Topics Justice

Question In international law, we have a right to leave our own countries (and come back) but not to enter other countries. Say I leave my home country A and try to enter B. There are some circumstances when, intuitively, it would seem unjust for B to refuse me entry, for example, if in turning me away, my life would be cut short, or if in entering B my life will be enriched and no harm will be done to the citizens of B. However, what principles should apply apply across borders to this type of issue?

Accepted:
April 10, 2006

Comments

I think you are asking whether international law ought to be revised so as to avoid the two intuitive injustices you assert.

With regard to your first intuitive injustice, international law already recognizes a right to asylum and a duty of non-refoulement. But many states implement this right in arbitrary and quite ungenerous ways, with the result that many desperate people are either returned to a situation where their life or health are at risk or else confined for long periods in inhumane detention centers. Here a modification of international law -- involving a consistent and efficient international process for determining refugee status as well as a fair allocation of recognized refugees among suitable asylum countries -- would indeed be a great improvement.

As for your second intuitive injustice, it may not be an injustice at all. Imagine a million Europeans eager to move to the Solomon Islands. Their presence would not really harm the locals -- in fact, it might greatly boost their per capita income. Still, with two-thirds of the citizens now Europeans, there would be a dramatic change in the local culture, a change the natives might regret. And one can then ask: Should it not be their prerogative to decide whether to invite (even harmless) Europeans into their community, and in what numbers? If so, then international law seems fine as it is, in this regard: A national population is free to decide about non-emergency admissions of foreigners into their country.

There may be a third intuitive injustice inherent in the status quo, which has to do with economic inequality. Here my concern is not with people who want to immigrate because they face life-threatening poverty back home. Such people -- currently routinely rejected as "economic refugees" unworthy of asylum -- ought to be protected under the revised asylum procedures suggested two paragraphs back. Rather, I am now thinking of poor people who want to build a better life in a more affluent country. In an economically just world, countries should perhaps be entitled to turn such people away (as I suggested in the preceeding paragraph). But in the present context of international economic injustice, one may doubt whether the more affluent countries may keep such people out (and formulate international law so that it entitles them to do so) . Among the relevant international economic injustices, I would mention the fact that some national populations appropriate hugely disproportional shares of the world's resources, such as land as well as air and water used for the discharging of pollutants. One could also mention unfair trading rules that allow wealthier countries to protect their producers through quotas, tariffs, anti-dumping duties, export credits, and huge subsidies, all of which greatly impede poor-country producers in those sectors (agriculture, textiles, footwear) where they would otherwise be globally most competitive. But in this case a reform that would compensate people impoverished by protectionist trade barriers by allowing them to immigrate into countries imposing such barriers would seem to make less sense than an alternative reform that would instead abolish rich-country protectionism.