Deep thinking about immigration

David Miller. His book Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration aims to be the first to combine such an abstract approach to the topic with such a strong dose of realism. Make no mistake: Mr Miller is a humane, social democratic Oxford University professor. But comes down in favour of a state’s right – except when human rights are threatened – to close its borders to outsiders, and proposes four principles that should govern policies while admitting immigrants.

The first principle is what he calls “weak cosmopolitanism.” A weak cosmopolitan believes in the equal worth of all human beings but sees this as morally compatible with giving special consideration to our compatriots. The argument is simple: The radical changes to our behaviour required by a strong cosmopolitanism – which holds that we have an obligation to treat all people the same – would entail abandoning too much of what gives shape and meaning to our lives.

In the context of immigration, strong cosmopolitanism mandates an international “open borders” policy, whereas weak cosmopolitanism dictates only that a country’s policy cannot violate anyone’s human rights and sometimes must actively protect them.

Mr Miller’s second principle is national self-determination. Immigration can bring about considerable change to a country, and Mr Miller argues that citizens have the right to decide whether such changes would bolster or undermine their society. Any such policies have to be consistent with weak cosmopolitanism — and also, Mr Miller believes, with his third principle: fairness. The aim of a state’s immigration policy has to be one that would-be immigrants ought to accept as reasonable.

Does that seem as if it might get blurry in practice? The early history of immigration

suggests so. Traditionally, scholars have divided that history into two periods: a “selective” phase starting in 1882, which involved screening out individuals with any “defect” that would render them “likely to become a public charge”; and a “restrictive phase” starting with the passage of a literacy test in 1917.

Yet Mr Baynton, challenging conventional historiography, argues that the selective phase, despite its reliance on the “public charge” standard, was no less discriminatory. During those years, he demonstrates, immigration officials could and did customarily invoke this to rule out such “defectives” as women unaccompanied by male providers and members of races with supposed “predispositions” to criminality.

The fourth of Mr Miller’s principles is social integration, where Mr Miller calls for certain commitments, as well as a certain flexibility, on the part of everyone involved.

Mr Miller argues for reciprocity with respect to cultural integration. A Muslim immigrant to Italy, he feels, should not object to the presence of a crucifix in his daughter’s classroom as a symbol of the nation’s Catholic heritage; but neither should her school object to her preference for modest dress and the wearing of a head scarf. Here, too, the American example is relevant. In his minutely detailed City Of Gods the historian R Scott Hanson uses the story of Flushing — which calls itself the birthplace of religious freedom in America and is now the hub of the most religiously diverse large county in the US — as a “case study” of the promises and drawbacks of pluralism. How religiously diverse can a society get?

Mr Hanson, who has also done ethnographic work in the neighbourhood, concludes there is virtually “no limit” to how much religious diversity a society can accommodate. But he also finds that when it comes to cooperation and unity – two goals that Mr Miller, at least, places considerable emphasis on – there are limits to how much of a sense of community you can achieve in such a pluralistic environment. It’s another consideration to bear in mind for those who seek to respect social cohesion as well as the rights and interests of prospective immigrants. The Political Philosophy of Immigration David Miller Harvard University 240 pages; $35 Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics Douglas C. Baynton University of Chicago 192 pages; $35 Religious Freedom, Immigration, and Pluralism in Flushing, Queens R Scott Hanson Empire State Editions/Fordham University 336 pages; $35