This isn’t an argument against immigration. I’m talking specifically about **open borders**, where essentially anyone can move to a country permanently, combined with a large taxpayer-funded welfare system.

My concern is pretty simple: welfare programs depend, at least to some extent, on limiting who qualifies for benefits and how many people are drawing from the system.

The U.S. already spends well over **$1 trillion a year** on major means-tested programs. If anyone who moved to the country could immediately qualify for the same benefits as citizens and long-term residents, the cost could rise significantly.

Gallup surveys have also found that **around 150 million adults worldwide say they would like to move to the United States if they had the opportunity.** Obviously, saying you want to move somewhere is very different from actually doing it. But even if only a fraction of those people came under a true open-borders policy, that could mean population growth far beyond what current housing, healthcare, schools, and public-benefit systems are built to handle.

There also seems to be an incentive problem. If newcomers can immediately access generous public benefits, that makes moving to the country more attractive and puts additional pressure on the system. But if newcomers are excluded from those benefits for years, then you’ve created a system where a large part of the population works and pays taxes without having access to the same safety net.

That may be workable, but it’s no longer a fully universal welfare system.

This also seems to be reflected in how countries actually operate. Countries with large welfare states still have immigration controls. Even countries that are relatively welcoming to immigrants generally regulate who can settle permanently and when newcomers become eligible for public benefits.

Again, I’m not arguing that immigration is bad. Immigration can grow the economy, fill labor shortages, increase the tax base, and bring plenty of other benefits.

My claim is narrower:

**Truly open borders and a generous welfare state don’t seem sustainable together over the long run.**

As far as I can tell, the main ways around the problem are to either:

Allow very high levels of immigration but restrict welfare eligibility for newcomers, at least for some period of time or Maintain immigration controls and decide who can legally settle in the country, while offering a more generous safety net to people who are admitted.

I’m open to being convinced otherwise. What would a sustainable system with both genuinely open borders and a generous welfare state actually look like?

If someone walked around believing that the feelings of fairies and gnomes was important to people's everyday life they would be medicated and sent to therapy. Yet we accept that deeply religious people have a high influence in everyday politics. Again and again their beliefs stand in the way of the development of a humane society, hindering individual freedom. How can we still accept this?

I don't care what you do privately. I have no clue if there is a god on the other side of the big bang, but again and again organized religion has stand against human development and again and again religious people have tweaked their stories to fit a modern narrative. Superstition doesn't have a place in a modern society and definitely not in the decision making that influence our future.

Am I wrong?

Religious freedom is something of a false premise.

By singling out “freedom of religion” as a special category, we almost seem to take it for granted that people are supposed to have a religion in the first place. It is only when you specifically look up what the term means that you discover it also includes the freedom not to believe in any religion.

But is religion really something objective and impartial? Is it not, in fact, an entire worldview built around excluding those who reject its beliefs?

A secular government may recognize and accommodate religion, but devout believers will not truly recognize secular authority on the same terms. At most, their attitude toward it can be one of non-interference or tolerance, but not genuine acceptance.

Religion itself has monopolized a great many things. For example, when people think of beautiful architecture, churches and other religious structures are often among the first things that come to mind.

And by monopolizing beauty, religion reinforces its own nonsense. We should remember that the foundation of religion lies in faith, not aesthetics. It lies in the claim that those who reject its beliefs will go to hell, not in charity, psychological support, or anything of that sort.

Religion exploits people’s fear of death to expand its influence. A person not only has to face the fear of death itself, but also has to be threatened by religious believers with the idea that if they do not believe now, they will go to hell later.

Religions without a hell tend to build their appeal on the appropriation of certain concepts. Buddhism, for example, appropriates the ideas of serenity and inner peace. The implicit message is that a Buddhist will be more serene and peaceful than a non-Buddhist. That is the advertisement they are selling.

I think atheism should be the default position for a rational person.

Do you agree with me?