> I do support an open border. Why wouldn't you?
> A closed border denies freedom of movement

First of all, where does this "freedom of movement" come from? Freedoms are things that human societies carve out of harsh reality by legal convention and physical enforcement. "Freedom of speech", for example, is really better thought of as saying "within this area wherein this government has a monopoly on force and physical enforcement of policy, it is permitted to say anything, and legal consequences will be brought upon those who try to prevent others from exercising this permission". It's not some fundamental, pre-existing condition that you have by some god-given set of rights (encoded where? defended how?)

Freedom of movement is not some guaranteed thing, nor is it a state of normalcy. Throughout human history, we have defended our territories from outsiders who would exploit us for their own gain; it's a very sound evolutionary strategy, and virtually every group that has survived the last ten thousand years has this as their default state, modulo legal immigration and trade and visas and such.

In other words, "freedom of movement" is not denied - it's simply not granted by default. When a society matures to a certain level in cooperation with other nearby mature societies, e.g. the situation in continental Europe, it's possible to relax some of the restrictions; but it's important to keep in mind that this only comes from the expectation of shared enforcement of similar or identical laws that just push the border out from the immediate ones surrounding one nation, to a group of nations. The need to enforce who is and who is not permitted in society remains under the purview of government, for reasons that really ought to be obvious.

> you only earn the freedom to move if you've been deemed productive -- so people with physical disabilities preventing them from working, or severe mental illness should be denied the right to move where they wish?

This "freedom to move" should be replaced with "right to immigrate into some other country" - very few places try to prevent you from leaving! - and you need to look at things realistically from the perspective of the new country. You're asking them to take on a new citizen you yourself say is not productive - if they have a healthcare system, this translates directly to a new financial burden. Why should they do this? In what sense do they owe you care simply because of your desire to live on their collective property?

> Or that person from the Congo shouldn't be allowed to come here simply as a circumstance of their birth?

It's not just the "circumstance of their birth". We're not blank slates, and even if we were, we certainly aren't by the age of voluntary personal emigration. Some number of people from the Congo do emigrate, of course; but it remains completely the right of their new host nation to be as selective as they like about determining which individuals to accept and deny. Surely it makes sense to do this on some objective merit basis, and not randomly or just all-permissively?

> I'm sure almost everyone on HN would decry the Berlin Wall as a authoritarian human rights abuse.

I'm pretty sure the Berlin Wall was built by the USSR to keep East Germans in, not West Germans out. Who would want to go behind the iron curtain to wait in a bread line?

> The US is far from East Germany, but why even begin down that path?

It's not even remotely a reasonable comparison. The border wall between the US and Mexico is intended to keep illegal immigrants out - legal immigrants from south of the border will probably still number in the hundreds of thousands per year. The idea is that these will be people selected peacefully and legally for being able to contribute to society in a positive way, rather than the selection process of "whoever can pay people-smugglers and survive a trip through the border and then manage to hang on in their new country illegally without getting caught".

> Westerners didn't ask permission to invade the Congo, or India, or hundreds of other places in the global south, and we certainly didn't get visas before stripping those countries of natural resources and their cultural heritage

Well, of course not. I don't really see how this is exactly germane to the conversation about open borders. I will say that the Congo and India probably would have enjoyed having stronger borders to prevent this incursion, in retrospect; I'll also say that I and increasingly many other people do not buy into any kind of collective guilt based on the ethical indiscretions of our ancestors / predecessors / people very distantly related to us.

> How hypocritical is that?

How does it make sense to take an irrational-yet-principled, self-destructive stance? Is the goal to earn some kind of moral absolution? Who would deliver that, and in what sense would it really be absolute, lasting forgiveness? What level of impact / destruction / restitution / reparation is required? How many generations need to bow to this historical guilt - a concept that was literally antithetical to the Western canon of the son not being punished for the sins of the father for the past two thousand years?

Is there some point at which the due is paid?

> And lets not kid ourselves that closed borders keeps "the bad people" out -- people who want to commit crimes generally don't care about following immigration laws. They'll dig tunnels under walls...

I think a decent number could be stopped. It's not like this would be the only effort - consistently applying enforcement and rewriting laws to more fairly and effectively keep the citizenry safe is the ongoing job of any government interested in "law and order". Deportation, fighting organized crime, making it more difficult to be undocumented, and reducing financial incentives to be in the country illegally are all a part of this effort. Of course, this effort cannot stand alone in its attempt to make the country safer and better - there are plenty of legal Americans who are problematic and similarly need to be dealt with. No reason to believe only one strategy should be executed at once.

> If it means more strain on welfare programs in the short run as people try to start new lives here

It probably means their collapse, eventually, when taxpayers become tired of funding an effort that is directly to their own personal detriment and causes the slow decay and destruction of their beautiful cities. What comes next is terrible; so I think trying to stave that off and form something workable while we still have societal cohesion is the better course of action. That means capping things off and committing to a slow reduction in these services (and a corresponding uptick in services to wean people off, e.g. re-education, employment placement, renewed industrial development to help form career paths for blue-collar workers rather than being stuck in entry-level work for their entire lives, etc.)