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Do duties to outsiders entail open borders? A reply to Wellman

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Notes

  1. See Wellman (2008).

  2. Wellman also suggests that certain duties to outsiders can be discharged through military intervention; however, I will not discuss this argument here.

  3. Wellman, p. 122.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Although my criticisms take issue with broader concerns about Wellman’s argument, it is worth noting that this thought experiment does not entail the conclusion he draws from it. Even if it were true that luck equality is less morally weighty than other types of equality, it does not necessarily follow that luck equality is not sufficiently important to justify restrictions on the right to freedom of association.

  6. Wellman recognizes that duties to outsiders may also be justified on samaritan grounds. As he explains, samaritanism maintains that “one has a natural duty to assist other when they are sufficiently imperiled and one can help them at no unreasonable cost to oneself.” He pursues a similar line of argument against this justification for open borders: as with egalitarian duties, samaritan duties to outsiders may be discharged by providing aid instead of opening borders. See Wellman, p. 124–30.

  7. Mexico also waived duties on the importation of machinery, equipment, raw materials, and components for use in the maquiladoras, provided the end products were exported back to the United States.

  8. Early scholarly debates about the BIP were characterized by disagreement about the effects of the program, with some theorists arguing that the maquiladoras would have a “sponge effect,” providing jobs for people who would otherwise cross the border in search of work. However, there is now fairly widespread consensus that the BIP promotes migration. See Massey and Espinosa (1997), pp. 969, 988–89 and Kopinak (2005), pp. 2–3.

  9. For a discussion of this line of argument, see Kopinak, p. 3.

  10. Sassen (1988), ch. 2 and (2001).

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid; Kopinak, pp. 6–8.

  13. Sassen (1988), ch. 2 and (2001).

  14. Although the visas available to maquiladora workers do not permit them to work in the United States, some find jobs and subsequently decide to overstay their visas. Interestingly, even those workers who initially do not intend to cross the border often get their documents during their employment in maquiladoras and some later decide to enter the United States. See Kopinak, pp. 6–8.

  15. Massey and Espinosa; Fernández-Kelly and Massey (2007); and Andreas (1998/1999).

  16. Fernández-Kelly and Massey, pp. 99, 105–06, 116; Andreas, pp. 608–10; Massey and Espinosa, pp. 968–9; and Hing (2010), ch. 1.

  17. Hing, Ch. 1.

  18. Anderson (1999).

  19. Anderson, p. 313.

  20. Questions also arise regarding exactly who bears these duties. However, it clear that the U.S. and Mexican governments are at least partly responsible for the human costs of the BIP and NAFTA, and assuming that citizens of democratic states are collectively responsible for the policies of their governments, it follows that citizens of the United States bear a share of the duties generated by these policies. Relational egalitarians also suggest that U.S. consumers have a collective duty to mitigate the oppression of Mexican workers who produce goods sold in the United States. See Anderson, p. 321, fn 78.

  21. Miller (2010), pp. 143–54.

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  1. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

    Shelley Wilcox

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Wilcox, S. Do duties to outsiders entail open borders? A reply to Wellman. Philos Stud 169, 123–132 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9902-y

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