Immigration Rights and the Justification of Immigration Restrictions

When, if ever, are restrictions on immigration morally justified? There is considerable disagreement about this foundational question in the political philosophy of immigration, with the debate often framed as a dispute between two camps that each seek to vindicate a putative right. Populating the first camp are defenders of open borders, who defend a “right to immigrate,” or a “human right” to immigrate and “move freely across borders.” Populating the other camp are those who support a receiving state’s “right to exclude,” “right to control [its] borders,” or “right to choose an admissions policy.” This article aims to answer the question at the heart of this debate by clarifying the conditions for immigration restrictions to be justified. I begin in Sections II and III by challenging the debate’s current binary framing, which submerges three important distinctions: specifically, the distinction between individual rights to free immigration and rights to immigrate for specific reasons; the distinction between strong and weak individual rights to immigrate; and the distinction between a receiving state’s legitimacy-right and justificationright to regulate and restrict immigration. In Sections IV and V, I consider the view that individuals have a strong right to free immigration; since a right of this type stringently protects individuals’ freedom to immigrate according to their choice, it would make immigration restrictions normally unjust. I offer a conditional argument that there is no such right. This argument is conditional because it takes for granted an internationalist conception of global justice that differentiates between egalitarian duties of justice that specially apply among those who share membership in a state, and distinct duties of justice that apply between states or among all human persons. I target in particular two arguments that each seek to mount a freestanding case for a strong individual right to free immigration—that is, a case that does not depend on accepting either internationalism or its rival, globalism. While rejecting a strong right to free immigration, I affirm two distinct rights to immigrate: strong rights to immigrate for certain specifically protected reasons, and a weak right to free immigration that establishes a presumption against immigration restrictions that lack a sufficient justification. In Section VI, I then specify the conditions for immigration restrictions to successfully rebut