In my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World (pp.162-67) and in blog posts here and here, I have defended the idea that a liberal state may permissibly impose immigration controls if required to maintain the tolerant, pluralistic nature of its polity. In light of the intense controversy surrounding this issue both within libertarian circles and more broadly, I wished to address this topic in a more thorough, comprehensive way.
As described in an earlier post, I was fortunate to recruit my friend Danny Frederick as a co-author, and we recently completed a draft that satisfies us both. Its title is “The Liberal Defense of Immigration Control,” and here is the abstract:
Liberal theorists generally support open borders and some recent work has argued that liberalism is incompatible with substantive immigration control. We argue that it has not been shown that there is an inconsistency in the idea of a liberal state enforcing such controls and that it may be obligatory for a liberal state to impose substantive, though relatively minor, restrictions on immigration. The immigration control on which we focus is that concerning people from societies that resemble closed societies, particularly those in which Islamic fundamentalism is endemic. We suggest that, if the threat we envision is real, then a liberal state has a right to limit, though not to prohibit, immigration from such societies.
We are still looking for a journal, but have decided to limit our search to those that permit self-publication prior to submission. Here is a link to our paper. We anticipate that it will undergo further revisions as part of the peer-review process, and so welcome all critical questions and comments in the hope of improving our arguments.
