Abstract
In this paper I provide a philosophical analysis of family-based immigration. This type of immigration is of great importance, yet has received relatively little attention from philosophers and others doing normative work on immigration. As family-based immigration poses significant challenges for those seeking a comprehensive normative account of the limits of discretion that states should have in setting their own immigration policies, it is a topic that must be dealt with if we are to have a comprehensive account. In what follows I use the idea of freedom of association to show what is distinctive about family-based immigration and why it ought to have a privileged place in our discussion of the topic. I further show why this style of argument neither allows states to limit nearly all immigration nor requires them to have almost no limits on immigration. I conclude by showing that all states must allow some degree of family-based immigration, and that this is a duty owed not to ‘outsiders’ seeking to enter, but rather to current citizens.
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An early version of this paper was presented at the Northeastern Political Science Association annual meeting in 2007. My thanks to Tom Donahue for organizing that session and to David Alvarez Garcia for his helpful comments at that time. Sarah Song kindly assigned a draft of the paper to her students at Berkeley. My thanks to her and her students, especially Genevieve Painter, for their comments. Stephen Perry, Samuel Freeman, Jon Mandle, Alan Brinton, Kok-Chor Tan, Howard Chang, Ekaterina Dyachuk, and two anonymous reviews for Law and Philosophy also provided very helpful comments.
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Lister, M. Immigration, Association, and the Family. Law and Philos 29, 717–745 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-010-9083-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-010-9083-9