Open Immigration Policies and Liberal Discomfort

Authors: Richard Nunan

Publish Date: 2008/03/18

Volume: 9, Issue: 4, Pages: 537-541

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Abstract

Consequentialist cosmopolitanism Peter Higgins argues enables closed border liberals to evade charges of moral hypocrisy despite their commitment to moral equality of individuals once we recognize that open border arguments rely on cosmopolitanism’s individualism requirement which ignores social realities relevant to a realistic assessment of the social consequences of an open immigration policy Higgins is mistaken however in contending that cosmopolitan individualism entails attention to people only in their capacity as the abstract atomic individuals populating Charles Mills’ idealized social ontologies Conversely if cosmopolitan individualism does compel us to think of people as abstract atomic individuals we are not obliged to think of them as relatively privileged Under liberal cosmopolitanism however which prohibits state discrimination between citizens and noncitizens open border policies are subject to no such consequentialist objections

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