Stephan Faris > Quotes

“On average, a Nigerian working in Nigeria earned one-fifteenth as much as a comparably skilled Nigerian working in America. Indian workers living in India did slightly better, earning about a sixth of what an equally skilled co-national did in the United States. Workers from Mexico multiplied their income 2.4 times simply by stepping across the border. Guatemalans who made the trip tripled their paycheck. Haitians who moved to the United States saw a tenfold jump in earnings.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration

“We’re countries that have constitutions that put humans and human rights above everything else, countries that have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But we don’t realize that the holocaust of today is determined by our laws, that this is the effect of the policies we’ve put in place to defend our fortresses.” She lit another cigarette. “What do I tell my little niece when she asks me, ‘Why did they die?’” she said. “I tell her it’s because they came from far away. They were on a boat that wasn’t safe. And then she asks me, ‘Why didn’t they take a plane?’ It’s hard to explain to a little girl why we didn’t let them take a plane.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration

“The women would have preferred to simply take a plane and find work in a factory, an office, or a restaurant. But our laws blocked their way. Pushed out of their home country by poverty, constrained on the other end by barriers to legal immigration, made vulnerable by our attempts to keep them out, the women chose the only option available. They sought out the trafficker, asked him to arrange for them to be smuggled across the desert and over the sea. In exchange, they would sell their bodies and pay him back. We left them little choice.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration

“Yet as a distinction, citizenship is entirely artificial. An accident of birth, a quirk in the law, or the whim of a bureaucrat can mean the difference between a life of comfort or a life of struggle.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration

“some 250 years of nationalism, the segregation of the world’s population into separate countries seems as natural as the division of the globe into continents. So it’s important to remember that restricting immigration is a political choice, one whose burden is carried largely by the less fortunate.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration

“Emmanuel, leafed through a book of photographs, color printouts, bound in black plastic and covered with a thin transparent sheet: There was green grass and a white-paneled house and a little blond girl smiling. There was a large van and an even larger play set. There was a countertop completely covered with food. “This is a very nice place,” Emmanuel said in a quiet voice. “I would like to go to this place.” For Emmanuel, the snapshots of suburban America presented an impossible dream, a portrait of manicured abundance as distant and as glorious as a preacher’s description of heaven.”
― Stephan Faris, Homelands: The Case for Open Immigration