The Case Of Limiting Immigration By David Miller
Limiting Immigration
Would you reject or support David Miller’s grounds for limiting immigration?
In his 2005 “Immigration: The Case of Limits” paper, David Miller argues in favor of the right for countries to limit immigration. He replies to defenders of open borders and gives conditions for morally acceptable immigration policies.
Most importantly, he offers two reasons for nation-states to limit the flux of incoming long-term residents (refugees are thus not part of our discussion) to their territories. The first one is related to the need for nation-states to control their public culture and the second one to the need to control the population size, both globally and nationally.
I argue in this paper that states are indeed justified …show more content…
A high amount of population has consequences for the quality of life and the environment of a given state. “Those of us who live in relatively small and crowded states experience daily the way in which the sheer number of our fellow citizens, with their needs for housing, mobility, recreation, and so forth, impacts on the physical environment.” (Miller 2005: 202) The consequence is that the nation-state should be able to make a political decision to tackle this issue and a part of the solution might be to restrict numbers. Therefore, nation-states have a reason to limit …show more content…
The argument assumes that states require a common culture to build a political identity itself necessary to serve valuable functions in society. Therefore, public cultures have to be protected. Now, since immigrants enter a society with their own values, absorb part of the existing values and change the public culture in various ways, the issue of immigration is relevant to the protection of public culture. A country may thus limit the flow of immigration, so that the new comers and the public culture can appropriately adapt to the new changes. Note that a country may not stop immigration, because public culture’s change is a natural phenomenon, cultures always change anyway. The point is that the nation-state has an interest in controlling its public culture, without being rigid about it, to keep a form of continuity in it. The political judgment made by the state as to what policy of immigration is appropriate to the public culture depends on empirical cases, but it could be to limit
Would you reject or support David Miller’s grounds for limiting immigration?
In his 2005 “Immigration: The Case of Limits” paper, David Miller argues in favor of the right for countries to limit immigration. He replies to defenders of open borders and gives conditions for morally acceptable immigration policies.
Most importantly, he offers two reasons for nation-states to limit the flux of incoming long-term residents (refugees are thus not part of our discussion) to their territories. The first one is related to the need for nation-states to control their public culture and the second one to the need to control the population size, both globally and nationally.
I argue in this paper that states are indeed justified …show more content…
A high amount of population has consequences for the quality of life and the environment of a given state. “Those of us who live in relatively small and crowded states experience daily the way in which the sheer number of our fellow citizens, with their needs for housing, mobility, recreation, and so forth, impacts on the physical environment.” (Miller 2005: 202) The consequence is that the nation-state should be able to make a political decision to tackle this issue and a part of the solution might be to restrict numbers. Therefore, nation-states have a reason to limit …show more content…
The argument assumes that states require a common culture to build a political identity itself necessary to serve valuable functions in society. Therefore, public cultures have to be protected. Now, since immigrants enter a society with their own values, absorb part of the existing values and change the public culture in various ways, the issue of immigration is relevant to the protection of public culture. A country may thus limit the flow of immigration, so that the new comers and the public culture can appropriately adapt to the new changes. Note that a country may not stop immigration, because public culture’s change is a natural phenomenon, cultures always change anyway. The point is that the nation-state has an interest in controlling its public culture, without being rigid about it, to keep a form of continuity in it. The political judgment made by the state as to what policy of immigration is appropriate to the public culture depends on empirical cases, but it could be to limit