Open borders
human rights. Additionally, to present a pragmatic case in favour of open borders, whilst it is likely the case that low-skilled wages will drop due to increased supply of labour, this will likely not affect the 91.1% of Americans who have a high-school diploma. 9 As Caplan points out ‘Most of the world’s would-be immigrants are, at best, substitutes for American high-school dropouts.’ 10 Furthermore, it is estimated that open borders would lead to an increase of 67-147% in GWP. 11 While these facts do not relate significantly to the moral argument, they still serve to refute a pragmatic approach. Other critics may argue that it is membership within a political community that grants the right to internal free movement. Since non-citizens (i.e. would be immigrants) are not members, the continuity of the moral justification is broken. If you claim that only citizens deserve the right to move freely within a state, you must explain why citizenship, typically determined by birth or descent, not moral desert, has such decisive moral significance. It is a matter of convention and citizenship which is almost always morally arbitrary (certainly at birth), not earned and is therefore a matter of arbitrary luck rather than earned entitlement. This rebuttal relies upon the very arbitrariness of where one is born. If democratic states reject the notion that other products of birth, such as race, gender and class, morally pertain to one’s entitlements, so too, for the sake of consistency, should democratic states reject where one is born as a moral divider. The moral case for open borders follows from the very principles liberal democracies already claim to uphold. If equality, autonomy and the right to self-determination are the foundation of internal freedom of movement, then these same principles cannot be confined within borders. To do so is to treat the accident of birth as a morally relevant distinction, an assumption incompatible with the democratic rejection of inherited privilege. Objections that appeal to state sovereignty or practical issues should rightfully influence how policy should be implemented but fail to undermine the moral validity of the proposal. The recognition of a right does not presuppose its effortless realization, instead it establishes a direction in which institutions and societies must strive towards. Ultimately, to act consistently with their own moral commitments, democratic states must recognize that the same moral rationale underpinning the freedom of movement within a state as a fundamental human right also applies beyond borders.
9 https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html . 10 https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012/1/cj32n1-2.pdf . 11 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1912544_code794896.pdf?abstractid=1912544&mirid=1
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