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Rawls’ highly unpersuasive attempt to evade the open borders ramifications of his own theory

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Open borders advocates sometimes claim that Rawlsian ethics imply support for open borders. If this is an implication of Rawls’ theory of justice, however, it’s one that Rawls himself does not acknowledge, for reasons he mentions in passing in his book The Law of Peoples:

Concerning the second problem, immigration, in #4.3 I argue that an important role of government, however arbitrary a society’s boundaries may appear from a historical point of view, is to be the effective agent of a people as they take responsibility for their territory and the size of their population, as well as for maintaining the land’s environmental integrity. Unless a definite agent is given responsibility for maintaining an asset and bears the responsibility and loss for not doing so, that asset tends to deteriorate. On my account the role of the institution of property is to prevent this deterioration from occurring. In the present case, the asset is the people’s territory and its potential capacity to support them in perpetuity; and the agent is the people itself as politically organized. The perpetuity condition is crucial. People must recognize that they cannot make up for failing to regulate their numbers or to care for their land by conquest in war, or by migrating into another people’s territory without their consent.

How convincing is this argument?

Rawls’ suggestion that a people should be concerned about their land’s ability to “support them in perpetuity” exhibits a strange neglect of international trade. Almost no country today is economically autarkic. In that sense, no country’s land “supports” its people. Some countries, like the United States, could probably get by without international trade, albeit with a lower standard of living. Others, certainly including Hong Kong and Singapore, but probably Japan too, and many others, could not do so, or only with tremendous difficulty. But that’s not a problem, because they don’t need to. They can buy what they lack from foreigners. A primitive Malthusian notion of carrying capacity seems to be at work in Rawls’ mind, but Malthus has been wrong, most of the time, concerning human populations in the last 200 years. Moreover, if a country were really on the verge of a Malthusian nightmare of mass starvation, it would not be an attractive destination for immigrants. It seems safe to say that there is no country in the world today where existing migration restrictions could be plausibly justified by an argument from limited carrying capacity. Continue reading Rawls’ highly unpersuasive attempt to evade the open borders ramifications of his own theory →

The Administration’s Deferred Action Policy: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

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For the open borders advocate in the United States, policy changes which modestly expand the opportunity for more people to live and work legally in the U.S. create ambivalence. The beneficiaries of the changes gain access to the American job market and can live without the fear of deportation. At the same time, the limitations of the new policies highlight the plight of those still excluded from freely entering or staying in the U.S. The Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allows some undocumented immigrants to temporarily stay in the U.S., is a stark example of such a policy change.

The administration’s action certainly helps a sympathetic group of immigrants. Since August 2012, many undocumented individuals 30 years old or younger who came to the U.S. when they were younger than 16 have been eligible to receive deferred action, which allows them to stay in the U.S. and receive work permits for two years. Individuals have to have been in the U.S. for five years or more, have generally clean criminal records, and be in school, have graduated from high school, or be military veterans. The two year period is renewable. According to the National Immigration Law Center, over one hundred thousand immigrants have received deferred action under DACA, as of December 13, 2012. It is estimated that over 1.5 million immigrants could benefit from the administration’s action. These individuals could lead happier lives with unlimited work opportunities, access to driver’s licenses, and the chance to live without the fear of imminent deportation.

There are several reasons to be concerned about DACA, however. First, there are significant weaknesses in the policy itself. By applying for deferred action, undocumented immigrants are making the government aware of their immigration status, making them vulnerable to future deportation. According to a document produced by several legal groups, “Attorneys are advised to warn their clients in writing that even for prima facie eligible cases, deferred action is not guaranteed. The warning should further explain that applicants will be revealing and, in most cases, documenting their removability to a government agency that can initiate removal proceedings.” A future administration that is opposed to the policy could quickly rescind it. Underscoring the temporary nature of deferred action, the legal groups’ document states that “DHS can renew or terminate a grant of deferred action at any time.”

Second, some of the rhetoric by supporters of DACA suggests that the parents of the young immigrants are to blame for the perilous immigration status of their offspring. In announcing the new policy, Mr. Obama suggested these younger immigrants should not be deported “simply because of the actions of their parents.” (transcript of speech) This is reminiscent of comments made by those who want tighter immigration policies which blame undocumented immigrants for any suffering their children experience from immigration enforcement actions. As reported in the New York Times, Rosemary Jenks, from the restrictionist group NumbersUSA, “said the responsibility for the impact on children of the deportations rests with their parents. ‘If parents are going to come here illegally, unfortunately the child faces the consequences as well…’”

Such remarks by DACA supporters communicate the wrong message to the public about what has caused the young immigrants’ predicament. The threat of deportation for these immigrants ultimately stems from immigration restrictions, not from any fault of the parents. By bringing their children to the U.S. to improve their lives, the parents have shown great dedication toward them. Seeking a quality education, safety, and economic well-being for one’s children is the epitome of being a responsible parent. Conversely, keeping your children in a country that is unsafe, has weak schooling, and/or offers limited economic opportunities in deference to U.S. immigration laws could be considered poor parenting. The rhetoric also implies a dubious distinction between “worthy” immigrant sons and daughters who deserve protection and “unworthy” immigrant parents who do not. (The credit for this criticism of dividing immigrants into worthy and unworthy groups goes to the organization No One Is Illegal.)

Third, DACA protects only a small portion of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Most of the millions of undocumented individuals in the U.S. do not meet the criteria to apply for deferred action. This has been illustrated in recent cases reported in the media. In one, a Mexican woman and her daughter won money at an Arizona casino, but after the casino called the police when they thought their identification was fraudulent, the government learned that the two were undocumented. They were both arrested, but while the daughter was released because she qualified for DACA, the mother was deported because she did not qualify. In another Arizona case, a woman who had been granted deferred action status under DACA watched as her mother and brother were arrested by immigration agents at their home. The mother and brother were released the next day, apparently only because of pressure on the Obama administration, but still face the possibility of deportation. The pressure existed because the woman who had benefitted from DACA was a well-known advocate for young undocumented immigrants.

The policy is an example of the arbitrary and invariably unfair nature of immigration laws. For instance, it does not help immigrants who are 31 years old, who have only lived in the U.S. for four years and eight months, or who came to the U.S. when they were sixteen. It does not help those who did not complete high school, even though they may be upstanding members of their communities. No One Is Illegal has articulated nicely the inherent unfairness of having the government determine who may immigrate and who may not: “… the achievement of fair immigration restrictions… would require a miracle.”

Similar problems will arise should the DREAM Act or “comprehensive immigration reform” be enacted.  The only way to permanently fulfill the hopes and dreams of all immigrants is to regularize the status of current migrants and move towards open borders for prospective future migrants, possibly incorporating some of the keyhole solutions to address restrictionist concerns.  Not only will all immigrants gain when these changes are made, America will have instituted a just immigration policy it can be proud of.

Introducing Joel Newman

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We’re happy to announce that Joel Newman will join Open Borders as a regular blogger. Joel Newman has a bachelor’s degree in history from Pomona College and works as a teacher in Beaverton, Oregon. He is completing a book calling for open borders. He plans to write posts about various moral and practical arguments in favor of open borders.

Joel is the first blogger at Open Borders who contacted us of his own initiative for the blogging role, and also the first blogger here who does not comment on EconLog. All other recruits so far have been people we came to know of and touched base with through the comments space on EconLog. Thus, he’s likely to bring a new and somewhat different perspective to the case for open borders than most of the regular and guest bloggers on the site so far. Joel has written about open borders in other venues in the past, including in the magazine of Pomona College, his undergraduate alma mater.

Open borders and the viability of democracy

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Let me raise a very large question: Is democracy viable under open borders?

Of course the question has no single answer: terms need to be defined, for one thing.

Democracy nowadays is usually taken to mean “one person, one vote,” which in turn seems like a political expression of the claim, in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” Yet in the US Senate, voters in small states have 10 times as much per capita representation as voters from large states, or more. Nonetheless, I think most Americans would regard with horror the idea that anyone could be given 2 votes, or 7, or 0.3. The clause in the Constitution which reads…

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

… is regarded with horror, rightly, but I think for somewhat the wrong reason. The right reason for horror is that the Constitution seems to be tacitly condoning slavery. Worse, the slaves’ weight in this count increased masters’ representation. The wrong reason to be offended by the clause is to assume that it implies that black slaves were only three-fifths of a human. Logically, this is a nonsequitur, particularly since the slaves didn’t get to exercise three-fifths of a vote. If the slaves had been able to vote, but their votes had counted only three-fifths as much as those of free whites, that would have been much better than the system that actually prevailed in the Old South.

In fact, I would raise the question: is there really anything so wrong with giving different people different numbers of votes? If a municipality gave long-term residents two votes, recent arrivals one, would there be anything especially wicked about that? What if an electoral system gave an extra vote to anyone who had voted for a losing candidate in the most recent election, as a means of preventing tyranny of the majority? If there is some reason to regard such practices as unwise or even immoral, should “one person, one vote” be considered part of the definition of democracy, or is it just a desirable feature that some democracies might have?

This is relevant to open borders, because one way to safeguard a country’s institutions while opening the borders to immigrants might be to let immigrants vote, but give them fewer votes than natives. That way, if a very large number of immigrants came, say 200 million in the US case, they could have a political voice while leaving natives secure in their electoral dominance, with possible benefits for institutional continuity. But whether this represents a way that democracy could be viable under open borders depends on whether “one person, one vote” is part of the definition of democracy.

Loosely speaking, democracy seems to mean everyone can vote, as opposed to, say, gentry or aristocrats or oligarchs. Nowadays Britain is usually considered to have become democratic only in the later 19th century as the franchise was extended to all or almost all adult males, but of course Britain had voting for centuries before that. So, for that matter, did ancient Sparta, after its own fashion. Indeed, while to say that ancient Athens was a democracy and ancient Sparta was not captures an important truth, it is not a truth easily defined, let alone reconciled with any modern definitions of democracy, for the Athenians had lots of slaves and there were also many metics (foreigners) in the city: by this estimate, less than one-third of the population were citizens, and of those only the males could vote. For citizens, though, Athenian politics was highly participatory and inclusive; much more so than any democratic polity that exists today. Sparta was also probably more participatory and inclusive than any modern democracy for the members of its fierce citizen-elite lording it over masses of helots with whom the Spartan state was nominally in a state of war for centuries, so as to absolve its Krypteia or secret service of manslaughter as they made routine killings of uppity helots. If you’re going to deny Sparta the status of democracy on the “one man, one vote” criterion, Athens fails that test, too. Bottom line: democracy means everyone can vote, but who is “everyone?” All “citizens”– however defined? All residents? All natives? All whom the state regards as subject to its authority? Probably no answer could be offered which would correspond with all our traditional intuitions and historical judgments about what polities qualify as democratic. Continue reading Open borders and the viability of democracy →

Newtown, availability bias, and why civil disobedience works

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It is a well-known pattern in human behavior that people tend to overestimate the probability or frequency of any event which easily springs to mind. For example, Americans tend to greatly overestimate the number of minorities in the US. Why? Probably because minorities stand out, are striking, and therefore attract attention, and are easier to recall, particularly if one is prompted to recall people on the basis of their race. Similarly, people wildly overestimate the number of gays, and think there are a lot more immigrants than there really are. Again: gays and immigrants are striking, therefore easy to recall. Very few people are afraid of driving, but some are afraid of flying on airplanes, for safety reasons. In fact, flying is far safer than driving, but plane crashes, when they do (rarely) occur, are striking, and easy to call to mind. This common cognitive error is called “availability bias.”

Lately, I’ve been reminded of this by the national furor over the killings in Newtown, Connecticut, or Sandy Hook, or wherever (link). I don’t know the details: I have no interest in them. You shouldn’t either. It’s 20-some deaths, in a country of 300 million, a world of 7 billion: far below the number of murders that happen in the US a typical day, let alone deaths from AIDS or malaria. It shouldn’t be considered news. But one of the nuisances in an age of mass media is that availability bias and the media’s quest for profits conspire periodically to waste the nation’s time on events which ordinary people’s statistical ineptitude fool them into believing are important. Of course, you can say that every human life is enormous value if you like– I won’t contradict you– but then (if you want to be consistent) every birth, every marriage proposal (a landmark in most human lives), every heart-warming death in the midst of a loving family ought to be news too. People should resolutely ignore stories like that out of Newtown. The media should refuse to report on it. Such stories actually make people more ignorant, because they reinforce availability bias. The most scrupulously accurate reporting on extremely unrepresentative events is, an important sense, misinformation: people think they’re learning something about how the world world works, when they’re not. “Why is our age peculiarly haunted by nihilistic violence?” people might think. It isn’t: on the contrary, it is amazingly peaceful.

But availability bias has an upside. If we give disproportionate attention to particularly striking instances of evil, we can also give disproportionate attention to particularly striking acts, or lives, or courage, self-sacrifice, and zeal for truth. Heroes, one might say, are a function of availability bias. The hero leads one life but his example, his memory, may resonate in millions of lives. Grisly crimes seize our attention to our detriment; but the examples of heroes edify us, more or less. Of course, a lot of heroes actually set rather bad examples. Alexander the Great was brave, no doubt, and had some other virtues; but there is much about him that ought not to be emulated. Napoleon’s example exerted a decidedly negative influence on the life of Europe. I think, in particular, that he left behind a widespread impression– on Hegel, for example– that it is okay for certain great men, because of their world-historic importance, to violate the moral law. Che Guevara was a bad man. King David had his virtues– and his crimes. It’s better to think about heroes like these than to think about Newtown. They are (most of them) a more edifying subject for contemplation than that, and they are more genuinely important.

Here the heroes of civil disobedience occupy a special place. The archetype here is not a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King: they matter, but not just for their civil disobedience, for they were also eloquent and held positions of leadership. Rather, take someone like Rosa Parks. She was not in (much of) a position of authority (she was the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP). At any rate, it wasn’t by using her position of authority that she made a difference. She simply disobeyed the order of a bus driver to sit in the “colored” section in the back of the bus. Or Mohamed Biouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who by lighting himself on fire in protest of police abuse, catalyzed the Arab Spring revolutions that proceeded to topple the governments of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Or many of the otherwise obscure individuals who through Christian martyrdom became enrolled in the lists of Christian saints and inspired people for centuries or millennia thereafter. The influence of these people depends on availability bias. I would argue, if pressed, that one ought to ignore an event like Newtown, because it is not actually important to the lives of almost anyone– it shouldn’t induce you to modify your behavior, or your opinions– and it’s not edifying to contemplate. It is appropriate to contemplate Rosa Parks or St. Vincent, because their lives are edifying. But I don’t think people focus on them just for the sake of being edified. They focus on them because they are striking; only in this case, it just so happens that they are striking in a good way.

Availability bias helps to explain why civil disobedience works, at least sometimes. Much more often, at any rate, than the merely numerical weight of civil disobedients in the human population would warrant. (Also see my post Why Jose Antonio Vargas Matters.)

UPDATE: I suppose I should make it clearer why this is related to open borders. It’s because I think civil disobedience is likely to be one of the means by which open borders is established. A lot of people will start out by being against the deportation of Jose Antonio Vargas, or some similar figure. In the course of much debate and mobilization, they’ll realize that they can’t justify restricting the set of the non-deportable in any reasonable, non-arbitrary way short of making everyone non-deportable, which, after phasing out the anomaly of trying to bar entry physically, will end in open borders.