Legitimate Exclusion of Would-Be Immigrants: A View from Global Ethics and the Ethics of International Relations

Abstract

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders.

How and When are We Right to Prioritize the Interests of Residents and Citizens?

“…This does not show that the argument behind UDT is wrong in itself. To preserve its attractive critical point of view, elsewhere I have suggested a softer version of UDT (Camacho 2019). On this version, we waive the requirement of completely redrawing borders and very strong demands for democratic legitimacy for the more modest indication of shifting the burden of the proof toward a more general justification of borders.…”

“…Third, this not only means that borders are a complex set of institutions. It also means that a complex set of institutions is created when an intergovernmental relationship reaches enough complexity (see Camacho 2019). Different sets are created depending on what country a relationship has been established with.…”

“…Before we can ponder considerations about what kind of immigration policy is fair or just, we need to distinguish what kinds of uses of political power are justified for immigration practices and institutions. only then, with a broad range of permissible practices and uses of political power, can the question of justice in immigration make sense (Camacho 2019). But if democratic legitimacy is ineffective when justifying borders, then what kind of justification is available?…”

“…Moreover, there is an important distinction between ‘territories’ (with their respective jurisdictions) and ‘land.’ Land is all of that geographical surface not covered with water, while territories (and their jurisdictions) are social constructs. Typically, property and legal rights are applied to land while legal jurisdiction is a territorial right (Camacho 2019). Any jurisdiction establishes the validity over a territory of several legal rights and legal rules, while moral rights are established by status or by certain basic human interests in that they apply to all jurisdictions.…”

“…As established earlier, states are territorial entities that extend over a portion of land and immigration controls seek not only to exclude immigrants from the group but, more importantly, they seek to keep immigrants out of the land (Simmons 2001). But without a rightful claim over the land, permission to take care of their self‐regarding affairs does not provide analytically the permission to give priority over the interests and affairs of others (Camacho 2019).…”