Abstract

This paper analyses how open borders can reconcile the competing ideals of liberty and equality within immigration philosophy. It argues that open borders provide a means to balance individual freedom with social equity. The paper addresses critiques of open borders—such as concerns over job security and social trust—by presenting evidence of migrants’ significant contributions to economic growth and innovation. Moreover, by integrating economic efficiency with moral arguments, the study asserts that open borders promote a cosmopolitan sense of equality while preserving individual freedoms. Ultimately, it suggests that open borders form a framework that promotes global justice. 

Just like immigration is oftentimes a divisive issue to host countries, we simply cannot seem to reconcile liberty and equality. Complex ideas that pertain to the abstract are best broken down—thought by thought. I suggest that an analysis of immigration and open borders under the different lens of political and moral philosophies provides a common ground between liberty and equality. A path to reconcile MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters with John Rawls’ perhaps!

Scholars such as David Miller (2016), Christopher Heath Wellman & Phillip Cole (2011), and James L. Hudson (1986) have offered valuable insights and contributed significantly to the philosophy of immigration. One challenge in this area of study is that since the time of Hobbes, there has been a lack of political philosophy that directly addresses immigration. In this work, I have attempted to synthesize older philosophical ideas, creating what some might consider a form of applied philosophy. This is important as millions are willing to take drastic measures to try to travel past borders to improve their social and economic well-being. This includes the exodus of illegal immigrants risking their lives for a better dream, or recently the proclivity of poor Indian workers to migrate to war-struck Israel to simply escape the dire social realities that affect them in the country. Therefore, normatively what is stopping us from welcoming them? The answer that I find is the concurrence of a null set.

To begin with, let’s understand “Open Borders.” I want to highlight Prof Chandran Kukathas's understanding of open borders. I believe his perspective is valuable not only because it is contemporary but also because it avoids common misunderstandings about open borders. He argues (2012) that open borders involve not just the ability for individuals to cross borders freely, but also the acquisition of rights and the capacity to fully participate in the society they enter. This viewpoint emphasizes that openness includes both legal recognition upon entry and practical integration into the community, allowing individuals to reside, work, and engage politically. This little distinction is important as it sets apart countries that offer asylum but do not grant equal natural rights to their refugees.

Second, it would help to recollect some of the chief claims against open borders. The most intuitive are the ones used to rally people, which begin and end with “Our state, our right of admission.” Concerns regarding potential job displacement and the erosion of cultural identity significantly contribute to the discourse surrounding immigration policy, particularly about open borders. Critics often cite the impact of immigration on native employment opportunities, the emergence of cultural shocks within communities, and a subsequent decline in the social trust index within host nations. These factors are frequently invoked to bolster arguments against open border policies. As Prof Benjamin Powell (2020) of Texas Tech University points out, the new economic case for immigration restriction argues that immigrants would overwhelm and destroy the productive traits of rich countries. To dive into the world of the abstract, the debate turns to compatriot partiality (Miller, 2016). In essence, it is the idea that states have associative obligations toward their citizens, akin to obligations within personal relationships. As many would argue, perhaps the associative relationship is to be maintained given that states are legitimized by the will of their respective political communities. Therefore, the argument would follow that states are entitled to treat their citizens very differently from foreigners. Let us look at some of the claims against the critiques mentioned above.

The economic case for Open Borders

First, we consider economic efficiency as a subset of the utilitarian tradition. This offers a strong case for free immigration, as the economic effects of open immigration, far outweigh any potential harm it brings. Looking at the effects on productivity, global gains in GDP, and humanitarian benefits helps. Not only does opening borders allow labor allocation from low-productivity regions to high-productivity ones, but studies by Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett (2016) suggest a doubling of global GDP growth overall. All of the positive effects get further amplified when one considers the exponential humanitarian benefits that immigration brings to people. People escape conflicts and disasters, and they multiply their wages. Safe and legal humanitarian passages would further reduce humanitarian costs associated with unsafe illegal immigration.

Scholars such as Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell (2020), and Bryan Caplan (2024) have pointed out that immigrants raise productivity and output. Particularly lower-skilled immigrants are more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. The economic benefits of immigration are often not captured directly in GDP statistics. High-skilled immigrants boost knowledge production and innovation. From 1901 to 2015, 31 percent of American Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine, economics, and physics were immigrants (Nowrasteh & Powell, 2020). A World Bank working paper by Chellaraj et al. (2008) estimates that a 10 percent increase in the nationwide number of foreign-born graduate students would raise total patent applications by 4.7 percent.

Lower-skilled immigrants work in labour-intensive occupations that are non-competitive and increase productivity indirectly through complementary task specialization. In addition to the skill level of immigrants, the increasing number of immigrants brings diversity which is positively related to total factor productivity (TFP), income, GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity, or PPP), political freedom, and social freedom (Nowrasteh & Powell, 2020). Higher levels of immigration from more countries are correlated with increased economic growth, income per capita, TFP, and other important measures of economic productivity. In the United States over time and in cross-country time-series analysis, a greater diversity of immigrants is correlated with improved economic outcomes (Nowrasteh & Powell, 2020).

There exist counterarguments to the prevailing understanding of immigration's impact on productivity; however, Powell and Nowrasteh have effectively addressed these concerns. The counterarguments that immigrants displace native-born innovators and inventors or that immigrants worsen native-born educational outcomes and diminish the quantity of human capital cannot overwhelm the large positive effect they have on economic productivity.

In general, greater stocks and flows of immigrants are not associated with increased corruption that could undermine productivity in destination countries. In fact, rather than bringing social capital, norms, or beliefs from poorer countries that increase corruption in rich countries, it seems that greater immigration is associated with decreased corruption in destination countries that already have low levels of corruption and high levels of economic freedom. In all cases moreover, they find that there is no statistical relationship between immigration and terrorism either, reinforcing the fact that these fears are largely magnified.

What about trust levels?

Trust is “the subjective probability with which an agent assesses that another agent or group of agents will perform a particular action.” Social trust is often associated with positive economic outcomes as it reduces transaction costs, promotes cooperation, and makes markets more efficient. As Powell and Nowrasteh rightly point out, critiques of open immigration often argue that letting in migrants from low-trust regions would often undermine the trust levels in the higher-trust destination countries. They challenge this assumption in their book ‘Wretched Refuse?’ that while immigrants may initially have different trust levels, their trust levels would tend to converge with the trust levels of the natives over time. Studies discussed in the book also suggest that immigration does not significantly reduce trust in host countries. Trust levels among immigrants and their descendants tend to increase across generations as they integrate.

Compatriot Partiality—A case lost?

Prof Chandran Kukathas’s work (2012) critiques the idea of compatriot partiality. He emphasizes that the perception of the state as a collective endeavor reflecting its citizens' will is fundamentally flawed. He posits that states are often products of conflicts among elites rather than genuine expressions of collective self-determination. This challenges the legitimacy of the state's claim to prioritize its citizens over non-citizens, as it undermines the idea that such prioritization is based on a shared project or mutual obligations among a cohesive community. The following paragraph highlights this thought:

Pevnick suggests that immigration control is justified because there is a pre-existing political community with interests it has every right to protect by excluding others from entering or participating in social life within its boundaries. But there is no such fixed community. It is a community that changes with the movement of people. What states have tried to do is fix the identity of that community by distinguishing people into categories, most generally into citizens and noncitizens, and then by making finer distinctions between different classes of residents, legal and illegal immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. (Kukathas, 2012, p. 20)

Second, he points out that by restricting movement, states not only limit the rights of foreigners but also hinder their citizens' opportunities to engage with others. Thus, the ethical basis for compatriot partiality becomes questionable when weighed against the fundamental rights to freedom and interaction.

He also notes that despite strict immigration controls, many individuals will continue to seek entry into different countries due to desperate circumstances or aspirations for better lives. This reality suggests that attempts to enforce strict borders often fail and highlight the moral implications of denying individuals the opportunity to improve their circumstances. The persistence of migration challenges the justification for compatriot partiality, as it reveals the limitations and consequences of such policies.

We have been able to establish why open borders are good, but what does this have anything to do with reconciling liberty and equality?

After all, heightened by philosophies of individualism and competitive economics on the one hand and by periodic waves of egalitarian and leveling tendencies, the conflict between liberty and equality has been a continually recurrent theme. However, it is also true that liberty and equality overlap spaces in the works of most thinkers.

Liberty and Open Borders

The most prominent argument posited by advocates of open borders is the promotion of individual liberty. Now liberty understood negatively (Bhargava & Acharya, 2008; Dryzek et al., 2008) is the absence of external constraints on an individual. In the context of open borders, therefore, negative liberty implies the right of individuals to move across borders freely without restrictions imposed by nation-states. This freedom of movement aligns with John Stuart Mill’s idea of maximizing personal autonomy, allowing individuals to seek opportunities, safety, and self-fulfillment wherever they choose.

Conversely, positive liberty is the freedom to do and exercise the concept of freedom. Positive liberty thus requires not just the absence of barriers but also the presence of resources and opportunities for personal development. Open borders are congruent with positive liberty not only because they remove barriers but also facilitate integration, ensuring that migrants have access to jobs, education, and social services that enable them to thrive, thereby maximizing their self-actualization.

The liberty of movement then parallels economic liberty as more efficient labor markets enable migrants to enhance their living standards. Beyond the immediate discussion, it's also important to recognize how open borders cultivate a sense of cosmopolitanism among individuals. They inspire people to embrace a wider identity, seeing themselves as members of a global community.

Equality and Open Borders

The concept of equality lies at the heart of normative political theory. And even though, on a surface level, it implies a relationship between people, the idea of equality is all the more complex. Just like liberty, equality yields multiple conceptions.

To begin with, open borders stay true to the utilitarian yardstick of equality of welfare. It would entail migration policies that allow a great number of third-world citizens to migrate to the country of their choice. Although global migrants represent only 3.6 percent of the world's population (Chavda, 2024), open borders would encourage many more people to move to their preferred locations. Besides, the utilitarian principles of equality of welfare often conflict with liberal principles in various ways.

Next, a Rawlsian perspective on open borders aligns closely with the principles of equality and liberty, despite Rawls himself categorizing immigration as a non-ideal theory matter and excluding it from the core elements of a “realistic utopia.” According to Dr Esma Baycan-Herzog (2022) of the University of Geneva, Rawls justifies this as follows:

1. Societies have a right to self-determination to discharge their duties toward their citizens.

2. These include territorial and political duties.

3. Discharging these duties is necessary for stability (‘the stability requirement’).

4. Stability is an important good requiring protection against various challenges.

5. As one such challenge, unlimited immigration is incompatible with the stability requirement.

6. Therefore, states have a right to unilateral discretionary control over migration.

However, Dr Esma Baycan-Herzog critiques Rawl’s "methodological nationalism"—the assumption that society, the state, and its members are a self-contained unit. This framework treats borders as natural boundaries of moral and social obligation, leading to a bias that equates nation and citizenship with social cooperation. As a result, it dismisses the rights and needs of immigrants as less significant than those of citizens, which Baycan-Herzog argues is inconsistent with the principles of fairness and equality central to Rawls' philosophy. Part of this inconsistency can be attributed to the anxiety of mass migration disrupting societal stability—a coherent social fabric where all members understand and accept shared principles of justice. Recent studies on immigration and open borders have shown that such anxieties are largely misplaced.

Interestingly, Rawls' philosophy aligns more closely with the concept of open borders than he might have initially acknowledged. If we were to exercise the thought experiments that Rawls advocated, The veil of ignorance, it would be clear that most people would recognize the risks of being born in a disadvantaged nation, and would likely advocate for conditions that allow individuals to escape extreme poverty, oppression, or conflict, which many people endure simply due to birthplace. From this viewpoint, open borders could be seen as an application of "non-discrimination" in a global context, allowing individuals to overcome disadvantages they did not choose, such as birthplace.

Second Rawl’s difference principle suggests that social and economic inequalities are only justified if they benefit the least advantaged members of society. Applied to open borders, this principle suggests that immigration policies should be structured to improve conditions for the most disadvantaged, both within and outside the host society. Rawls might support open borders to the extent that they improve the situation of the least advantaged globally without causing undue harm to the least advantaged within a given society.

Last, Sen’s approach to the equality of capabilities— one that underscores that true equality is not merely about the distribution of resources but about providing everyone with similar freedoms to pursue a fulfilling life, would also appear consistent with the vision of open borders. Borders often trap individuals in resource-poor or conflict-ridden regions, constraining their choices and potential to lead a life they value. By allowing migration from lower-opportunity countries to higher-opportunity areas, open borders help reduce capability disparities linked to place of birth. This allows individuals from disadvantaged regions to access better healthcare, education, and living environments, enhancing their life options and capabilities. There is also a significant improvement in productivity.

Conclusion

There have been several arguments against open borders, as we have observed. But economic and political literature at large seems to suggest otherwise. This includes case studies and real-world models, such as those from the UAE, which demonstrate the significant impact of mass migration. It was also interesting to discover that open borders present a case where you would be able to find consistency with both the often antithetical concepts of liberty and equality.