Can a policy of complete open borders be justified?

Can a policy of complete open borders be justified? Discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks.

Stance: Against complete open borders; for calibrated liberalisation (humanitarian corridors, skills-based routes, regional free movement with shared institutions).

Definitions

• Complete open borders: no ex ante limits on entry, residence, or work; states cannot refuse admission on security, economic, or administrative grounds.
• Justified: normatively defensible (political morality) and institutionally feasible within rule-of-law democracies.
• Benefits: moral (cosmopolitan equality), economic (efficiency, innovation, remittances), cultural (exchange), humanitarian (safe mobility).
• Drawbacks: sovereignty erosion, bounded-solidarity breakdown, security/externalities, absorptive-capacity overload, justice to non-migrants (especially poorest citizens).

Assumptions under challenge

1. That borders are morally arbitrary and therefore ought to be open.
2. That democratic legitimacy can be sustained without membership boundaries.
3. That welfare states and legal systems can absorb unbounded mobility without collapsing solidarity and compliance.

Point 1 — Sovereignty, Membership & Democratic Self-Rule

Distinctness: constitutional design and who rules — i.e. you lose the identity of what a country and a democracy actually is.