Although justification and implementation of human rights are typically dealt with as separate issues, the lines between them become particularly opaque when dealing with contested rights claims, particularly those made by immigrant groups. The relevant lessons from Europe seem to indicate that in these sorts of cases, questions of justification can become embedded in deliberative practices that lead to their greater institutional entrenchment. The heterogeneity of deliberative practices out of diverse Member State administrative contexts can be turned (...) into an epistemic virtue when including additional perspectives that increase the likelihood of avoiding error and alleviating bias. With a focus on immigrant rights in the EU, I first give a stylized rendition of the shortcomings of three views—post-national rights theorists, liberal nationalists, and cosmopolitans. In contrast, experimentalists highlight the democratic potential of realizing rights on a pragmatic model of the Open Method of Coordination that better responds to regional problems not necessarily tied to a single site of sovereignty. Since immigrants in the EU are party to multiple overlapping political communities, the democratic justification of rights in contested cases can be directly tied to this novel institutional implementation, forging a modified social imaginary in the process for all affected actors. (shrink)

Arash Abizadeh has recently argued that political communities have no right to close their borders unilaterally, since by doing so they subject outsiders to coercion which lacks democratic justification. His conclusion is that any legitimate regime of border controls must be justified to outsiders. David Miller has sought to defend closed borders by distinguishing between coercion and prevention and arguing that the latter does not require democratic justification. This paper explores a different route, arguing firstly that the requirements of democracy (...) do not provide us with practical guidance unless we also consider other values, such as rights, and secondly that being subject to coercion does not entitle one to democratic justification. These arguments suggest that Abizadeh is wrong to hold closed borders in need of democratic justification. (shrink)

Attaining and maintaining a substantial Jewish majority in Israel has been one of the basic goals of the State of Israel since its early years. A substantial Jewish majority within the borders of the state is thought to be necessary in order to preserve its Jewish nature. Many believe that the demographic consideration also stood behind the enactment of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law , 2003, which prohibits granting Israeli citizenship and residency to Palestinians from the West Bank (...) and the Gaza Strip, and prevents, inter alia, Israeli Arabs from living in Israel with their Palestinian spouses. I examine the legitimacy of the demographic consideration from the perspective of liberal political theory. I conclude that demography can, in principle, be a legitimate consideration in deciding immigration policy, and its justification can be derived from the liberal justification of the right to national self-determination. However, the demographic consideration must be assigned its proper role and weight relative to other important liberal values such as equality and other human rights. I suggest that the demographic consideration might be legitimate only to the extent that it is not used to justify immigration policies that violate constitutional rights. I then discuss the Supreme Court decision concerning the constitutionality of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. I demonstrate that, contrary to statements by the judges themselves, the demographic consideration played a key role in the opinions of several judges. It was, however, a hidden consideration. It was not openly acknowledged and discussed. Consequently, a careful examination and balancing of the demographic consideration could not take place. The result was that the actual influence of the demographic consideration on the outcome of the case was much stronger than can be reasonably justified according to liberal principles of justice. (shrink)

This article examines how undocumented immigrants mobilize for greater rights in inhospitable political and discursive environments. We would expect that such environments would dissuade this particularly vulnerable group of immigrants from mobilizing in high profile campaigns because such campaigns would carry high risks (deportation) and have little chance of success. However, we have witnessed many mobilizations by undocumented immigrants in both Europe and the United States over the past 20 years. This article uses the case of undocumented youths in (...) the United States (DREAMers) to examine how a group of undocumented immigrants have overcome important barriers and become a powerful voice for immigrant rights in the country. The article suggests that while undocumented immigrants faced inhospitable contexts, cracks and “niche-openings” they continued to present themselves to groups with the right set of cultural, legal, and economic attributes. Immigrants in possession of these attributes (in this case, youth) could target a niche-opening and argue that they are particularly deserving of legalization. This article also highlights an important dilemma: In contexts characterized by general closure and hostility, narrow mobilizations targeting niche-openings provide the only path to legal status for some, but they can also differentiate (discursively and legally) between “deserving” and “undeserving” undocumented immigrants. Differentiation can contribute to stratifying the immigrant population, with those deemed more deserving facing greater rights and entitlements and those deemed less deserving facing greater restrictions and repression. This carries the risk of magnifying normative and legal inequalities between immigrant groups while introducing many points of conflict within the broader immigrant rights movement. (shrink)

This chapter argues that people have a human right to immigrate to other states. People have essential interests in being able to make important personal decisions and engage in politics without state restrictions on the options available to them. It is these interests that other human rights, such as the human rights to internal freedom of movement, expression and association, protect. The human right to immigrate is not absolute. Like other human freedom rights , it can be (...) restricted in certain extreme circumstances. Outside these circumstances, however, immigration restrictions are unjust. Having presented the argument for a human right to immigrate, the chapter responds to objections from distributive justice, culture and scarcity. (shrink)

This article questions the use of immigration as a tool to counter global poverty. It argues that poor people have a human right to stay in their home state, which entitles them to receive development assistance without the necessity of migrating abroad. The article thus rejects a popular view in the philosophical literature on immigration which holds that rich states are free to choose between assisting poor people in their home states and admitting them as immigrants when fulfilling duties to (...) assist the global poor. Since the human right to stay is entailed by values that feature prominently in the philosophical debate on immigration, the article further contends that participants in that debate have particular reason to reject the popular ‘choice view’ and endorse the alternative position presented in the article. (shrink)

Liberals conceive of territorial rights as dependent on the legitimacy of the state, which is in turn understood in terms of the state’s protection of individual rights and freedoms. Such justifications of territorial rights have difficulties in addressing the right to control immigration, which is therefore in need of additional justification. The paper considers Christopher Heath Wellman’s liberal proposal for justifying the right to control immigration, which understands the right as derivative of a general right to freedom (...) of association held collectively by the people of the state. The paper argues that state legitimacy and freedom of political association fail to connect in the way required to justify a right to control immigration. Wellman’s argument conflates the state as an institution and the people as a political collective and elides the difference between territorial jurisdiction and associational freedom. (shrink)

Social media platforms have become crucial channels for radical right populist leaders to broadcast anti-immigrant views. These politicians employ various rhetorical appeals, such as pathos (emotional language), logos (logical arguments), and ethos (speaker credibility), to sway public opinion. This study considers the anti-immigrant rhetoric of prominent European populist radical right leaders across X, Instagram, and Facebook, analysing the prevalence of these rhetorical strategies across different platforms. From the perspective of mediatization theory, politicians can adjust their messages to fit (...) with the design and formats of various social media platforms. Party leaders often resort to emotional appeals on X, with its limited space for communication, as well as on Facebook, where emotional interaction buttons and discussion features can encourage emotional rhetoric as well. Logical appeals (logos) are common on platforms such as Facebook and X, which offer options to easily share information in the form of texts and links. Additionally, ethos, associated with speaker’s credibility, is common in posts on platforms that facilitate closer engagement with the party leaders’ constituents, such as Facebook and Instagram. These findings underscore the importance of considering platform design when shaping political communication strategies. (shrink)

Suggests that illegal immigrants should be offered a path to citizenship.

What legal rights and duties immigrants should have is among the most ferociously debated topics in the politics of liberal societies today. However, as this article will show, there is remarkably little disagreement of great magnitude among political theorists and philosophers of immigration on the rights and duties of resident immigrants (even in contrast to the closely related philosophical discussion of justice in immigrant admissions). Specifically, this article will survey philosophical positions both on what legal rights (...) immigrants (documented permanent residents, guestworkers, and undocumented immigrants) ought to have (including to citizenship and against deportation), and on what liberal societies may justly do to require immigrants to integrate. This article will reveal that there is a substantial, growing gap between contemporary politics worldwide and what the moral norms of liberalism seem to entail concerning the rights and duties of immigrants. (shrink)

Although the right to health is universal, many nations that honor it fail to do so in the case of non-citizen immigrants. In this essay, we argue that the reasons typically given for not extending the right to health to immigrants are without merit and that there are good reasons for nations to protect, respect and fulfill the health right of all immigrants. Contrary to the standard view, we argue that health can be understood as a global public good. Two (...) important points follow: because health is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, it is in the health interests of nations to respect, protect and fulfill immigrants’ right to health. Furthermore, meeting the health needs of immigrants is an important way for receiving nations to meet the duties that may be generated by the benefits they incur as a result of health’s global public good dimension, thus ensuring that receiving nations are not free riders. We then argue that because citizens and immigrants dwell together, nations have duties of solidarity to immigrants with respect to health. Using the insights of social psychology, we show that solidarity among diverse people is both a reasonable expectation and a morally desirable one. (shrink)

Abstract: Michael Walzer and David Miller defend the authority of democratic states to determine who will be allowed entry and membership. In support of this view they have claimed that the domestic solidarity necessary for social justice is threatened by the unregulated influx of outsiders. This empirical thesis proves to be false when applied to the United States, where heavy Latino and Latina immigration is more likely to increase civic solidarity than to diminish it. Seen in this light, the positions (...) of Jürgen Habermas and Carol Gould, giving human rights priority over democratic sovereignty in decisions about membership, cannot be criticized as utopian. Liberal philosophers can also defend open borders as a way to give oppressed peoples representation inside powerful countries where state decisions often threaten access to essential resources and basic freedoms in their home countries. (shrink)

A recent challenge to statist arguments defending the right of states to exclude prospective immigrants maintains that such statist arguments prove too much. Specifically, the challenge argues that statist arguments, insofar as they are correct, entail that states may permissibily exclude current members' newcomers by birth, which seems to violate a widely held intuition that members' newcomers by birth ought automatically to be granted membership rights. The basic claim is that statist arguments cannot account for the differntial treatment between (...) prospective immigrants and newcomers by birth. Call this the newcomer-by-birth objection. This article rejects the newcomer-by-birth rejection. It begins by sketching the precise extent to which the objection applies to statist arguments. It then examines the case of newcomers by birth and argues for a principled basis for treating them differentially from prospective immigrants such that a right to exclude prospective immigrants need not entail a right to exclude newcomers by birth. But this distinction holds only in most cases, not all, and therefore the newcomer-by-birth objection is not entirely defeated. With respect to the cases in which the objection does hold, it is argued that such cases are morally akin to international adoption, and thus morally benign. All considered, statist arguments easily survive the newcomer-by-birth objection. (shrink)

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

Philosophers have assumed that as long as discriminatory admission and exclusion policies are off the table, it is possible for one to adopt a restrictionist position on the issue of immigration without having to worry that this position might entail discriminatory outcomes. The problem with this assumption emerges, however,when two important points are taken into consideration. First, immigration controls are not simply discriminatory because they are based on racist or ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs, but can themselves also be the source (...) of social and civic ostracism. Second, by focusing so much on questions of admission and exclusion, philosophers have tended to overlook the discriminatory potential of immigration enforcement mechanisms. In this essay, I make the case that philosophers who deal with the issue of immigration cannot dispense with the potential for discrimination in a state's enforcement mechanism as easily as they have with the potential for discrimination in a state’s admission and exclusions criteria. In addition, I put forth the positive claim that the way to combat this potential for discrimination (e.g., xenophobia) must begin with a defense of, and advocacy for, immigrant rights. (shrink)

Although Australia has comparatively few individuals seeking asylum, it has had a mandatory detention policy in place since 1992. This policy has been maintained by successive governments despite the overwhelmingly negative impact mandatory detention has on mental health. For mental health professionals working in this environment, a number of moral, ethical, and human rights issues are raised. These issues are discussed here, with a focus on dual loyalty conflicts and drawing on personal experience, the bioethics and human rights (...) literature, and recent parliamentary inquiries. For those who continue to work in this environment, future directions are also discussed. (shrink)

It is normally taken for granted that states have a right to control immigration into their territory. When immigration is raised as a normative issue two questions become salient, one about what the right to exclude is, and one about whether and how it might be justified. This paper considers the first question. The paper starts by noting that standard debates about immigration have not addressed what the right to exclude is. Standard debates about immigration furthermore tend to result either (...) in fairly strong cases for open borders or in denials that considerations of justice apply to immigration at all, which results in state discretion positions. This state of debate is both theoretically unsatisfactory and normatively implausible. The paper therefore explores an alternative approach to the right to exclude immigrants from the perspective of recent debates about the territorial rights of states. The right to exclude claimed by states is analysed and it is shown to differ both conceptually and normatively from rights to impose political authority within a territory. The paper finally indicates how this analysis might broaden the focus of debates about immigration and suggest alternative regimes of migration regulation the possibility of which is obscured by traditional justice approaches. (shrink)

States claim the right to choose who can come to their country. They put up barriers and expose migrants to deadly journeys. Those who survive are labelled ‘illegal’ and find themselves vulnerable and unrepresented. The international state system advantages the lucky few born in rich countries and locks others into poor and often repressive ones. In this book, Christopher Bertram skilfully weaves a lucid exposition of the debates in political philosophy with original insights to argue that migration controls must be (...) justifiable to everyone, including would-be and actual immigrants. Until justice prevails, states have no credible right to exclude and no-one is obliged to obey their immigration rules. Bertram’s analysis powerfully cuts through the fog of political rhetoric that obscures this controversial topic. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and ethics of migration. (shrink)

The immigration debate in political theory has produced a series of accounts that justify the state’s right to exclude potential immigrants, where the right of self-determination figures prominently. We challenge two prominent accounts of the self-determination-based right to exclude and defend a circumscribed right to exclude and a corollary duty to admit immigrants, based on our ‘people relationship goods’ account of self-determination. Our conception reconciles the moral claims of global opportunity migrants with the well-being and non-alienation interests of the locals. (...) It therefore provides a principled answer to the philosophical question underlying pressing political conflicts today, namely what is the permissible scope of exclusion by self-determining political communities, in light of weighty global moral demands of inclusion. (shrink)

Do past state actions, such as the American conquest of northern Mexico, the British colonization of South Asia, and the Spanish expulsion of the Sephardim and Moriscos, grant contemporary Mexicans, South Asians, and the descendants of the Sephardim and Moriscos a particular right to immigrate to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain respectively? In this paper I examine three theoretical models for addressing this question: retrospective responsibility for historic injustice; the principle of coercively constituted identities; and the theory (...) of remedial responsibility. I argue that remedial responsibility best justifies a particular right to immigrate through responsibility for the past for three reasons. First, it relieves us of the epistemological task of establishing causal responsibility. Second, it lessens the normative task of identifying a theory of unjust harm to establish moral responsibility. Finally, it facilitates the normative task of ranking the claims to immigrate of different individuals. (shrink)

In recent years irregular immigration has attracted increasing scholarly attention. Current academic debate casts the irregular immigrant in the role of the new political subject who acts out a right to have rights and/or as the rightless victim who is subjected to violence and abuse. However, the conception of the irregular immigrant as harbinger of political change and/or victim reifies the persistent dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. It ignores that irregular immigrants are not by definition excluded from (...) a normal life and that numerous immigrants live in the interstices between full legal inclusion and exclusion without democratic legal order being cast to ruin. The question that underlies this essay is: What concept of law can accommodate the unauthorized presence of immigrants (i) without reducing them to bare life, struggling to survive and/or assigning them a political agency and (ii) without taking recourse to the use of force and violence in a zero-tolerance policy? To answer this question, this article draws on what Agamben has coined the potentiality of the law and unpacks Judith Shklar’s idea of different degrees of legalism. (shrink)

Populists in the EU often call for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights. These calls are often demagogic and parochial. This paper aims to show what exactly is both distinct and problematic with these populist calls from a normative point of view while not necessarily reducible to demagogy and parochialism. The overall aim of the paper is not to argue that all populists call for such restrictions nor to claim that all calls for such restrictions are populist. (...) The purpose of the paper is rather humble. It only aims to show that populist calls for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are characterised by two normatively problematic arguments that target two different subsets of the citizenry: what I dub for the purpose of this paper the moralists and the immoralists. It is the way populists address these two subsets of the citizenry, as well as the fact that they could simultaneously appeal to the concerns of both groups, that makes populist approaches to welfare rights both conceptually distinct to other approaches as well as potentially politically appealing to a more diverse population of voters. (shrink)

The “right to belong” is a human right in two ways. First, there is the right to belong in a limited sense, i.e., to the extent necessary for individuals to secure all other human rights, such as those recognized by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Second, there is a deeper aspect of the right to belong, that which is necessary to flourish as a human being. To establish, first, that the right to belong in a (...) limited sense should be a human right, I draw upon Hannah Arendt’s claim that stateless persons are without rights, as only communities can grant them. I argue that this limited level of belonging is a necessary but insufficient condition for human flourishing. Full human flourishing requires belonging on a deeper level. To articulate the nature of this deeper level of belonging I draw on Simone Weil’s definition of the “need for roots” and John Dewey and Jane Addams’ constructions of the self as social. I then show how “belonging” in a deeper sense necessarily connects with how a person is perceived and received by individuals and institutions in a community and argue that full perception by and participation in a community is necessary for humans to flourish. Thus, the right to belong imposes an ethical obligation on other members of the community to perceive undocumented immigrants as full human persons with the potential to lead flourishing lives. (shrink)

Immigration restrictions violate the prima facie right of potential immigrants not to be subject to harmful coercion. This prima facie right is not neutralized or outweighed by the economic, fiscal, or cultural effects of immigration, nor by the state’s special duties to its own citizens, or to its poorest citizens. Nor does the state have a right to control citizenship conditions in the same way that private clubs may control their membership conditions.

The rhetoric employed by right-wing populist parties (RWPPs) has been seen as a driver for their success. This right-wing populist (RWP) rhetoric is partly characterized by the use of anti-immigration metaphors and hyperboles, which likely appeal to voters’ grievances. We tested the persuasive impact of figuratively framed RWP rhetoric among a unique sample of Dutch RWPP voters, reporting an experiment with a 2 (metaphor: present, absent) x 2 (hyperbole: present, absent) between-subjects design. Our findings challenge prevailing ideas about how supportive (...) voters respond to RWP rhetoric: Figurative language did not steer voters more in line with RWP ideas but pushed their opinion further away. These unexpected boomerang effects mainly held for weakly identified voters. This suggests that RWPP voters support their party, not because of but despite their rhetoric. Being heard in their grievances, rather than told what to grieve about, seems to be a main driver for RWPP support. (shrink)

Recently, John Doe, an undocumented immigrant who was detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was admitted to a hospital off-site from a detention facility. Custodial officers accompanied Mr. Doe into the exam room and refused to leave as physicians examined him. In this analysis, we examine the ethical dilemmas this case brings to light concerning the treatment of patients in immigration detention and their rights to privacy. We analyze what US law and immigration detention standards allow (...) regarding immigration enforcement or custodial officers’ presence in medical exams and documentation of detainee health information. We describe the ethical implications of the presence of officers in medical exam rooms, including its effects on the quality of the patient-provider relationship, patient privacy and confidentiality, and provider's ability to provide ethical care. We conclude that the presence of immigration enforcement or custodial officers during medical examination of detainees is a breach of the right to privacy of detainees who are not an obvious threat to the public. We urge ICE and the US Department of Homeland Security to clarify standards for and tighten enforcement around when officers are legally allowed to be stationed in medical exam rooms and document detainees’ information. (shrink)

In Justice for People on the Move (2020), Gillian Brock argues that immigration bans targeting religions run afoul of international human rights agreements and practices concerning equal protection under the law, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion. Religion-targeted bans are also said to violate ethical requirements for legitimacy by not treating immigration applicants fairly and signalling the acceptability of hatred and intolerance. Brock centres her discussion around the example of the Trump administration’s 2017 Muslim ban, for which she (...) notes additional problems such as the ban’s being motivated by dubious empirical assumptions about the risk of terrorism. I raise two challenges for Brock’s argument. I begin by asking whether banning the immigration of individuals from certain Muslim majority countries could be justified on the grounds that a large portion of the population in those countries appear to reject core liberal values such as the equal rights of women and homosexuals. This leads to my primary challenge, which concerns the practice of treating religion as a morally protected category such that discrimination based on religion is inherently impermissible. I argue that religions should be viewed as more akin to political ideologies than to morally arbitrary categories like race and sex, and that if a given religion is genuinely harmful to liberal values, an immigration ban could in principle be compatible with respect for human rights. (shrink)

According to David Miller, immigration is not a human right. Conversely, Kieran Oberman makes a case for immigration as a human right. We agree with the latter view, but we show that its starting point is mistaken. Indeed, both Miller and Oberman discuss the right to immigration within the liberal paradigm: it is a right or not depending on the correct balance between the interests of the citizens of a given national state and the interests of the immigrants. Instead, we (...) claim that public justification can underpin immigration as a human right. That said, the public justification of the right to immigration has several counterarguments to rebut. Before we deal with that issue, relying on Jürgen Habermas’s social theory, we examine the legal structures that could support the right to immigration in practice. To be sure, this does not provide the normative justification needed, instead it shows the framework that allows the institutional realization of this right. Then, through a combination of civic and cosmopolitan forms of solidarity, the article discusses the formation of a public sphere, which could provide the justification of the right to immigration. (shrink)

This article brings an account of reasonable expectations to bear on the question of when unauthorized immigrants have a right to be regularized—that is, to be formally guaranteed freedom from the threat of deportation. Contrary to the current literature, which implicitly relies on a flawed understanding of reasonable expectations, this article argues that only those unauthorized immigrants who have both been tacitly permitted by the state despite lacking formal authorization and have remained long enough to develop deep social roots in (...) the state have a right to regularization. (shrink)

This paper argues that the relevant unit of analysis for assessing the justice of an immigration policy is the socially-situated individual (as opposed to the individual simpliciter or the nation-state, for example). This methodological principle is demonstrated indirectly by showing how some liberal, cosmopolitan defenses of "open borders" and the alleged right of immigration fail by their own standards, owing to the implicit adoption of an inappropriate unit of analysis.

Although the moral foundations of voting rights regulations have been the subject of widespread scrutiny, there is one aspect of the debate which has gone largely unquestioned and is currently accepted in every state’s actual voting rights regulations. This is the requirement of prior residence, which stipulates that immigrants are granted the right to vote only once they have lived in the host country for a certain period of time. It is this requirement I call into question in (...) this paper. Taking up the most plausible justifications for this requirement, I aim to put substantial pressure on its moral acceptability by arguing that it is not directly grounded by any of the principles that are currently defended as a means to determine the demos, nor a proxy for some other morally relevant feature, nor a warrantor for abilities held to be significant for the right to vote. (shrink)

Kymlicka has offered an influential luck egalitarian justification for a catalogue of polyethnic rights addressing cultural disadvantages of immigrant minorities. In response, Quong argues that while the items on the list are justified, in the light of the fact that the relevant disadvantages of immigrants result from their choice to immigrate, (i) these rights cannot be derived from luck egalitarianism and (ii) that this casts doubt on luck egalitarianism as a theory of cultural justice. As an alternative (...) to Kymlicka’s argument, Quong offers his own justification of polyethnic rights based on a Rawlsian ideal of fair equality of opportunity. I defend luck egalitarianism against Quong’s objection arguing that if choice ever matters, it matters in relation to cultural disadvantages too. Also, the Rawlsian ideal of fair equality of opportunity cannot justify the sort of polyethnic rights that Quong wants it to justify, once we set aside an unwarranted statist focus in Quong’s conception of fair equality of opportunity. Whatever the weaknesses of luck egalitarianism are, the inadequacy of the position in relation to accommodating cultural disadvantages of immigrants is not among them. (shrink)

There are now over 1.1 million people overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with about 33,000 detained in jails and federal detention centers around the country at any particular time. The average detention time is two months, but some are detained for much longer periods. Since its inception, one hundred and twenty one deaths and countless cases of medical neglect have occurred. Given its secrecy, and lack of accountability and oversight, it is not clear how many of these deaths (...) are the result of grossly inadequate medical care. ICE is a branch of a government agency in a democratic country, thus the citizens on whose behalf it allegedly operates have an obligation to ensure that it operates in conformity with the fundamental principles of justice on which this nation was founded. ICE is a young and rapidly growing bureaucracy with little oversight. It operates using a mix of federal, state, local and private centers, many of which are penal institutions. It has a history of serious abuse, and even when it operates in conformity with its penal standards, it inflicts additional harm onto vulnerable people, especially asylum seekers and parents of minor children. It thus requires our constant vigilance and concern. Our immigration policies and detention practices are deeply troubling, but until we elect to reform them, we have a special obligation to the vulnerable populations that we house in ICE detention. (shrink)

U.S. citizens have a right to exclude potential immigrants. This right rests in part on the threat immigration poses to change the character of the institutions to which the current citizens have consented and in part on the threat immigrants pose to the citizens' rights to collective property. This right is probably not opposed by a human right to immigrate since such a right cannot be supported by arguments from equality, fairness, legitimate state authority, or libertarianism.

Migration is a recurrent phenomenon of human history because it is a successful adaptive strategy of human beings. Although migration today is not of a greater magnitude than in the past, it attracts a great deal of media and academia attention. The present wave of non-Western immigrants into the United States and Europe caused, apart from myriad economic, social and political problems, an ideological dispute between globalism and right-wing populism. Both ideological approaches attract many zealots who spread extreme opinions and (...) poison the whole political life. Using the scholastic method, I examined some opposing points of view of globalists and right-wing populists on several topics regarding non-Western immigration: border control, illegal immigration, limitations of legal immigration, refugee relocation quotas and cultural integration of immigrants. The globalists’ and right-wing populists’ theses and arguments were checked in regard with established authorities, available factual data and human reason. Highlighting some important topics relating to immigration problem and weighing the main arguments used by globalists and right-wing populists, I also indicate several points of compromise that could help people to moderate their political opinions. (shrink)

Many of us take it for granted that states have a right to control the entry and settlement of non‐citizens in their territories, and hardly pause to consider or evaluate the moral justifications for immigration controls. For a long time, very few political philosophers showed a great deal of interest in the subject. However, it is now attracting much more attention in the discipline. This article aims to show that we most certainly should not take it for granted that states (...) enjoy a moral right to exclude would‐be immigrants. It is neither obvious nor uncontroversial. And if we cannot find adequate justifications for the existence of such a right, then we need to re‐evaluate the very backbone of current approaches to immigration policy. The paper begins with an overview of the existing academic debate about the extent of the right to freedom of movement. Next it introduces three arguments in support of the state’s right to exclude would‐be immigrants which draw on claims about the collective right to self‐determination. Finally it outlines three important challenges faced by these arguments in support of the state’s right to exclude. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article challenges Kieran Oberman’s derivation of a right to immigrate from the right to internal movement, residence, and employment. His argument depends on a cantilever strategy, which finds it illogical to recognize one right without recognizing an analogous second right. This differs from a direct argument, which derives a right directly from an essential human interest, and an instrumental argument, which identifies one right as a means to protecting another right. The strength of a cantilever argument depends on the (...) direct or instrumental foundations of the initial right and the aptness of the analogy between it and the new right that one seeks to establish. Oberman’s argument fails on both accounts. First, his defense of the initial right to internal movement, residence, and employment, although portrayed as a direct argument, actually rests on inapt cantilever analogies with other rights, such as freedom of speech or religion. Second, the overall cantilever argument for deriving the right to immigrate fails, because immigration across fiscally separate states is not analogous to movement, residence, and employment within a single, fiscally unified state. Instead, a right to travel and visit is the proper outcome of Oberman’s argument. (shrink)