the world is a bit more complicated than your comment implies.
Me not visiting my friend more often doesn't protect a single soul. All the while, criminals with legalized money buy residencies and citizenship left and right. Tell me more about how that protects anyone even remotely.
The visa requirements are not so much for the elites in rich countries; it's more for the general population - particularly in welfare states, the situation is that you can have open borders, or you can have universal welfare benefits for population, but you cannot have both.
Often it seems that it is actually the political and economical elite that wants to do away with immigration controls (to get cheap labor, for instance).
visa free travel exists before countries agreed to trust each other for whatever the reason may be (economic/social/etc.). other countries can workout ways for travel but they do not think of it as a priority.
Have them write to their politi-critters. Get the law revisited. If enough of your friend's friends also agitate and your neighbors generally agree or at least don't oppose, the law will be revised -- problem solved.
If, on the other hand your friend is in the minority, and you being able to visit without immigration permition is still that important to them, they are welcome to emigrate to somewhere visits without visas are open to you.
If you were told you should tell your friends to vote better next time just so they can see you, I'd love to know how that would make you feel.
I've lived all over the world, and also work with many offshore teams in places that don't just take my passport.
I've had to get plenty visas. It's their country, I'm a guest. I fail to understand the insult.
You're also either confused or disingenuous about the motives and beliefs of those trying to talk with you here, mine included. Good way to stay cocooned in a closed-minded point of view.
And who are you to decide what's good or not?
If you really cared for equality, you'd open borders for the poor people to come and compete in a truly open and free market. Otherwise it's all just hypocrisy and exploitation.
all it leads to is catastrophe, as witnessed over and over. a well regulated market, taking into account externalities like the environment, population density, cultural barriers, etc. is in the best interest of humanity.
it was the capitalists that brought in massive immigration into europe, without asking the native population. with no plan for integration, balance. super results.
The majority of people might not want to move state, which is fine, but they prevent other people from exercising their right to freedom of movement.
But this ends up being bad for everyone - if we are agreed that competition is good, this prevents competition between sovereign states for labour and population.
As an individual, I am stuck with whatever citizenship I was born into - and I have practically no opportunity to revoke my citizenship or try to claim a different or better citizenship. This is absolutely a derogation of a basic human right. I see it as no different morally than, for example, a caste system.
If you think that a country giving privileges to its own citizens compared to foreigners is morally equivalent to a caste system, you might as well claim the same about parents caring more about their own children than other people's children. Good luck with that.
My argument is the opposite: countries take away privileges from their citizens by restricting movement. The fact that this is done by states' mutual agreement does not mean people are gaining privilege.
Human beings are supposed to migrate - that's why we are all over the world.