# Antilockdown

By [The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman](https://paragraph.com/@nickgrossman) · 2013-04-23

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Matthew Yglesias has a good piece up this morning on [the immigration debate in the wake of the Boston bombings](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/04/border_security_immigration_reform_and_the_tsarnaevs_a_bigger_guest_worker.html).  He points out that historically, as we’ve tightened our border lockdown, we’ve not decreased illegal immigration, we’ve just made the _coyote_ industry more lucrative.  

[In my favorite line](http://theslowhunch.net/post/48690234708/by-far-the-best-way-to-keep-dangerous-foreigners), he suggests that rather than tighten our lockdown, we should open up:

> by far the best way to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country is to make it easier for nondangerous ones to enter.

In other words, **the best approach is not lockdown, but antilockdown**.

If you think about it, this counterintuitive thinking applies to lots of other issues, and particularly reminds me of the debate over piracy — e.g., the best way to decrease illegal downloading is not to make it harder to copy files, but rather to make it easier to buy & share them legally.

I am going to keep thinking of other issues where this kind of thinking applies.

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*Originally published on [The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman](https://paragraph.com/@nickgrossman/antilockdown)*