Philosophical Questions: Immigrants

[ysabetwordsmith]

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Is it just and right to deny entry to a country when doing so probably means death for the immigrant and their family?


No. People should have freedom of movement, and not need the permission of one owner to leave the cage they were born in and another owner's permission to enter a different cage. Safety is also a human right.

And this is going to kill a lot of people, because climate refugees aren't even recognized as real refugees with rights, but humans are creating millions of them.

Comments

[crunchysteve]

Agreed

[siliconshaman]

Yup, I'm with you. In fact I think I'd take it further, down with borders! What, you think you own that bit of the world? Nah, you're just living there temporarily.

[arlie]

I think it depends on reasonably anticipated consequences of admitting them - as applied to admitting all similar cases.

Given human nature, the "reasonably" in my phrase above is usually replaced by "according to popular local prejudices," leading to all kinds of injustice.

But there's a thought experiment where these particular refugees are highly likely to kill people wherever they wind up, whether as murder, contagion (they come complete with an untreatable highly contagious fatal disease), or simply consuming resources that are already insufficient for all those already present to survive.

That said, any country with a birthrate below replacement level should probably admit more people, regardless of their prospects if not admitted. Though personally I'd rather not admit a bunch of people sincerely convinced that women should be subordinate, gay people should be executed, and aggressive war is the best possible way of ensuring any country's prosperity. Too many like that will tend to shift local opinion towards a midpoint between their views and those already present. (Yes, they'll assimilate over time - but to a developing new consensus, not to the consensus as of before their arrival.)

Noting of course that rules of thumb like "they are Muslim" or "they are Israeli or Russian" isn't fair to people who want out of their current country in part because they don't agree with local majority opinions - or even those who simply don't share those opinions, but want out for other reasons.