So a faithful reader, Peter Hurley, referred me to an article he’s written on “Opening the Canada-US Border,” which, as much as I tend towards immigration restrictionism, I actually like quite a lot. It’s basically a plan for a Schengen Agreement between us and our northern neighbor, or, as we from the Detroit like to say, “practically the 51st state already anyway,” and “just like the U.S. except nicer.”
And the borderlessness of the European Union (combined with the common currency) is absolutely amazing — to drive from Germany, through Austria, and into Italy, without a single stop. See the picture in this old blog post, with my boys on either side of the Germany/Austria border. Besides which, in addition to removing border control of any kind, the EU members have, for the most part, the ability to work anywhere in the European Union that they can find an employer to hire them. (“For the most part” means that when some of the poorer countries joined, such as Romania, there was a phase in, in which for a limited number of years, certain countries, such as Germany, can choose not to implement this.) There was an initial concern in Germany that Polish plumbers would overwhelm the country; a while back I read an article that these fears were unfounded, but a google search pulled up this Reuters article on German fears that Romanians and Bulgarians are overwhelming the welfare system. In any event, with the low unemployment rate and the low birth rate (as well a high degree of “professionalism” that means that they expect their workers to be skilled and have formal training), Germany can likely manage the inflow.
But there are two requirements for a Schengen Agreement-like system to work with Canada: the first, that our external borders are secure, and, the second, that we have effective systems in place against ID fraud and off-the-books workers. In Europe, it’s my understanding that with the opening of internal borders, a lot more attention is paid to the border crossing into Schengen Agreement-countries from outside the area. With respect to Canada, of course, there aren’t that many illegal border-crossers, but I don’t know whether they’re any better at eliminating visa-overstays than we are. And my quick check on German Schwartzarbeit (by looking in the discussion forum of www.toytowngermany.com) didn’t yield any results on to what degree that’s an issue there.
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