Danny Frederick and my short paper, “A Weak Case Against Open Borders–A Critique of Joshi,” was just published in Cosmos + Taxis. While I am pleased that the editors chose to publish it, this is nevertheless a melancholy event inasmuch as it highlights for me just how much I miss my friend and co-author, who passed away two months ago. This was certainly among the last things he worked on prior to his very premature death.
By way of background, Hrishikesh Joshi is among the handful of academic philosophers of the classical liberal persuasion that has written against open borders. His paper, “Is Liberalism Committed to Its Own Demise?,” was published as we were putting the finishing touches on our own piece, “The Liberal Defense of Immigration Control.” We were careful to take note of his paper, briefly describe its arguments, and explain why his reasoning, although grounded in liberal values, was distinct from our own. Naturally, we believed we were making a superior argument, or we would have withdrawn our paper.
Accordingly, we were surprised and disappointed that when he published in December of last year his book chapter purporting to summarize the libertarian/classical perspective on migration, he did not bother to even mention our work. Our just-published paper briefly rehearses our argument, explains in greater depth our view that it presents a better-reasoned defense of immigration control, and asserts that Joshi was negligent in omitting it from his discussion.
