Selective Immigration Policy and Democracy: From the Perspective of Lawful Coercion Approach to Democracy's Boundary Problem

Abstract

In this article, I reconsider legitimacy of selective immigration policy from the standpoint of political philosophy. Today states have unilateral discretion over entry policy, therefore prospective immigrants have no voice in the policy making process. However, legitimacy of those policy practices partly depends on underlying normative reasons. By focusing on individual liberty, I indicate the policy practice is illegitimate.
  The issue of legitimacy of selective immigration is concerned with “democracy's boundary problem,” that is, of deciding who should be included in the democratic decision procedure. In this article, I take the lawful coercion approach to this problem among others. There is some disagreement within this approach: Thomas Nagel and David Miller argue that the current policy practices are legitimate and on the other hand, Arash Abizadeh argues that they are not. Their debates apparently focus on the conceptions of “coercion”. However, “liberty” is actually the key to their arguments. In this connection, the present article proceeds as follows: firstly I try to reconstruct their arguments by introducing two conceptions of liberty, freedom as option-availability and freedom as independence. Secondly, I critically examine these theorists and argue for Abizadeh. Finally, I briefly show the policy implications of Abizadeh's position.