Some people say that a country is like a private club. The members of a private club have the power to exclude from the club any person who wants to become a member, and the members don’t need to have a strong reason for doing so. If a country is like a private club, then it can also exclude unwanted members without a strong reason. Let’s take the case of the US. It’s almost certainly true that most Americans don’t want all the new members that would arrive if the borders were opened. If a country is like a private club, then even if Americans don’t have strong reasons why they don’t want the new members, they have the right to exclude them.
But a country is not like a private club in important ways. The philosopher Michael Huemer wrote about this issue in his essay Is there a right to immigrate? published in 2010. Huemer gives the example of a philosophy club formed by Sam, Betty, and Mike. It turns out that another individual, Marvin, wants to join the club. For no particular reason, Sam, Betty, and Mike decide that they don’t want Marvin to join. This might be a bit unfriendly, but, Huemer writes, Marvin can’t complain that his rights have been violated. The philosophy club is within its rights to exclude Marvin.
How is a country not like the philosophy club? Huemer discusses several important reasons:
- Every person must be a citizen of at least one country. You can’t just decide that you don’t want to join any country. Private clubs are very different: no one is forced to belong to at least one philosophy club.
- Countries provide extremely important services, like education and health care. But some countries are much better at this than others, to the extent that people who belong to the poorest countries suffer from severe poverty or oppression. Philosophy clubs don’t provide services that people need to have decent lives. People that belong to the worst philosophy clubs don’t suffer from poverty or oppression as a result.
- If a person is excluded from a country then they are also excluded from a huge range of social and business interactions with the citizens of that country. On the other hand, people who are excluded from a philosophy club can still have social and business interactions with the members of the club. They can still rent a room that a philosophy club member is renting out, for example.
Since philosophy clubs and other private clubs like them are very different from countries, Huemer invents another type of club which he calls a “water club” and which is much more similar to a country. Imagine that there’s an island, and each person belongs to a water club. The water clubs collect water for their members, and all of the water on the island is controlled by the water clubs. Everyone is forced to belong to at least one club, and no one can obtain water except through a water club. Some clubs are much better at managing their water, and some clubs control more water, and higher-quality water, than others. Many people on the island suffer from severe thirst. Many of these people try to join better water clubs, but the members of the better clubs refuse to let them join. Some members of the better water clubs want to allow the people suffering from thirst to join their club, but they are outvoted by other members. Finally, the better water clubs don’t allow their members to socialize or do business with the people from the worse water clubs suffering from thirst.
The scenario with the water clubs is much closer to the immigration policy of the US government (and most other governments, for that matter) than the example with the philosophy club. In the water club scenario, the clubs have control over extremely important goods that everyone needs, everyone must belong to at least one, people who belong to the worst clubs suffer for it, and people who are excluded from a club are also excluded from a wide range of social and business interactions with the club’s members. In all these aspects, the water clubs are similar to governments, and the philosophy club is not.
Questions
- Is the philosophy club ethically permitted to exclude unwanted members?
- Are the best water clubs ethically permitted to exclude the people from the worst water clubs suffering from thirst?