake of the Aleppo riots, while other anti-Jewish riots took place in British Aden and the French Moroccan cities of Oujda and Jerada.

In 2020, a series of riots in North East Delhi in which Hindu nationalist mobs attacked Muslims and vandalized Muslim properties and mosques was widely described as a pogrom. During the riots, 53 people were killed and more than 350 were injured.

Usage

An early reference to a "pogrom" in The Times, December 1903. Together with the New York Times and the Hearst press, they took the lead in highlighting the pogrom in Kishinev (now Chişinău, Moldova) and other cities in Russia. In May of the same year, The Times' Russian correspondent Dudley Disraeli Braham had been expelled from Russia.

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "the term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [and] the first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881", and the Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789 states that pogroms "were antisemitic disturbances that periodically occurred within the tsarist empire." However, the term is widely used to refer to many events which occurred prior to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. Historian of Russian Jewry John Klier writes in Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 that "By the twentieth century, the word 'pogrom' had become a generic term in English for all forms of collective violence directed against Jews." Abramson wrote that "in mainstream usage the word has come to imply an act of antisemitism", since while "Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon ... historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence".

The 1921 Tulsa race massacre, which destroyed the wealthiest black community in the United States, has been described as a pogrom.

 

The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities, and accordingly some scholars do not include antisemitism as the defining characteristic of pogroms. Reviewing its uses in scholarly literature, historian Werner Bergmann proposes that pogroms should be "defined as a unilateral, nongovernmental form of collective violence that is initiated by the majority population against a largely defenseless ethnic group, and he also states that pogroms occur when the majority expects the state to provide it with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority," but he adds that in Western usage, the word's "anti-Semitic overtones" have been retained. Historian David Engel supports this, writing that "there can be no logically or empirically compelling grounds for declaring that some particular episode does or does not merit the label [pogrom]," but states that the majority of the incidents "habitually" described as pogroms took place in societies that were significantly divided by ethnicity and/or religion where the violence was committed by members of the higher-ranking group against members of a stereotyped lower-ranking group with which they expressed some complaint, and the members of the higher-ranking group justified their acts of violence by claiming that the law of the land would not be used to stop them.

There is no universally accepted set of characteristics which define the term pogrom. Klier writes that "when applied indiscriminately to events in Eastern Europe, the term can be misleading, the more so when it implies that 'pogroms' were regular events in the region and that they always shared common features." Use of the term pogrom to refer to events in 1918–19 in Polish cities including Kielce pogrom, Pinsk massacre and Lwów pogrom, was specifically avoided in the 1919 Morgenthau Report and the word "excesses" was used instead because the authors argued that the use of the term "pogrom" required a situation to be antisemitic rather than political in nature, which meant that it was inapplicable to the conditions existing in a war zone, and media use of the term pogrom to refer to the 1991 Crown Heights riot caused public controversy. In 2008, two separate attacks in the West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were characterized as pogroms by then Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert.

Werner Bergmann suggests that all such incidents have a particularly unifying characteristic: "[b]y the collective attribution of a threat, the pogrom differs from other forms of violence, such as lynchings, which are directed at individual members of a minority group, while the imbalance of power in favor of the rioters distinguishes pogroms from other forms of riots (food riots, race riots or 'communal riots' between evenly matched groups); and again, the low level of organization separates them from vigilantism, terrorism, massacre and genocide".

Red Scare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare 

A "Red Scare" is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism or anarchism by a society or state. The name refers to the red flags that the communists use. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which are referred to by this name. The First Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War I, revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution and political radicalism. The Second Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War II, was preoccupied with the perception that national or foreign communists were infiltrating or subverting U.S. society and the federal government.

First Red Scare (1917–1920)

Political cartoon from 1919 depicting the Russian revolution's impact on the Paris peace talks

The first Red Scare began following the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and the intensely patriotic years of World War I, as anarchist and other left-wing social agitation aggravated national, social, and political tensions. Political scientist and former member of the Communist Party Murray B. Levin wrote that the Red Scare was "a nationwide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent—a revolution that would change Church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life". Newspapers exacerbated those political fears into anti-foreign sentiment because varieties of radical anarchism were becoming popular as possible solutions to poverty, often by recent European immigrants (cf. hyphenated-Americans). The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies, backed several labor strikes in 1916 and 1917. These wartime strikes covered a wide range of industries including steel working, shipbuilding, coal mining, copper mining, as well as other industries necessary to make wartime necessities. After World War I ended the number of strikes increased to record levels in 1919 with more than 3,600 separate strikes that spanned from steel workers, to railroad shop workers, to the Boston police department. The press portrayed them as "radical threats to American society" inspired by "left-wing, foreign agents provocateurs". Those on the side of the IWW claim that the press "misrepresented legitimate labor strikes" as "crimes against society", "conspiracies against the government", and "plots to establish communism". Opponents, on the other hand, saw these as an extension of the radical, anarchist foundations of the IWW, which contends that all workers should be united as a social class and that capitalism and the wage system should be abolished.

In 1917 as a response to World War 1 Congress passed the espionage act of 1917 to prevent any information relating to national defense to be used to harm the United States or aid her enemies. The Wilson administration used this act to make anything "urging treason" a "nonmailable matter" . Due to the espionage act and the then Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, 74 separate newspapers were not being mailed.

A "European Anarchist" attempts to destroy the Statue of Liberty in this 1919 political cartoon.

 

A bomb blast badly damaged the residence of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer in the spring of 1919.

 

In April 1919, authorities discovered a plot for mailing 36 bombs to prominent members of the U.S. political and economic establishment: J. P. Morgan Jr., John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and immigration officials. On June 2, 1919, in eight cities, eight bombs simultaneously exploded. One target was the Washington, D.C., house of U.S. Attorney General Palmer, where the explosion killed the bomber, who evidence indicated was an Italian-American radical from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Afterwards, Palmer ordered the U.S. Justice Department to launch the Palmer Raids (1919–21). He deported 249 Russian immigrants on the "Soviet Ark", helped create the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and used federal agents to jail more than 5,000 citizens and search homes without respecting their constitutional rights.

Yet, in 1918, before the bombings, President Woodrow Wilson had pressured the Congress to legislate the anti-anarchist Sedition Act of 1918 to protect wartime morale by deporting putatively undesirable political people. Law professor David D. Cole reports that President Wilson's "federal government consistently targeted alien radicals, deporting them ... for their speech or associations, making little effort to distinguish terrorists from ideological dissidents." President Wilson used the Sedition Act of 1918 in order to limit the exercise of free speech by criminalizing language deemed disloyal to the United States government.

Initially, the press praised the raids; The Washington Post said, "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over [the] infringement of liberty", and The New York Times said the injuries inflicted upon the arrested were "souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which had been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds and suspected-Reds". In the event, the Palmer Raids were criticized as unconstitutional by twelve publicly prominent lawyers, including (future Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter, who published A Report on the Illegal Practices of The United States Department of Justice, documenting systematic violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution via Palmer-authorized "illegal acts" and "wanton violence". Defensively, Palmer then warned that a government-deposing left-wing revolution would begin on 1 May 1920—May Day, the International Workers' Day. When it failed to happen, he was ridiculed and lost much credibility. Strengthening the legal criticism of Palmer was that fewer than 600 deportations were substantiated with evidence, out of the thousands of resident aliens arrested and deported. In July 1920, Palmer's once-promising Democratic Party bid for the U.S. presidency failed. Wall Street was bombed on September 2, 1920, near Federal Hall National Memorial and the JP Morgan Bank. Although both anarchists and communists were suspected as being responsible for the bombing, ultimately no individuals were indicted for the bombing in which 38 died and 141 were injured.

In 1919–20, several states enacted "criminal syndicalism" laws outlawing advocacy of violence in effecting and securing social change. The restrictions included free speech limitations. Passage of these laws, in turn, provoked aggressive police investigation of the accused persons, their jailing, and deportation for being suspected of being either communist or left-wing. Regardless of ideological gradation, the Red Scare did not distinguish between communism, anarchism, socialism, or social democracy. This aggressive crackdown on certain ideologies resulted in many supreme court cases over the debate to free speech. In the case of Schenk v. United States using the clear and present danger test the espionage act of 1917 and the sedition act of 1918 were deemed constitutional.

Second Red Scare (1947–57)

Senator Joseph McCarthy, namesake of McCarthyism

The second Red Scare occurred after World War II (1939–45), and it was popularly known as "McCarthyism" after its most famous supporter, Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthyism coincided with an increased and popular fear of communist espionage that was consequent of the increasing tension in the Cold War through the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the Berlin Blockade (1948–49), the end of the Chinese Civil War, the confessions of spying for the Soviet Union that were made by several high-ranking U.S. government officials, and the outbreak of the Korean War.

Internal causes of the anti-communist fear

The events of the late 1940s, the early 1950s — the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1953), the trial of Alger Hiss, the Iron Curtain (1945–1991) around Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test in 1949 (RDS-1) — surprised the American public, influencing popular opinion about U.S. National Security, which, in turn, was connected to the fear that the Soviet Union would hydrogen-bomb the United States, and fear of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA).

In Canada, the 1946 Kellock–Taschereau Commission investigated espionage after top secret documents concerning RDX, radar and other weapons were handed over to the Soviets by a domestic spy-ring.

At the House Un-American Activities Committee, former CPUSA members and NKVD spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, testified that Soviet spies and communist sympathizers had penetrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II. Other U.S. citizen spies confessed to their acts of espionage in situations where the statute of limitations on prosecuting them had run out. In 1949, anti–communist fear, and fear of American traitors, was aggravated by the Chinese Communists winning the Chinese Civil War against the Western-sponsored Kuomintang, their founding of the People's Republic of China, and later Chinese intervention in the Korean War (1950–53) against U.S. ally South Korea.

A few of the events during the Red Scare were also due to a power struggle between director of FBI J. Edgar Hoover and the Central Intelligence Agency. Hoover had instigated and aided some of the investigations of members of the CIA with "leftist" history, like Cord Meyer. This conflict could also be traced back to the conflict between Hoover and William J. Donovan, going back to the first Red Scare, but especially during World War II. Donovan ran the OSS (CIA's predecessor). They had differing opinions on the nature of the alliance with the Soviet Union, conflicts over jurisdiction, conflicts of personality, the OSS hiring of communists and criminals as agents, etc.

History

Early years

By the 1930s, communism had become an attractive economic ideology, particularly among labor leaders and intellectuals. By 1939, the CPUSA had about 50,000 members. In 1940, soon after World War II began in Europe, the U.S. Congress legislated the Alien Registration Act (aka the Smith Act, 18 USC § 2385) making it a crime to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association"—and required Federal registration of all foreign nationals. Although principally deployed against communists, the Smith Act was also used against right-wing political threats such as the German-American Bund, and the perceived racial disloyalty of the Japanese-American population, (cf. hyphenated-Americans).

After the non-aggression pact was signed between Hitler and Stalin in 1939 the communist party in the United States took an anti-war approach and were consequently treated with more hostility than they had been previously by the public because they were seen as to be working with the Nazis, however in 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the CPUSA's official position became pro-war, opposing labor strikes in the weapons industry and supporting the U.S. war effort against the Axis Powers. With the slogan "Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism", the chairman, Earl Browder, advertised the CPUSA's integration to the political mainstream. In contrast, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party opposed U.S. participation in the war and supported labor strikes, even in the war-effort industry. For this reason, James P. Cannon and other SWP leaders were convicted per the Smith Act.

Increasing Tension

In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the "Federal Employees Loyalty Program" establishing political-loyalty review boards who determined the "Americanism" of Federal Government employees, and requiring that all federal employees to take an oath of loyalty to the United States government. It then recommended termination of those who had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union, as well as some suspected of being "Un-American". This led to more than 2,700 dismissals and 12,000 resignations from the years 1947 to 1956. It also was the template for several state legislatures' loyalty acts, such as California's Levering Act. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was created during the Truman administration as a response to allegations by republicans of disloyalty in Truman's administration. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the committees of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R., Wisc.) conducted character investigations of "American communists" (actual and alleged), and their roles in (real and imaginary) espionage, propaganda, and subversion favoring the Soviet Union—in the process revealing the extraordinary breadth of the Soviet spy network in infiltrating the federal government; the process also launched the successful political careers of Richard Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as that of Joseph McCarthy. The HUAC held a large interest in investigating those in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. They interrogated actors, writers, and producers. The people who cooperated in the investigations got to continue working as they had been, but people who refused to cooperate were blacklisted.

Senator Joseph McCarthy stirred up further fear in the United States of communists infiltrating the country by saying that communist spies were omnipresent, and he was America's only salvation, using this fear to increase his own influence. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy addressed the senate, citing 81 separate cases, and made accusations against suspected communists. Although he provided little or no evidence, this prompted the Senate to call for a full investigation.

Senator McCarran introduced the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 that was passed by the U.S. Congress and which modified a great deal of law to restrict civil liberties in the name of security. President Truman declared the act a "mockery of the Bill of Rights" and a "long step toward totalitarianism" because it represented a government restriction on the freedom of opinion. He vetoed the act but his veto was overridden by Congress. Much of the bill eventually was repealed.

The Second Red Scare profoundly altered the temper of American society. Its later characterizations may be seen as contributory to works of feared communist espionage, such as the film My Son John (1952), about parent's suspicions their son is a spy. Abundant accounts in narrative forms contained themes of the infiltration, subversion, invasion, and destruction of American society by un–American thought. Even a baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds, temporarily renamed themselves the "Cincinnati Redlegs" to avoid the money-losing and career-ruining connotations inherent in being ball-playing "Reds" (communists).

In 1954 congress passed the Communist Control Act of 1954 which prevented members of the communist party in America from holding office in labor unions and other labor organizations.

Wind Down

In 1954, after accusing the army, including war heroes, Senator Joseph McCarthy lost credibility in the eyes of the American public. He was formally censured by his colleagues in Congress and the hearings led by McCarthy came to a close. After the Senate formally censured McCarthy, he lost a lot of his standing and political power, and some of the tension and excitement from a possible communist takeover died down.

From 1955 through 1959, the Supreme Court made several decisions which restricted the ways in which the government could enforce its anti-communist policies, some of which included limiting the federal loyalty program to only those who had access to sensitive information, allowing defendants to face their accusers, reducing the strength of congressional investigation committees, and weakening the Smith Act.

In the 1957 case Yates v. United States and the 1961 case Scales v. United States, the Supreme Court limited Congress's ability to circumvent the First Amendment, and in 1967 during the Supreme Court case United States v. Robel, the Supreme Court ruled that a ban on communists in the defense industry was unconstitutional.

In 1995, the American government revealed details of the Venona Project, which when combined with the opening of the USSR ComIntern archives, provided substantial validation of intelligence gathering, outright spying, and policy influencing, by Americans on behalf of the Soviet Union, from 1940 through 1980. Over 300 American communists, whether they knew it or not, including government officials and technicians that helped in developing the atom bomb, were found to have engaged in espionage.

Baby boom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom 

A baby boom is a period marked by a significant increase of birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds of defined national and cultural populations. People born during these periods are often called baby boomers; however, some experts distinguish between those born during such demographic baby booms and those who identify with the overlapping cultural generations. The cause of baby booms involves various fertility factors. The most well-known baby boom occurred in the mid-twentieth century, beginning in the late 1930s or early 1940s and ending in the 1960s. It was a change of trend that was largely unexpected, because in most countries it occurred in the midst of a period of improving economies and rising living standards.

The baby boom occurred in countries that experienced tremendous damage from the war and were going through dramatic economic hardships. These countries include Germany and Poland. In the United States the baby boom was attributed to the number of veterans returning home after the war ended in 1945. It also was due to the strong post-war American economy. The U.S. Congress passed the G.I. Bill of Rights to encourage home ownership and higher levels of education by charging very low or no interest at all on loans for veterans. Getting settled in with a more comfortable economic position allowed families to have a place to live, be educated, and start having babies. "Now thriving on the American Dream, life was simple, jobs were plentiful, and a record number of babies were born."

The U.S. birthrate exploded after World War II. From 1941 to 1961, more than 65 million children were born in the United States. At the height of this baby boom, a child was born every seven seconds on average. Factors that contributed to the baby boom consisted of young couples who started families after putting off marriage during the War, government encouragement of growth of families through the aid of GI benefits, and popular culture that celebrated pregnancy, parenthood, and large families.

The baby boom was the result of couples holding off on having children due to the Great Depression and World War II. Once the baby boom began, the average woman started getting married around the age of 20 instead of 22. Couples were eager to have babies after the war ended because they knew that the world would be a safer place to start a family.

Another leading cause that led to the baby boom was that people were able to afford moving out to the suburbs to raise a family instead of living in the city. Additionally, the cost of living in the suburbs was very low, especially for those returning from the military. This was also the time period where women were encouraged to take on their "roles", meaning that they were encouraged to stay home as a housewife along with being a mother while the husband worked.

The market became a seller's market. Many families were adapting to popular culture changes that included purchasing TVs, opening credit card accounts, and buying mouse ears to wear while watching The Mickey Mouse Club. Once economists realized how many children were being born, concern arose about enough resources being available, especially when those born in the baby boom time period started having kids of their own.

The issues of the baby boom time period are that it could hugely impact the population change and cause social and economic impacts. One economic impact of the baby boom is the concern that when baby boomers get older and retire, the dependency ratio will increase. The Census Bureau estimates that the dependency ratio in the United States will be 65 by 2020 and reach a record-breaking high of 75, the highest it has been since the 1960s and 1970s when those baby boomers were children. The economics of an area or country could benefit from the baby boom: It could increase the demand of housing, transportation, facilities and more for the increasing population. With an increase in population, the demand for food also increased. If a country cannot keep up with a rapidly increasing population, it could cause a food shortage and insufficient health care facilities. Without the sufficient supplies needed for the population, it could cause poor health that could lead to deaths in the population.

Africa

"According to the new UNICEF report, almost 2 billion babies will be born in Africa between 2015 and 2050 and the 2 main driving forces behind this surge in births and children are continued high fertility rates and rising numbers of women able to have children of their own."

The HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa has contributed locally to a population boom. Aid money used for contraceptives has been diverted over the past two decades into fighting HIV, which lead the number of babies born far outstripping the deaths from AIDS.

France

After being in a lull of low birth rates, France experienced a baby boom after 1945. The sense that the population was too small, especially in regard to the more powerful Germany, was a common theme in the early 20th century. Pronatalist policies were proposed in the 1930s and implemented in the 1940s.

In addition, there was steady immigration, especially from former French colonies in North Africa. The population of France grew from 40.5 million in 1946 to nearly 50 million in 1968 and just under 60 million by 1999. The farm population declined sharply, from 35% of the workforce in 1945 to under 5% by 2000. By 2004, France had the second highest birthrate in Europe, behind only Ireland.

Japan

The number and the rate of births in Japan

The First Baby Boom

In Japan, the first baby boom occurred between 1947 and 1949. The number of births in the past three years exceeds 2.5 million every year, bringing the total number of births to about 8 million. The 2.69 million births in 1949 are the largest ever in postwar statistics. The people born in this period is called the "baby boom generation" (団塊の世代, dankai no sedai, means "the generation of nodule").

The Second Baby Boom

It often refers to a period of more than 2 million births from 1971 to 1974, with the number of births in 1973 peaking at 2.09 million. However, unlike the first baby boom, this increase in the number of births is an increase in the number of births not accompanied by an increase in the total fertility rate. The people born during this period is often called "baby boom junior" (団塊ジュニア, dankai junia, means "the juniors of the generation of nodule").

The rate of births has been declining since the second baby boom.

Romania

• Decreţei: (1967–1989), A baby boom in Romania was caused by a ban on abortion and contraception, consequently, hospitals became overcrowded. From the Chicago Tribune on December 26, 1967, the article stated that a doctor had to beg a woman to have a home birth due to overcrowding at the hospital, "Please stay at home, we have no rooms". The column also stated how "pregnant women were having to share hospitals beds and sickly babies were being put into oxygen tents in groups". The baby boom in Romania caused problems that began affecting the health of its residents. Abortion before being banned in 1966 was the only form of birth control, leaving people without access to that form of family planning. Another set of policies from Romania's Leader at the time, Nicolae Ceausescu, contributed to the baby boom based upon ethno-nationalism. To encourage people to have more children from dominant ethnic groups, the Romanian Government created financial incentives to have children, specifically a tax for anyone over 25 without a child. This motivated a lot of people to have children at a younger age, and with ethnic Romanian partners. Which lead to an initial surge of babies being born but then began to decrease in the birth rate to 14.3 births per 1000 individuals by the 80's. In an effort to ramp up birth rates Ceausescu made new policies. Changing the legal age to marry to 15, social media campaigns and mandating monthly gynecological exams to all women of children bearing age. This caused a near 5x increase in spending for incentives, yet managed to decrease the birth rate by 40%.

United States

The term "baby boom" most often refers to the post–World War II baby boom (1941–1964) when the number of annual births exceeded 2 per 100 women (or approximately 1% of the total population size). There are an estimated 78.3 million Americans who were born during this period. The term is a general demographic and is also applicable to other similar population expansions.

United States birth rate (births per 1000 population per year). The United States Census Bureau defines the demographic birth boom as between 1946 and 1964 (red).

 

Recent baby boom periods include the following:

• Post–World War I baby boom: (1918–1929)
• Mid-twentieth century baby boom, commonly called post-World War II baby boom: Years of duration vary, depending on the source.
• Echo Boomers (Millennials): (researchers and commentators use birth years typically ranging from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s) are mostly the children of baby boomers and a few members of the Silent Generation and Gen X.

Effects on dependency caused by the Baby boom (1941–1964)

During the baby boom the U.S. experienced after World War II, the dramatic rise in births led to a higher dependency ratio, which means that there is a large portion of the population under the age of 15 and over the age of 65 that relies on those in the work force (ages 15–64). The Cohort of this baby boom is expected to once again increase the dependency ratio once the majority is over the age of 65, as these people will no longer be part of the work force. Some of the 75 million baby boomers began to reach retirement age in 2011. In the year 2000, only 12.4% of the population was 65 or over and is predicted to rise to 18% by 2020, largely due to the baby boom. Currently the Government supports social security to the population over 65, which may lead the states increasing their budget to fund programs like Medicaid.

Israel

Israel has been in a constant baby boom since independence, with the highest fertility rate in the OECD at 3.1 children per woman. In addition to having the highest fertility rate among developed nations, it is the only developed country to have never had a sub-replacement fertility rate. Israel's baby boom began in 1947, a year before independence, when the fertility rate among the Yishuv, or Jewish population of what was then Mandatory Palestine, began to rise dramatically as a result of the aftereffects of the Holocaust and a expectations of Jewish independence.

Open border

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_border 

Border between Spain and Portugal, members of the Schengen Agreement. Their border is marked with a simple sign and no passport checks or customs controls.

An open border is a border that enables free movement of people (and often of goods) between jurisdictions with few or no restrictions on movement, that is lacking substantive border control. A border may be an open border due to intentional legislation allowing free movement of people across the border (de jure), or a border may be an open border due to a lack of legal controls, a lack of adequate enforcement or adequate supervision of the border (de facto). An example of the former is the Schengen Agreement between most members of the European Economic Area (EFTA and the EU). An example of the latter has been the border between Bangladesh and India, which is becoming controlled. The term "open borders" applies only to the flow of people, not the flow of goods and services, and only to borders between political jurisdictions, not to mere boundaries of privately owned property.

Open borders are the norm for borders between subdivisions within the boundaries of sovereign states, though some countries do have controlled borders within the boundaries of the state (for example in the People's Republic of China between the mainland and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau). Open borders are also usual between member states of federations (such as the United States of America), though again in some instances movement between member states may be controlled via an internal passport system. Federations and confederations typically maintain external border controls through a collective border control system, though they sometimes have open borders with other non-member states (particularly enclaves, such as Switzerland and the European Union) through special international agreements.

Pervasive international border control is a relatively recent phenomenon in world history. In the past, many states had open international borders either in practice or due to a lack of any legal restriction. Many authors, such as John Maynard Keynes, have identified the early 20th century and particularly World War I as the point when such controls became common.

There have been sporadic attempts to promote global open borders as a viable policy option. Open borders quickly became popular after 1889. The International Emigration Conference held in Rome in May 1924 stated that anybody has the right to immigrate to a different country if they wanted to. Before the 1880s, migration to the United States was not fully controlled. During World War I it became easier for people to migrate from their country of origin to foreign countries. After World War II, countries were looking for many new workers, and Germany issued a guest work program to attract more people to work. Later, in the 1970s to 1980s strict borders were reinstated in industrialized countries. Currently, immigration is more restricted and harder for low-skilled and low-income people.

Types of borders

There are multiple types of national borders in use around the world. Some of these are:

A conditionally open border is a border that allows movement of people across the border that meet a special set of conditions. This special set of conditions which limits the application of border controls that would normally otherwise apply could be defined by an international agreement or international law, or the special conditions could be defined by a regulation or law of the jurisdiction that the people are claiming the right to enter. Conditionally open borders generally requires a claim to be submitted from the people who are proposing to enter the new jurisdiction stating why they meet the special conditions which allow entry into the new jurisdiction. The new jurisdiction may detain the people until their claim is approved for entry into the new jurisdiction, or they may release them into the new jurisdiction while their claim is being processed. Whenever a conditionally open border is allowed, a considerable effort is often required to ensure that border controls do not break down to such an extent that it becomes an open border situation. An example of a conditionally open border is a border of any country which allows movement of asylum seekers due to application of either the 1951 Refugee Convention or international law which allows people to cross a border to escape a situation where their lives are directly threatened or in significant danger. Another example is the border between Ireland and the United Kingdom. The two countries allow unrestricted movement of their own citizens, but in order to enjoy such movement across the Irish Sea, those same citizens may be required to provide evidence at seaports and airports that they are UK or Irish nationals. These checks are by the police, not immigration officers. (As of October 2018, there are no such controls on the highly porous land border between them).

A controlled border is a border that allows movement of people between different jurisdictions but places restrictions and sometimes significant restrictions on this movement. This type of border may require a person crossing this border to obtain a visa or in some cases may allow a short period of visa free travel in the new jurisdiction. A controlled border always has some method of documenting and recording people movements across the border for later tracking and checking compliance with any conditions associated with the visa or any other border crossing conditions. A controlled border places limitations on what a person crossing the border can do in the new jurisdiction, this is usually manifested in limitations on employment and also it limits the length of time the person can legally remain in the new jurisdiction. A controlled border often requires some type of barrier, such as a river, ocean or fence to ensure that the border controls are not bypassed so that any people wishing to cross the border are directed to authorized border crossing points where any border crossing conditions can be properly monitored. Given the large scale movement of people today for work, holidays, study and other reasons a controlled border also requires internal checks and internal enforcement within the jurisdiction to ensure that any people who have entered the jurisdiction are in fact complying with any border crossing conditions and that they are not overstaying to reside illegally or as an undocumented resident. Most international borders are by legislative intent of the controlled border type. However, where there is a lack of adequate internal enforcement or where the borders are land borders, the border is often controlled only on part of the border, while other parts of the border may remain open to such an extent that it may be considered an open border due to lack of supervision and enforcement.

A closed border is a border that prevents movement of people between different jurisdictions with limited or no exceptions associated with this movement. These borders normally have fences or walls in which any gates or border crossings are closed and if these border gates are opened they generally only allow movement of people in exceptional circumstances. Perhaps the most famous example of an extant closed border is the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. The Berlin Wall could also have been called a closed border.

Borders can be open or and closed based on: entry status, entry duration, entry qualifications, entrant rights and obligations, and entry quotas. Entry status refers to the occupation of someone when and if they are allowed to cross a border, whether they are a student, worker, soldier, immigrant. One's status effects the chances of being permitted to cross a border. “Most states control border crossing by limiting the duration of any visit.” Entry qualifications are restrictions based on factors such as health, age, income, religion, race. “Many countries, including Canada and Singapore, will admit wealthy immigrants who can demonstrate an intention and capacity to invest in the country.” Entrants rights and obligations are the restrictions that will be placed on those who have already been permitted to cross a border: you must follow certain rules and regulations given by the government to be allowed to stay in that country. A government may allow you to take up residency but may not allow you to work, and those who are allowed to work may not be able to find work due to the restrictions and forms of employment allowed. Entry quotas are restrictions based on the number of immigrants allowed across a border within a certain frame of time: if you meet all of the qualifications to cross a border, but the country you want to enter has already met its quota for allowing immigrants inside, you may still not be allowed to enter.

As seen from the examples below, there are differing degrees of "openness" of a border, the nature of which depends on whether or not there are physical passport controls in place (and enforced). Passport control by police or immigration officers may be in place on some kinds of border but citizens of the destination territory or participating territories are permitted to cross using at most an identity card without any further approval, restrictions or conditions. Examples of the most open type of border include the Schengen zone or the [UK/Ireland] Common Travel Area, where transit across the inter-state frontiers are entirely uncontrolled, and third-country illegal immigration is controlled by internal policing as with any other kind of clandestine entry. Examples of near-open borders include the border between the Common Travel Area (on the one hand) and the Schengen Zone (on the other) which, despite having full passport control, is an internal EU border that EU citizens can pass freely without any conditions, other than an identity card. Non-EU nationals are subject to full passport and visa control measures at airports and some seaports. A hybrid of these two possibilities is the border between Russia and Belarus in the Union State which lacks any physical control but formally foreigners are not permitted to use an uncontrolled crossing.

Arguments for and against

Arguments for open borders

Open borders allow free migration between nations. Several arguments for open borders and against controlled borders are as follows:

1. Open border advocates argue that free migration is the most effective way to reduce world poverty. Migrants from developing countries can earn higher wages after moving to a more developed country, usually lifting them from 'developing world poverty' to 'developed world poverty'. They also send remittances to relatives in their home country, the flow of remittances being estimated to be around three times the global foreign aid spending reported by the OECD.
2. A literature summary by economist Michael Clemens leads to an estimate that open borders would result in an increase of 67-147% in GWP (gross world product), with a median estimate of a doubling of world GDP. One estimate placed the economic benefits at 78 trillion.
3. From a human rights perspective, free migration may be seen to complement Article 13 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
4. Professor Joseph Carens argues that the social inequality imposed by closed borders is so great it outweighs any challenges to their political or economic feasibility. He argues we should open borders based on the same reasons we reject the feudal system: both are legal systems which afford privilege based on the luck of birthright and maintain inequality by limiting the lower socioeconomic status groups' freedom to move.
5. American bioethicist Jacob M. Appel has argued that "treating human beings differently, simply because they were born on the opposite side of a national boundary," is inherently unethical. According to Appel, such "birthrights" are only defensible if they serve "useful and meaningful social purposes" (such as inheritance rights, which encourage mothers and fathers to work and save for their children), but the "birthright of nationality" does not do so. Economist and writer Philippe Legrain argues that the countries of the world need migration to help global trade and reduce the occurrence of regional wars.
6. Open borders cannot be dismissed as a utopian idea, argues Harald Bauder, because they do not propose an alternative way to organize human society but rather are a critique of closed or controlled borders. This critique, however, invites the search for practical as well as radical solutions to the problematic consequences of contemporary migration practices, including the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, the US–Mexico border, and elsewhere.
7. Restrictions on mobility can only be justified if it can be shown that those restrictions prevent significant harm. Since research indicates that open borders will be better for both the natives and the migrants, and at the very least have not been shown to cause major harm, those restrictions are unjustified. The remote control methods used to keep hopeful immigrants out of wealthy nations (such as visa programs, flood lights at borders, or barbed wire fencing for example) slow down the avenues of legal migration and make other avenues of seeking asylum a more perilous endeavor. 
8. Immigrants are entrepreneurial with high labor force participation and have specialized skills giving them the opportunity to enter underserved markets and create businesses, increasing the number of jobs available in America. Author Thomas E. Lehman, has written articles on the controversial topic of opening Americas borders. In his article “The Benefits of Open Immigration” Lehman states that it is often thought that the policy of open immigration would lead to immigrants willing to work for less pay.
9. Bryan Caplan has argued that in the U.S., which contains policies that favor high-skilled immigration, the overall long-run fiscal effect of immigrants is positive $58,000 for existing immigrants and positive $259,000 for new immigrants; thus, increasing immigration with the current ratio of high-and low-skilled workers could benefit social security programs and medicare. He states that a truly open borders policy would result in an altered ratio of low- and high-skilled workers where the productivity effect of immigration mitigates the negative fiscal impact of older low-skilled migrants. In addition to that, native-born populations also have a larger fiscal burden than comparable immigrants.
10. Open borders would help save the lives of people who would otherwise have to wait for countries to decide the fate of refugees. As stated by author Sasha Polakow-Suransky, countries have enough to care for their citizens and others. Caplan has also shared that not doing anything and being a bystander is just as harmful to refugees. It is estimated that open borders would allow people to be safe and create a better world economy at the same time.
11. Refugees who are in danger flee to Western countries which have provided safety and comfort. David Miliband argues that having open borders will rescue the lives of migrants who are constantly struggling to survive in inhabitable areas. According to him, accepting migrants into Western countries shows the acceptance for those in need and expresses that support and guidance is essential to saving the lives of innocent people.

Arguments against open borders

Controlled borders restrict migration by non-citizens. Several arguments for controlled borders and against open borders are as follows:

1. That controlled borders encourage responsible policies in relation to population and birth rates for countries by preventing high population and high birth rate countries from disgorging their people onto other low population and low birth rate countries.
2. Large-scale immigration from poorer countries into richer countries can create a "brain drain" in the source country, where educated professionals leave their home country to live elsewhere, depriving their home countries of an educated workforce. For example, in 2010 there were more Ethiopian doctors living in Chicago than there were in Ethiopia itself.
3. The realism of open borders has been called into question, given that it could potentially require a world government.
4. In the United States, it has been argued that it may cause increased backlash from the white population who carry 75 percent (but decreasing) of the political vote. This backlash includes preventing immigrants access to basic forms of governmental or community support as well as the creation of policies that specifically criminalize immigrants. This trend is based on studies demonstrating the more a political party shows positivity towards immigration, the more the white vote shifts towards conservative republicans who support more restrictive immigration policies.
5. The influx of low-skill immigrant labor that open borders would bring into higher-skilled economies like the United States is feared to cause the standard for the average worker to decrease. Progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders reject open borders as a loss for the American worker. Additionally, economic models that resemble the Nordic System operate in a way that rewards high-skilled work and seeks to avoid bolstering domestic and low-skill work that would make employment more accessible to refugees.
6. It has been argued that an open border could cause a great replacement of traditional values and ideals of the receiving country, claiming that multiculturalism is not possible in certain countries. For example, the President of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, says that France should not cater to Muslim ways of life because they go against French liberal ideals. Others, such as Reihan Salam, have argued that low-skilled immigrants in the U.S, have formed a racialized class distinct from Americans, and that the implementation of open borders will create and deepen a cultural and economic clash in America due to differing ideals and values. Fear of losing traditional values has also been a contributing factor to the rise of the populist parties, which are greatly concerned with the social, cultural, and ethnic conservation of the majority, but the need to keep a certain ethnicity as the majority has spawned anti-immigrant beliefs within particular parties; thus, it has been observed that some populist party’s views depict immigration as a negative, even as widespread immigration causes the composition of the population to change, due to the ethnic differences that immigrants bring.

Political debate

The modern debate around open borders is not clearly delineated into the traditional left-right political spectrum and party identification can be quite mobile based on the issue of immigration, but in the United States, visible stances and differences between parties based solely on immigration and open borders became apparent after the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965. Some groups traditionally seen as right-wing, like Libertarians, support unrestricted immigration, while nativists like Donald Trump oppose them. Similarly, some figures on the left wing, like Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders reject open border policies, while others support open borders (as shown by the slogan "no human is illegal"). In addition, the population of the democratic party has shifted from a massive white majority to almost an even split with non-white citizens since 1980, which has led some members of the democratic party to shift more towards the political right, and until then both political parties had been more or less aligned regarding immigration. The dividing line accords more closely with the libertarian-authoritarian political spectrum. 

It has been proposed that borders between the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries be opened. If goods and services and corporations can cross international boundaries without restraint, it is argued, then it does not make sense to restrain on the flow of people who work to make those goods and services. Some estimate that open borders where people are free to move and find work could result in 78 trillion dollars in economic gains.

Those in favor of a global migration policy advocate the adoption of a migratory regulatory system and new criteria to better guaranteed all rights (civil, social and political) for all immigrants. It is necessary to expand migration policy to create better management of global migratory system. Some propose a new meaning and understanding of global citizenship to establish a border global migration system. Migration is under the control and management of local governments and officials, but it is both a domestic political issue, and a global issue which needs joint efforts from different countries.

Variables informing the political debate

Attitudes toward immigrants

The Pew Research Center has indicated that there are generally more people who perceive immigrants’ effect on their country because of their work and talents as an advantage rather than a disadvantage across 18 countries (including the United States and several European countries with the largest migrant populations) containing a combined 51% of the world’s migrant population; there are generally more people in favor of deporting immigrants living in their country illegally across the same parameters. While there are more people on the ideological left who have a positive view of immigrants and more people on the ideological right who are in favor of deporting illegal immigrants, there is no necessary correspondence with what most people on each end of the political spectrum are inclined to support.

The media is a major influencing factor for attitudes towards immigrants. It is documented the more the media portrays immigration negatively, the less white Americans will vote in favor of open borders and the more likely they will continue believing in the immigrant threat narrative. This narrative claims the more immigrants there are, the bigger the threat there is to the native culture, language, homes, jobs, and even political offices. An analysis of three decades’ worth of articles in the New York Times found their coverage increased the negative lens of immigration far more than the positive by focusing their articles mostly on negative aspects and images of immigration. It is significant to note studies show white Americans largely do not distinguish between an American-born Latinx and an immigrant Latinx when thinking about immigration issues, voting, and choosing partisan ties. Native-born individuals report slightly more positive views when asked about impacts an immigrant may have on their country, especially when considering their contribution to cultural life. However, when it comes to the labour market, half of the native-born population hold no particular view when it comes to immigrants taking or creating jobs.

It should also be noted that attitudes towards immigrants shift over time, much like any political issue. Using California as a case study, Manuel Pastor found that the views of immigration in the state have been fluid at best. While many view California as a liberal haven that is accepting and tolerant of immigrants today, much of the state’s history has had less favorable views towards immigration. Pastor suggests there is a link between California's improved domestic economic stability over the past two decades and it's attitudes towards immigrants. He argues California has created an environment more accepting of diversity by reducing the economic disparity between cities and the predominantly white suburbs, along with reforming some of the racist economic and educational policies created in the late seventies and early eighties (such as Proposition 13). He suggests this shift towards an ethos which sees liberal social reform and economic prosperity as compatible has driven the State’s movement towards less punitive immigration reform. This view acknowledges the economic and social value of a well-integrated immigrant communities. Pastor makes the point that even in societies where immigration is viewed negatively, values are able to shift, and if the ultra-liberal thriving economic state of California can radically change the perception it has on immigration, then it is quite possible for other states or nations to shift their perceptions. 

Integration

Integration has been defined as the process of immigrant and native born populations changing to resemble one another as a result of the influx of people into a particular territory. There is a split on the degree to which individuals living in countries with the 18 largest migrant populations would want immigrants to integrate and the effects of integration on both immigrant and non-immigrant populations are varied. In the United States, for example, integration is successful in terms of education, employment and earnings, occupations, poverty, language, health, crime, and family patterns; however, successful integration does not necessarily entail improvement on well-being. Integration can even lead to further backlash against immigration by non-white populations who have assimilated successfully. It has been found that more than half of Hispanics support increased security among the border in order to reduce illegal crossings and that countries with a high share of immigrants may be more susceptible to favor right-wing policies such as strict immigration; thus, it has been suggested that successful integration does not guarantee continued patterns for future generations.

Examples of open borders

Svalbard

Uniquely, the Norwegian special territory of Svalbard is an entirely visa-free zone. No person requires a visa or residence permit and anyone may live and work in Svalbard indefinitely, regardless of citizenship. The Svalbard Treaty grants treaty nationals equal right of abode as Norwegian nationals. So far, non-treaty nationals have been admitted visa-free as well. "Regulations concerning rejection and expulsion from Svalbard" are in force on a non-discriminatory basis. Grounds for exclusion include lack of means of support, and violation of laws or regulations. Same-day visa-free transit at Oslo Airport is possible when travelling on non-stop flights to Svalbard.

Examples of controlled borders

• The border between the United States and Mexico is controlled. This border is the most frequently crossed controlled international boundary in the world, with approximately 350 million legal crossings being made annually.
• India and Bangladesh share a border—which India is in the process of turning into a controlled border by the completion of a full border fence between the two countries to control the flow of people and prevent illegal migration.
• Entry into any of the U.S. minor outlying Islands requires permission from United States Armed Forces, and entry to the territory of American Samoa for US citizens requires a return ticket.

Examples of closed borders

The information in this section may not be complete or up to date. Prospective travellers should check with government sources for the most current information.

• North Korea and South Korea share a militarized border, known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has been in operation since the suspension of the Korean War in July 1953 (when the Korean Armistice Agreement established the DMZ near 38° N). The strip of land along the border has many landmines and movement detection equipment. There are two Border Crossings (one road, one rail) between North and South Korea but are mostly closed though they are opened from time to time with strict restrictions.
• The Armenia–Azerbaijan border is completely closed, due to the state of war between the two countries over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
  
• Turkey closed its border with Armenia in April 1993, out of solidarity for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and is still in effect as of 2019. Turkey has very close relations with Azerbaijan and no formal relations with Armenia.
• India and Pakistan share a border that is almost closed due to the hostilities between these two countries. The only (controlled) border crossing is at Wagah.
• The border between Ukraine and Moldova at Transnistria is closed to male Russian passport holders.
• The land border between Algeria and Morocco has been completely closed since 1994 although there are airline services between the two countries.
• The Central African Republic's state of civil war has caused Chad to close all land borders between the two countries.
• The Colombia–Venezuela border is partially closed by the government of Venezuela.
• The Israel-Lebanon border is closed due to the hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.
• The Israel-Syria border is closed due to the hostilities between Israel and Syria, but there have been some legal crossings.
• The Israeli-Egyptian border is almost completely closed due to hostilities between the two countries, though one controlled border crossing exists at Taba. This is the only road connecting the African road system to the road systems of Europe and Asia.
• The Belarus–Russia land border is totally closed for foreigners despite being totally open for their own citizens.
• There are no road crossings going into Gaza Strip, from Israel or Egypt due to hostilities, although most Arab countries still have flights to Gaza Strip.
• In June 2017, Saudi Arabia closed its border with fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member Qatar, due to the 2017–18 Qatar diplomatic crisis.