Here, I explain how immigration restrictions violate individual rights.* [ *Based on: “Is There a Right to Immigrate?”, Social Theory and Practice 36 (2010): 429-61. ] 1. Starvin Marvin Marvin is hungry. He plans to walk to a nearby marketplace, where he would be able to successfully trade for food. Sam, however, shows up with his M16, deliberately blocking the road and demanding that Marvin go back. As a result, Marvin is forced to return home emptyhanded, where he starves.
Preventing someone from trespassing on my property is not necessarily a harm. When is it a harm? When should that override my property right?
All roads and other transportation infrastructure belong to someone. If they all unanimously refuse to allow Marvin to use their infrastructure to pursue his needs, can we say they have harmed him? How many or few options does Marvin need access to for their refusal to count as harm? So long as he has one viable effective alternative, other refusals might count as inconvenient but not harmful.
Only when all gatekeepers, however many there may be, agree that Marvin can’t pass would the harm take place. But this seems odd. If there are 100 alternatives, whether or not they are responsible for the harm depends on what others, perhaps one other, have done, not what each have done themselves. If I refuse and someone else allows Marvin to pass, I have done no harm. If no one else accepts him, we have all done harm. But only one person has done something different.
J.C. Lester has tried to address some of these questions in his book Escape from Leviathan. E.g., someone escaping from a natural disaster has a right to trespass. I am not entirely satisfied by his account, though my criticisms are too vague to include here. I prefer to think that disaster victims are still liable for trespassing, or any other torts they create, and should compensate the victim if a dispute results. But that leads to further questions: what sorts of defense am I entitled to raise against such trespassers? If I am obligated to allow them to pass, what is the basis of my obligation?
Bernard Gert's framework might be relevant, in that he allows that rules can be broken in emergencies if done “publicly.” I was not able to satisfy myself as to exactly what that involves, but I assume it means that many people know about the violation and regard it as a valid exception to the rule. Is Marvin facing an emergency?
Perhaps if I knew more about ethical intuitionism I would be able to answer all these questions.
Great post, Mike. I’m all for open borders but here are two more objections I’m interested to get your take on. (The first is related to duties to citizens and anti-overwhelming the state objections):
(1) Citizens, in countries with universal benefits like Canada (e.g. healthcare, retirement, etc), have in some way contributed to the benefits they can expect to receive from the state. In this sense, the state is a kind of public service provider which citizens pay into and take from as needed. However, immigrants haven’t yet contributed to the state but may nonetheless expect to receive such benefits once they arrive. The person who is against immigration may say that those people immigrating into the country have not contributed and will negatively impact the quality of those services (relates to the objection about overwhelming the state). So if immigration is allowed, then doesn’t such benefits to the immigrant unjustly harm the person who contributed to the state? A potential reply is that it’s not the immigrants who have harmed citizens but the government who has unjustly taxed its citizens and monopolized those services, preventing competition for those services by the private sector.
(2) This objection deals less with immigration and more with regulating movement, so it’s more an objection to free movement per se. Citizens might complain that allowing open borders can have negative environmental consequences if people who come over introduce species that have a negative ecological impact, like changing ecosystem properties, causing trophic cascades, outcompeting native species which change the ecosystem and in turn affect ecosystem services that the citizens depend on. So, though people are allowed to immigrate, they cannot bring anything they want into the country. Potential reply: this problem isn’t specific to immigrants and could also be introduced by citizens who travel.
I don’t think you have steelmanned the culture argument. I think that argument is more like.
1. Either:
A. America’s governmental system is a unique force for good in the world. Such that it’s value outweighs the value that immigrants would have received by coming here.
B. America’s governing system uniquely protects freedom as a value. In its absence, the entire world will become like the placed immigrants want to leave.
2. America’s governmental system’s ability to deliver that is dependent for its survival on America’s current culture.
3. Letting in loads of immigrants would prevent America’s governmental system from surviving.
To my mind, when you express the steel man version, you start introducing lots of empirical assertions that are at least contested.
Read the article: i was pro open borders before reading it, and is pro open border after
I have a relative that is anti immigration, and i think his response to this would be that this all sounds nice, but the practical effects of immigration are disastrous, and that humans morally care more about their own kin and nationality, and that there is an overriding moral responsibility for nationalism
So he would probably say this article is living with its head in the clouds, and ignoring the real world.
He has said things like nationalism being the thing that got rid of despots, got us economic and social freedom, and been a force for great good historically, and thus encouraging GB less of it is very shortsighted and gambling with humanities potential
From what i can tell he also has a deep intuition that life is tok sensetive to risks to allow risky immigrants in, and that its obviously wrong to change society
Agreed with everything here but I'd just like to draw attention to 4.4 which I've always thought the worst objection of all. Many migrants are poorer than even the poorest Americans, so how on earth do immigration restrictions "prioritise the poor"?
havnt read this yet, just wanted to comment that several socialists i have read seem to consider capitalism as the equivalent of someone standing over people and stopping them from getting food and neccessaties. they seem to view a lot of work as obstacles to wellness, and as capitalists and employers as highway robbers leeching things from workers
they also seem obsessed with the idea of the commons, specificlly the english commons. they love to say something along the lines that in the past people had the option of not participating in the markets as the commons had materials and foods that people could use and share freely. but that the enclosure of the commons from capitalists and goverments were the equivalent of robbery and forcing everyone to participate in the market economy, essentially why they consider having to work jobs and private property as theft and exploitation.
So basically, the natural uncoerced state was positive freedoms, non-hierarchys, and communal sharing . Then supposedly capitalists either via force, trickery, or disregarding the wishes of the community makes it an coerced state of being. And so in their minds Revolution is turning it back into the natural state of the commons
i think so at least. im not sure if i fully understood them
Preventing someone from trespassing on my property is not necessarily a harm. When is it a harm? When should that override my property right?
All roads and other transportation infrastructure belong to someone. If they all unanimously refuse to allow Marvin to use their infrastructure to pursue his needs, can we say they have harmed him? How many or few options does Marvin need access to for their refusal to count as harm? So long as he has one viable effective alternative, other refusals might count as inconvenient but not harmful.
Only when all gatekeepers, however many there may be, agree that Marvin can’t pass would the harm take place. But this seems odd. If there are 100 alternatives, whether or not they are responsible for the harm depends on what others, perhaps one other, have done, not what each have done themselves. If I refuse and someone else allows Marvin to pass, I have done no harm. If no one else accepts him, we have all done harm. But only one person has done something different.
J.C. Lester has tried to address some of these questions in his book Escape from Leviathan. E.g., someone escaping from a natural disaster has a right to trespass. I am not entirely satisfied by his account, though my criticisms are too vague to include here. I prefer to think that disaster victims are still liable for trespassing, or any other torts they create, and should compensate the victim if a dispute results. But that leads to further questions: what sorts of defense am I entitled to raise against such trespassers? If I am obligated to allow them to pass, what is the basis of my obligation?
Bernard Gert's framework might be relevant, in that he allows that rules can be broken in emergencies if done “publicly.” I was not able to satisfy myself as to exactly what that involves, but I assume it means that many people know about the violation and regard it as a valid exception to the rule. Is Marvin facing an emergency?
Perhaps if I knew more about ethical intuitionism I would be able to answer all these questions.
Great post, Mike. I’m all for open borders but here are two more objections I’m interested to get your take on. (The first is related to duties to citizens and anti-overwhelming the state objections):
(1) Citizens, in countries with universal benefits like Canada (e.g. healthcare, retirement, etc), have in some way contributed to the benefits they can expect to receive from the state. In this sense, the state is a kind of public service provider which citizens pay into and take from as needed. However, immigrants haven’t yet contributed to the state but may nonetheless expect to receive such benefits once they arrive. The person who is against immigration may say that those people immigrating into the country have not contributed and will negatively impact the quality of those services (relates to the objection about overwhelming the state). So if immigration is allowed, then doesn’t such benefits to the immigrant unjustly harm the person who contributed to the state? A potential reply is that it’s not the immigrants who have harmed citizens but the government who has unjustly taxed its citizens and monopolized those services, preventing competition for those services by the private sector.
(2) This objection deals less with immigration and more with regulating movement, so it’s more an objection to free movement per se. Citizens might complain that allowing open borders can have negative environmental consequences if people who come over introduce species that have a negative ecological impact, like changing ecosystem properties, causing trophic cascades, outcompeting native species which change the ecosystem and in turn affect ecosystem services that the citizens depend on. So, though people are allowed to immigrate, they cannot bring anything they want into the country. Potential reply: this problem isn’t specific to immigrants and could also be introduced by citizens who travel.
What do you think?
Anyway, happy Fourth of July (:
What about criminality? Check europe stats. Immigrants are overrepresented. Sweden is the European capital of rape. Guess the demographics.
I don’t think you have steelmanned the culture argument. I think that argument is more like.
1. Either:
A. America’s governmental system is a unique force for good in the world. Such that it’s value outweighs the value that immigrants would have received by coming here.
B. America’s governing system uniquely protects freedom as a value. In its absence, the entire world will become like the placed immigrants want to leave.
2. America’s governmental system’s ability to deliver that is dependent for its survival on America’s current culture.
3. Letting in loads of immigrants would prevent America’s governmental system from surviving.
To my mind, when you express the steel man version, you start introducing lots of empirical assertions that are at least contested.
Read the article: i was pro open borders before reading it, and is pro open border after
I have a relative that is anti immigration, and i think his response to this would be that this all sounds nice, but the practical effects of immigration are disastrous, and that humans morally care more about their own kin and nationality, and that there is an overriding moral responsibility for nationalism
So he would probably say this article is living with its head in the clouds, and ignoring the real world.
He has said things like nationalism being the thing that got rid of despots, got us economic and social freedom, and been a force for great good historically, and thus encouraging GB less of it is very shortsighted and gambling with humanities potential
From what i can tell he also has a deep intuition that life is tok sensetive to risks to allow risky immigrants in, and that its obviously wrong to change society
Agreed with everything here but I'd just like to draw attention to 4.4 which I've always thought the worst objection of all. Many migrants are poorer than even the poorest Americans, so how on earth do immigration restrictions "prioritise the poor"?
havnt read this yet, just wanted to comment that several socialists i have read seem to consider capitalism as the equivalent of someone standing over people and stopping them from getting food and neccessaties. they seem to view a lot of work as obstacles to wellness, and as capitalists and employers as highway robbers leeching things from workers
they also seem obsessed with the idea of the commons, specificlly the english commons. they love to say something along the lines that in the past people had the option of not participating in the markets as the commons had materials and foods that people could use and share freely. but that the enclosure of the commons from capitalists and goverments were the equivalent of robbery and forcing everyone to participate in the market economy, essentially why they consider having to work jobs and private property as theft and exploitation.
So basically, the natural uncoerced state was positive freedoms, non-hierarchys, and communal sharing . Then supposedly capitalists either via force, trickery, or disregarding the wishes of the community makes it an coerced state of being. And so in their minds Revolution is turning it back into the natural state of the commons
i think so at least. im not sure if i fully understood them