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The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

President Obama’s recent initiative on immigration has reignited the national debate on the issue. This interview, the first in a series on political topics, discusses philosophical ideas that underlie this debate. My interviewee is Joseph Carens, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He immigrated to Canada from the United States in 1985 at the age of 40 and is a citizen of both the United States and Canada. He is the author of “The Ethics of Immigration.” — Gary Gutting

GARY GUTTING: In your recent book, you talk a lot about the rights of people to immigrate or to remain in a country after they’ve immigrated. What would you say to those who think that immigration policy should instead focus on the right of a country to decide who gets to live there? They might agree that there are extreme situations — say the threat of genocide — in which people have a right to immigrate, but generally, they’d say, the citizens of a country have a right to decide who they want to take into their community. How do you respond to that position?

JOSEPH CARENS: I think this way of posing the question confuses two issues. The first is the question of who ought to have the authority to decide what a policy will be. The second is whether that policy is morally acceptable. Someone can have the right to make a decision and can still make a decision that is morally wrong. Let’s assume for the moment that the citizens of a country have a moral and legal right to determine who they will take into their country. It doesn’t follow that whatever they decide is morally defensible. Even apart from the question of people fleeing genocide, I think everyone today would agree that it would be morally wrong to exclude people on the basis of race or religion.

So, we have to ask what other moral limitations there are on what democratic states ought to do in the area of immigration. Most of my book is concerned with identifying those limitations, even if one accepts the general premise that democratic states should be able to control immigration.

We should create a firewall between immigration enforcement and those responsible for protecting basic human rights.

G.G.: I know you want to question that premise, since you defend an “open-borders” position on immigration. We’ll come back to that, but, first, could you say a bit more about the moral limitations on other aspects of our control of immigration?

J.C.: Yes. Quite apart from the admissions question, we can ask how states should treat those immigrants who are already present. For example, we ought to discuss the terms under which immigrants and their children should gain access to citizenship, what legal rights immigrants should have and so on. I also view the debate about irregular migration — what many people call the question of “illegal immigrants” — as less about admissions than about whether migrants who have settled without permission have any moral claims to legal rights and legal status.

G.G.: What sort of moral claims do you have in mind?

J.C.: I have two kinds in mind: first, moral claims to legal rights even while immigrants are still in an irregular status and, second, moral claims to legal status as residents and, eventually, to citizenship itself.

Some people would say that “illegal immigrants” should have no legal rights at all, precisely because their very presence is “illegal.” But no one really would defend that view if they thought about it for a moment. The fact that immigrants have settled without authorization does not mean that it’s O.K. to kill them or beat them up or rob them. Even “illegals” are entitled to protection of their basic human rights, and most people acknowledge this in principle.

The problem is that some (in Arizona, for example) want to link immigration enforcement to everything else, so that those whose job it is to protect basic human rights, like local police or workers in emergency rooms, are expected to report anyone with an irregular immigration status. The result is that irregular migrants will steer clear of the authorities, and so will be vulnerable to extreme abuse. If we take human rights seriously, we should take the opposite approach. We should create a firewall between immigration enforcement and those responsible for protecting basic human rights. Irregular migrants would then know that they could go to the police or to the emergency room without worrying about getting reported. That’s what cities like New York are trying to do.

G.G.: But why should people who are here illegally ever have a moral right to become legal citizens?

J.C.: Living and working in a society makes immigrants members of that society over time, even if they arrived and settled without permission. This is clearest for those who arrived as young children. Everyone has heard stories about the Dreamers, young people who were raised in the United States and who are now stuck in limbo because they do not have legal status. They are Americans in every respect that should count, and they can’t be blamed for coming here because they were only children when they arrived. So it would be morally wrong to kick them out. We should give them status as permanent residents with the normal access to citizenship that this allows.

It sounds reasonable to say that migrants should wait their turn, but to ask people to stand in a line that doesn’t exist or doesn’t move is disingenuous.

Their parents admittedly did choose to come without permission, but even if you think this was wrong, the life they have been living since they arrived matters much more from a moral perspective. We should recognize them, too, as members of society and give them legal status as permanent residents with normal access to citizenship.

G.G.: Could you explain why you think that at some point the life they’ve lived in a country should offset their illegal entry?

J.C.: We often have to balance competing moral considerations. So, even if you think that immigrants did something wrong by entering without permission or perhaps overstaying a visa, you have to weigh that wrong against the harm that would be done by forcing them to leave after they have been here a long time, have sunk roots in the community, and have established a life in our society. It’s simply wrong to impose a big harm on people for a minor offense, as we recognize with our statute of limitations on many offenses. So, when people have been here for a long time, living peacefully and contributing to the community in ordinary ways, the morally right thing to do is to let them stay, regardless of how they arrived. And if you let them stay, you have to let them become citizens. A democracy cannot justify excluding settled residents from citizenship over the long run.

G.G.: What about the precedent set? Once people realize that illegal immigration will turn into legal citizenship, won’t we be overwhelmed with illegals? And wouldn’t that be unfair to immigrants who have followed the rules?

J.C.: I would not claim that a regularization policy would have no incentive effects, but I think it is very easy to exaggerate them. Overall economic conditions here and abroad and the availability of legal entry options are much more important factors affecting levels of irregular migration. And that’s the problem with your second question. It implies that getting in legally is a real option. For most irregular migrants, it isn’t (although there would be ways of changing that). It sounds reasonable to say that people should wait their turn, but to ask people to stand in a line that doesn’t exist or doesn’t move is disingenuous.

G.G.: There’s much less disagreement about accepting refugees from political persecution and violence. Do you think the rich democratic nations are meeting their moral obligations to such people?

J.C.: No, I don’t. We say that we want to recognize our obligation to admit real refugees. In that sense, there is less disagreement about accepting refugees than about irregular migrants. But, in fact, we impose visa requirements that refugees can’t meet and carrier sanctions that prevent refugees from getting here. The result is that the responsibility of caring for refugees falls much more heavily on relatively poor states (like Jordan, for example) than on us. We have a history here — the terrible failure of liberal democratic states to admit Jewish refugees prior to World War II. So, my standard for refugee policy has a baseline. No refugee policy is morally defensible if the same policy would have led to the exclusion of Jews fleeing Hitler in the late 1930s. Our current policies fail that test.

G.G.: You also want to challenge the very idea of serious immigration control. This is your open-borders view that “in principle people should normally be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another.” As you know, this is definitely a minority position. Do you think it’s possible to convince people that you’re right — or, at least, to take your view seriously?

J.C.: Well, first of all, consider my argument for open borders. I think that the way the world is organized today is fundamentally unjust. It’s like feudalism in important respects. In a world of relatively closed borders like ours, citizenship is an inherited status and a source of privilege. Being born a citizen of a rich country in North America or Europe is a lot like being born into the nobility in the Middle Ages. It greatly enhances one’s life prospects (even if there are lesser and greater nobles). And being born a citizen of a poor country in Asia or Africa is a lot like being born into the peasantry in the Middle Ages. It greatly limits one’s life chances (even if there are some rich peasants and a few gain access to the nobility). These advantages and disadvantages are intimately linked to the restrictions on mobility that are characteristic of the modern state system, although the deepest problem is the vast inequality between states that makes so many people want to move. This is not the natural order of things. It is a set of social arrangements that human beings have constructed and that they maintain.

G.G.: It’s an interesting argument, but it’s not likely to convince people who live in rich countries like the United States and Canada.

J.C.: It was also pretty hard to convince most of the nobility that there was something wrong with feudalism. They were happy to believe that it was ordained by God or that deep social inequalities were inevitable or something of the sort. I’m sure that most people in rich countries think there is some sort of justification for the way the world is organized today and that their privileges are defensible. The real challenge for them is this. Is there some story that they can tell to the human beings on the other side of this rich-poor divide as to why these existing arrangements are fair? Would they think the arrangements were just if they were in the position of the excluded? I don’t think so. In my view, a just world would be one in which the economic and political differences between countries would be greatly reduced and people would be free to move (but not feel driven to do so). That is the sort of arrangement that could be justified to everyone.

Related More From The Stone Read previous contributions to this series.

But my open-borders argument is not designed as a policy proposal. From a political perspective, an open-borders policy is a nonstarter. Most people simply assume that states are morally entitled to control immigration. Any politician advocating open borders would quickly be marginalized or voted out of office.

G.G.: So, why argue for open borders if it is not a feasible policy?

J.C.: Because philosophers should tell the truth as they see it (even when that makes some people mad). And it can be important to gain a critical perspective on existing arrangements, even if we cannot do much to change them at the moment. The feudal system was once deeply entrenched. So was the institution of slavery. For a long time, there was no real hope of changing those social systems. Yet criticism was still appropriate. If we don’t ask fundamental questions about the justice or injustice of our social arrangements, we wind up legitimating what should only be endured.

G.G.: You’ve put forward some interesting claims, but I suspect many readers would be concerned about strains on resources, social disruption, etc., if we accepted your views. Don’t you think that a nation has to balance the duty to admit immigrants against the needs of the people who are already citizens?

J.C.: I think that’s a common concern but one that is problematic. Many of the important questions about immigration are about how to treat people who are already here, not about how many to admit. Immigrants who are contributing have legitimate claims to be treated fairly, and it’s not very expensive to do that. Even letting irregular migrants stay and giving them legal status would not be very costly. In fact, it would probably save money compared with policies aimed at kicking them out or preserving the status quo. It’s more practical as well as more just.

I do think that meeting our duties to refugees would be expensive, but I don’t think cost is a good reason for failing to do so. Cost was one of the public rationales for excluding Jewish refugees in the late ’30s, and that illustrates why that case is such an important standard. Finally, it is true that creating a just world with open borders would involve very large costs for rich states, but the whole point of describing our advantages as unjust privileges is to say that this is a cost that we ought to bear. The implicit presupposition of your question, and of the commonsense view behind it, is that we are morally entitled to what we have. That is what I want to challenge.

This interview was conducted by email and edited. Other installments in this series can be read here.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author, most recently, of “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone.



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