Immigration
protection—do not contradict the right to regulate who joins the demos, which is framed as a need to maintain cultural traditions and practices rather than a breach of justice to outsiders.
Yet border control is unavoidably coercive toward non-members through denial, detention, and removal; democratic legitimacy typically requires justification to all those subjected to it (in this case, non-citizens) and not only to insiders who enact it, which weakens the claim that self-rule alone licenses robust, unilateral exclusion. Freedom of movement strengthens this constraint, if cross-border mobility is a human right grounded in basic interests in opportunity, association, and exit, then restrictions require stringent justification, limiting the call for exclusion justified solely by insiders’ preferences about composition. Freedom of contract adds a complementary liberty-based argument: consensual agreements between migrants and willing residents or employers are permissible interactions, and limiting immigration violates the liberties of both parties. Thus, these considerations defend this essay’s position: there is a presumption of admission constrained only by a demanding, evidence-based threshold—triggered when indicators show that further inflows would foreseeably and significantly impair equal citizenship and core institutional functioning despite sustained integration efforts—and any temporary limits must remain rights- compatible, time-bound, and publicly justified to those they coerce. Culture This part explains the importance of public culture, how immigrants affect culture, and why limiting immigration is permissible once implementing integration programmes yet still reaching the threshold. Miller (2016) distinguishes private culture (individual beliefs) from public culture (shared understandings of social organization: language, values, institutions). This distinction proves crucial: states need not concern themselves with what migrants eat or worship privately but care about whether immigrants can participate in democratic societal structures and share common values with others. Public culture generates social trust and mutual identification—’fellow-feeling’—which enables welfare state solidarity (Miller, 2016; Putnam, 2007). Without sufficient shared understandings, citizens become reluctant to sacrifice for distant others who are perceived as fundamentally different, undermining the state’s redistributive capacity and democratic legitimacy. As without social cohesion immigrants also suffer, maintaining social cohesion is thus in the interest of both immigrants and governments. This therefore provides rational grounds for limiting migration or having preferences for immigrants with close cultural proximities, as it reduces social friction and supports institutional stability.
However, the claim that any immigration harms institutional functioning faces substantial flaws. 1 Australia, New Zealand, and Canada function effectively diverse democracies with robust welfare
1 Some scholarship suggests that rapid increases in ethnic heterogeneity can temporarily reduce social trust and ingroup solidarity, potentially straining welfare state support (Putnam 2007; Alesina and La Ferrara 2002). However, these effects are mediated by institutional design, policy responses, and time. Putnam himself notes that long-run impacts depend on whether institutions foster bridging social capital and expanded identities.
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