In a recent column in the Times (paywall), James Kirkup, Director of the Social Market Foundation and writer for various right-wing outlets, argues that “liberals” should be more accommodating of the state’s desire to enforce exclusionary immigration policies and that, if only they were, a more open policy would be feasible. But, given, public anxieties about immigration and the stubborn refusal of the likes of us to co-operate, the public were going to put people like the UK’s authoritarian Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in charge. Our non-co-peration, or even resistance, is, supposedly self-defeating.
One thing he says is this:
There’s a simple logic about immigration: unless you believe your country should have no borders and be entirely open to anyone in the world, you must accept that the state needs to be able to remove uninvited people. I accept this as someone who has long argued for a liberal, open migration policy.
This rhetorical move gets made a lot by advocates and apologists for immigration control. I remember a similar point being made to a representative of the Stansted 15 on BBC Newsnight. Either the state gets what it wants, or … open borders.
But it is a rhetorical move that needs to be resisted, because you don’t have to be an advocate of open borders to believe that the actual policies being enforced by the state are cruel, unjust and unjustifiable to the point where reasonable people have the right, and possibly sometimes the duty, to disobey, even to resist and sabotage them.[^1] Moreover, when they are sufficiently unjust as a general rule, it is reasonable of people to believe that any particular act of enforcement will be unjustifiable and that the burden of proof is on the other side.
Other countries have their own tales to tell of state injustice and misconduct, but by any measure, the recent record of the UK is shocking. The UK does its level best to stop victims of persecution from reaching its shores to claim asylum. People who do manage to arrive are often criminalized for their method of arrival. Refugees are put into disused and dilapidated army camps in conditions that allow the coronavirus to spread. Their applications for asylum are inconsistently assessed and refusals are often overturned on appeal (so the government is trying to reduce their right to appeal). Many wait in limbo for years on £5 support per day, legally prevented from working. In the past many have been unlawfully deported, some to their deaths. The UK’s hostile environment policy, aimed at controlling irregular migration, led it it make unemployed or homeless long-term legal residents, to deprive them of health care, to incarcerate them or exclude them from the country. It introduced harsh financial limitations on the right to live in the country with your own spouse and children, splitting an unknown number of families (probably in the tens of thousands). It falsely accused thousands of foreign students, many of whom spoke perfect English, of cheating on an immigration-related language test and removed their visas, driving some into destitution. In recent days, young women visiting relatives who reveal to immigration officers that they might babysit for their families during their stay have been detained for intending to work illegally and forcibly removed from the country. So many lives ruined, and I didn’t even have to look up or check any of the above before typing. A longer list would be easy to make.
So no, there is no “simple logic” that tells you that short of open borders you have to accept whatever it is the state actually does, and one starting point might be that it is at a minimum a necessary condition of the legitimacy of state immigration policies that they not treat people in cruel and arbitrary ways, not throw them back into the hands of their persecutors, not expose them to violent death, not separate them from their loved ones, not deprive them of urgent medical care or leave them destitute on the streets, and so forth. When the state complies with those standards, we’ll talk.
But what if they can’t? Immigration restrictionists often argue to the effect that if control is a legitimate purpose, then whatever is necessary to achieve that purpose is itself legitimate. But that doesn’t follow, and if a supposedly legitimate purpose is only achievable by illegitimate means, then that failure infects the purpose itself. In other words, it isn’t just the restrictionists who can play the game of “simple logic”, and the onus is on them to show that immigration can be controlled without doing horrible things to human beings that should never be done.
[^1]: Lord Sumption, a former member of the UK Supreme Court, recently declared that there is no obligation to obey sufficiently unjust laws. He was right about the general proposition and was feted for saying so in the very publications that preach about an unthinking obligation to obey. That was because some of the people who write for those publication see covid lockdowns as unjustifiable restrictions on their freedom. But there’s no comparison between the temporary restraints of a global emergency and the systematic interference with the freedoms of immigrants and citizens a like that is required for effective immigration control. The cost of immigration control for freedom is well discussed in Chandran Kukathas’s new book Immigration and Freedom (Princeton).
{ 44 comments }
J-D 05.19.21 at 8:32 am
The shoddy rhetoric covers faulty logic, specifically the fallacy of equivocation. ‘The state needs to have some power in some circumstances to remove some uninvited people’ is not synonymous with ‘the state needs to have unrestricted power in all circumstances to remove any uninvited people’, but ‘the state needs to be able to remove uninvited people’ ambiguously straddles both meanings, and the ambiguity is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. The point is closely related to this one:
rjk 05.19.21 at 11:56 am
It’s interesting to gauge my own reactions to this. At first I thought this was a little unfair to Kirkup, whose heart seems to be in the right place and who is merely arguing for a political tactic that he thinks is most likely to secure the best outcome. On reflection, I think I agree a bit more with the critique of his position.
I take Kirkup to be arguing for the rule of law: nobody should be allowed to cheat the system by entering without declaring their presence, or over-staying a legally-permitted visit. He believes that once this matter of procedural fairness is dealt with, the public will be happy with laws which, in practice, permit a good deal of immigration and the maximum compassionate treatment of refugees. In D&D alignment chart terms, he thinks that the only politically acceptable “good” policy is “lawful good”. In this view, the “chaotic good” of the Glasgow protestors is simply less likely to prevail than the “lawful evil” of the Home Office, with the result of pursuing it being that there is simply less overall goodness being enacted.
Of course, if the Home Office is constitutionally evil, and is being encouraged to be so by politicians who might be that way inclined themselves, then the only good option available is the chaotic. One is not required to tolerate lawful evil just because it is lawful (and, as per Lord Sumption, at some point the evilness overpowers the lawfulness even in the eyes of the law).
This is where Kirkup’s political strategy has to be questioned. Rather than framing the protestors as law-breakers (however sympathetic their case may be to him personally), he could choose to frame the Home Office as breaking the law, either human rights laws, some other assumed natural rights, or British customs of fairness and decency, and the protestors as defenders of liberty. The chaotic and ungovernable force isn’t that of ordinary people defending their neighbours, but that of the officials of the state who enforce arbitrary and unchallengeable rulings on innocent people. Of course, that is a rhetorical move that is somewhat harder to make in the pages of the Times! Nevertheless, it feels as though it would be more productive for him to try, rather than taking the easy plaudits from conservatives for “standing up” to the left.
Chetan Murthy 05.19.21 at 8:17 pm
Two thoughts:
(1) gee, I bet Kirkup is suuuuch a liberal partisan of “liberal, open migration policy.” You betcha! I’d want to see detailed receipts, Jimmy-boy.
(2) “Immigration restrictionists often argue to the effect that if control is a legitimate purpose, then whatever is necessary to achieve that purpose is itself legitimate.”
Hmm … on this logic, it’s fine to kill a bunch of innocent people, that one guilty man should hang, right?
Sigh. As with so many things, the manifest intent of these sort of people (“the cruelty is the point”) makes it more and more impossible to give them an inch.
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.19.21 at 9:06 pm
“…the onus is on them to show that immigration can be controlled without doing horrible things to human beings that should never be done.”
What if they can’t? Is it open borders, then? And, possibly, a civil war?
What’s the solution?
J-D 05.19.21 at 11:59 pm
I haven’t read James Kirkup’s piece, so I have to rely entirely on Chris Bertram’s account of it–if anybody has reason to think that account is a misrepresentation, I’m eager to know about it. However, assuming that account to be accurate, it’s a mistake to describe James Kirkup as arguing for a political tactic. In simple language, it appears James Kirkup is arguing that the reason people do nasty things is because they are reacting against other people telling them to be nice: therefore, you shouldn’t tell people to be nice. He isn’t advocating for any alternative political tactic except to the extent that inaction can be described as a tactic. This kind of argument for inaction provides convenient cover for the lazy, the timid, and the lukewarm, but it has no merit beyond that.
Moz of Yarramulla 05.20.21 at 3:06 am
Interestingly right now similar argument are being made about Jacinda Ardern’s enthusiasm for putting refugees in prison in Aotearoa. It’s not on the same scale of horror as Australia or even the UK, obviously, but it’s still odious.
Isn’t it interesting how q
KT2 05.20.21 at 3:10 am
CB said “but by any measure, the recent record of the UK is shocking”
Has the UK gone this far?
Australia. “the new law seeks to expressly allow the government to detain refugees such as AJL20 for as long as it likes, potentially for the rest of his life.”.
Remember the 13th May 2021 when Australia extinguished even hope.
No debate or committee. Both majir parties, Â Liberals small ‘l’ or conservatives, and Labor party voted for.
Australia – a cruel inhumane mindset.Â
“Migration Amendment (Clarifying International Obligations for Removal) Bill 2021
“Senate
Introduced and read a first time
13 May 2021
Second reading moved
13 May 2021
Second reading debate
13 May 2021
Second reading agreed to
13 May 2021
Third reading agreed to
13 May 2021
Finally passed both Houses
13 May 2021
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6696
From the Guardian article:
“Indefinite detention of refugees is unlawful under international law, but Australia has quietly made it legal
“To counter the [High] court’s ruling against unlawful detention, the government simply wrote a new law allowing it to do whatever it wants
“The Migration Amendment (Clarifying International Obligations for Removal) Bill 2021 was introduced on the last sitting day of the last session in March.
“On Thursday, in the hours before the budget reply speech, the government cut short debate on the floor of the Senate and brought the bill to a vote. There were critics on the floor of the parliament, notably Greens senator Nick McKim andindependent MP Andrew Wilkie. But with bipartisan support, there was little room for dissenting voices. With Labor’s support, the bill passed quietly into law.
“The government has appealed the decision to the high court, but regardless, the new law seeks to expressly allow the government to detain refugees such as AJL20 for as long as it likes, potentially for the rest of his life.
“AJL20 is 29 years old.”…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2021/may/16/indefinite-detention-of-refugees-is-unlawful-under-international-law-but-australia-has-quietly-made-it-legal
J-D 05.20.21 at 8:12 am
There’s no reason to suppose that immigration can’t be controlled without grossly abusing people (if you have any reason to think so, you’re concealing it), but if, hypothetically, it turned out to be true that immigration can’t be controlled without grossly abusing people, then it shouldn’t be controlled. If there is anything which would justify grossly abusing people, controlling immigration isn’t it.
But the practical point Chris Bertram was making can, unless I’m very much mistaken, also be expressed this way: the onus should be on governments to find ways to manage immigration without grossly abusing people. Governments shouldn’t grossly abuse people!* Therefore, they shouldn’t grossly abuse people in order to manage immigration; they should find ways to conduct their affairs without grossly abusing people, and to the extent that they don’t, it is they, the governments, which have failed.
*I know very well that governments do grossly abuse people, and that we are a long way from any state of affairs in which governments don’t grossly abuse people, and that getting to any such state of affairs is a huge challenge. It’s still the right direction in which to be headed.
George Carty 05.20.21 at 9:51 am
Aren’t Australia and NZ not comparable with the UK (or indeed any European countries) because almost all foreigners (with a tiny number of exceptions, such as professional sportspeople) are currently banned from setting foot there in the first place?
This blanket ban isn’t motivated by xenophobia in the classic sense, but is the inevitable consequence of their “zero Covid” policy. The hotel quarantines which they are using to keep Covid out aren’t perfect, and were breached roughly once for every 18,000 arrivals (with roughly half of those breaches causing lockdowns). It is therefore essential under a zero Covid policy to keep incoming travellers down to the absolute minimum (which in practice means only returning citizens and permanent residents).
https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1387828828609855499
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.20.21 at 10:34 am
@8 “But the practical point Chris Bertram was making can, unless I’m very much mistaken, also be expressed this way: the onus should be on governments to find ways to manage immigration without grossly abusing people.”
If I were representing the government, I’d reply: we do our best to achieve the goal of ‘no open borders‘, as we understand it. If you don’t like our methods (the actual methods, not selected unfortunate incidents), then the onus is actually on you to suggest – and defend against (predictable) criticisms – either different methods, or a different definition of ‘no open borders‘ plus the methods to achieve it, or rejection of the ‘no open borders‘ goal altogether.
I mean, if you really do want to move beyond the rhetoric and mutual accusations, it’s just a garden variety political process, searching for a compromise and consensus.
Matt 05.20.21 at 11:26 am
JD said: There’s no reason to suppose that immigration can’t be controlled without grossly abusing people
Gargonzola replied (?I) If I were representing the government, I’d reply: we do our best to achieve the goal of ‘no open borders‘, as we understand it.
It’s important to see that there is, literally, no policy goal that is perfectly met, and not crime that has perfect enforcement – that’s from traffic accidents to parking violations to shoplifting to murder. That’s because in all of these cases, getting perfect enforcement would be, perhaps, impossible, but even getting close to it would be unduly expensive, both financially and in terms of rights violations. The straight forward implication of this is that every country will have to accept a certain degree of unauthorized migration unless it wants to both be extremely wasteful and a regular violator of the rights of people – including citizens, authorized migrants, and unauthorized migrants (who still have a certain number of rights.) How much unauthorized migration has to be accepted? That’s a point for debate, but it seems clear to me, living in Australia and teaching Australian migration law, that Australia has set the bar too far towards enforcement and rights violations. It seems pretty clear that the UK has too. Maybe all states have, to greater or lesser degrees. This doesn’t imply that the answer is “open borders” (as JD rightly notes.) But, just as we don’t think that even murder allows the state to do anything that reduces it, it should be obvious that that this applies to immigration enforcement, too.
(Here’s a perhaps useful comparison: it would be insane to say the US has “open borders”, and yet, the unauthorized population of the US has been close to 10 million people – going up and down a million or so over time – for a long time. By comparison, the unauthorized population of Australia was, for a long time, about 40K, though I suspect it’s gone down a fair amount in the last year. This suggests that, even when we adjust for size, no sane person can suggest that there is anything at all that resembles “open borders” in Australia, nor would there be under any even slightly likely revision of migration laws that made them more humane, less unjust, and less wasteful.)
nastywoman 05.20.21 at 1:21 pm
@ 4
-”to show that immigration can be controlled without doing horrible things to human beings that should never be done.â€
What if they can’t? Is it open borders, then? And, possibly, a civil war?
What’s the solution?
To show that immigration can be controlled without doing horrible things to human beings that should never be done!
J-D 05.20.21 at 1:38 pm
If you were representing the government, what would be your justification for doing so?
What would be the justification for the government having ‘no open borders’ as its highest priority goal? I can’t think of any. What would be the justification for not making ‘no gross abuses’ a higher-priority goal? It should be.
Barry 05.20.21 at 1:48 pm
J-D: “In simple language, it appears James Kirkup is arguing that the reason people do nasty things is because they are reacting against other people telling them to be nice: therefore, you shouldn’t tell people to be nice. ”
It’s just yet another variation on evil-doers blaming their victims and bystanders.
PatinIowa 05.20.21 at 3:48 pm
The purpose of immigration control in the US is not to prevent people coming to the US illegally or to remove them once they’re here. Its purposes are far more complex than that.
How do we know? We know because employers who knowingly employ undocumented immigrants are rarely (never?) punished for such behaviour.
While the US puts asylum-seeking children in disgusting circumstances, rightly described as concentration camps, it does very little to discourage businesses from recruiting, hiring, and then exploiting undocumented labour.
I encourage people to look at the legislature in, say, an agriculture-dense state like Iowa to see what happens when legislation is proposed to increase enforcement on businesses, rather than visit pain on undocumented human beings.
I’ve long felt that if we were really serious about curbing undocumented immigration, all we’d have to do is put a couple of agribusinesses or construction firms out of business for conspiring to violate multiple federal laws (think RICO), and there’d be immediate changes.
It will not happen, unless the racists completely take over the Republican party and purge the Chamber of Commerce types. And then it won’t happen, because the Republican Party is a coalition that requires both.
(I’m fully aware that sanctions against employers will result in other abuses, especially even more discrimination against Mexican and Latinx-appearing legal residents and citizens. But then, as an immigrant myself, I’m not terrified of immigrants in the way the right wants me to be, so …)
notGoodenough 05.20.21 at 6:24 pm
Gorgonzola Petrovna @ 10
“If I were representing the government, I’d reply: we do our best to achieve the goal of ‘no open borders‘, as we understand it.â€
That would seem to me to be a very strange statement to make, given that – to the best of my knowledge – the government has not declared “no open borders†to be a goal. Indeed, I saw no mention of it amongst the objectives listed in the government’s recent New Plan for Immigration.
Perhaps you can point to either where the government has stated that “no open borders†is a goal, or explain why you would would make this statement?
Kiwanda 05.20.21 at 6:26 pm
PatinIowa: Yes, highly restrictive but poorly enforced immigration is a huge boon to some employers: it creates a large set of especially powerless, easily exploitable, workers. It also makes for a nice set of people for politicians to blame: “It’s not my allies keeping your wages down, it’s those illegals”.
LsP 05.20.21 at 8:00 pm
“[O]ne starting point might be that it is at a minimum a necessary condition of the legitimacy of state immigration policies that they not treat people in cruel and arbitrary ways, not throw them back into the hands of their persecutors, not expose them to violent death, not separate them from their loved ones, not deprive them of urgent medical care or leave them destitute on the streets, and so forth.”
This is “and a pony” level wishful thinking. Those are all things that a majority of Americans appear to find OK treatment of US citizens, let alone non-citizens. Boris Johnson as Prime Minister seems to show that a majority of British voters have similar views. It seems at least a little quixotic to think immigration policy will treat immigrants with less cruelty than a country treats its own.
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.20.21 at 8:18 pm
@13
I don’t know about ‘the highest priority’, but it seems obvious why it is a government responsibility. As for the gross abuses, that’s normally addressed by courts. And, again, bad laws are modified or repealed by a political process. I haven’t read the piece, but I guess that’s what James Kirkup is saying. Of course refusing to cooperate could be part of the political process, but I guess he feels it’s not very productive. Just heightens the acrimony. Is there something unseemly about this point of view? Anyway, I don’t think I have anything more to say here.
Ray Vinmad 05.20.21 at 11:55 pm
There is a common rhetorical move by faux humanitarians when they want to justify something that is inhumane.
Person 1 says –‘This is wrong. This is cruel. This is harmful. There are certain lines we must not cross.’
Person 2 says–‘You are not permitted to object unless you solve [extremely complex and thorny problem]. Don’t have a solution, huh? Well then, we must do this vile and inhumane thing.’
Or they do the thing where they say the only options are so much worse using slippery slope arguments and a pack of inferences about the disastrous results of being more humane and just. Or they offer up some shitty utilitarian argument about how you make X people suffer but that prevents incentivizing Y people who will suffer more.
When is Person 1 ever wrong? Almost never in my view.
Why is Person 2 always successful at dragging the argument over into hack consequentialist territory and getting their bullshit intuitions to put the burden of proof on Person 2?
That’s a question we should be asking. The answers are complicated probably but it seems like at least one part of the reason it works is that a lot of us are trained to be comfortable with certain humans receiving cruel treatment so much so that we’re afraid to gamble that Person 2 is wrong in case it makes problems for us or someone whose interests we have been taught to respect.
Some of the way we’re taught this is to be steeped in the idea that our comfort and security is very fragile and there’s some way that other people’s suffering is necessary for us to go on like this. I don’t think that intuition is necessarily true either.
Is there a term for this strategy? I love the way ‘sealioning’ just makes certain rhetorical moves plain and I would love to have a word for this particular move because it is very potent and hard to root out of debates.
People find the rhetoric convincing because they want something to say that obscures the fact that we depend on and embrace systems that inevitably result in cruelty. They want it to sound too complicated to solve.
Lots of human problems are complicated but ‘don’t do that extremely cruel thing’ is not so complicated. Once you let in the idea that we should do the cruel thing because stuff is complicated you are endorsing a world that most of us wouldn’t want to live in. Nobody can do this consistently which is why (a) Person 2 should never win the argument and (b) our permitting it shows that we have somehow exempted certain groups of people from concern.
It’s a type of reasoning in bad faith because Person 2 doesn’t give a damn but I wish there were a word for it.
Alex 05.21.21 at 2:32 am
KT2, I’m not familiar with what’s going on in Australia, however the UK does have a policy of indefinite detention of refugees, yes.
Chris Bertram 05.21.21 at 8:05 am
@LsP “This is “and a pony†level wishful thinking. Those are all things that a majority of Americans appear to find OK treatment of US citizens, let alone non-citizens. ”
Alternatively, you might conclude that the US fails to meet a reasonable standard for state legitimacy.
Fergus 05.21.21 at 8:14 am
This is dead right, Chris – I have noticed before the huge gulf in approach to this issue between people who start in, say, thinktanks or opinion journalism or other high politics, and people who start with a first exposure to actual state practice (be it migrant communities themselves, or their neighbours, or lawyers or activists.) It doesn’t validate the logic, but you can see how if you start from the abstract (we have a right to exclude) then it’s easier to travel down the path of thinking certain actions are justifiable in pursuit of that principle. And if you start from the observation of something unjustifiable on its face, you’ll have a pretty different attitude.
A related, broader point: it’s not only current state practice that we shouldn’t accept as justified by the need to not have open borders. Border control measures generally, and the use of deportation at a large scale in particular, are pretty new – always around, but they’ve really ramped up since 9/11. And there’s plenty of room for argument about particular individual measures, but clearly the switch from ‘deportations are sporadic’ to ‘deportations are systematic’ hasn’t made a huge difference to the number of migrants arriving to or living in the rich countries practising these policies. We could just… not. And we’d still be a very long way from anything that could reasonably be called open borders.
Gorgonzola at 8 – Matt’s explanation of why even if you reject open borders you will have to accept some unauthorised migration is exactly right, on the substance of the issue, but a quick point on the politics… There needs to be some clarity about who, in this imagined dialogue, the government is talking to. I don’t think anyone can seriously think that a victim, or an activist, who highlights some abuse is engaging in pure rhetoric unless they immediately offer some worked out alternative. Sometimes, for some people, a perfectly good answer to the offered question “well, how should we do it, then?” is “not like that”. It wouldn’t be very practical if that was the response offered by everyone to the left of the current government, obviously. I in fact do believe in open borders, but that doesn’t mean I think the Labour Party (or any mainstream left party) should make it their policy or election commitment any time in the near future. Of course the political system needs some actors to offer less abusive ways of managing migration – but that doesn’t mean that other people, who take on the different but important task of showing up what the abuses are, are failing to ‘move beyond rhetoric’.
Fergus 05.21.21 at 8:29 am
@Alex — the UK’s approach to immigration detention is abysmal, but it’s very far from comparable to Australia’s (both this specific thing KT2 is talking about and in general.) The UK policy framework is that irregular migrants are detained in order to facilitate deportation – in theory this should be for short periods; in practice it is often for pretty extended periods and that’s a huge problem. But it is the case that there are irregular migrants who are known to the Home Office, don’t have permission to be in the country, and are in the community (required to report periodically.) In Australia those people would all be detained throughout — the people currently in immigration detention have spent an average of 627 days there.
The new law is sort of just a codification of what the government was already doing and frequently being able to defend in court – the policy was already that people would just be detained indefinitely, the new legislation essentially just closes off some speculative legal challenges that activists have recently started considering.
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.21.21 at 9:19 am
@16,
you can’t be serious. Are you saying you’re not aware of the body of laws that amounts to ‘no open borders’? Have I dreamed up the existence, legal existence, of visas, residential permits, border guards, deportations, etc? And if I have, then what are we talking about here?
notGoodenough 05.21.21 at 2:43 pm
Gorgonzola Petrovna @ 25
“you can’t be serious.”
Yes, I can.
“Are you saying you’re not aware of the body of laws that amounts to ‘no open borders’?â€
No. I don’t believe anything in my comment either states or implies this so it appears to be something of a non-sequiter, but I do try to answer questions when they are asked of me.
Have I dreamed up the existence, legal existence, of visas, residential permits, border guards, deportations, etc? And if I have, then what are we talking about here?”
I will confess I didn’t think my comment was so mystifying as to prevent a simple answer, but since you appear to be rather struggling with this I will try to clarify for you.
Firstly, let me note the difference between a “goal” and a “methodology”: a goal is what you are trying to achieve; a methodology is how you achieve it.
For example, my goal might be “make a nice cup of tea”. My methodology might be “investigate the key factors affecting the tea´s niceness – including milk to tea ratio, selection of leaves, steeping time, etc.”.
This is an important distinction, because arguments about methodology are arguments about how to achieve something, while arguments about the goal are arguments about what you are trying to achieve.
To extend my tea example – if you and I disagree on the best “tea methodology”, we can try to find some consensus or common ground. We can examine the factors (maybe it turns out that leaves don´t effect the flavour), we can come up with better ways of measuring the effects, we can improve our approach – but this could still all be in search of the same shared goal: “make a nice cup of tea”.
If, however, we disagree on the goal (e.g. my goal is “make a nice cup of tea” and yours is “get drunk on cheap vodka”) then we are not arguing about the best way to achieve the same thing – instead, we are arguing about achieving different things.
To put this in context with respect to my comment, consider the following:
Example 1
The Government states “our goal is to have a fair immigration system”, and their methodology involves having “no open borders”. There can still be arguments about what a fair immigration system is, and there can be arguments about whether “no open borders” is the best way to achieve it.
Example 2
If, as you would state were you in the position of doing so, the Government´s goal is “no open borders”, then
(a) “no open borders” is not something open for discussion or compromise – having “no open borders†is foundational to what is trying to be achieved
(b) “no open bordersâ€, as one of the things trying to be achieved, is implicitly more important than any non-goals (which is significant from the point of view of prioritising policy).
I hope these two examples highlight the importance of this point – and the implications it would have for the ensuing discussions, debates, formulations of laws, etc.
Now, in the Government’s New Plan for Immigration (just to pick a recent example), they state they have three goals:
“1. To increase the fairness and efficacy of our system so that we can better protect and support those in genuine need of asylum
2. To deter illegal entry into the UK, thereby breaking the business model of criminal trafficking networks and protecting the lives of those they endanger
3. To remove more easily from the UK those with no right to be here”
These goals do not seem to necessarily preclude “no open bordersâ€, nor do they seem to necessarily preclude “not having no open bordersâ€. My current understanding is that the Government might argue “no open borders†is necessary to achieving these goals (i.e. making a methodological argument), but (to the best of my knowledge) the Government is not arguing that having “no open borders†is what they are trying to achieve (i.e. making a goal argument). This would to me seem to be a non-trivial point.
To answer your question – “what are we talking about here?â€
In my case, I am trying to establish:
1) Has the Government stated “no open borders†is a goal?
(in which case I can revise my understanding of what the Government has stated is is trying to achieve)
2) If the Government has not stated “no open borders†is a goal, why would you do so were you to speak on behalf of the Government?
(for example, do you believe it is in fact a goal irrespective of what they state, do you believe it should be a goal irrespective of what they state, etc.)
In your case (while I try to avoid making definitive statements about other people’s thought processes) based on your comments it appears you have been discussing your speculations regarding what you imagine an article you haven’t read says about a topic in response to what someone who has read that article has said in rebuttal to the article.
I hope this clarifies matters sufficiently, and that you might now answer my query: “Perhaps you can point to either where the government has stated that “no open borders†is a goal, or explain why you would would make this statement?â€
rjk 05.21.21 at 3:49 pm
J-D @5:
This seems unduly harsh. I think his position is that the average voter wants a) immigration to be managed in accordance with democratically-approved aims, b) generous treatment of refugees, and c) fair deals for general migrants. The authoritarian argument is that you simply can’t allow any level of migration without harsh rules and harsher enforcement, lest the country be overwhelmed by people-traffickers and exploitative grey economy activity. Merely arguing that current levels of enforcement are unfairly harsh concedes too much ground, because it accepts the premise that managing immigration in accordance with some democratically-agreed plan is impossible, and then we are just haggling over how much pain we’re willing to inflict on migrants to discourage the inevitable abuse.
Kirkup’s position would seem to be that while there may be plenty of nasty authoritarians, they aren’t in a majority, and the average voter would support a more liberal immigration policy so long as this were not merely a chaotic policy of non-enforcement. Perhaps he is naive for thinking that this alternative exists, and perhaps it’s not feasible to think that he’s really that naive, and so he must be mendacious instead. But I don’t think it’s as simple as “there are nice people who want nice things, and nasty people who want nasty things, and we can’t mention the nice things in case the nasty people get riled up by it”. His whole point is to try to break this up into two dimensions, one of formal tightness of immigration policy, and another of the harshness of enforcement. I don’t think it’s the best way to frame it, but it’s not obviously terrible.
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.21.21 at 6:23 pm
@26,
The “open borders” – “no open borders” dichotomy is introduced in the post. Or so I thought. You don’t like it described as a “goal”? Fair enough. ‘State’, ‘condition’, ‘the order of things’? ‘We do our best to achieve (maintain?) the condition of ‘no open borders‘, as we understand it’. Better?
Perhaps ‘we do our best to control immigration’ would make more sense, but, again, I thought the concern of being labeled (and brushed off as) an advocate of “open borders” is essential.
J-D 05.22.21 at 2:03 am
With a minor caveat* I agree with this point, but I foresaw a point like it and responded to it in advance in a footnote to the linked previous comment. So I won’t repeat myself.
The caveat is this: winning a US election or a UK election does not even require a majority of the votes cast, still less the endorsement of a majority of voters for an entire program, so the evidence of election results is not conclusive about what views are held by a majority of voters. But although not conclusive it is suggestive. I think it’s likely you’re right about the views of both US and UK voters, I just don’t think it’s demonstrated with certainty.
But priority is critical.
If it were obvious to me, I wouldn’t have posed the question.
Sometimes courts are effective in stopping gross abuses, but it’s not clear that this is normally true, and because it plainly isn’t universally true, there remains a role for others.
That’s something which is true sometimes but not always; but when it is true, I can’t imagine what sort of political process not involving people criticising, opposing, or resisting a law would result in its being modified or repealed.
The question isn’t whether it’s unseemly, the question is whether it’s accurate. There’s no good reason to suppose it is.
It seems you thought wrong.
I mentioned that I have not read James Kirkup’s original piece and am responding to Chris Bertram’s description of it. Your reading is not supported by that description. Have you read the original piece?
Patrick 05.22.21 at 4:20 am
“I haven’t read James Kirkup’s piece, so I have to rely entirely on Chris Bertram’s account of it–if anybody has reason to think that account is a misrepresentation, I’m eager to know about it. ”
Well, he summarizes this:
“There’s a simple logic about immigration: unless you believe your country should have no borders and be entirely open to anyone in the world, you must accept that the state needs to be able to remove uninvited people. I accept this as someone who has long argued for a liberal, open migration policy.”
As this:
“Either the state gets what it wants, or … open borders.”
And as this:
“So no, there is no “simple logic†that tells you that short of open borders you have to accept whatever it is the state actually does,”
Both of which are obvious misrepresentations of the plain language of the text that he literally quotes in his article.
Stephen 05.22.21 at 4:43 pm
Dear Professor Bertram
A while ago I came across your very lucid article, “Natural rights to Migration?”
which has the initial caveat “Please do not cite or quote without permission.”
It seems to me that the views expressed there (as I understand them, that there is a natural right to move and settle across the borders of states, and that persons denied that right should be paid compensation by the states from which they are excluded) are highly relevant to this conversation. Have I understood your views correctly? Do you still hold them? Do I have your permission to quote them?
I haven’t given an url for your article because that might be taken as citing you without permission.
Chris Bertram 05.22.21 at 4:45 pm
@Patrick I think my gloss is reasonable, given that he’s using that passage to set up an argument for working collaboratively with the Home Office as it currently is.
Chris Bertram 05.22.21 at 6:11 pm
@Stephen. No. That was an unpublished working paper from a few years back. You’ll find an accurate version of my current views in my book Do States Have the Right to Exclude Immigrants? (2019)
notGoodenough 05.22.21 at 8:27 pm
Gorgonzola Petrovna @ 28
“The “open borders†– “no open borders†dichotomy is introduced in the post. Or so I thought.â€
The post said “you don’t have to be an advocate of open borders to believe that the actual policies being enforced by the state are cruel, unjust and unjustifiableâ€. It seems to me it was not setting up an “open borders†– “no open borders†dichotomy, but instead suggesting that this is a false dilemma posed by people supporting the current status quo (e.g. “either let us do what we are doing, or open bordersâ€). I could perhaps have misunderstood, but that was my impression. Regardless, I don’t see what this has to do with my question.
“You don’t like it described as a “goalâ€?â€
I have no idea why you would think my personal likes or dislikes have anything to do with this – it seems a pretty bizarre thing to infer. Again, you offered a discussion of what you would state were you speaking on behalf of the government – I assumed you had spent some time considering your words and were using them carefully to convey your understanding. I asked you a fairly minor question regarding a point in order to seek clarity – I am astounded at how much offence you seem to have taken.
I would respectfully request you reread your responses to me – while I have taken no little time to explain myself and answer your questions, you have continuously responded in a rather aggressive, touchy, rude, and – frankly speaking – condescending fashion. I don’t know why you seem so bent out of shape by someone asking you, fairly politely, to clarify your remarks, but it is of course your choice to do so.
As you seem to be getting rather exercised about this, perhaps it is better if we drop the discussion entirely?
J-D 05.23.21 at 1:17 am
This suggests three questions:
Is there a justification for an evaluation of the government’s performance as ‘best’?
Is there a justification for the government’s trying to control immigration?
Is there a justification for the specific ways in which the government is trying to control immigration?
They might be misrepresentations if what is meant by ‘you must accept that the state needs to be able to remove uninvited people’ is ‘you must accept the principle that the state needs to have some ability to remove some uninvited people in some circumstances’; but Chris Bertram, having read the article, suggests that the meaning is closer to ‘you must accept that the state needs to have an ability to remove uninvited people which extends (at least) as far as the state’s current actual practice’, and if he’s right about that then there’s no misrepresentation. Again, I haven’t read the article.
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.23.21 at 7:23 am
@34,
No, let us continue the discussion, please; I am enjoying it.
It’s been years since I’ve taken such a strong offense, responding – all at once – in aggressive, touchy, rude, and condescending fashion, and got bent out of shape so much. Not to mention being exercised and making bizarre inferences. I love making bizarre inferences. It’s a great feeling, I tell you. Especially on a rainy Sunday morning. Brightens the Lord’s Day.
More minor questions, please.
notGoodenough 05.23.21 at 10:14 am
Gorgonzola Petrovna @ 36
“No, let us continue the discussion, please; I am enjoying it.â€
I am very glad to hear it.
When someone responds by telling me I cannot be serious, rhetorically demanding if I am unaware of the existence of visas, repeatedly does not answer my queries but instead implies they result from emotional objections rather than a desire for more information (as detailed in a fairly lengthy explanatory post) – well, I worry that that person seems to be going a little off the rails. I am grateful for your reassurance.
â€I love making bizarre inferences.
To each their own, I suppose. It is, I freely confess, a little disconcerting – it is akin to asking someone what the weather is like and receiving in response “why do you hate crabs?â€. But far be it from me to deny you such enjoyment – I will endeavour to read around you rhetoric in future.
“More minor questions, please.â€
Gladly. To continue – I think that whether or not something is what is trying to be achieved, or if it is the route by which something is achieved is a point worth being clear on (I hope it is clear why, from my comment @ 26, and that perhaps you might agree that this is a useful distinction).
I would then repeat my query – are you aware of the Government having stated that “no open borders†is a goal (or, if you prefer, is something to be achieved)?
I would also ask, do you think “no open borders†is in fact a goal of the Government (regardless of whether or not they state it)?
Moving on to your comment @ 28, I do see a potential issue with your proposed statement:
“‘We do our best to achieve (maintain?) the condition of ‘no open borders‘, as we understand it’.â€
I think that making this comment as an official Government pronouncement might well raise a few eyebrows given the potential conflict with the Comhlimistéar Taisteal (Common Travel Area) and the ensuing ramifications this would have (notably for the GFA).
I presume you have already considered this, and so would be most interested on what your thoughts are regarding this point.
J, not that one 05.23.21 at 3:22 pm
I had the same questions about the OP that others, most recently J-D, have been discussing. I read it as reading Kirkup as accusing critics of current policy of being Open Borders advocates, that he could not see any difference between “not this†and open borders. While I read Kirkup as discussion not the current policy but the need to have a policy. Someone who doesn’t accept an exclusionary policy of any kind surely is advocating open borders (say, someone who refuses the right of the government to use force and to require private citizens to treat people differently on the basis of their status). But it does raise a question whether law is legitimate if it’s open to certain kinds of severe criticism. Kirkup could be read as saying that states have a right to enforce borders, therefore states deserve deference for whatever they decide. And that’s an interesting question. Obviously no one thinks it should be illegitimate to advocate for different policies (at least I assume Kirkup couldn’t possibly think that). But is there a certain amount of deference that due to the makers of government policies, within limits, even if they aren’t your own considered preference? I think probably there is. I also think there’s more than one sufficiently optimal solution and none of those work unless there’s agreement to do whatever’s decided.
But the application of that agreement to excluding discussion of different policies is strange to me.
onastywoman 05.23.21 at 5:14 pm
@
‘I love making bizarre inferences’.
ME TOO –
So could I call you our ‘ResidentRudyRussian’?
Gorgonzola Petrovna 05.23.21 at 7:39 pm
@37,
I realize now that my aggressive, touchy, and rude insistence (made in a condescending fashion) that one of government’s goals is to achieve and maintain the state of “no open borders” (treaties of simplified border control notwithstanding) must be one of my bizarre inferences.
Well, in all honesty, I suspect I could search for and easily find plenty of government proclamations you so desperately desire, but my innate cruelty prevents me from doing so. For it pleases me to have you worrying and feeling disconcerted. And that’s my good side, by the way.
J-D 05.24.21 at 12:18 am
I expect it’s possible to find examples of harm done both by insufficient deference to governments and other holders of authority and by excessive deference, but I estimate that much more harm has been done by excessive deference than by insufficient deference and I conclude that although there is justification for deference in some cases the default impulse should be in the direction of less deference (and more questioning, criticism, or resistance).
If somebody says ‘Immigration policy should be less restrictive and less harsh’, it is not justified for somebody else to respond ‘Unless you can explain in detail what policy you are advocating, you have no case’. There are many people who have a much deeper understanding in detail of the issue and who would be equipped to make detailed suggestions about how policy could be made less restrictive and less harsh; I do not need their level of expertise in order to judge the right general direction.
nastywoman 05.24.21 at 7:43 am
and there is a very simple solution to all of this –
Y’all just have to believe like ME –
(and the NYT) that without some additional immigration WE won’t get the help we need in the future for caring for y’all – our ‘Elders’ –
AND we shouldn’t forget the extra help for our… heart and souls – if these immigrants are racial diverse –
as –
THAT –
on the long run –
turns US into much more pleasant and tolerant Human Beings TOO!
notGoodenough 05.24.21 at 8:59 am
Gorgonzola Petrovna @ 40
“I realize now that my aggressive, touchy, and rude insistence (made in a condescending fashion) that one of government’s goals is to achieve and maintain the state of “no open borders†(treaties of simplified border control notwithstanding) must be one of my bizarre inferences.â€
Actually, as I previously noted, I would say your bizarre inferences would more be things like saying that if someone is asking you if there is evidence that the Government has a goal of “no open borders†it is because they don´t like the word “goalâ€, rather than because they would like some evidence that the Government has a goal of “no open borders†(despite them stating this very clearly that the latter is their motivation).
In my opinion (for the little it is worth), your insistence that the Government has a goal of “no open borders†is not necessarily a bizarre inference – but it is worth noting it would represent the Government actually moving to a far stricter degree of border control than currently exists. It is possible this may be a goal, it is possible it may not be – it would be nice to have evidence one way or the other, but it seems you are not interested in such trivialities as “having a good reason to believe somethingâ€.
“Well, in all honesty, I suspect I could search for and easily find plenty of government proclamations you so desperately desire, but my innate cruelty prevents me from doing so.â€
I´m afraid what you suspect is far less of interest to me than what you can demonstrate (it remains a reasonable rule of thumb that one should apportion confidence to the evidence, a la David Hume). After all, many people suspect many things, and they are not always correct!
I know, I know, it is such a bore dealing with someone who´s epistemology is “trying to construct the most reliable understanding based on the best available evidence†rather than “guessing at what´s going on based on things which flatter preconceptionsâ€, but there we are – we all have our idiosyncrasies, after all, and one of mine is that I like to try to have as high a reasonably justified confidence in my understanding as possible.
“For it pleases me to have you worrying and feeling disconcerted.â€
I am sorry to disappoint, but of all the things which worry and disconcert me you rank very low. If it is a comfort, I will say I find your willingness to make strong pronouncements about something you seem to have little understanding of and even less interest in discussing mildly puzzling (though as I´ve met people on the internet before, not that puzzling). I hope this is sufficient to gratify your sensibilities – after all, bringing joy to people remains a great achievement in these trying times.
Final remark
It is a pity that you still have yet to actually answer any of the questions I´ve posed (I believe this will be my 5th comment on this thread directed at you, yet discourse appears to remain rather unproductive).
Perhaps you will consider that the goal you insist the Government has – and suspect has publicly stated – would likely represent an abandonment of the CTA. That would, naturally, endanger the GFA – and that could well lead to reigniting tensions in Ireland. Given that “the troubles†resulted in a fair degree of death, destruction, and fear, I don´t think that it is something to take lightly (hence why I have that annoying tendency to keep asking for evidence!). As you seem somewhat averse to discussing any of these points, it sadly seems the conversation will stall a little now. This won´t, I´m afraid, keep me awake at night – though if you prefer to imagine that it will, feel free to do so!
Should you be interested in actually discussing topics, offering evidence to support assertions, or engaging in insightful or thoughtful dialectic, I will certainly gladly read what you have to say. Until that happens, I will wait – though I certainly hope our little dialogue has provided you with as much amusement as it has me.
Vive valeque,
J, not that one 05.24.21 at 11:06 pm
J-D @ 41
Yes, if you take “the government doesn’t have the right to decide who will be excluded†to mean “policy should be less restrictive and less harsh,†in other words something like “this government doesn’t have the right to make the decisions it does about who will be excluded and how that will be enforced,†it seems perhaps the problem goes away.
I do wonder whether Kirkup actually did go on to say that everyone owes the state full deference on all of it including the obligation to agree that the state’s decisions are correct, the alternative being lawlessness, in which case what I see as the overt meaning of the OP is quite correct in my opinion.
We may be unable here for the most part to engage in political discussions of what policy should be in detail, still, I assume that when policy is discussed, what is being discussed is policy, and what it should be.
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