Topics Justice

Question The rulers of country X are dictators in every sense of the word. Due to their repressive policies, living conditions of the inhabitants of X have dropped to pathetic levels. The rulers of X, because they have the money and wealth, decide to send their children to a country C which has better living conditions than X. Is it just for the rulers of C to deport these children back to X?

Accepted:
July 16, 2007

Comments

One needs a bit more detail here. Guessing at what interests you, let me fill this in. Let's assume the children were granted a proper visa, for instance a student visa after having been admitted to a university in C. They have started their study, and their parentage now comes to light. Should their visa be revoked, and they be deported?

An argument in favor is that they are enjoying privileges that are denied to most of their compatriots. Letting them enjoy study here affords them an unfair advantage. On the other hand, lots of other foreigners study here; so, while these kids are unfairly advantaged vis-a-vis their peers from X, they are not unfairly advantaged vis-a-vis many other young people. Sending them home while students from other countries are allowed to stay may look like punishing them for the crimes of their parents.

Such punishment, if this is what it is, can have its advantages, of course. It puts the rulers of X (and the rulers of other countries as well) on notice that, if they badly mismanage their country so that the vast majority of its citizens cannot send their children to C, then their own children will also not be allowed to go. This in turn may greatly reduce such mismanagement. If so, this strengthens the case for deportation as a general rule for such cases.

There is a further consideration. Chances are that the rulers of X are so wealthy because they have used their political position to embezzle state revenues. If so, the money their kids spend in C on tuition and living expenses is stolen property. Whoever knowingly accepts such funds in payment becomes complicit in the embezzlement. If corrupt rulers could not spend the money they steal from their countries, there would be very little point in stealing it. This consideration suggests a more complex course of action. C should not allow stolen money to enter and to be used in payment. So, if the kids cannot pay their tuitions with fairly earned funds, then they should be treated like other students unable to pay their tuitions. This means, presumably, that the university in question would revoke their student status and C's immigration officials would then deport them.

I find this last response quite plausible. Yet, unfortunately, in the real world, countries and institutions are only too eager to receive stolen funds. Western countries and their banks were happily complicit in the huge thefts perpetrated by Marcos, Suharto, Mobuto, Abacha, and dozens of other brutal dictators and their clans and collaborators. Our complicity is ongoing. Equatorial Guinea is a country very much like X. Teodorine Nguema Obiang is its government Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, earning an annual salary of $60,000. He has recently been allowed to purchase a $35-million mansion in Malibu. How did he get the money to do this? Well, his father Teodoro Nguema Obiang is the President of the country. He could not afford the mansion either, on his official salary, but he is stealing large amounts from his country, whose population for the most part lives in extreme poverty. Raymond Baker (Capitalism's Achilles Heel) estimates that some $500 to $800 billion in dirty money are transferred each year from poor countries to rich ones -- vastly more than all development assistance going the other way. By eagerly accepting these huge inflows, we are contributing to the impoverishment of countries like X -- also indirectly, by greatly increasing the rewards of coups and misrule.