Justice, membership, and irregular migration

Many states enforce restrictive immigration laws that prevent foreigners from immigrating to these states. However, people frequently violate these immigration laws and immigrate anyway. Call the members of this group: irregular migrants. My major questions in this essay are: (1) are immigration restrictions permissible? (2) if some immigration restrictions are permissible, what moral claims do irregular migrants have against the states in which they live?;In the first half of the dissertation, I argue that some immigration restrictions may be morally permissible. My argument for this claim rests on a theory of the special obligations that compatriots owe to one another. In particular, citizens have duties of reciprocity to one another and states have special responsibilities to avoid imposing oppressive relationships on the people that they rule. I draw on the empirical evidence on the impact that immigration has on the provision of public goods and social capital in order to show that immigration can sometimes conflict with these special obligations. In these cases, some immigration restrictions may be justified.;In the second half of the dissertation, I examine the moral claims of irregular migrants. I contend that the same moral considerations that explain why citizens have special obligations to one another also explain why citizens acquire special obligations to irregular migrants: states have duties to protect even short-term residents from oppressive relationships, such as domination, and citizens have duties of reciprocity to irregular migrants over time. I conclude that the satisfaction of these duties requires states to extend most of the same legal rights and protections to irregular migrants than they extend to authorized residents and that it is generally unjust to impose criminal penalties on violations of immigration law. Furthermore, I argue that irregular migrants who cooperate on fair terms with citizens have rights to permanent residency and citizenship. This account of membership justifies a distinctive kind of amnesty program: earned regularization programs.