Governments give more importance to the interests of their citizens than to the interests of foreigners. For example, governments have to protect their citizens from criminals and hostile foreign governments, but they don’t have to protect foreigners from criminals or other governments. The government of a country provides citizens living in the country with public services, but the government doesn’t provide such services to people living in other countries.
Restrictions on immigration to the US are clearly against the interests of potential immigrants, but since potential immigrants to the US aren’t US citizens, maybe that doesn’t matter. Since the US government puts less weight on the interests of potential immigrants in comparison to the weight it puts on the interests of US citizens, maybe the government is right to restrict immigration if doing so reduces the economic harm that some Americans would suffer due to market competition. Maybe the interests of citizens outweigh the interests of potential immigrants in this case.
In his essay Is there a right to immigrate? Michael Huemer makes two relevant observations here. The first observation is that most economists believe that the overall economic impact of immigration on current citizens is positive. Most current citizens would either benefit from increased immigration or not be affected at all, and only a small proportion of the population would be disadvantaged. Restricting immigration to reduce the harms that some citizens would suffer ignores the benefits to other citizens, and ignores the overall benefits. If the US government only considers the interests of current citizens, and it considers the interests of all of its current citizens, then it is the immigration restrictions that are overall harmful, not immigration itself.
The second observation is that the obligations that governments owe to their citizens don’t eliminate their obligation to respect the human rights of foreigners. Consider the version of the Starving Marvin scenario that we saw in Chapter 14: Marvin’s bread. In that scenario Sam used force to prevent Marvin from reaching the market because he didn’t want his daughter to have to pay slightly more for her bread. Huemer asks: “Would Sam succeed in defending his behavior if he pointed out that, as a father, he has special obligations to his daughter, and that these imply that he must give greater weight to her interests than to the interests of non-family members?”
It’s true that Sam has special obligations to his daughter. In fact parents have a stronger duty to protect the interests of their children than governments have to protect the interests of their citizens. But this does not mean that a parent has the right to use physical force, or the threat of it, to harm a non-family member. If a parent has to choose between giving food to their own child and giving food to a non-family member, the parent should generally give the food to their own child. But a parent cannot use force to stop non-family members from obtaining food in order to prevent slight economic disadvantage to their own child. Similarly, the fact that a government has special duties to its own citizens doesn’t mean that the government can use harmful force against foreigners in order to protect some citizens from slight economic disadvantages due to market competition.
Questions
- Can Sam use physical force, or the threat of it, to prevent a non-family member from obtaining food in order to prevent slight economic disadvantage to his daughter?
- Can a government use harmful force against foreigners in order to prevent slight economic disadvantage to some citizens?
16. That immigrants may burden the government doesn’t justify immigration restrictions