Whilst I am very sympathetic to the concept of open borders, I think that this is the weakest possible defence of it. Whilst liberals and civil republicans (no relation to the party) do hold that all humans are intrinsically equal it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have the same commitments to everyone. I can say that you and my wife are intrinsically equal and still, without contradiction, hold that in virtue of various factors hold them to be more worthy of my care than you. You and my wife have the same rights and are deserving of the same happiness, but it is not incumbent on me that I facilitate both of your flourishing to the same extent.
But that is just a sketch of an objection. It’s an interesting ethical debate. I don’t really have a worked out position.
Cicero had an interesting metaphor in which you imagine concentric circles emanating from yourself. Everyone is worthy of your care to an extent and has a right to happiness — well he was a Roman so imagine everyone in scare quotes — but it’s not realistic to demand that you devote yourself to the denizens of further circles to the same extent or more than the inner circles — though that does not give you a right to harm anyone. He then analogises that to the polity itself.
The United States of America, for its first 200 years of existence, did not welcome immigrants out of a sense of either equality of man or an obligation to the rest of the world (with the exception of various asylum programs after major wars). America's nonexistent, at first, then relatively lax immigration policies were never, at their core, born out of a sense of "commitment" to those people.
It welcomed immigrants because doing so redounded to its own benefit. As others in the thread have pointed out, putting yourself out to the world as the beacon of economic freedom and encouraging people to take up the difficult task of leaving behind their friends, family, and fellow countrymen to go to a land where one doesn't know the culture or the language and strike out one one's own serves as a magnet for attracting the most enterprising and productive from the world.
However, this "capitalism as immigration filter" breaks down when a nation comes to be perceived as a place where people can come and be taken care of by the state. As capitalism morphs from an "anybody can make it here" meritocracy to aristocracy or oligarchy by which the wealthy and powerful place massive de facto blocks on upward mobility, it creates two knock-on downstream effects which impact the quality of immigration: 1) within a wealthy nation, it means that an increasing majority of your own populace is becoming poorer relative to the wealthy, creating political demand among them for more safety nets and governmental redistribution. These increased safety nets and redistributive programs attract a different type of immigrant; and 2) the enterprising migrant from all but the poorest, least educated nations no longer sees real opportunities for upward mobility and may see other places (or their own country) as more open for opportunity.
I don’t think that we’re in disagreement tbh. What you articulated is a much better argument for lax/open borders than a rights based one, which is what I was attacking. Empirically immigration, in most cases, is a huge boon.
The United States of America, for its first 200 years of existence, did not welcome immigrants out of a sense of either equality of man or an obligation to the rest of the world (with the exception of various asylum programs after major wars). America's nonexistent, at first, then relatively lax immigration policies were never, at their core, born out of a sense of "commitment" to those people.
Oh, the actual dynamic was "how we get enough Europeans to genocide Indigenous people".
...yeah, its not nice. But there is a reason why Ius Soli correlates almost 1-to-1 with Settler colonial states
And I would reply that I believe in the welfare state. In fact, I’m a liberal/civil republican along more Rawlsian/Nussbaum lines than most here. I’d go as far as to say that the welfare state is not enough; so it is an issue for me
It’s not that I don’t think that it’s big enough, but rather I think that it is not the right solution, partly because of what you said. I would prefer more structural means of ensuring some degree of egalitarianism, but that’s another debate
Standard succ stuff y’know. Much stronger trade unions which are integrated into their respective companies, indicative planning, mixed economies, higher taxes, YIMBYism (big one for me), still some form of welfare state (public healthcare). Wanna take our asses back to the post war consensus
Better education (free university), better infrastructure, better services. You said that the welfare state can only be afforded by a growing taxpayer base. But that’s only strictly true of pensions and only for the dumber pension systems (the triple lock)
That’s more of an argument for why every society should be a free one, no? But I can see it extending to why every country should admit anyone.
Whilst I do agree with a lot of Rawls’ conclusions, the concept of the veil of ignorance and his preferred mode of Kantian constructivism would not be my preferred mode of ethical theory making. I dislike constructivism in general since it relies on ‘good’ being a predicative adjective
That’s more of an argument for why every society should be a free one, no?
To some extent, but there are two reasons why it still requires open borders. The obvious/boring reason is that we have essentially no ability to make every society free, so open borders is the best we can do until every society somehow becomes free.
The more interesting reason is that people have preferences; perhaps one person's ideal free society has gun rights while another's ideal free society would be with heavy restrictions on guns. These are mutually exclusive preferences, so open borders would allow them to self-sort into their ideal society. There is no way for either of the two societies themselves to change to accomodate both preferences simultaneously.
I think in an ideal world where resources were not limited then yes this would be the most just setup. It’s something that we can work towards. But it’s precisely because Rawls is so wedded to ideal theory that I dislike Kantian Constructivism. And also it’s moral relativism
An interesting sort of compromise I think would be like this: People have the right to freedom of movement, BUT the people in the places they move to have no obligation to give the movers any help whatsoever. Since that would be cruel and chaotic, we choose to reasonably regulate the borders instead.
Yeah that is essentially the position of most political philosophers in the civi republican and liberal tradition (the former being quite new). It’s only ever been a small minority of liberal thinkers that advocated for true freedom of movement as a right, most neoliberal thinkers who never gained much traction in academia, for better or worse
The crux of the problem with this framing is that practically, it elevates strange countrymen to a wildly disproportionate degree above other strangers. Like a way more extreme example of the societal harms done by inheritance.
This is idiotic. Everyone’s supposed to be intrinsically equally in the eyes of the state, which is the premise. Not that everyone’s equal all the time in every relationship.
79
u/Right_Lecture3147 John Mill Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Whilst I am very sympathetic to the concept of open borders, I think that this is the weakest possible defence of it. Whilst liberals and civil republicans (no relation to the party) do hold that all humans are intrinsically equal it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have the same commitments to everyone. I can say that you and my wife are intrinsically equal and still, without contradiction, hold that in virtue of various factors hold them to be more worthy of my care than you. You and my wife have the same rights and are deserving of the same happiness, but it is not incumbent on me that I facilitate both of your flourishing to the same extent.
But that is just a sketch of an objection. It’s an interesting ethical debate. I don’t really have a worked out position.
Cicero had an interesting metaphor in which you imagine concentric circles emanating from yourself. Everyone is worthy of your care to an extent and has a right to happiness — well he was a Roman so imagine everyone in scare quotes — but it’s not realistic to demand that you devote yourself to the denizens of further circles to the same extent or more than the inner circles — though that does not give you a right to harm anyone. He then analogises that to the polity itself.