By Allen Myers
A standing joke among critics of Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett is that the slogan he put on car registration plates, "Victoria — on the move", is only too true: since he has been in office, there has been a steady drift of Victorians to other states, especially Queensland.
We need not investigate what percentage of these Victorians depart because of political hostility to Kennett, how many flee for economic reasons, how many believe that the climate in Queensland or wherever they are heading will suit them better and so on.
The point is that these Victorians are free to go to any other state or territory, regardless of their reasons — indeed, no-one, aside from the occasional demographer or social science researcher, even asks their reasons. There are no South Australian border guards to stop hungry Victorians from surging westward out of the Western District, no refugees from Kennettism swimming the Murray by night only to be hunted down and interned by the NSW Immigration Service.
The idea of such borders between Australian states is absurd, of course, but it is not really a joke. Border guards and worse confront most of the world's people whenever they contemplate changing their residence between countries. This situation is so widespread that many people accept it as a matter of course, without asking why governments should restrict international movements.
Governments in many countries like to maintain the idea that "we" would be "swamped" by less fortunate neighbours if we didn't have immigration restrictions; such a view implies that "our" government deserves credit for maintaining conditions that are the envy of those around us.
The reality, however, is that there are not large numbers of people in any country who are eager to go elsewhere — in the absence of extreme circumstances. Of course, to escape war, famine or similar catastrophes, most people will travel as far as they are able, but in ordinary circumstances, the desire to move from one country to another is quite limited (based on individual situations such as family connections) and as likely to operate in one direction as the other.
However, it's also the case that greater economic opportunity acts as a "magnet" for people, though not to the extent imagined by those who fear being "swamped" by immigration. In Australia, for example, there is a fairly constant population drain from rural areas to the cities, because of the lack of rural jobs. Unemployed people in Mexico are similarly drawn by the prospect of jobs in the southern United States, and no doubt there would be job-seeking immigration to Australia from poorer countries in the region were it not for the geographical and legal obstacles.
Australian city dwellers don't put fences around the cities to stop themselves being overrun by people leaving the bush, yet capitalist governments and parties consider it normal to put a fence around the whole country. Racism is what allows them to get away with it.
Racism also helps to conceal the class interests that are served by barriers to free migration. There are few legal barriers to the movement of capital, especially in these days of "globalisation". The capitalists themselves certainly find it easy to relocate wherever they choose: under the Australian government's business migration program you can buy the right of residence, and Rupert Murdoch was welcomed with open pockets when he decided to become a US citizen.
But the capitalists insist on trying to control where working people can live. When business is good and workers are in demand, the capitalists regard workers as a "national resource"; in the 19th century, it was not uncommon for governments to put obstacles in the way of workers' emigrating. During the post-World War II economic boom years, western European governments imported "guest workers" from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean; now that economic times are harder, the "guests" are treated more like invaders.
Socialists regard the right to choose one's residence as a fundamental human right. But real choice is limited so long as the globe is divided between impoverished lands and islands of capitalist privilege. It will take a socialist economy, which consciously seeks to overcome all forms of inequality, to bring about the dream of human freedom: a world without borders.