On Discrimination and Borders
Jul. 2nd, 2015 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseudomonasRacism has a bad image, and quite right too. It's not that it's been eliminated, but that its social acceptability is such that even the BNP pays lip service to Not Being Racist. The very existence of the phrase "I'm not racist but…" is testament to how widely everyone, even massive racists realise that racism is probably not the ideal policy to cling to in life.
But. It seems to me1 that the lines of acceptable discrimination have been drawn such that it just so happens there's no problem at all with discriminating based on place of birth. The UK does it, just about every other country does it; the idea that it's legitimate to say "if you were born here (and/or if your parents were) you are One Of Us and you have these rights and entitlements and may come and go freely, otherwise you are a Foreigner and Not Our Problem" is fully normalised in mainstream political thought.2 We happily abridge the freedoms of myriads of people because they weren't born here. This cannot be right.
I can see absolutely no principled reason for this that wouldn't also amount to an extremely racist justification. I can see many pragmatic reasons for allowing this state of affairs to continue; but working backwards from pragmatic reasoning to a principle is exactly as bad as saying "our economy would collapse without slavery, therefore let us posit that the group we are enslaving are subhuman" (if you think that's too extreme then I would argue that this is merely the most graphic and most recent example of the injustices perpetrated by the mindset).
In the short term I would prefer we accept the cognitive dissonance of saying "this policy is immoral but we will stick to it for pragmatic reasons except in cases where people absolutely require refuge" than maintain the current pretence that there is anything morally acceptable about it. In the longer term, we should work towards (minimally) fully open borders and citizenship on demand for residents of any state3. I would argue that there are pragmatic advantages to that situation too - in particular in terms of increasing economic parity between regions. But even if there were no such advantages we should pursue this goal anyway, on purely principled grounds, just as abolitionists believed in their cause regardless of its undoubted economic impact.
[I considered giving here lots of examples of how the implementations of immigration controls are evil in practice, but actually the point I'm trying to make is that the very concept is evil in principle]
1Yes, I know I'm not anything like the first person to realise this.
2I don't even know of a word or short phrase that means "discriminating against someone based on their place of birth"; there's a lot of pernicious nitpicking by people who hold to this that "oh, it's not really racism because 'people from X' aren't a race", and yeah, OK, it's not exactly racism, but it's ALSO BAD so your argument is crap. [ETA:![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
abigailb suggests "Nativism" which is pretty close, but I would like a word describing the phenomenon of discrimination, not its political application, so as to be able to say e.g. "Nativism is a political doctrine based on _____". ETA2: "Xenophobia" is pretty damn close and well known, so maybe we should leave it at that for now. ]
3I have no major problem with the existence of national governments - just as Leicestershire and Lincolnshire have different local governments but there is no suggestion that people born in one shouldn't be permitted to travel, reside, or work in the other.
But. It seems to me1 that the lines of acceptable discrimination have been drawn such that it just so happens there's no problem at all with discriminating based on place of birth. The UK does it, just about every other country does it; the idea that it's legitimate to say "if you were born here (and/or if your parents were) you are One Of Us and you have these rights and entitlements and may come and go freely, otherwise you are a Foreigner and Not Our Problem" is fully normalised in mainstream political thought.2 We happily abridge the freedoms of myriads of people because they weren't born here. This cannot be right.
I can see absolutely no principled reason for this that wouldn't also amount to an extremely racist justification. I can see many pragmatic reasons for allowing this state of affairs to continue; but working backwards from pragmatic reasoning to a principle is exactly as bad as saying "our economy would collapse without slavery, therefore let us posit that the group we are enslaving are subhuman" (if you think that's too extreme then I would argue that this is merely the most graphic and most recent example of the injustices perpetrated by the mindset).
In the short term I would prefer we accept the cognitive dissonance of saying "this policy is immoral but we will stick to it for pragmatic reasons except in cases where people absolutely require refuge" than maintain the current pretence that there is anything morally acceptable about it. In the longer term, we should work towards (minimally) fully open borders and citizenship on demand for residents of any state3. I would argue that there are pragmatic advantages to that situation too - in particular in terms of increasing economic parity between regions. But even if there were no such advantages we should pursue this goal anyway, on purely principled grounds, just as abolitionists believed in their cause regardless of its undoubted economic impact.
[I considered giving here lots of examples of how the implementations of immigration controls are evil in practice, but actually the point I'm trying to make is that the very concept is evil in principle]
1Yes, I know I'm not anything like the first person to realise this.
2I don't even know of a word or short phrase that means "discriminating against someone based on their place of birth"; there's a lot of pernicious nitpicking by people who hold to this that "oh, it's not really racism because 'people from X' aren't a race", and yeah, OK, it's not exactly racism, but it's ALSO BAD so your argument is crap. [ETA:
3I have no major problem with the existence of national governments - just as Leicestershire and Lincolnshire have different local governments but there is no suggestion that people born in one shouldn't be permitted to travel, reside, or work in the other.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 07:16 pm (UTC)but the topic under discussion is place of birth, isn't it, rather than country of birth? i don't think the two are interchangeable, which is rather the point i'm making. is the country of england defined by the set of grid references within its borders, or what one imagines the shared assumptions of its people? if england and spain, say, were to suddenly switch populations, in their entirety - what would one call the nation on the kind of triangular-ish land mass twenty miles off the coast of the great big landmass?
and if people really do adore the geography of their birth, are they in love with the scenery per se, or with the lifetime of emotions it triggers within them - the fact that it tells them that they are, in some evanescent way, home? and what, if anything, does that imply about their emotional attachment to the prevailing government, and its preferential treatment of those born onto that scenery?
too many concepts are being conflated here, and then not-quite-appropriate metaphor is being heaped on to confuse the picture even further. social units, jumbled up with love-based relationships, intertwined with landscape paintings...
before we can talk sensibly about any of this, we need to try and sift out what is being talked about. which
no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 08:18 am (UTC)I think, you could reasonably cobble together some system of citizenship by descent, possibly augmented with some rules about physical presence in the country that don't refer to place of birth, that more or less preserve the status quo in practise and don't have particularly far-reaching implications. OK, it would be nice if people who are permanently resident here but not citizens (or for that matter, are citizens by descent) and might expect British citizenship for their child could pop abroad on holiday while pregnant without worries, but that seems a minor thing in the grand scheme of things.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 01:56 pm (UTC)Prong 1 is to say, "place of birth, colour of passport, people are discriminating on irrelevant things, don't do that."
Prong 2 is for someone else to say, "OK, place of birth, colour of passport etc. are basically easily-observed proxies for the real thing of interest, which is having some substantial connection to the country/nation/state; the latter is the thing that's directly relevant but it's too subjective to define properly let alone measure directly so we have to rely on proxies (probably in practise some hodgepodge of them with odd edge cases and interactions)." and to reply, "yes, I'll grant you that (maybe if only for the sake of argument), but even if you could neatly define and measure the 'substantial connection' it's still wrong to deny citizenship to people willing to physically relocate themselves."
What I'm seeing in boldface in the OP is "fully open borders and citizenship on demand for residents" which looks pretty clearly like prong 2; however the insistence that this about place of birth looks like prong 1.
I disagree with prong 1 but am undecided on prong 2 (and even if I'm persuaded of it, there's still the debate as to how much it's a practical thing to start chasing now and how much it's a utopian dream to start chasing some time after doing the other utopian stuff like eliminating private property); I'd like to see prong 2 debated on it's merits rather than on prong 1 reasoning.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 02:18 pm (UTC)On the one hand, it's currently a utopian dream. On the other, in the C18/C19 century slavery went from the Natural Order Of Things to Universally Unacceptable; in the course of the C20 century colonialism went from the Natural Order Of Things to Universally Unacceptable. I'd like to see a twofold approach of a) making the philosophical case for absolutely open borders in principle; while b) making the political case for consistent loosening of immigration controls (as far as is unlikely to cause chaos at any given time) in practice.
There are lots of other evils to be tackled, but I believe that many of them would be significantly addressed by any approximation to open borders.
(also I don't think elimination of private property is desirable, but would prefer it if we argued about that in another forum, cos one can of worms at a time plz...)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 03:26 pm (UTC)With families, it seems to be the case that adults can refuse to join or form families for whatever reason they like; this takes precedence over antidiscrimination. Things are a little different with people born into families or adopted as children (we don't really do adult adoption in this country, do we?) but even then, giving up children for adoption is a thing. OTOH, disowning a child I think is seen as rather more dramatic - condemnable in a wider range of circumstances - than getting divorced, and getting divorced as far more dramatic than not getting married in the first place.
With companies, there is some antidiscrimination in place; direct discrimination is disallowed, also there is some restriction on indirect discrimination, but it's not total. Companies are allowed, for example, to insist on particular skills, even if the presence of those skills is correlated with protected characteristics[1], if there is a bona fide occupational requirement. A lot of people think of immigration policy in the same light; they want to let in people who have the right skills etc.
(Aha, I see an edit to add "Certainly to be consistent you'd have to apply the tests to people who were (otherwise) born into citizenship as well as those who relocated into it")
One test in current use is the "would otherwise be stateless" test; if this test isn't allowed, and it's not OK for people to be left stateless, then the only remaining option is to allow citizenship on demand. "Would otherwise be stateless" correlates remarkably well, I think, with a lot of the citizenship by birthright that already applies; it would certainly have applied to me.
I brought up private property because in a sense, a lot of this is to do with property. With my citizenship comes a sort-of share in the national wealth - in the form of everything from protection from foreign armies through to easy access to Medieval ruins, and in particular access to well-paying employers. I think a lot of anti-immigration sentiment is to do with controlling access to that wealth - see the common complaints about immigrants taking people's jobs or being on benefits. Also I suspect that a lot of the benefits of open borders would come precisely from spreading that wealth.
[1] Note Meehl's observation that in "soft" fields everything is correlated with everything else.