In a 2009 TED Talk, economist Paul Romer proposed “charter cities,” territorial carve-outs in poor countries that would be overseen by outside democracies. The concept sounds so much like colonialism that it has resonated primarily with the political right. But that doesn’t mean the left should ignore Romer’s idea. Such places, the economist — who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 — told me, could be designed to welcome immigrants, with few or no restrictions. Would this (conveniently, for some) reduce the number of people trying to get to the U.S. or Europe? Sure. But there’s no reason why charter cities couldn’t become thriving centers in their own right.

So far, the main advocates for these sorts of sovereign cities have been centrist wonks and economists. Every few years, an American pundit recommends that cities or states be empowered to issue visas, rather than only the federal government. In 2019, the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan think tank started by Napster founder Sean Parker, suggested a “heartland visa” to draw “skilled immigrants” into regions of the U.S. that have shrinking workforces. Such initiatives have already been implemented in Canada and Australia. Some of the most out-of-the-box thinkers on independent cities are outright fascists. Perhaps the worst such scheme comes from Praxis, a venture-backed band of amateurs who want to create a new city in the Mediterranean for reactionary, conventionally attractive admirers of neoclassical architecture and Elon Musk. (To them, I say go for it — and please don’t come back.)

When I began reporting on the uses and misuses of alternative jurisdictions, I was skeptical of these ventures to the point of writing them off. But it’s become clear to me that conventional national structures can’t save us: not in our carbon-ravaged future, and certainly not now. It is delusional to believe that heads of state will solve the global refugee crisis of their own accord. It is arguably even crazier to think that multilateral agreements, or the well-intentioned frameworks and compacts initiated by the United Nations, will impel states to take migrants they don’t want.

And swaying public opinion doesn’t do much either. Not a whole lot changed when Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian refugee, washed up on a Turkish beach on the way to Greece in 2015. This April, nearly a decade later, the European Parliament voted to adopt the Migration and Asylum Pact, a law that makes it harder for asylum seekers to find shelter in Europe, and easier for countries to turn people away.

Why is immigration never fair? The state is the judge, jury, and executioner. Almost invariably, an individual comes up against a country and pleads her case to be let in, with little visibility into how, why, or when her fate will be decided. This is true for guest workers, refugees, and asylum seekers; it is also true for credentialed professionals moving for their jobs, and even for foreign millionaires trying to throw money at the problem. What unites these people is the fact of being born outside the state they’re trying to move to, a circumstance they had no say in. And in every case, it is the nation-state that gets its way.

It is of course absurd to compare an unaccompanied teenager from Guatemala to the child of a German industrial magnate. Still, both are subject to the fact that nations have a monopoly on mobility. The government has the total power to decide who gets to come in and who has to stay out.

We have come to accept this injustice, this arbitrary yet fundamental lack of personal agency, in much the same way we accept that it rains during tax season. But what if we didn’t? What if the left began dreaming of new kinds of places where people could go without running the Customs and Border Patrol gauntlet? These places should not be conceived of as extralegal prisons, like Nauru or Guantánamo, or as glorified refugee camps to put asylum seekers out of sight and mind. They should be imagined as thriving, real communities, not just entrepôts for those stuck in between. They could take the form of existing cities endowed with the power to issue immigration permits, or sparsely populated areas where governments want to make something new.

People on the move — many of them in life-or-death situations, and more globally with each passing year — cannot wait for a world of open borders. Right now, we should begin letting go of fictitious and largely conservative ideas about national sovereignty by imagining new towns, cities, and zones where anyone can go, no questions asked. At the very least, new kinds of jurisdiction would provide a more humane alternative to the dismal choices on offer. But these open places could also help prove how harmful the world’s national borders have been all along.