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I disagree. Perhaps one could make the argument that freedom to move from one's current position as a basic human right, but that is different from the freedom to move anywhere, which would be requisite to argue for open borders on this basis.
Let's consider the case of two isolated island nations, Nation A and Nation B, which initially have indentical conditions. Nation A develops its economy in a manner that ensures ecological stability and the people prosper. Nation B, on the other hand, develops its economy in a manner that degrades the island ecology, ruining their soil and losing their crops, leading to famine. This leads to a distinct inequality between these two nations. However, Nation A is in no way responsible for the devestation and famine in Nation B.
By the argument posited by Mr. Abizadeh, it would be unjust for Nation A not to accept refugees from Nation B. However, it seems strange that Nation A would be obliged to cede territory and strain their own resource because of actions that were beyond their control and were in fact caused by the very people now seeking to live on their island.
In fact, I would further argue that in this situation, Mr. Abizadeh's version of "global justice" would amount to a punishment of the good behavior of those in Nation A and a reward of the bad behavior of those in Nation B. You'll find that Nation B still fully controls their initial holdings (the island that they ruined) and in accepting Nation B refugees, Nation A has to cede some of its territory and resources to Nation B.
This is absurd. If democratic theory is defined as requiring say of all the world's people in the laws of a state, then no state on the planet can be termed as "democratic". I'd like a proof-of-concept before endorsing such an idea.
Tribal privilege has been a useful means for maintaining the stability of societies for centuries, so I'm not sure what why it would be an illegitimate defense. In fact, I would call into question the practicality and thus the relevance of any political theory that ignores or tries to erase the tribal nature of humans.
In other words, if some group of people develop a way of living that allows them to create ever greater amounts of wealth and that wealth then attracts people who have no desire (or, perhaps, ability) to live by the restrictions necessary to generate that wealth, aren't you just inviting the inevitable swamping of the wealth-generators with the result that all of humanity slips back into the malthusian, subsistence past?
Assuming, of course, that you accept that all of humanity for almost all of human history lived in a malthusian economy with the vast, vast majority of poeple barely eking out a subsistence living and that it is only those relatively few countries that have adopted the societal structure created in England (and western europe, more broadly) in the lead-up to the industrial revolution who have ever lived in a system of rising living standards and wealth.
The parable that always occurs to me is Ethiopia. In the 80's they had a population in the 30 millions and were unable to feed themselves and so endured famine. The world was outraged and responded with aid that saved literal millions of lives. This is all to the good right? In the early 21 st century the population of ethiopia was around 80 million and they were unable to feed themselves and thus endured famine. The basic effect of saving those millions in the first famine was to allow a subsistence culture to triple it's population without raising living standards any perceptible amount.
A just world, as I understand Will's definition, would allow Ethiopia to spread its culture as far and wide as its rapid population growth would allow. The wealth created by the modern world would be split equitably and given to them with no corresponding requirements to adopt the cultural attributes that allow such wealth creation or even a requirement to drop the cultural attributes that leave them perpetually trappped at subsistence level.
The inevitable outcome of such a "just" policy would be the wiping out of the only human cultures that have ever created progress beyond susbsistence living in the same malthusian trap that has swallowed all technological progress throughout human history in every culutre except those few modern ones in the last 200 years. (A historical eye-blink, it should be noted.)
If the implementation of your philosophy would result in the vast majority of the human population sinking into subsistence living and the wiping out of the only human progress the world has ever known, I would submit that your philosophy is stupid.
private property/citizens priviliege=1:
The owners of the farm could of course say to the people that camped on their lawn: “We get to make these rules however we like because it’s our haouse damn it!” sort of position. But that’s hard to recognize as much more than a reflex in defense of private property.
There is no more reason to expect people to want poor immigrants to settle in their country than in their backyards. Unless, of course, they see anything in it for them.
I'm norwegian so I'm not too familiar with the american situation but in Norway immigration is a terrible deal for the midle class (and propbably evryone else too). The NAM foreigners are all from violent misogynist tribal cultures (NAMs are wildly overrepresented in violent crime statistics and almost all rapes (I'm not exaggerating) where the offender does not know the woman is commited by immigrants), their unemployment rate is horrible, if they work they usually do so in poorly paid jobs making them net recipients of tax-money anyway, we had riots in front of the royal palace during the gaza crisis (immigrants), NAMs all vote for the socialists and they might soon be a majority...
I want my tribal privileges back.
Why don't you get Cato to print up some "Nationalism is myopic" bumper stickers? I'll buy one.
Better would be square root of xenophobia but no way to write that in a comment
To give folk decision-making power without even any implicit commitment to the polity making the decision is surely a reductio in the other direction. Decision-making power without even a shadow of responsibility. Not even the elementary one of living with the consequences.
The citizen/state relationship could be as simple as "I'll give you some money to provide public goods, you do that." Plus public deliberation.
As for who participates in decision-making, perhaps it depends on the issue. Why not make migration a regional issue, since it affects everyone at once? It doesn't mean people from Guatemala are going to start voting on US tax rates.
However the real problem with the argument is that everything affects everybody. Trade policy affects what people can bring over the border. War affects whether the country next to me is getting bombed.
So actually this argument doesn't seem too good. How do you draw the line between what your neighbors can vote on and what not?
Exactly. So if we redefine the question of relevant popular sovereignty to include allll people who are touched by the ramifications of a particular policy then the people of Iraq should have some hand in shaping American politics should they not? China should be shaping financial reform... well...
In any event when you frame immigration as an issue of human rights you end up with a good deal of unintended ( I assume ) silliness. It doesn't hold.
Take your Iraq bombing example. Yes, following the logic to its conclusion, we need to ask Iraq before we bomb them. But following logic even more to its conclusion, we just shouldn't bomb them! Killing other people is wrong.
We're not peaceniks, so we accept that wars are still necessary in our world. What's really going on here is that "universal human rights" only have legal purchase in a world where there is a global government with a monopoly on the use of force. (At least I don't immediate see another way to obtain enforced universal human rights).
In such a hypothetical world, the US and Iraq [under Saddam, say] are like two citizens (or organizations, or sub-states in a federal regime) that want to kill each other. Well, no, you can't do that! It's against the law!
If there isn't a sufficiently strong central government then it doesn't matter what's against the law or not. So what this all comes down to is that these human rights are real moral considerations but they have no effective force in a world without deep global political coordination.
Thus, the libertarian argument for world governance. Ta-da!
I don't agree with the premise that immigration policy and associated border security are in fact "policies that subject them [foreigners] to state force". A foreigner becomes subject to immigration policy and border laws when he freely chooses to enter the sovereign territory of a neighbor. Until such time, he is not subject to state force.
Secondly, to whom do you extend the participatory privilege in defining the immigration laws of a sovereign entity? To those within 20 miles of a border, 50 miles, 100 miles? To those that express a desire to emigrate in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years? Where do you draw the border line (pun intended)?
You can caricaturize this position as a "We get to make these rules however we like because it’s our club, damn it!" all you want, but I really don't see how you can defeat it without completely giving up the notion of property rights.
Or is it different b/c immigrants are people and people have no externalities, while toxic waste is inanimate and basically nothing but externatlities?
Does it reflect better on the American character to lock poor people out than to permit them entry on limited terms? Guest worker programs do clash with deeply held mythologies about our relationship to the global poor. We live in a state of relative political equality nested awkwardly within a deeply unequal world, and it can seem better, kinder, to keep the inequality outside, walling it off and keeping our hands clean.
Or would you accept a generous temporary guest-worker program, as an acceptable alternative your first choice (abolishing citizenship)?
The point of the quoted text is that Americans are in the grip of "deeply held mythologies" about poverty and inequality and that our immigration policies reflect and reinforce them. I agree!
I have no interest in abolishing citizenship. I'm for a guest-worker program as a temporary solution until the establishment of a common North American labor market.
And why 'a guest-worker program as a temporary solution until the establishment of a common North American labor market'. Why perpetually favor Mexicans, when allowing Somalis or Haitians would raise migrants' income much more drastically?
At the very least, I can't see giving foreign nationals the right to participate in the political process when not all Americans have that right.
I'm also inclined to think that citizenship is indivisible. If some individual is entitled to have a say in the making of any law in some democracy then: (1) He is a citizen of that democracy; (2) He has a right to have a say in the making of all laws in that democracy; (3) He is subject to all the laws of that democracy; (4) the democratic state in question has a strict obligation to secure for him all the civil rights of a citizen.
To those who are simply asserting that tribal privilege is beneficial or legitimate, I must ask then how belonging to the tribe of America (or wherever else) is a valid reason for the application of superior rights but the tribe of white people, or men, or Anglo-Saxon, etc., is not. If we find accidents of birth to be philosophically satisfying reasons for doling out rights, there is little reason not to apply them by race or sect or gender. Right? A person born in Mexico is denied the right to choose to live in America or participate in its democratic process. He or she is disenfranchised by an accident of birth. That doesn't strike me in keeping with the basic principles of egalitarianism, where we attempt to mitigate, as best as we are able, the negative impact on liberty that accidents of birth cause.
Or are you asserting that we should have the right to make Mexico's government do whatever we want (since we outpopulate them by a significant margin and thus would dominate them in any democratic vote), in a hypothetical world where the US and Mexico were the only two countries in existence? Is that "philosophically satisfying" to you?
So someone exercises their "freedom of movement" to immigrate illegally. The state does allow immigration, but like the benefits extended by the state to property owners, there are requirements that must be met to get the benefits associated with legal immigrant status. There are countless reasons for this. It benefits the citizens of the state if the state screens for criminal records, contagious health conditions, the ability to contribute to the society and not be dependent on the taxes of those already here, only admits a number of people that won't overwhelm existing resources, etc. etc.
In your view, the state's enforcement of these immigration rules is completely illegitimate. In fact, it is so illegitimate that the desire to enforce these rules can only be explained by nativism and tribal privilege. Meanwhile, the state's enforcement of the rules that allow me to keep individuals off of my property is completely legitimate.
To get where you're going, you have to believe that the state exists only to protect individuals and not the collective. I'm not nativist or tribal. In fact, I really don't have an opinion on whether immigration numbers should be relaxed or tightened. However, I do take issue with the idea that the state doesn't have the right to set those numbers.
No-- you merely have to consider that national boundaries are illegitimate structures for deciding who is in the collective.
Private ownership of land (and state-backed property rights) is justified because the system as a whole tends to leave people better off than does common ownership. There are, however, reasonable limitations on property rights. Some are based in the fact that the system doesn't leave everyone in a better position than they'd be otherwise, and thus some redistribution may be needed to make the overall system truly mutually beneficial. Some limitations on property rights are based in conflict with other rights. For example, easements of right of way protect freedom of movement. As I understand it, in many places it is not trespassing to walk across someone's property if there is no nearby public path. But you'd know better than I would.
I think the restrictions on rights to free movement and association created by border and immigration policies need justification in the same way that the limitations on individual liberty implicit in private property rights need justification (e.g., if your lawn was still in the commons, I'd be free to camp there, eat fruit off the trees there, etc.)
I haven't said that the state may not legitimately enforce immigration rules or control the border. I think screening for threats to public safety and health are totally legit. Likewise, I think limiting the level of immigration to a level compatible with social stability can be legit. So who determines the level? In this particular post, the idea was that the the legitimacy of border policy, according to a very widely accepted theory of the source legitimate political authority, might require that the people directly affected by the policies be allowed to weigh in on what they will be. The idea isn't that there can be no legitimate policies. Also, this isn't contesting the legitimacy of the use of state power in the public interest. It's contesting that national citizenship defines the relevant public.
A large guest-worker program would be a big improvement in terms of justice. Eventually, we should move to an EU-style system in which North Americans are free to travel, live and work anywhere in North America.
A question about your right of free movement across north america:
I could see this as immediately viable between Canada and the US but less with Mexico. This is not b/c Mexicans are bad people or whatnot but that the Mexican government, society and what-have-you seem to tolerate much higher levels of corruption than the US and Canada do. This must give one pause when considering things like safety regulations.
Sure, the statutes governing, say, truck-inspection and driver safety might be broadly similar in all three jurisdictions, but I wonder if even the most fervent believer in freedom of travel throughout North America (which is, I suppose, to say you, Will) would feel equally confident driving behind an 18 wheeler on the highway regardless of whether the truck bore signs that it had passed inspection in Canada, Mexico or the US. My sense is that people would be justified in having roughly equal confidence in the US and Canadian regimes (or possibly more confidence in the Canadian one) and significantly less in the Mexican one, not b/c they hate "brown mexicans", as the open borders crowd always immediately assumes , (after all, it could just as well have been a Mexican-American or Mexican-Canadian who did the Canadian or US inspection) but b/c the corruption rate in Mexico being what it is, it's far more likely that the inspection was not actually done according to statute in Mexico.
I likewise would love to see a foreign policy, to the extent possible, that encourages Mexico (and other countries) to adopt our standards against corruption and for property rights and the like. I think it would be good for those countries and would have the additional beneficial result of eliminating the kind of cultural disparities that necessitate severe border restrictions.
If there's a special problem with Mexico, it's that, unlike Romanians, many of them are brown, and that, unlike Europeans, Americans are not accustomed to hearing other languages.
We won't even mention the disparate growth rates that might also factor into a different decision when considering the impact of unrestricted movement. (Mexican population growth rate: 1.14% Romanian: 0.14%)
No, I'm sure it's just that Europeans are cosmopolitan and accepting while Americans are racist boors.
This is why these sorts of discussions always leave me cold: they're not really good-faith discussions. Anyone who disagrees with open-borders between the US and Mexico is branded a racist through questionable use of facts at best.
Apparently you are unfazed by the results of last EU parliamentary election. If even the Europeans are fed up with the EU-style system, why would we want it here?
Is there some nuance that I am missing that makes it a crime against human rights to restrict who may enter your country on a regular basis but somehow makes it okay if the people who want to enter your country are an army seeking to seize control? By resisting them are you not interfering with their human right to free movement?
Now you've really lost me. So the accident of being born on one side or the other of the border between Mexico and the United States shouldn't affect one's right to live anywhere in the United States, but being born on one side or the other of the border between Panama and Colombia should affect those rights?
Citizenship is the mechanism by which popular sovereignty is exercised. One does not "extend" or "respect" popular sovereignty by devaluing citizenship, one cuts popular sovereignty off from any serious moorings.
And to return to what gives one the right to have a say, consumer sovereignty comes from "putting your money where your mouth is". You get a say because you give something. Citizenship is at least the minimal implicit "giving" of living in the community, either by being born and raised there or by living there for the set period and swearing public allegiance. Having a say without anything to back it up at all except "I would like the decision to be different" is a massive devaluing of citizenship and the concept of a shared polity.
Obviously asking the Japanese voters what they thought was where one wants to take Arash Abizadeh's argument, but how does one draw the line? The standard answer is citizenship: I am profoundly sceptical there is any better answer.
Let's make a deal Will:
I favor something called a head tax. This is a tax that is levied on every conceivable taxpayer, let's say starting with the age of 16 and ending at the age of 70. Between the prime working years of 20 and 65 each person is required to pay, above and beyond current taxes, a flat rate of $5000/yr to reside in the US and to receive the protection of US law. Anyone unable or unwilling to pay, in full or part, this fee will be required to work for the government at a flat rate of $10/hr to make up the balance. This policy not only addresses the issue of non-citizen non-contribution but also of citizen non-contribution, which is currently a grave threat to the republic. The basis of political organization is general reciprocity, and the answer to your "tribalism" jab is to take away rights from currently existing putative citizens on the basis on non-contribution. How you like them apples? I can take the same premise as you and strip even current residents of the franchise.
The problem is that different forms of life, including the human forms, have their own peculiar brands of justice and morality, and that often the epitome of justice to one is the epitome of injustice to that other. At that point, justice is simply what you can force down someone else's throat.
Great. Then a conservative immigration policy is justified because the system, as a whole, leads to a relatively ethnically homogeneous and high human capital population that promises long term political stability, functional institutions, high levels of social trust and altruism, low corruption, low levels of fear and predatory criminal behavior, lower inequality, and high standards of living.
The United States and Canada have much higher standards of living than the racially mixed/ethnically heterogeneous Spanish and Portuguese descendant nations south of Texas. Importing the people of those nations is importing the social characteristics, lower human capital, and lower standard of living of those nations.
Free movement of labor is fine given that there is a high degree of confidence that the itinerants leave when they are supposed to, and have a poor prospect to gain permanent citizenship for themselves and their children (and its attendant access to voting rights and social services).
Porous immigration means a relatively small number of immigrants and their descendants benefit from the higher standard of living here at the expense of the living standards of the native population and their descendants.
Tighter immigration means a relatively large number of world citizens and their descendants benefit from the higher world living standards that stem from the higher living standards of our native population and their descendants. This means a greater export of wealth, technology, science, culture, and ideas that benefit both the nation and the entire world than if our nation had lower human capital, less functional institutions, more civil strife, and lower economic development.