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Opening Australia’s borders

By Tiziana Torresi - posted Friday, 4 November 2005


In reaction to the general mood, both in the UK and other western countries, of political parties and governments wanting to be seen to be “tough on immigration”, many social justice activists are turning their abhorrence of what they see as inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees into attacks on migration controls. Activists have been mobilised into a defence of people’s right to move freely, and have even called for as radical a policy as completely open borders. While concerns about the fairness of migration policies are certainly justified - and not only in relation to refugees - is the call for more generous entry policies the right political strategy? And what exactly is motivating the activists’ claims - is it really freedom of movement, or something much more basic, such as inequality?

The campaign for freer international migration is not restricted solely to the left. On the right, lobbyists are generally concerned about the free circulation of labour and a larger pool of consumers, while on the left, campaigners are motivated by considerations of the welfare and rights of migrants. In this piece, however, I am going to concentrate on the left.

For campaigners on the left side of the political divide, if we look deeper into their motivations, it seems that poverty occupies a central role in their concerns. It is the poverty, perceived or real, of those wishing to migrate that chiefly seems to concern many of the activists who advocate for the right to move freely. Migration is seen very much as an opportunity equaliser and as a way to redress global injustices. It is the fact that so many migrants are in conditions of such desperate need that elicits moral outrage at their exclusion from our wealthy communities.

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Of course many people are also concerned with freedom of movement as such, or simply with the inhumane way refugees and migrants are often treated once they arrive on our doorstep, regardless of any particular concern about poverty. Nevertheless migration as a solution to global poverty and inequality is undeniably a strong motivator for advocates of migrants’ rights. People are generally not as concerned with the freedom of Canadians to move to Sweden as they are for that of Mexicans to move to the USA, let alone the issue of refugees.

But regardless of whether we think people have a right to move and live where they wish, arguing for open borders or even just for freer migration, while certainly well-meaning, is in fact a totally misguided enterprise if what we are concerned with is the alleviation of poverty.

Left-wing campaigners are certainly right to be concerned about poverty, given the wretched standard of living suffered by many people in the poorer regions of the world. Poverty is precisely what we should be concerned with, especially when we think of justice across borders. It is actually surprising that the problem of global poverty does not engage our moral indignation more directly. However, using the issue of free movement to tackle poverty not only confuses the debate, but obscures the primary concern: poverty itself.

Arguing in favour of migration as a solution to poverty is very problematic because it fails to help the very people who are ostensibly the subjects of concern. This is true for at least three reasons. First, the people most in need are unlikely to be knocking on our doors. Instead, it will be the better off among the worse off who have the initiative and resources to make the journey. Migrants who come to western democracies from poorer countries often belong to either the “middle classes” of those countries or are among the young, healthy and resourceful. Moreover, no matter how many migrants we let in, even on the most generous of migration policies those admitted would still be a drop in the ocean when compared to the number of people in need. Consequently migration is a solution only to the poverty of the few, and those few are typically not the people most in need.

Second, far from being a solution to poverty, migration might actually be making things worse. Immigration saps human resources from countries which are struggling already and so further impoverishes them. True, migrants often send money home to their families, and these remittances are crucial in the economies of many poor countries but the positive effect of remittances is not always clear. Many think that reliance on remittances undermines countries’ potential for change and development and is at best a short-term band-aid solution. Moreover, the families to whom this money is sent are often among the better off in the poor countries. Once again, then, it is really only the better off among the worse off who benefit. This is to say nothing of the effect remittances might have in cementing already existing inequalities within the communities of origin.

Third, even those migrants who manage to be admitted into wealthier countries would themselves prefer often to see the situation in their home countries improve rather then having to uproot themselves in search of opportunity - with all the personal and communal disruption which follows from such movements. Migrating out of necessity rather then choice is often a very painful experience.

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Besides migration not being a good solution to poverty, arguing for freer migration is not a wise political strategy. This is a point made forcefully by the eminent political philosopher Thomas Pogge in his work on global poverty. Pogge points out that arguing for more open borders is a mistaken political strategy, and that instead of arguing for freer migration, we ought to employ our scarce political resources to campaign for the alleviation of poverty where poverty happens, and for the protection of rights where rights are violated.

Pogge argues that convincing our governments and compatriots to admit more needy foreigners is politically very difficult and costly, especially now that migration has turned into such a hotly disputed political issue. Crucially, such campaigns seem to exhaust the good will towards foreigners that might otherwise be employed to implement other strategies of poverty eradication. A lot of solutions to poverty have been suggested by experts on development, and some are much more feasible and effective than commonly believed - what is lacking is the political will to implement them. It seems this is what we should push for in our fight to eradicate poverty, rather than campaign for a relaxation of migration restrictions.

At this point I am probably expected to make an exception to this argument and exclude refugees from what I am saying here - I will not do so. The distinction between “refugees,” put simplistically, people escaping persecution, and “economic migrants”, people leaving difficult economic situations, carries a lot of weight in debates on migration, with economic migrants typically thought to be less urgently in need. Yet, it seems to me that the difference between people fleeing persecution and those fleeing extreme poverty is morally less relevant than we are accustomed to considering. Why should it be any better to die slowly of starvation and preventable diseases rather than being executed for one’s political views?

But before those of you who are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of yet another argument against immigration get too excited, I should add that I do not think these arguments can be used so easily to this end. One could not credibly employ the arguments I have made against immigration as a solution to poverty and just leave it at that. The two ends of the argument must necessarily go together: one can argue against further immigration on the grounds that it is not an effective strategy of poverty alleviation only if at the same time one makes credible attempts at poverty eradication itself. Otherwise, the charge of serious hypocrisy could be levelled all too easily.

I could push this further and say that, in fact, a state is justified in restricting immigration only if it has done what is in its power to eradicate poverty globally. This is particularly evident when we consider that much of world poverty is not just the result of richer countries’ failure to help, but often the direct result of policies the same rich countries pursue in their own national interest. This connection between poverty and migration is not underlined nearly often enough. When discussing how many migrants and refugees we should let in, hardly anybody points out that often we are directly responsible for the conditions of need that have forced them to flee in the first place. This consideration should dispel the comfortable notion that by letting migrants and refugees in we are doing them a favour, when in reality we might simply be redressing wrongs for which we are, at least partially, responsible.

If a connection between poverty and migration is to be drawn, it ought to be this one. Our discussion of migration policies should be more firmly framed within an assessment of the fairness of the international system of relations and institutions as a whole.
 
This article is not meant as a condemnation of activists who work to further the rights of migrants, especially when such political activism is aimed at ensuring the protection of the rights of migrants who are already here. However, if we are interested in addressing global poverty and inequality, it seems migration is the wrong battle to pick. Activists’ political energies may well be better spent elsewhere. It may be wise to question how much energy we spend trying to get our governments and compatriots to open borders and how much is spent convincing them of the urgency of finding and implementing a permanent solution to world poverty and human rights violations.

Whatever one thinks about the rights and wrongs of free movement, this line of argument cannot be a successful strategy either politically or practically to the problems and injustices that underlie so much of our international relations and institutions.

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About the Author

Tiziana Torresi studied Politics at the University of New South Wales and was also educated at “La Sapienza” Prima Universita’ di Roma, Italy. She is currently a member of St Antony’s College and of the Politics and International Relations Department, University of Oxford. In the last stages of her doctoral thesis in political philosophy, her research concentrates on the philosophy of migration.

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