By JUDE DOUGHERTY
Miller, David. Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016; 218 pp.
This is a timely book, to say the least. David Miller is a professor of political theory at Nuffield College, Oxford. He speaks as a European, but what he has to say applies analogously to North America. He is thoroughly conversant with current academic literature on the subject of immigration, although much of it seems specious or sophistical. Consequentially, he is led to deal with many questions that defy common sense.
Does everybody have a human right to migrate, that is, to enter another country? What can be asked of immigrants, legal or not, once they arrive? Should they be expected to assimilate? Can they properly demand that the host country make room for the different cultural norms they bring with them? Can someone who wants to migrate make a moral claim against the state he wishes to join?
After making a series of distinctions, for example, between refugees and economic migrants, between human rights and political rights, Miller devotes a chapter to “cosmopolitanism,” the world-outlook that favors open borders. That view, as described by Miller, denies the importance of loyalty to a particular place or culture. A cosmopolitan is someone who regards himself as free to choose a habitat anywhere in the world to which he may have access. His only identity is that of a human being. In short, he regards himself as a citizen of the world.
At the political level, cosmopolitanism entails a belief in world government, a commitment to a single body that simultaneously represents the interests of all human beings, albeit that below a central authority there can exist subsidiary forms of regional and national governments. Such a government would recognize the moral worth of all human beings without regard for gender, race, or skin color, and perhaps other features as well.
States have historically acted on the assumption that they are entitled to treat their own citizens very differently than foreigners. Miller asks, “Assuming as a premise the equal worth of all human beings, how far are political communities nonetheless permitted to show special concern for their own members?”
Miller acknowledges that the main argument justifying open borders finds few friends among the general public. Still, some political philosophers argue that the Earth as a whole is the common property of all human beings. The argument goes something like this. Immigrants are human beings; we cannot ignore their moral standing or violate their human rights; and officials of the would-be host country must give good reasons if they refuse the immigrant who wishes to enter.
In Miller’s words, “Even if there is no human right to immigrate, a state’s immigration policy must nevertheless be morally defensible, in the sense of giving good reasons for the exclusion of the would-be immigrant.”
The next question logically follows: “What of the right of citizens in a democracy, do they not have the right to determine the future direction of their society?” In response, Miller points out, some question the notions of “community” and “national self-identity,” and they argue that the preservation of a complex, heterogeneous nation cannot supersede the needs and interests of immigrants. The human rights of immigrants are thus deemed superior to those of residents.
In summing up, Miller takes the position that the immigration policy of a liberal democracy should be guided by four values, namely, a weak cosmopolitanism, national self-determination, fairness, and social integration. “The position I defend could be described in broad terms as communitarian and one of social justice.” Admission policies and integration policies should aim at ensuring that immigrants become full members of the societies that they join, and be regarded and treated as equal citizens by the indigenous majority.
However, this does not entail assimilation. Immigrants, Miller maintains, are entitled to retain their specific group-based identities and their cultural identities. Miller invokes concepts such as rights, fairness, justice, and social justice to defend his positions on immigration.
His consideration seems to travel in one direction, toward the migrant as an individual, but not sufficiently back to the people who make up the faceless corporate state which is being called upon to accommodate the migrant at any cost. It must be observed that there is no state without its people, who individually and collectively have their own claim to rights, fairness, justice, and social justice.
The people who make up a state — in many cases, a heterogeneous body of persons who have occupied, cultivated, and defended lands for generations if not millennia, and whose ancestors survived many expressions of statehood ranging from petty chiefdoms to city states to empires — have been careful about whom they admit from outside. They have routinely, in every age, admitted limited numbers of persons who were seen to contribute to and not detract from their society.
And it was never disputed that the newcomers, while bringing their own cultural style, language, and customs, were expected to adopt the laws, customs, and norms where they came to rest.
Academic fetishes and political interests have dominated the subject of immigration since the 1960s. Neither attitude displays an interest in representing the citizens on the ground or addressing the messy details of what actually happens when a large body of foreign nationals decides to cross a border.
The social displacement of vulnerable working-class people, no-go zones, the industrial smuggling of human beings by transnational crime groups, mass sexual assaults on women, imported terrorism, metastasized violent gangs among low-skilled, low-wage immigrants: These are the fruits of ruling-class dilettantes who do not have the pragmatic interest of their own citizens at heart.
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