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Why did Effective Altruism abandon Open-Borders Advocacy? — EA Forum

forum.effectivealtruism.org · 91 words · saved by 1 readers

We live in an era of unprecedented passport checks, visa quotas, and detention centers, a world that regulates human movement more tightly than at any other point in history. Some scholars and activists think we’ve gone too far; they think that this hyper-restriction is neither just, nor economically rational. One of these groups is Effective Altruism (EA), a social movement that aims to identify which interventions are the most promising in terms of overall social impact. This makes sense from a demographic perspective: open borders are championed by both progressives/leftists (who are more common among EA’s rank-and-file) and by a growing number of moderates/capitalists, who are more common among EA’s big funders/decision-makers. There’s a tension between these two groups, but on open borders they can agree. For example, in my country the leftist Naima Charkaoui wrote Het opengrenzenmanifest (the open borders manifesto) and on the more liberal side, Stijn Bruers (head of EA-Belgium)

DavidNash 11mo 9 7 1 I think the evidence that EA has "abandoned" open borders is relatively weak, it looks more like that it was never a high priority, and still isn't. There has been interest in labour mobility, and in 2024 and 2025 Open Phil funded related areas - 1 , 2 , 3 . But the tag has changed and it now falls under global health, innovation or abundance. I'm not sure forum posts are relevant when it's just 1-2 posts a year, and suggest ongoing limited engagement. Reply

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