GV262 - WT W1 - Carens and Miller

Carens - “Open Borders’ - Core Argument

States have a right to self determination - inc the right to control who can enter and reside within their borders

• Compares current immigration laws to the feudal system - people are born into privilege and others had no chance to improve their lives

Carens - “Nozickian” Open Borders (1)

• Draws on Nozickian/libertarian emphasis on individual freedom and voluntary exchange

• Individuals may do what they like with their own personal property. “They normally exclude whomever they want from land they own. But they have this right to exclude as individuals, not as members of a collective”

• Control that the state can legitimately exercise over that land is limited to the enforcement of the rights of individual owners

Carens - Utilitarian Open Borders (2)

• Best immigration policy from a utilitarian perspective would be one that maximised overall economic gains.

• Dominant view among both classical and neoclassical economists is that the free mobility of capital and labor is essential to the maximisation of overall economic gains.

• Free mobility of labor requires open borders

Carens - Rawlsian “Open Borders” (3)

• “Veil of ignorance” - nullify effects of specifc contingencies which put men at odds - natural and social contingencies are “arbitrary from a moral point of view”

• Whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one, whether one is already a citizen of a particular state or an alien who wishes to become a citizen

• “Take a global, not a national, view of the original position”

• Reflect on border control and migrant rights in terms of:

- The principle of basic liberties

- The principle of just inequalities

Carens - Open borders and the Basic Liberties Principle

• “In an ideal world people might have powerful reasons to want to migrate from one state to another”

• “Economic opportunities for particular individuals may vary greatly from one state to another even if economic inequalities amongst states were reduced by an international difference principle”

• “One might fall in love with a citizen from another land, one might belong to a religion which has few followers in ones native land and many in in another, one might seek cultural opportunities that are only available in another society” (Carens)

Caren’s - public order restrictions limited scope

• “Need for some restriction would not justify any level of restriction whatsoever or restrictions for other reasons, but only that level of restriction essential to maintain public order”

Application:

• 70% of U.S. crop farm workers are foreign-born (mostly from Mexico), showing core industries depend heavily on Mexican labour despite strict legal immigration caps

• Lack of proportionality between US caps on legal migration from Mexico and core US industries’ reliance on Mexican labour

Miller - ‘basic’ vs ‘bare’ freedoms

“ Usually draw a line basic freedoms that people should have as a matter of right and what we might call bare freedoms that do not warrant that kind of protection”

• (Basic rights to free movement) → correspond to conditions in whose absence human beings cannot live decent lives, no matter what particular values and plans of life they choose to pursue

• Includes right to free movement over a ‘fairly wide area’ but not unlimited freedom to move and relocate anywhere

Miller - Restrictions on Immigrations (1) - “Communities of Character”

• Nation states have a strong and legitimate interest in determining who comes in and who does not.

• Without this, no “communities of character” (Michael Waltzer) → “historically stable, on going associations of men and women with some special commitment to one another and some special sense of their common life”

• “The public culture of their country is something that people have an interest in controlling: they want to be able to shape the way that their nation develops”

• Unnacceptable → permanent class of non citizens who are unable to contribute to distinct public cultures.

Miller - Restrictions on Immigration (2)

• Right to leave a country is a negative liberty against interference and does not generate a positive obligation for other states to admit migrants

• “The right of exit is a right held against a persons current state of residence not to prevent her from leaving the state […] But it does not entail an obligation on any other state to let that person in”

Miller - Distributive Justice

• Does not equate to an obligation to provide unrestricted immigration (wealthy countries can help poorer ones through aid, trade etc)

• Moral obligation → admit refugees who are fleeing persecution or violence. They should be protected temporarily and once its clear they cannot return to their home country

Carens & Miller - Shared Premise

Carens: “the effect of immigration on a particular culture and history of the society would not be a relevant moral consideration so long as there was no threat to basic liberal democratic values”

- Both theorists favour a liberal individulist narrative about why and how people migrate