The Schengen Area’s Open Borders
In a blog post at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has an interesting reminder of the virtues of open borders in Europe. Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University, which arguably is the best free-market, Austrian economics department in the country. He is also the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center. Along with his GMU colleague Tyler Cowan, he is the co-author of Modern Principles of Economics. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many other publications.
The Schengen Area, Tabarrok reminds us, came into existence in 1995 with ten countries. It established a system of open borders between those ten members. Citizens of those nations could freely cross borders to enter the other nine countries. No passports or visas were necessary. People could freely live, tour, and work in the other nine counties. In essence, the system was the same as it is here in the United States with respect to travel across state borders, only with Schengen we are dealing with nations rather than states within a nation.
Tabarrok reminds us that today the Schengen Area has grown to 27 countries, which means that 427 million (yes, that’s million with an “m”) people can move freely between those countries. Quoting an article in AFAR magazine, Tabarrok writes, “Each day around 3.5 million people cross internal borders for work or study or to visit families and friends, and almost 1.7 million people reside in one Schengen country while working in another.” No, not everyone moves to one country or another. Most people choose to reside in their own country.
Article from The Future of Freedom Foundation
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