The Ethics of Immigration

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Notes

1. See Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics 49 (1987): 251–73 and ‘Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective’, in Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and Money, eds. Brian Barry and Robert E. Goodin (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 25–47. The argument of Chapter 11 is based more obviously on the second essay, although it has been substantially updated.

2. In addition to criticizing the bounded justice view, Carens responds to a variety of potential objections concerning political self-determination, state sovereignty, national security, public order, and various communitarian commitments.

3. For the classic account of the problem, see Frederick G. Whelan, ‘Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem’, in Liberal Democracy: Nomos 25, eds. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 13–47.

4. The all-subjected principle states that all adults continually subject to laws should be able to participate in the procedures that create and shape those laws. The all-affected principle states that all adults affected (within a certain threshold) by political decisions should be able to participate in making of those decisions. Carens comes closest to invoking these principles on pages 50 and 58–9.

5. In the theoretical literature, Robert Goodin and Sofia Näsström raise difficulties concerning these principles. See Goodin, ‘Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007): 40–68 and Näsström, ‘The Challenge of the All-Affected Principle’, Political Studies 59 (2011): 116–34. In practice, the United States (among others) does not grant citizenship to members of society on the basis of their ongoing subjection to the law, and it does not permit legal permanent residents access to the electoral process.