Should we move to an open borders system?

[JonesTown]

Spain announced this week that it will allow half a million immigrants who arrived illegally to stay in the country. In the US, many on the left are calling for all immigration enforcement and deportations to be halted.

Here, the Greens support a world without borders and oppose action to prevent small boat crossings to the U.K.

Should we move to an open borders system where anyone who wants to is allowed to come to the U.K. and stay permanently?

It's not true to say the UK benefits system is one of the most generous in Europe. According to this, it is below average:

fullfact.org/immigration/uks-welfare-system-most-generous-europe/

“In the US, many on the left are calling for all immigration enforcement and deportations to be halted.”
In the US people are protesting the brutality of ICE and deportation to out of country detention centers.
They are not interested in free flow open boarders

We know nothing of the background of strangers who were born here either.

Sounds like an excellent way for criminals to move between countries undetected.

Yes, but this is Mumsnet so you will overwhelmingly be told 'no'.

We already have it

@BreakingBroken

There was an anti-ICE protest in my city this week which was campaigning for an end to all deportations.

You have to ask?

Yes, I think many of the people protesting against deportations and enforcement actually DO want open borders. But that's very much against what most ordinary people want.

I don't see how that could possibly work? It 'should' be how the world is, of course, but it's not. When the Titanic sank about 1/3 of the passengers survived because the evacuations, initially at least were orderly perhaps because third class passengers were largely kept locked below deck, according to some sources and the lifeboats weren't filled to capacity. I can't help but think if there'd been a free-for-all the vast majority of lifeboats would have been swamped and nearly everyone would have died.

It's horrible, and feels unethical to say 'We Can't Save You All', but isn't it true we'll just all sink together if we try?

I’m sort of glad you asked… except, I’m staggered that you need to?!
I have 2 adult children living back at home since covid, there’s no space for british (since beginning of records) citizens how can there be any space for any more?

No.

Why not? It's already happening anyway! No one who comes in illegally is deported, free to do whatever to whomever. See the Sudanese asylum seeker who murdered a young mother in today's press: no mention of deportation yet weren't we 'promised ' this not so long ago? May as well just get on with it and officially throw open the border, and resign ourselves to the inevitable. It would at least stop a lot of fat cat human rights lawyers getting even richer.

No

It went up nearly a million towards the tories last stint in power. All with visas, all controlled. (not folk on a boat). I'd argue we pretty much did have an open borders policy.

No. We certainly don't.

We don't want to add more either though.

We will be paying for him to be in prison for the next 29 years! What a waste of that woman’s life and tax payers money.

OP is that come here AND pay tax in order to get benefits/NHS treatment etc? Or do you just rock up and fill your boots. Are we limiting the amount of people that come here to fill their boots? Or is it a world wide free for all at the expense of the (reducing) number of UK taxpayers?

Which TBF is the current system it would appear.

I would prefer to take in more women and young children than the hoards of grown men I see, especially from places like Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran.

We already have an open borders system. That's why Rhiannon Whyte is dead and her 6 year old son will grow up without his mother.

Milton Friedman’s famous comment - you can’t have open borders and a welfare state, it’s not sustainable, you can have one or the other.

Absolutely not

Absolutely not

RIP Spain

No, we don’t have enough water, sewage capacity, energy production etc and we’re concreting over the Green Belt, including arable land. Immigrants will age eventually, needing care, and it becomes a pyramid scheme.

I am ethnically Indian. There is no reason why we should allow an unlimited number of migrants into the UK. Particularly if they are unscreened for criminality or radicalism. Migration is a positive for any country- but be quite fussy about who you let in.