Unjust Borders

Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration

Javier S. Hidalgo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351383271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

States restrict immigration on a massive scale. Governments fortify their borders with walls and fences, authorize border patrols, imprison migrants in detention centers, and deport large numbers of foreigners. Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration argues that immigration restrictions are systematically unjust and examines how individual actors should respond to this injustice. Javier Hidalgo maintains that individuals can rightfully resist immigration restrictions and often have strong moral reasons to subvert these laws. This book makes the case that unauthorized migrants can permissibly evade, deceive, and use defensive force against immigration agents, that smugglers can aid migrants in crossing borders, and that citizens should disobey laws that compel them to harm immigrants. Unjust Borders is a meditation on how individuals should act in the midst of pervasive injustice.

1 The Case Against Exclusion

1. Introduction

Gabriel Hernández Cortez is a Mexican citizen from Guanajuato in central Mexico. In Guanajuato, Gabriel worked in construction and earned about four dollars per day. Gabriel’s son, Carlos, became ill and was hospitalized. The cost of Carlos’ medical care ($650) was ruinous for his family’s finances. His wife and two children had to move in with her parents. Meanwhile, Gabriel set out for the United States to earn more money. Gabriel says: “I prefer to stay home. But the only way to make it is to come north… . I just want a very tiny slice of pie. I just want to work for a little bit of money.”

But Gabriel couldn’t reach the United States. Gabriel tried crossing the border four times. Each time American immigrant agents caught him and turned him back. In one case, border agents caught Gabriel as he was climbing a barbed-wire fence. An agent grabbed Gabriel by his hair and the barbed wire cut his leg. He says: “I don’t blame la migra. They’re just doing their jobs, enforcing the laws that come down from above.” Gabriel remained in Naco, Sonora and slept out in a central plaza in the city, pondering how to cross the border. I don’t know what happened to him.¹

Here’s another case. Gloria lived in Phoenix with her four children where she worked as a housekeeper. She was a single mom and she was also undocumented. One day she was arrested. Her employer had been operating drop houses where unauthorized migrants would stay after crossing the border. Gloria says that she had nothing to do with it, but she was charged as an accomplice. After serving time in prison, she was deported to Mexico and lost custody of her children. The children were separated and put into foster care. Gloria now lives in Nogales, Mexico. She works in a factory for $15 per day and lives in a plywood shed. Gloria rarely sees her children. Gloria says: “when I was young and my kids were little, I thought that I could never live without them. I never thought that one day they’d grow up and I’d be far away from them. But you have to learn how to live like this.” Her children visit her at the border where they can talk through a mesh fence, but these visits are infrequent. Gloria’s son says: “I just sometimes feel like I’m a stranger to her. And sometimes she’s a stranger to me.”²

The laws and policies that forbid migrants like Gabriel from crossing borders and that deport migrants like Gloria are immigration restrictions. Immigration restrictions stop foreigners from crossing borders and permanently residing in another state’s territory. There’s nothing special about the United States, of course. Every functioning state enforces immigration restrictions.

Are immigration restrictions justified? My answer: generally speaking, no. In this chapter, I’ll begin to explain why. My overall argument goes like this. Immigration restrictions interfere with valuable freedoms, such as freedom of association and occupational choice. So, there is a presumption against immigration restrictions. Other moral considerations can in principle defeat this presumption. Yet actual states enforce immigration restrictions in an unreliable way. States are biased against immigration. They do a poor job of tracking the balance of moral considerations when it comes to immigration policy. As a result, they enforce unjust immigration laws. We thus have reason to conclude that almost all actual immigration restrictions are unjust.

I will only develop part of my argument here. This chapter focuses on sketching a presumptive case against immigration restrictions. It aims to show that strong moral reasons speak in favor of free movement. My argument in this chapter owes much to the pioneering work of other authors, such as Joseph Carens and Michael Huemer.³ My goal is to clarify the argument for free movement, place it on firm foundations, and respond to important objections that critics have raised to the case for free movement. Chapters 2 and 3 complete my all-things-considered argument against immigration restrictions.

2. Freedom and Movement

A Thought Experiment

To motivate my argument, let’s start with a thought experiment. Imagine that tomorrow you wake up in the morning and you start getting ready for work, just like every other day. As you’re pulling out of your driveway, you notice something strange. You see walls topped with barbed wire encircling your neighborhood. You also notice police officers patrolling the area around the walls, and pulling down people who try to scale them.

You angrily ask the police officers why they’re doing this. They respond: “The local government has determined that the members of your community are taking jobs from other citizens and using too many welfare benefits. Besides, your community is culturally distinct from the broader community and we can’t have your community changing our culture in bad ways. Finally, doesn’t the rest of the community have a right to self-determination? We can decide with whom we want to associate and we’ve decided that we don’t want to associate with you!”

Needless to say, you don’t accept these arguments and you’re eager to escape your neighborhood. You need to get to work, for one thing. But you also want to visit friends and family members in other parts of the city, attend concerts and classes, eventually move to a new apartment across the city, and so on. But state officials stop you from leaving. You might be injured if you evade these officials and scale the walls. Maybe you’ll cut yourself on barbed wire. If you are undeterred and try to leave anyway, these officers will overpower and imprison you. Moreover, state officials will probably track you down and return you to your neighborhood even if you do manage to escape. Finally, let’s suppose that public officials make it illegal for people outside of your neighborhood to interact with you by employing or sheltering you. Let’s call this case: Neighborhood.

At first glance, the actions of state officials in Neighborhood seem seriously wrong. Why’s that? Well, we have strong moral reasons to refrain from coercing and harming other people. Almost everyone thinks that assault and violent threats are usually wrong. The reasons against coercion and violence speak against the actions of the state employees. After all, state officials threaten you with physical force in Neighborhood and will deploy this force against you if you disobey their commands.

The deeper story is that state employees infringe on valuable liberties when they prohibit you from leaving your neighborhood. If you’re unable to leave your neighborhood, you can’t search for work, you can’t associate with your friends and family, you can’t attend your church, and you can’t explore cultural opportunities outside of your neighborhood. So, state employees seem to violate your rights to freedom of association, occupational choice, religious freedom, and so on. Your personal liberties in Neighborhood are curtailed by restrictions on freedom of movement.

Reflection on Neighborhood suggests that freedom of movement is intimately connected with core freedoms.⁴ To exercise occupational freedom or religious liberty, we must have the freedom to move around. Your religious freedom is impaired if the state forbids you from traveling to the church of your choice. You lack occupational freedom if other people stop you from searching for a job or traveling to employers who are willing to hire you. Yet the state should respect basic liberal freedoms like freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and occupational freedom. The state’s reasons to respect these freedoms need not be absolute. My argument only depends on the premise that states have strong moral reasons to respect these liberties. I suspect most readers will accept this premise and I’ll say more about it below. For now, my claim is that, if states should respect basic liberties and restrictions on freedom of movement curtail these liberties, then states should respect freedom of movement.

Here’s another way to put the point: freedom of movement just is a constitutive aspect of valuable liberties, such as occupational freedom and freedom of association. Let’s say that entity A is a constitutive component of entity B if A is a component or part of B. For example, the stone in a statue is a constitutive component of this statue. The stone just is a part of the statue. Or consider the paint in the frescos of the Sistine Chapel. This paint is a constituent of Michelangelo’s frescos. My claim is that freedom of movement is a constitutive part of important liberties like freedom of association and occupational freedom. Freedom of movement is itself a component of, or part of, valuable liberties.

Moreover, if freedom of movement is a constitutive part of something is valuable, then freedom of movement is itself valuable. You ought to refrain from scraping off the paint of the frescos in the Sistine Chapel. Why? After all, it’s just paint. But this paint is a constitutive of something else that is extremely valuable—Michelangelo’s frescos. The same goes for freedom of movement. You ought to respect this freedom because it’s part of respecting more fundamental liberties.

Let me qualify these claims somewhat. It’s false that every restriction on freedom of movement infringes on basic liberties. Suppose that state officials forbid you from traveling to Antarctica. This doesn’t seem to restrict your basic liberties, liberties that people have strong reasons to respect. This restriction could still be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Why’s that? The answer is that restricting your freedom to travel to Antarctica avoids restricting your freedom to associate with others, and the freedom to associate with others is essential for exercising valuable liberties.

Things are different when it comes to restrictions on movement to places where people live. Restrictions on our freedom to move to where other people live prevent us from entering into certain relationships with others. If your friends, family members, co-religionists, and potential employers lived in Antarctica, then laws that prevent you from moving to Antarctica would restrict valuable liberties. You usually need freedom of movement to associate with others and to enter into certain relationships with them. The more general point is that many of our most important liberties protect our ability to form and control our relationships with others. To a large extent, our basic liberties protect our interests in sociability. This is why restrictions on freedom of movement normally (but don’t always) restrict valuable freedoms. Restrictions on freedom of movement typically stop us from associating with others on freely chosen terms.

To illustrate, consider religious freedom. Freedom of religion doesn’t just protect our ability to endorse different religions on an intellectual level. Imagine that government officials said: “we respect your freedom to endorse and practice Buddhism. But we forbid you from associating with fellow Buddhists. To enforce this prohibition, we’ll make sure to prevent you from traveling to any more mindfulness retreats.” This would obviously be unjust. This example suggests that freedom of religion protects our ability to form relationships with co-religionists by worshipping with them, participating in religious ceremonies and events, and associating with them in other ways. And, in order to associate with people in these ways, you need to enjoy freedom of movement. To worship along with your co-religionists, you must actually travel to a place where your co-religionists reside.

The point generalizes to other freedoms: we need freedom of movement to exercise a range of personal liberties. This is why restrictions on freedom of movement normally violate freedoms that liberals (and others) prize, such as freedom of religion, freedom of association, occupational freedom, and so on. Take occupational freedom. Most people think that we should have the freedom to pursue the occupation of our choice. If you want to become an actor, college professor, or auto mechanic, the state should let you pursue your dreams. But this freedom is worthless if you lack the ability to actually travel to your place of work. Suppose that government officials told you: “sure, you have the freedom to become a dental hygienist, but we will stop you from reaching any dentist’s office.” Clearly, your freedom of occupational choice is violated to the extent that you lack freedom of movement in this case.

I want to consider one final, morally relevant feature of restrictions on freedom of movement. These restrictions interfere with the liberty of people on both sides of a border. In Neighborhood, state officials obviously restrict your liberty. But these officials in effect restrict the freedom of people outside of your neighborhood as well. Look at it this way: restrictions on your movement impair their freedom to associate with you. Suppose employers want to hire you or your family wants you to live with them. Officials remove these possibilities by blocking your freedom of movement. Merely restricting your freedom of movement indirectly affects the freedom of other people who want to associate with you. It seems presumptively wrong to curtail other people’s freedom to associate with or interact with you, and this compounds the injustice of restricting your movement.

Some Objections

You might concede that it’s wrong for state officials to restrict your freedom of movement in Neighborhood. But you might argue that this is an extreme case. Sure, it’s wrong for governments to put you in prison without justification. It hardly follows from this that states are obligated to respect your freedom of movement in general. Instead, maybe states are only obligated to ensure that you have an adequate range of options.⁵ The government avoids violating your rights if it restricts your freedom of movement and you already have an adequate range of options to live a decent life. So, this objection says that it’s wrong to restrict your freedom of movement if you lack enough options to live a decent life. Otherwise though, it can be permissible to restrict your freedom of movement.

The problem with this line of argument is that we actually have strong reasons to avoid restricting freedom of movement even when people already have adequate or decent options. Let’s consider a new variation on Neighborhood. Imagine that you live in a major city—say, Los Angeles. You have plenty of good options in this city. You can access a range of jobs, associate with a wide variety of people, and access many different cultural opportunities. After all, there are more people in Los Angeles county than there are in many countrie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Case Against Exclusion
• 2 Challenges to Freedom of Movement
• 3 Actual Immigration Restrictions Are Unjust
• 4 Are More Open Borders Feasible? Does It Matter?
• 5 Resistance at the Border
• 6 People Smuggling
• 7 Complicity and the Duty to Resist
• 8 Promoting More Open Borders
• Index