THE ETHICS OF IMMIGRATION CONTROLS
That the rights of asylum seekers in Europe need to be defended more vigorously than at present would probably be accepted by almost all development NGOs, and by a sizeable minority of the general public. But an even more fundamental issue is whether development NGOs should question the ethics of global immigration controls in general, and not just the barriers to the movement of those fleeing from persecution. Could it not be argued that immigration restrictions constitute a form of "global apartheid", ensuring that poorer sections of world society are prevented, by legal and physical force, from sharing in total world riches? The following article by Andy Storey seeks to develop this theme, by arguing that immigration controls are based on dubious ethical and practical foundations, and that NGOs should be more willing than hitherto to challenge their validity. The author is research adviser with the Irish NGO Trocaire, though the views in this article are expressed in a personal capacity.
In her most recent book on the debt crisis - The Debt Boomerang: How Third World Debt Harms Us All1) - Susan George discusses its cost for the "First World" through the impact of "boomerangs" like the lost market opportunities and global environment destruction. One chapter argues that the "First World" will, to a certain extent, also pay a price for continued debt and underdeve-lopment in the "Third World" in the form of influxes of poor, would-be immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their own countries.
While George is certainly correct in her identification of this "boomerang" effect, my central problem with her approach to the immigration issue relates to the very legitimacy of immigration control. Her views are encapsulated in her statement that:
The right-wing, knee-jerk "we shall fight them on the beaches" riposte is as inappropriate as the "liberal" or "progressive" notion that the rich countries can somehow maintain open borders2).
The notion that the rich countries cannot (and should not) allow free entry to anyone and everyone would probably be accepted by many commentators. Most lobbying on the issue of immigration by human rights groups focuses on the need to afford protection to "genuine" asylum-seekers, who should be let in, as opposed to "economic migrants", who simply want a better life and who, according to many, should be excluded.
I am not suggesting that lobbying for the rights of asylum seekers is not a necessary and practical activity. My point is that it can legitimately be argued that everyone in the South has a right to a better life, and the North has no right to deny access to it, wherever it may be found.
This position, of course, rests upon a strong (and openly idealist) assumption. Others may disagree with it, and thus reject the substance of my argument. But such disagreement would at least bring differences in underlying value judgements to the fore. At present, most objections to freedom of movement are assumed to be so self-evidently valid that the values on which they rest are never seriously examined. I will now look at four of the most common such objections.
- The "decent living" argument
When former French premier Michel Rocard said: "We can't take in the whole of the world's misery", he was, according to Susan George, "speaking the literal truth"3). Susan George argues that further immigration would make it difficult to "ensure a decent living . . . for those immigrants who are already in the North". But how does one define a "decent living"? Average GNP per capita is US$80 in Mozambique, compared with US$ 17,820 in France (though immigrants, of course, usually earn much less). If people in Mozambique are expected to live (or die) on such a small sum, then the argument that France could not ensure a "decent living" (by the standards of the poorest countries of the world) for a greatly increased population starts to look a little threadbare.
One long-term consequence of totally free population movement would be to ensure greater equality of incomes around the world: high-income locations would attract inflows, pushing down incomes; and low-income locations would suffer out-flows, raising average incomes for those left behind. If total world income were evenly distributed, each person would receive somewhere in the region of US$4,000, which would represent a major drop in French living standards, but would be sufficient to ensure that no-one in the world died of starvation. In other words, it would mean the fulfilment for all of the minimal conditions for a "decent living". Undermining the present income levels of all those living in the North (migrants and indigenous) can therefore be seen as being in the interests of broader global justice.
It might be argued that unrestrained inflows of immigrants would not equalise incomes within countries: the immigrants would remain at the bottom end of the Northern labour market, in worsening conditions of unemployment and poverty. There are two responses to this: first, unemployment and poverty in the North might still be preferable to their equivalents in the South; second, the correct response to relative poverty in the North is surely to press for greater equality and justice within Northern societies, not to help to sustain injustice at a global level by keeping the numbers of the poor in the North down to "manageable" proportions. The deplorable situation that many immigrants are living on the margins of society calls for increased protection and demarginalisation, not barriers to free movement.
The vision of a world with an equal distribution of income between and within countries is, of course, utopian; but it highlights the fact that those who argue that immigration undermines the possibility of a "decent living" for all do so from a standpoint of relative affluence. One does not have to believe that greater global equality is a good thing in itself. The point is simply that, if such equality arises as a side-effect of the exercise of freedom of movement, then it cannot be condemned simply because it depresses the incomes of a certain group of relatively well-off people. From a global perspective, there is no convincing argument against freedom of movement on these grounds.
Practical evidence also rebuts the suggestion that immigration would make it impossible to provide a "decent living" for all in the recipient countries. By far the heaviest relative concentrations of immigrants and refugees are to be found in some of the poorest countries of the world. For example, in 1987, Malawi was hosting at least 200,000 Mozambican refugees, equivalent to 2.4 per cent of its population. Pakistan played host to 3 million Afghan refugees, equivalent to 2.7 per cent of its population. If countries which are much poorer than those of the North can carry such "burdens", then the argument that rich countries cannot offer at least equivalent hospitality is shown to be patently spurious.
- The "relative freedom from racism" argument
Susan George argues that further immigration to France and elsewhere would make it difficult, if not impossible, to ensure "relative freedom from racism" for those immigrants already in the North, thus implicitly accepting the case for differential immigration control between blacks and whites.
Racism against immigrants is, of course, a problem which needs to be tackled - but it is not a problem which legitimises immigration barriers, any more than discrimination against gay and lesbian people legitimises policies which encourage (or force) people not to declare their sexuality. To accept immigration controls is to accept defeat in the struggle against racism. Just as poor living and working conditions for immigrants constitute arguments for the elimination of the conditions, rather than the people, so racist attacks constitute arguments for the elimination of racism, rather than its victims.
Implicit in Susan George's argument is the notion that uncontrolled (non-white) immigration would generate uncontrollable racist reactions, leading to situations of extreme crisis. She cites a study - from the early 1980s which predicts that Los Angeles could well "become 75 per cent Hispanic in the year 2000 with unemployment rates quite possibly as high as 12 to 15 per cent. Such hardships would then make the Hispanics the most easily targeted scapegoats for the economic grievances of the `indigenous workers'"4) . This scenario is surely an argument in favour of immigration: the more "Hispanics" there are, the less chance there is that they can easily be persecuted. When a grouping constitutes 75 per cent of the population, it is in a far stronger position to resist racism than if it constitutes a vulnerable minority. However, immigration controls institutionalise the present vulnerable positions of minorities.
- Damaging the economies of the poor countries
The out-flow of people from the poor countries which the lifting of immigration restrictions might encourage would, it is argued, lower the development potential of those countries, since their most valuable resource, the most energetic and intelligent sections of the population, would apply their abilities elsewhere.
There is some truth in this argument, but it hardly constitutes a justification for the maintenance of immigration controls on the part of the North. If such controls were to be rationalised on this basis, it would amount to the North saying, "It would be better for you if you stayed where you are. We are enforcing these controls for your own good". Such a patronising attitude would not be accepted as legitimate by development NGOs in other areas of North/South relations, including trade issues.
Similarly, people in developing countries may choose not to migrate, or their governments may seek to persuade them not to do so; that is their right. Northern governments have no right to make choices for them.
While the right of Northern governments to restrict Southern emigrant flows can be rejected, Southern societies do undoubtedly suffer through out-flows of labour, especially of skilled labour. A US study estimates that in 1971-72, the South as a whole lost an "investment" of US$20,000 for each skilled emigrant, amounting to a total loss of US$646 million. Only some of these losses are recouped through remittances.
The current immigration policies of Northern countries serve to encourage this "brain drain", by selectively allowing the entry to some highly skilled an qualified people from the South:
The industrial countries, in what is effectively a "buyers market" for migrants, have been setting higher and higher levels of qualification - giving preference to highly skilled workers, or to those who bring capital with them, or letting in only political refugees...
The industrial countries are now in a position to ask not just for labour but also for money. Canada and the United States, for example, have been giving preference to investors and are said to have attracted millions of dollars this way.5
There is a socio-economic cost associated with emigration from Southern countries. And, of course, there is more to emigration than a narrow calculation of economic benefits and losses; the social and psychological impacts should be accorded equal importance. These are not invariably negative, but it is true that emigration imposes huge costs on those who move and those who are left behind.
Would it make sense for Southern societies to suffer increased out-migration when the socio-economic losses associated with present emigration levels are so significant? Are the potential losses sufficiently severe to justify, in the interests of the overall good, limitations on individuals' rights to move? While the implementation of such restrictions on the part of Northern governments might be cynical and indefensible in principle, could the restrictions be exempted from criticism by development NGOs on the grounds that their ultimate (unintended) impact was to limit damage to Southern economies and societies?
I think the answer is "no". For a start, emigration confers economic benefits, as well as losses, on sending societies. Remittances from emigrant workers in Northern and Gulf countries are an important source of income for many sending countries and stimulate knock-on economic activity. At present, immigration restrictions enormously limit the potential economic benefits of remittances.
Emigration on a large scale may make particular sense in situations of extreme poverty, unemployment and population growth - conditions which characterise much of the South:
Some 38 million extra people join the labour force [in the South] each year. Added to more than 700 million people already unemployed or underemployed [40 per cent of the labour force], this means that one billion new jobs must be created, or improved, by the end of the decade -equivalent to the total population of the North.6
In this context, emigration may be the only means to relieve intolerable pressures. Given previous experience in the North, out-migration may be a vital element in a particular stage of the development process, a notion which Northern governments now conveniently ignore:
Eurocentrism has quite simply ignored the fact that the demographic explosion of Europe, caused, like the analogous explosion in the Third World, by capitalist transformation, was accompanied by massive emigration to the Americas and a few other regions of the world. Without massive emigration, Europe would have had to undertake its agricultural and industrial revolutions in conditions of demographic pressure analogous to those in the Third World today. The number of people of European ancestry living outside Europe is currently twice the size of the population of the migrants' countries of origin.7
Development NGOs do not have to endorse a specifically capitalist transformation in the South to discern the relevant historical parallel: without some outlet for "surplus" labour, it may be impossible for regions to transform their socio-economic systems.
Of course, it would be ideal if no-one were to become "surplus" to a system, and if equitable global development could provide everyone with the opportunity of making a decent living in their home region. Pursuing such objectives is valuable, because it helps to expand people's choices and alleviate the pressures which might otherwise make emigration or destitution the only available alternatives. But calls for measures to stimulate development in the poor regions should be justified by their own merits: the alleviation of poverty and the expansion of choice. These are independent of the case for the free movement of people, which also stands in its own right.
The various economic arguments which can be made for the free movement of people are not justifications in themselves for free movement. Their importance lies in their being counterweights to the contention that migration will necessarily damage the economies of poor societies. While there are arguments on both sides, there would seem to be no clear basis for preventing migration in order to protect the interests of world society. In other words, if one starts (as I do) from the presumption that people should have the freedom to move, then only firm evidence that the exercise of such free movement would actively damage the welfare of society as a whole can be used to justify limiting it.
An argument which mirrors the suggestion that free movement of people would damage the economies of poor countries is that free movement facilitates the perpetuation of unjust social structures. In other words, by "draining off" the unemployed and the otherwise dissatisfied, migration relieves social tensions which would otherwise have led to irresistible pressure for a radical reform of society. There may be some truth in this. It may also be true that the absence of emigration merely contributes to unemployment and poverty, in turn creating apathy and disillusion: inertia, rather than revolutionary fervour, characterises many impoverished societies. Equally, if social pressure was brought to a head by the lack of the emigration "safety-valve", it could very well be channelled into reactionary forms, such as the revival of fundamentalism or fascism. These two considerations - that the lack of emigration outlets might not generate much pressure for change, and that if such change was generated it might not be positive - strongly suggests that people's freedom to move should not be overruled on the basis of a tentative hope that this will cause progressive social change.
- Accepting a "free market" ideology
It may be feared that to promote the free movement of people would appear to endorse the free-trade an free-markets paradigm, and thus reinforce a model of development which renders it increasingly difficult for people to determine their own development priorities.
There is certainly a logic to opposing development which elevates the free movement of the inanimate (but not the animate) to the level of sacred dogma. But an appropriate alternative need not to accept the free movement of people and things, nor the need to restrict the movement of both. At present, things (capital, commodities) are free to move, but people are not; development NGOs can plausibly argue for the opposite. In order that people can democratically design and implement their own development agendas - at local, regional, and global levels - controls on movement of goods may sometimes be necessary. If so, there is every reason to support such controls. But people should not be treated in the same manner: if people wish to move, they must be allowed to do so. Even if such movement might have negative effects on others (and this is debatable), one of the core values of a truly "alternative" development strategy to be propounded by NGOs should surely be the maximisation of human freedom.
Conclusion
This article aims to demonstrate that if one starts from a certain value judgement - in this case, a presumption that freedom of movement should be maximised on the grounds of broadening the range of human choices - then this casts serious doubts on the objections commonly raised to the idea of unlimited South-North migration.
The arguments for freeing up such migration could have been made on alternative grounds: for example, that the capitalist system has historically exploited Southern labour, attracting some of it to the North to perform menial jobs (where illegality and racism serve the useful function of limiting workers' rights, and the fight for those rights); but keeping most of it in the South, where it can be exploited by Northern transnational companies and others. If this position were to be adopted, the argument against immigration controls could be formulated in terms of resistance to imperialism and to its historical (as well as on-going) exploitation of Southern labour.
Whatever position is adopted, reasoned argument demands that the underlying values and/or analytical frameworks be made explicit, whether they are the "liberal" notion of increasing individual choice or the "socialist" conception of the injustice of class oppression. Unfortunately, the debate to date has often based on sloppy assumptions rooted in supposed "common sense". This article has sought to challenge some of these assumptions.
The thrust of this article has been that not only political refugees but all "economic migrants" should be allowed access to the North. However, it can be convincingly argued that if human rights groups adopted such a position, governments would dismiss it and use the excuse to tighten restrictions against all-comers.
This raises questions of tactics: in a situation where the best that can be achieved is the protection of a relatively small number of people (persecutees seeking political asylum) who are in conditions of dire insecurity, then it is appropriate to concentrate on attempts to safeguard their welfare. For instance, many people are concerned with promoting greater equality between everyone in society, but this does not mean that they will not prioritise a campaign to protect the living standards of those at the lowest income levels, such as those depending on social-welfare payments.
While recognising tactical imperatives, the philosophical premise of this article could nevertheless be adopted as a part of a broader (and long-term) alternative conception of the "world order" by development NGOs and others. The implications for us are enormous: are we prepared to accept sharing "our" wealth and "our" space with those poorer than ourselves? Accepting free movement poses far more direct challenges to our standards of living than, for example, massively increased development aid. It therefore challenges in a much more profound way the depth of our commitment to an equitable distribution of global resources.
It is time that development NGOs took this challenge more seriously.
Andy Storey
Notes:
- Susan George (1992), The Debt Boomerang: How Third World Debt Harms Us All, London: Pluto Press in association with the Transnational Institute.
Ibid, p. 112.
Ibid, p. 112.
Ibid, p. 115.
New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, p. 57.
Ibid, p. 54.
S. Amin (1988), Eurocentrism, London: Zed Books, p. 112.
The above text is an abridged version of The ethics of immigration controls: issues for development NGOs, published in Development in Practice, Vol. 4, No.3, October 1994 (OXFAM publications). Andy Storey's address for correspondence is: Trocaire, 169 Booterstown Avenue, Co Dublin, Ireland; Fax: +353/1 2883577.