Please Welcome Joss Sheldon, Author of Freedom: The Case For Open Borders - A Book For Today's World!

 “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respected stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.” --George Washington

I am honored to welcome Joss Sheldon to Book Readers Heaven, to talk about his book, Freedom: The Case For Open Borders... It was 2016 when I first met Joss through his wonderful book, The Little Voice.  It was one of those books that I got excited about, so, take a few minutes, and go check out my post to learn more... But first, Joss, would you tell us a little about yourself, your books, and why you chose to write the type of books that you do...

Because I wouldn’t know how to write any other type! I write about the things which I’m passionate about – to say the things which other public figures aren’t saying. My first book was about a conscientious objector in World War I. I was motivated to write that novel, because I was horrified by how British society was becoming more militarised in the wake of the Iraq War. People were beginning to use jingoistic language as a matter of course, referring to soldiers as “heroes” who were “brave” and who “defended us” –all without any kind of kickback or debate. The UK introduced an Armed Forces Day. The red poppy, a symbol used to pay homage to soldiers, was becoming ubiquitous – plastered across every newspaper, featured on sports jerseys, and even worn by presenters on the supposedly “neutral” BBC. 

So I wanted to provide a counterpoint. To speak up for the people who refused to go abroad and slaughter people in their millions. To glorify the activists who campaigned against war, and to champion the conscientious objectors who refuse to take up arms. To call them the “heroes” who were “brave” and who “defended us.” I’ve carried that passion throughout my career – telling the stories which aren’t being told, giving a voice to the good people and good causes which make the world a better place.

As I began to read Freedom, I was intrigued about your first major relocation to India to write. I remember back in highschool, I, too, had a dream of moving to Australia--I chose an English-speaking country for easier ability to begin working there for a living... As with many, however, I wound up staying within the area I was born. But have traveled quite a bit, thankfully, to capture some of the essence of different cultures... So, Joss, I'd love to hear more about how and why you went to India, and which of your books you wrote there... and, the good or bad or painful emotions you felt as you worked to live in a new location...

It was never a permanent migration. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. So much of the discussion about migration focuses on those people who move from one place, and then make a permanent home in another. Usually, it’s pitched as a discussion of immigrants coming here, taking our jobs and homes! But of course, emigration is another dimension – it’s about our right abroad to retire, or live in a place with cheaper housing.

And then temporary migration, nomadism, is yet another dimension--it's about our right to go on holiday, travel, study, tour with a band, follow a sports team, or receive healthcare where its more affordable. That was the case for me: I went to India to launch my career as an author, because I knew the cost of living was cheap. I could get by on just £5 a day. So I could live out there for 18 months, whilst writing my debut novel, and that cost around £2000 (when you include flights and visas). That bought me the time I needed to write. I couldn’t have ever dedicated 18 months to writing, unpaid, had I remained in Britain.

For my second novel, “Occupied,” I travelled around Palestine and Kurdistan--for research. And then I returned to my village in India to write that book. That was that. It was never meant to be permanent. I was a kind of nomad. As for the emotions: There were no bad ones! I felt so liberated, escaping my career to dedicate myself to something I was passionate about. I used to clean my teeth each morning, look in the mirror, and think “I’m happy.”And I meant it.

Joss, your enthusiasm for writing--and life--is exciting to learn about! I'm so thankful that you agreed to allow me to spotlight your book, as well as talk with me in even more detail than you have in your book. Personally, I was amazed at the scope, the breadth, and, yet, a totally comprehensive look at the situation which is. at a focal point, a book about Borders...but looking at it through the lens of personal freedom... I was enthralled as I turned the pages and saw how you began your book... My question is, is this your normal method for writing, or did you feel you had to build your case right at the beginning?

If people don’t like the first few pages of a book, there’s a good chance they’ll stop reading. So you have to catch a reader’s interest. And the introduction has to give a flavour of things to come – to set the scene. 

I like to fill my non-fiction work with stories, to make them easy to read and entertaining. And, likewise, I like to base my novels on real world facts and situations, to make them relevant. I like to blend the two forms together.

I'm glad to hear your thoughts on catching the reader's attention. Having read thousands of books, I can immediately tell the difference and weigh my options... Most of the time, I go ahead and read the book but having to read, say, about 50 pages and still be looking for something to hold my attention is, simply tedious... If I were reading it as a review, I would often highlight this issue, hopefully received as a critical recommendation for consideration...

I wondered about the short tale about not knowing which country someone lived in and its relevance to the weather... A bit of sarcasm, a delightful joke, or what meaning did you want to have set the stage for what was to come?

Do you mean the David Graeber quote at the beginning of the book? I love Graeber, he’s a big inspiration. So I’ll use any excuse to put a quote of his in my work! But yeah, the point was simple enough: For the majority of history, people governed themselves within their communities. They had very little interaction with the governments which supposedly ruled over the land, and which later drew borders onto maps. Such things were an irrelevance. People continued on with their lives. And with the exception of serfdom and slavery, most people had the right to go wherever they wanted, as though those borders didn’t exist. Borders really only became an impediment to movement around the time of World War I.

Almost immediately you hone in on 2015 and Donald Trump's beginning to speak about running for the presidency, citing Immigrants as a major problem. Tell me, was that when the idea for this book began? Did it have to do with the blatant false accusations he was making? Or was his speech just the icing on the cake of an idea that had been festering for awhile?

The point is that it’s not just Trump. He’s just the poster boy for the anti-freedom movement. But he has clones in almost every country. I’ve been more concerned about his so-called “opposition.” Trump and his ilk are saying immigrants are bad, immigration is too high, we need to take away people’s right to move, and spend a fortune to stop travellers going wherever they please. And his opponents are like, “Yeah, we agree: immigration is too high, and we do need to reduce it… Just not like that. And won’t you please tone down your language?”

None of these politicians are saying that immigration is amazing, that immigrants improve our economies and societies, that we should be encouraging more migration, and improving our freedom to move. Well, a few are in places like Canada, China and Japan – as I cover in a later chapter. But in most nations, these voices have been gagged. So I felt I needed to speak up. To be the voice of the voiceless. To widen the discussion, and the political spectrum.

I totally agree! It was only after Trump was in office and we began to see his inclination to "believe" Putin, or "fall in love" with Kim Jong Un, et.al., that we saw his unhealthy behavior towards dictators!

While it is difficult for me to ask, what can you tell me about how America is being perceived based upon immigration issues piling up?

 I think the rest of the world has its own issues. I certainly know of people in Britain who thought you were mad to elect Trump. But then we elected Johnson, so it’s not as though we hold the moral high ground! People in the Philippines seem quite warm to Americans in general, and indifferent to international politics. But there are certainly people in those countries which have felt the full force of American military intervention which I’ll have a thing or two to say on that front!

When you begin to spotlight the need for free borders, do you know, and accept, just how long it might take to achieve such a goal? 

As Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” He was talking about ending apartheid, which must have seemed impossible for many decades. Then it happened in super-quick time. Female enfranchisement would’ve been similar. Activists spent over a century demanding votes for women, but as soon as the first few countries got onboard, lots of others followed suit. 

We see something similar with borders: Most borders were undefined for most of our history. Then there was a flurry of border making in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Passports came into fashion a little, fell out of use, and then were used as a tool for shoring up hard borders around the time of World War I. So that all happened fairly quickly. 

If open borders can become closed borders in a relatively short period of time, why can’t hard borders become open in a similarly short timeframe? When it happens, I doubt it’d take long, but the journey up to that point may very well take a while.

 I think we need to start the conversation, which is what I hope to do with this book. We need to ask people to think about things from their own personal perspective – wouldn’t you like to have the right to go and live somewhere cheaper, or somewhere where jobs come with longer holidays, or somewhere with a better climate? Then you stretch it to others: Well, if you think that you’d like that, don’t you think others would like it to? Why should we discriminate against other people on the basis of where they were born? Why not give everyone equal rights, regardless of their birthplace or nationality? 

One of the things that pops into my mind, because I know it exists, are these issues: Love of Self, or Fear of others; also greed and power-hunger... To me, these have grown so much that I wonder could we eliminate each individual's need for security and basic needs... I'm referring specifically to Maslow's hierarchy of needs... Even in America, many are struggling for food security and housing, which are the first of basic human needs. And, if they are not met, are we faced when continued death by these limits. Obviously I'm referring to Africa, Gaza, Syria, and countries in South America who are being run by drug cartels... 

Yeah, that’s why we need to frame it in terms of the self. How would you wish to be treated if you were starving, or homeless, or persecuted. Wouldn’t you want to have the ability to move somewhere else, where you’d be freed from that suffering? That’s how you build empathy. 

This, of course, includes the rights of Americans to emigrate. If an American is “struggling for food security and housing,” then they should have the right to leave, and make a home for themselves in a place where those things are cheaper or more readily available. There are lots of Americans here in the Philippines--mainly retirees. If they’d stayed in the USA, they’d be really struggling. But out here, they live like kings! 

I could never have bought a house in Britain. But I bought my first house in Bulgaria for less than a garage would’ve cost me in London. In the Philippines, I have a nice new house on 1.7 hectares of land. Emigration made that possible. 

Right now, we sadly have in America a man who negatively informs the response to immigrants. Even if Trump doesn't get elected, the individuals who supported him are so different than the people needed to open our borders, even in a rational, planned manner. I believe that our border system is also being politized. I used to tell thousands of students and teachers "where to go" as a classroom scheduler. Any bureaucratic process can be made to function efficiently. We should be doing this right now.

 You’re not going to win Trump’s hardest supporters over. But you could at least categorise them as “anti-freedom” and “freedom haters.” They’re denying us our freedom to move! You could challenge their authoritarianism; with their lawfare, aggressive guards, and border walls. And you could call out the amount they’re wasting on these things--billions of dollars of taxpayers money a year. We need to make these emotional arguments. It’s not enough to go on the back foot--defending foreigners for Trump. We must also go on the front foot--challenging Trump’s supporters for the anti-American hatred of freedom.

But my main target is the so-called “Moderates,” who’ve allowed their views and policies to be dragged towards those of Trump. Biden is spending more on border control than any other president in history--way more than Trump spent during his term in office. Biden and his peers are buying into this notion that people can be “illegal”, and that travellers should be stopped from crossing an imaginary line someone drew on a piece of paper once upon a time. And that’s deeply worrying – it means there’s no real opposition to Trumpism. So we need to broaden the conversation. We need to pull these Democrats back to what would’ve been deemed a moderate position in the past. 

And, in Britain, are we looking at a limitation of land by which decisions are made? Specifically, is there enough land there or in other smaller countries where many additional immigrants could be housed?

There’s an abundance of land all around the world. It’s really not in short supply. There’s around 48 million square kilometres of habitable land on planet Earth--enough for about 6000 square metres of land per person. 

We do have a shortage of housing in some places in the UK, but there’s a simple answer to that: Build more homes! And do you know who can help us to do that? Immigrants can! Immigrants are more likely to be of a working age, and they’re more likely to actually work. They’re the very architects, plumbers, bricklayers, electricians and scaffolders we need to build those very homes! 

We should also bear in mind that there’ll be even more land available in the northernmost parts of our hemisphere when climate change kicks in. Places like Canada, Greenland and Russia are going to have millions of square kilometres of land which wasn’t habitable before, but which will become liveable in the near future. There’ll be more than enough for everyone – which is fortunate because a lot of people who live near the equator will be forced to move away! And the good news is that Canada and Russia are already encouraging inwards migration. The Russians are giving a hectare of land away for free to anyone who moves to its Eastern Provinces. 

Historically, if we know that people who relocated to the United States, at the same time also forced indigenous people already living across the nation to lose their land so that eventually, they were forced to cluster, never to roam again as their nature and culture demanded, how can we delete the selfishness and "rights" that now people have?

I don’t think that “rights” are a bad thing. I’m arguing for the right to move. And that should include the right to roam for indigenous people.

In the UK, we grant gypsies a number of pitches where they can make camps, before moving onto another location. We don’t provide nearly enough, and those communities are subject to a lot of abuse. But it is something you could copy. If you did, that’d make life better for more nomadic people and for wanderers in general. 

We also have public pathways in the UK, where people have a right to roam. I’m talking here about footpaths which cut across fields in the countryside – land which is owned by private farms. That right was actually secured by mass trespasses–where people young and old marched across the countryside, demanding the right to access that land.

Wow! I love that concept. I have about 13 acres surrounding me, but I try to prevent hunters crossing... Movement could be from one of my own outside cat family and I don't want them harmed... Still...  You believe on an individual basis, most people will try to help others, I agree. But… are known obstacles really able to be reduced or eliminated?

As Tony Benn once stated, “Every generation has to fight the same battles.” We can eliminate some obstacles, and then others will appear. And then we’ll have to fight to remove those. There is no final victory, or final defeat. 

I’d like to think that technology should help though. It could help us to get international passports and international citizenships--working out how long we spent in any given place--to whom we should pay our taxes, and from whom we should receive our pensions. We could register online whenever we arrive in a new place – removing the need for border agents. We’re already seeing something like this in Estonia. And we’re seeing digital nomad visas slowly coming into fashion across the world. These things are all reducing those barriers you mention.

Thank you so much, Joss, for providing a bright spot of a possible future for all of us--those who dream about wanting a better place where we have chosen to spend our lives. Or, the thought that those who wish to relocate for whatever reason, is an exciting and hopeful future that could start happening...and spread! You started by saying that you write about issues that you are passionate about... May your passion begin to be shared here in America, simply by acknowledging that immigration was, has been, and should be again, what America is all about!