Immigration has a curious history.

For the vast majority of human history over hundreds of thousands of years, our identity was “hyper-local”, defined by our family units and thus our tribes.

Geographic location was much less relevant as we roamed and migrated in search of natural resources and protection from seasonal weather and predators.

But that changed just 12,000 years ago, or just “3% of human history” ago, as our ancestors in Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia discovered and harnessed farming.

That spurred the birth of a concept that must’ve seemed like a fabrication at the time: “property rights”. Humanity had just invented a mechanism for people to claim land and its resources as their own.

That also meant that those who were more powerful could accumulate wealth in the form of the best resources and, over time, would aspire to acquire even more.

But claiming more and more resources required violence to first vacate and then “defend” lands… something that required larger and larger bands of fighters.

And uniting fighters willing to risk their lives necessitated creating artificial identities so it was clear who was “good” and who was “bad”, a definition that was (and is) entirely relative.

Initially, these identities were based on geographic origin which, over time, evolved into racial identity. To scale identities it even further, they integrated religious narratives just a few thousand years ago.

“For god and country” became a rally cry that unified armies to fight over and, ultimately, claim resources, frequently for the benefit of a small number of “royal” families professing a connection to, and even speaking on behalf of, a god.

Over the past 4,500 years, we went from local tribes to villages to city states and, ultimately, over just the last couple of hundred years, to modern nation states with defined borders and protected by armies intent on expansion at the expense of weaker nation states.

So, in reality, national identities have only existed for a sliver of our history, 0.05% or so. Before that, individual humans could still navigate the world in search of opportunity. There was no such thing as a passport and the only obstacle was learning to communicate with those from other lands.

People could migrate to “the new world”, work hard, contribute, build, invest, and integrate. It’s a story that has created the most powerful nation state in history.

As one of those stories myself, and as I consider ethical, moral, economic, and even pragmatic dimensions of this history, I can’t help but believe that “immigration” needs to be not just reconsidered but redefined.

I am heartened to see us having these conversations, and I hope we are able to intellectually and emotionally overcome the artificial bounds created by polarizing political narratives as we do so.