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A Nation is Not a Private Home |
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Written by Simon
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Monday, 14 January 2008 |
Often when I say my Right to Migrate tag line: “Responsible people should have the right to live where they choose.” The response is “So you’re ok with people moving into your house uninvited?” This response is based on the assumption that a country is analogous to a home. It assumes that a country is the private property of those who got there first and their descendants. That because it is their "property' they have the right to decide who can move there in the future.
But there is another model of property ownership that is a better analogy to a country than a private home.
I would like to propose that a nation is not like a private home. A
nation is like a condominium community. Like a condominium complex a
country is a self-managing cooperative that has to obey the basic rules
of human decency. A condominium community is subject to local, state
and national laws. These laws do not let the owners choose their
tenants or buyers based on ethnicity, religion or birthplace.
Individual owners and the community as a group are however allowed to
select new members based on how likely the tenants or buyers are to pay
the rent and treat the property with respect. The same should be true
for countries. There are international laws and standards that apply
to the behavior of nations. In recent decades we have seen that
nations cannot be racist with impunity (South Africa) cannot allow
slavery without sanction (Yemen) and cannot keep people from leaving
without being seen as repressive (East Germany).
A successful community whether it is condominiums or a nation will work
hard to grow by attracting responsible people. It will have laws and
policies that judge people based on their character not their color or
where they were born. Within our country our laws are quite clear you
cannot decline to rent or sell to people based on their ethnicity. The
same rules should apply also apply to those who were born outside our
community and want to move here.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 14 January 2008 )
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