Sussex Review

The University of Delaware philosophy department presented a discussion on the critical global topic of immigration in November.  

Scholars Joseph Carens of the University of Toronto and Kit Wellman of Washington University in St. Louis offered philosophical perspectives in a presentation funded by the Class of 1955 Ethics Endowment Fund. The University of Delaware Review reported on the meeting. 

“What are our duties to people who live beyond our borders?” Carens said. 

Wellman took the position that nations do have the right to exclude refugees. 

“Legitimate states have a right to exclude immigrants, including the desperately poor, and including refugees, just as long as they’re doing their fair share to help those elsewhere,” Wellman said. “The relationship between freedom of association and self-determination would be conflicted if nations did not have the right to exclude immigrants.” 

Carens countered that “modern borders with guards and guns draw attention to an immoral suppression of mobility for mostly ordinary and peaceful persons born into disadvantaged circumstances out of their control,” the Review reported. 

“There are moral constraints to the kinds of exclusions that states may practice,” Carens said.