From a modern perspective, it’s difficult to understand how it could have taken so long for humanity to realize slavery was wrong. This insight was apparently beyond Aristotle, Confucius, the Buddha, and Jesus. But once we figured it out, there was no going back. Humans shouldn’t be able to own other human beings. There’s no rational system of morality that can say otherwise.
Today, most humans take borders for granted. Some people are born in America, where they will have access to clean water, safety, education, and quality healthcare. Others are born in Congo, where they will lack sanitation and might be raped by armed militiamen. Many conservatives think nothing in the world is as important as keeping the Congolese exactly where they are. Most liberals, in contrast, will shake their heads and express sadness at the unfairness of life, and even agree that richer countries have an abstract obligation to help the global poor. But in practice, they will nearly always prioritize expansions of the welfare state at home over ways to help foreigners, whether through increasing immigration, more foreign aid, or more open trade. Practically nobody takes the simple argument against borders seriously enough.
One might say that enslaving people is an act of commission, while not letting them come to your country is an act of omission. But you actually need to pass and enforce laws against immigration. An individual who wants to settle in the United States, not bother anyone, and be a productive citizen, won’t be allowed to do so unless he has one of a limited number of legal pathways, and even then he must usually wait a very long time. You might have an airline that will gladly sell him a plane ticket, an employer that seeks to give him a job, and a taxi driver who will agree to pick him up from the airport and drive him to his new home, where he will rent an apartment from a willing landlord. The government needs to do a lot of things to stop that person from living in the country.
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There should therefore be a presumption toward open borders. This doesn’t mean that this default cannot be overcome in certain cases. Even the presumption against slavery can be overcome sometimes, though such instances are rare. In Haiti, the vast majority of the 30,000 to 40,000 whites living there were killed or driven out during and following the revolution. American slaveholders worried about experiencing a similar fate. If someone could foresee that this would happen, it could make sense to argue for delaying the end of slavery, at least for a short period of time. But basic morality requires one to acknowledge that they are making an exception to a general rule.
This is why the rightoid taunt “Why don’t you support open borders for Israel?” doesn’t take you very far.