“This is My Own, My Native Land”: Immigration, National Identity, and the Problem of Preference

Abstract

In Chapter 2 I suggested that Carens’s argument for open borders, if it is meant to apply generally and not only to liberal states, amounts to the claim that only liberal polities–perhaps only certain kinds of liberal polities–are legitimate. Now I want to broaden that suggestion and argue that no single immigration policy, whatever it might be, can be claimed as the “correct” one for all countries; one result of this, of course, is that the argument for open borders fails.To begin, I suggest that we ask what a people confronted with the task of designing an immigration policy does. As we shall see, this is not the deepest question we shall ultimately face; nor is it yet a normative question, though it may have normative implications. As a starting-point, though, it has the merit of reflecting people’s own experience and reactions, of beginning where we begin. Confronted by significant numbers of strangers wishing to enter our country, how do we respond? The first question that a people faces in these circumstances, I want to suggest, is this:Who are we? What common bonds or shared beliefs constitute us as this particular people? In other words, a people considering immigration policy first confronts the question of national identity.