President William Ruto says change aims to boost trade and allow goods, services, people and ideas to move freely across continent
President William Ruto says change aims to boost trade and allow goods, services, people and ideas to move freely across continent
It’s not been all great for Eastern Europe. Freedom of movement contributed to the massive brain drain plaguing former communist countries. But IIRC Kenya has a strong regional economy so they’re positioning themselves to be on the “good” end of increased workforce mobility.
Personally I think more freedom is a good thing despite those drawbacks, but also it’s easy for me to say as a Western European.
That’s not a problem of the open borders though. That’s an issue with the countries themselves.
The newly elected post-communist democratic Polish legislature could not reasonably be accused of running their country into the ground. Yet brain drain following the fall of the Iron Curtain was (and is) a real problem because it harms the country in a very real way. Eastern Europe is still paying for decades of autocratic communist rule, and looser border restrictions are certainly one contributing factor to the brain drain that continues to harm Eastern European countries (which leads to continued brain drain, which leads to a worse performing economy… you get the gist). There’s a reason the USSR forbid essentially all migration from East to West across the Iron Curtain.
From an individual perspective moving to a richer country makes sense, I’d do the same, but from a macroeconomic perspective this traps less developed nations in a vicious circle of brain drain leading to less economic development leading to brain drain (and more develpped nations in a vicious circle of de-industrialization).
I do not claim that this means that we should close down borders, as I still value individual freedoms quite highly and am generally pro-EU, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the very concrete downsides of those policies as well.
I see where you’re coming from and I don’t disagree. I just have a hard time telling people where they can and can’t go. I have no idea how we’d deal with both ends of this issue
Governments and big companies create strong incentives for the types of workers the country needs.
The problem can be solved by billionaires spending their money, just like every other problem in the world.
If that’s what we’re waiting for then we’re gonna be here for a long time…
Are you suggesting it would have been better to restrict movement so people were forced to stay where they didn’t want to?
Did you even read my second paragraph? No. But you are allowed to support a thing while recognizing its drawbacks.