If you ask most Democrats, they will tell you that they are not in favor of "open borders" - even if some of their proposals would achieve that goal. If they were to go to the voters advocating open borders, they would be slaughtered at the polls.

But New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo just can't seem to figure out why Democrats don't embrace the concept of open borders. After all, what could go wrong?

Imagine not just opposing President Trump’s wall but also opposing the nation’s cruel and expensive immigration and border-security apparatus in its entirety. Imagine radically shifting our stance toward outsiders from one of suspicion to one of warm embrace. Imagine that if you passed a minimal background check, you’d be free to live, work, pay taxes and die in the United States. Imagine moving from Nigeria to Nebraska as freely as one might move from Massachusetts to Maine.

Fine - just as long as the people of Nebraska (and the rest of us) are willing to pay the tab for government services the Nigerian would need to survive. 

When you see the immigration system up close, you’re confronted with its bottomless unfairness. The system assumes that people born outside our borders are less deserving of basic rights than those inside. My native-born American friends did not seem to me to warrant any more dignity than my South African ones; according to this nation’s founding documents, we were all created equal. Yet by mere accident of geography, some were given freedom, and others were denied it.

This is truly idiotic. Who among those of us who oppose illegal immigration are saying that people elsewhere are "less deserving of basic rights"? That's nuts. The fact that Mr. Manjoo is ignoring is that those "basic rights" cost. This "accident of geography" was created by millions of people who sacrificed everything and many gave their lives. Not in an effort to protect the physical borders of the US, but to protect the spiritual essence of America - our freedoms. It's not a question of basic rights or "dignity."

Is it "unfair" that many billions of people live in countries that do not embrace freedom? Of course it is. But opening the borders to those billions of people who would sell their souls to come to America is shockingly stupid with no realistic basis at all.

“When you start to think about it, a system of closed borders begins to feel very much like a system of feudal privilege,” said Reece Jones, a professor of geography at the University of Hawaii who argues that Democrats should take up the mantle of open borders. “It’s the same idea that there’s some sort of hereditary rights to privilege based on where you were born.”

Well, yeah. And your point? What these people are advocating is not "open borders." It's one world government - the destruction of the nation state. There are, indeed, privileges to be born in the US, France, Germany and any other industrialized, free nation. If there were privileges to be born in Nigeria, Nebraskans would be crowding the Nigerian embassy in Washington begging to be allowed in.

Maybe we should ask the Nigerians if they want open borders too.

The argument by Mr. Manjooo debunks itself. Poor, starving ,uneducated, illiterate people by the millions coming to the US would destroy our society. How can anyone be so stupid as to think otherwise?