The Back-Benchers' Blog

Since the beginning of history humans have migrated. I shall go a step ahead and say that it is human nature to migrate. In our quest for a better life, humans have moved around the world, traversing every inch of land available and populating every corner of the globe. This, of course, in no way justifies the act of migration, especially the illegal kind, but it is still an honest truth.

Now for any act to be deemed to be illegal, it doesn’t need to be unethical or unjust. It only needs to go against the existing system of laws. The legal system judges any act in the framework of the prevalent social system on the basis of laws that reflect the mentality of those in power when the laws were drafted. Therefore, laws are often not per se the most efficient or the most ethical. The current legal system has been carved out on the ideas of nationalism, initiated in Europe and extended to their post-independence colonies.

Thus, the current “problem” of illegal migration is a manifestation of a historical practice in conflict with the very modern idea of a nation-state.

To analyze the act of illegal immigration, we need to understand that no immigrant wants to be called illegal. The act of being illegal is not a matter of convenience. It is an act of duress, done in an attempt to flee economic and/or political persecution, and discover a life with more freedom. People choose the illegal path of migration, because the legal path is not the most efficient, and sometimes not a valid option ridden by bureaucracy and red-tape. Also to legally immigrate, you have to go through both the exit policies of your present country and the entry policies of the other countries.

But to understand this problem better, we need to come to a conclusion whether immigration without valid documents constitutes an unethical behaviour. And conversely, if the act of restricting this movement is unethical.

Nation-states have always preserved a right to membership. Without the right to “exclude”, they would no longer remain nation-states. They also preserve a right to prevent exit. Fortunately, except for the oppressive regimes, most nations allow for emigration. It is regarded as a basic human right by most nations. The same is not true for a right to entry. This asymmetry in labor movement is protectionism by the nation-states, and it needs to be justified. And the reasons need to be stronger than ‘moral panics’ of ‘them‘ taking away what is ‘ours‘, or ‘them‘ corrupting ‘our‘ cultures. I will not even dare to pick up the recent examples of Maharashtrians attacking Biharis for these very reasons.

Cultural reasons for preventing entry of illegal immigrants, or in others choosing who will enter and who will not, based on abstract notions of cultural similarity, and judging if they can be assimilated and incorporated into the cultural arena reek of national socialistic ideals, and as proved at the time of World War II is an unworkable idea. This is because the idea of nationalism is a hard one to defend, as current nation-states are too large and heterogeneous. Inevitably each person has many different identities. And moreover, culture evolves. Nations that have tried to maintain a culture of uniformity have failed miserably. Furthermore, such kind of ideals are not curtailed to restricting migration of humans but also restricting the migration of ideas.

For the sake of my argument I shall assume that these immigrants are law-abiding and do not appropriate property which belongs to a native. I make this assumption on the basis that a state that cannot protect its citizens’ property rights from outsiders will not be able to do so even when there are no immigrants. The extra pressure of 20 million people is not an excuse. I also do not consider the argument of terrorism using these immigrants to find a path to the country because of 2 reasons – 1) the major percentage of Bangladeshi immigrants are here for economic reasons and 2) terrorism is fueled by poverty, communalism and disillusionment, and it is ultimately the non-integration of the immigrants (and for that matter citizens too) and their local communities, illegal or legal, that allows for terrorists groups to hide and ensnare willing individuals.

The question that follows is that should states have a moral obligation to let people in as long as and to the degree that the states can fulfill their minimal moral obligations to guarantee basic human rights to safety and subsistence for all human beings, irrespective of gender, caste, region or nationality. We look at the specific case of the Bangladeshi influx into India. Does this influx put a strain on the welfare state? The Malthusian notions of the people being too many for the resources rear their ugly head again and yet again are not backed by facts but rather moral panics. I state that it is a moral panic because patriotism and nationalism are emotional issues, and more often than not the real issues of sustainability are drowned under the rhetoric of a Bangadeshi invasion.

If we consider India to be a welfare state, the argument is that the immigrants are taking advantage of the welfare state and thus free-riding on the tax-payers money. In a welfare state, well-off individuals are asked to make sacrifices for the sake of the worse-off, as a state-mandate, whether they like it or not. If an individual is justified in rejecting the demands of his government that he sacrifice his own interests for the sake of badly-off foreigners, then he is just likely to reject demands that he sacrifice for his fellow citizens. This is why this idea does not seem to hold against the weight of individual egoism.

Let us now look at a social contract theory of nation-states, i.e. if the citizens or residents of a country have promised each other to weigh each other’s interests more heavily than the interests of foreigners, then the general obligation to keep promises seems to establish that they should give priority to their compatriots. But an argument to this social contract justification of nationalism is that most people have never signed such a contract or made such a promise. The reality that illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are able to find jobs and live a sustainable life in India shows that there are locals who are willing to deal with the immigrants. And thus this contract fails too.

Nation-states in the globalized world of today are way too large and heterogeneous to hold onto the idea of “clans protecting our own”.

Another point to this argument is that people have always been able to reap the benefit of someone else’s hard work and build upon that. Every child that is born is akin to an alien, one that will reap the benefits of others. Reap the benefits of institutions that permit freedom and liberty. It is why Indians go to the western world. It is why Bangadeshis come to India. It is why Mexicans rush into USA. Because they believe that in the destination, they will find just reward for their hard work. Finding a job doesn’t seem to be an unethical act of sin.

And this brings us to another important question – Should human migration be regarded as a basic human right?

I resort to utilitarian philosophies to answer such questions, because it seems to avoid man-made distinctions of identity in its attempt to find what is just and what is unjust. Utilitarianism philosophies are inherently global philosophies and are not bound by boundaries and restrictions of nationalities or religion. A restrictive immigration system might seem to against a utilitarian view of things, especially if the fall in utility for Indians is lesser than the gain in utility for the immigrants.

The Rawlsian difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods if and only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Furthermore, if the law-makers are behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, what immigration policy would they choose? Most would choose open borders, as it is the only way they can discover freedom, if luck has let them be born in an underprivileged society. From Hobbes to Hayek, restriction of the act of human migration has been seen as having been going against the basic liberties of an individual. And to have an idea of a nation-state, which will eventually in the face of globalization and internationalism become an outdated concept, declaring it an unethical act does not heed well with any principle of humanity.

Wherever there is a strong economic gradient attracting immigration; states that are integrated into the globalized world economy are unlikely to ever be able to fully prevent it, they only have the power to force it into illegal channels by restricting the legal ones. Illegal migration is not the problem; the problem lies in the systems and institutions that are unable to cope with migration needs. As long as we maintain the property rights of the current citizens of the country, no libertarian or welfare state can ethically be opposed to the movement of people across a border. Will open borders cause anarchy and instability. Not if we can evolve our institutions to be able to withstand the migrations, and deter them not by police force but by creating systems that ensure that it is planned and structured.

We live in a world that screams for removal of protectionism, for free trade and globalization.  It is rather ironic that while we open our borders to goods, we close them to labor.  Even more because the ‘labor’ are living human beings in the quest for freedom.

Eventually, the state needs to ensure that migrations, like goods in the days of protectionism, do not go down the illegal stream, so we can keep track of it. Create the institutions that make this happen so we can look forward to a global society of free individuals. Building fences across borders is never a sustainable solution. When the push-pull effect of economics and politics gets large enough, no fence is strong enough to prevent the movement of people. Human migration does come at an economic cost and it is up to the institutions to evolve so they can sustain it. We need to remember that freedom always came at a cost.

“The guiding principle of any attempt to create a world of free men is this. A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy.” – Hayek, The Road to Serfdom