Developing the Ethics of Migration

Migration is the geographical movement of people in order to settle in other places for longer periods of time. It has been extensively analyzed by historians and social scientists. Philosophers however have thought little and have said even less about it. The migration policies involve highly consented normative judgments in all phases; the gap is quite astonishing. The political philosophers and the political theorists rarely discuss about migration. They have never ever developed a coherent ethics of migration. The theorists have started thinking about this issue from the last thirty years and still we do not have any comprehensive and systematic treatment.

There are two main reasons for this astonishing gap. One is the predominant political thought after the World War II that has been preoccupied with the general principles of justice under ideal conditions. It almost neglected the separateness of the states, some of the broader issues of international justice and the normative relevance of state membership. The second reason is that any ethics of migration is generally broad and complex. Some phases involved in migration are emigration excluding the root and immediate causes, immigration or actual first admission and the different stages of incorporation.

It is taken for granted that states have a right to control the entry and settlement of non citizen in their territories and hardly pause to consider or evaluate the moral justifications for the control of immigration. Very few philosophers show interest in the subject. Immigration results in some practical problems for western democracies. It challenges the ways in which people think about the citizenship and belonging in the democracies (Wellman et al, 98). They also chal...

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... refugee law due to disputes regarding the definition of suffering. It was said that sufferings caused by starvation is not a reason enough to qualify someone to enter in a different country.

Illegal immigration is unlawful. Americans generally debate on the illegal immigration fiscal costs. The supporters of the open borders rightly remind us that illegal immigrants pay sales taxes. Generally, their payroll tax contributions are not later tapped by Social Security payouts. But the opponents of the above fact will counter upon that illegal immigrants are more likely to end up on state assistance (Schotel, 103). They are likely to report cash income. Free movement has played an important role in economic utopias of completely free markets and corresponding free trade policies by many classical political economists and in standard neo classical theory of free trade.