People in the UK recently experienced what it was like to hear you couldn’t drive to your parents. During the pandemic, temporarily at least, there was a semi-plausible reason to stop movement. However, we’ve had permanent retardation of movement across countries for generations. How do we justify this?

The economic arguments don’t pass muster: mass consumption requires mass production. Yet, we force workers to stay in countries where their labour is less productive. Financially, even with our bloated welfare state, even low-skilled immigrants are a net fiscal positive when they arrive young. Culturally, it is fair to say immigrants congregate due to diaspora dynamics. However, natives benefit from the enterprises that pop up to serve this novel, localised demand. Also, second-generation immigrants are almost always fluent in English. It’s also worth pointing out that immigrants have a lower crime rate than natives. Politically, on average, immigrants are socially conservative and economically liberal - not good news for people like me. However, I remain calm because another convincing finding is they are culturally apathetic.

You didn’t like having your freedom stripped from you? Was it annoying to be told you couldn’t go somewhere because “it’s for the country’s own good”? Imagine you were guilty of being born in the wrong country, and the reasons you couldn’t drastically improve your life were even flimsier.