Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Philosophical and Empirical Context
- 2 Nationalist Approaches to Immigration Justice
- 3 Cosmopolitan Approaches to Immigration Justice
- 4 The Priority of Disadvantage Principle
- 5 Immigration Justice: In Defense of the Priority of Disadvantage Principle
- 6 Admission, Exclusion and Beyond: Which Immigration Policies Are Just?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Admission, Exclusion and Beyond: Which Immigration Policies Are Just?
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Philosophical and Empirical Context
- 2 Nationalist Approaches to Immigration Justice
- 3 Cosmopolitan Approaches to Immigration Justice
- 4 The Priority of Disadvantage Principle
- 5 Immigration Justice: In Defense of the Priority of Disadvantage Principle
- 6 Admission, Exclusion and Beyond: Which Immigration Policies Are Just?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
6.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter critically applies the principle I have developed and defended in the foregoing chapters to common types of immigration policies as a test of their justice. The Priority of Disadvantage Principle holds that just immigration policies may not avoidably harm social groups that are already unjustly disadvantaged. Since the PDP is merely a necessary condition of the justice of immigration policies, it will tell us which ones are unjust, but cannot by itself tell us which are just. Still, certain types of policies are recommended by the spirit of my principle.
The PDP does not necessarily require that states accord priority in admission to members of unjustly disadvantaged social groups. This is because a state's immigration policies can harm a social group that is unjustly disadvantaged in more ways than simply by refusing admission to its members. The immigration policies that states adopt engender certain patterns of global migration, and these patterns may have consequences for many social groups that are unjustly disadvantaged, whether their members are prospective migrants or not. The PDP enjoins states to consider all the harms their immigration policies may bring about for social groups that are unjustly disadvantaged, whether that group is comprised by its own residents, prospective migrants, or the non-migrating residents of foreign countries. Moreover, the refusal of admission is often but not necessarily a harm to those excluded; an immigration policy that excludes a certain class of persons may harm them or not, depending on the value of an immigration visa to them.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Immigration Justice , pp. 199 - 232Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013