This (since deleted) comment was pulled from the canada immigration RI:

As a suggestion to pro-amnesty/open borders economists, I suggest that they tear down their fences, move out from gated communities (especially those of the IGM stripe), and keep all doors unlocked. It would only be consistent with their beliefs.

But we've all seen many comments like this all over Reddit, possibly in person (e.g. my father used to say this). At it's core it comes from the seemingly reasonable statement "Citizens own the country they reside in." After all they, as a group, control the governing bodies that set the rules. From here it is not that much of a leap to think of citizens owning the country as perfectly analogous to homeowners owning their houses. Citizens opening their country is like a homeowner opening their own home.

The easiest way to dispel the analogy is to remember that citizens, as a group, do not own each other's property (which is what owning the country would mean); its not a collective. What they own, as a group, is the ability to set property rights for individuals. The astute reader will note that the ability to set property rights is a property right of individuals itself, so we have a feedback loop present. But of course citizens are individuals and individual citizens own a vote to marginally affect and effect property rights including those of other citizens. At this point we can compare the analogies individual to individual, with homes being the property on one side and votes/income being property on the other:

With Respect to Voting Power

Opening a home is increasing the probability that the value of property which the owner controls will change negatively over some time period. E.g. if something is stolen the owner now has a marginal reduction in net worth.

Opening immigration (without citizenship) does not change the probability that an individual's vote loses value because the number of votes remains static. Similarly group preferences remain static. Immigration with citizenship however means possible erosion of native preferences. This means it will lead to marginal "theft" of voting power if immigrants have differing preferences (i.e. whether they assimilate or not) and lead to political externalities. However along general issues 1st gen immigrants aren't very far from 4th gen1 even if they 'lean' left much more than natives 2. Other issues are things like social capital but with the right policies this isn't a problem and honestly I could go on and on. Point is, it theoretically could make a difference but empirically it's not really something to worry about. Regardless, increasing immigration without increasing citizenship removes this theoretical problem from consideration.

With Respect to Income Share

But what of the view that citizens have heterogeneous rights to fractions of national income (e.g. living wages)? Surely opening borders reduces some of the natives' shares and thus is akin to letting immigrants 'steal' from those natives as thieves would from homeowners. Well as /r/badeconomics knows, immigration almost always creates Pareto improvements with respect to natives and immigrants (as groups), meaning the analogy is garbage in aggregate. So lets see if it holds up if we focus on the Kaldor-Hicks improvements occurring.

Remembering Pareto improvements are a subset, any KH improvement means that some subset of natives experience a reduction in the share of national income they once had. This means that opening borders seems to increase the probability that "their" % of national income will reduce, just as opening their homes would increase the probability that the value of property one controls decreases. The problem of course is that citizens aren't actually "owed" any % of national income outside of what income + government transfers decree, unlike home owners who are owed the value of their property in their home (otherwise it wouldn't entirely be their property). So we end up talking about marginally reducing the probability that they have some % of national income which doesn't even belong to them. Since government transfers are determined by citizen preferences, to say that the country "owes" them what citizens in aggregate have not chosen to give them is by definition false (this is also why taxes aren't theft).

The only question remaining is would immigrants with citizenship signficantly change how much KH compensation occurs? Immigrants would only affect previously chosen distribution if they systematically hold different preferences than native regarding redistribution. Turns out they probably don't [see 1+2 above] also 3

Aside I hope this also makes clear why being simultaneously against immigration on native welfare grounds and against redistribution (stereotypical Republican) is totally illogical. If one wants no redistribution then one must be indifferent between PE outcomes, but if one wants no immigration because of native welfare then one clearly cares between PE outcomes. One could theoretically be against immigration so that redistribution is unnecessary but that requires a bunch of assumptions that are either economically stupid or purely normative.

Similarly being for redistribution and against immigration makes no sense because by combining the two you can generate Pareto improvements. Notice how being against immigration makes no sense in either scenario.

There's obviously more subtleties I have left out like how immigrants can change native preferences through exposure (usually for the better) but you guys can fill in the blanks.