Immigration myths: Law and order arguments for closed borders

This post deals with common law and arguments people use to defend the "we need to close our borders for immigration"-position. As the overview will show, these arguments are difficult to sustain on closer scrutiny. An examination exposes their weak foundation.

Law and order arguments

"Refugees and/or immigrants are criminals/terrorists and should be kept out of the country lest social unrest results"

No. There is no research suggesting that crime rates are higher among immigrants than among the native born population that I am aware of. In fact, the opposite is often true. Now, consider what some are suggesting here: because a marginal fraction of immigrants might have committed criminal acts, everyone should be kept out. That's a form of collective punishment, seriously disproportionate to the problem at hand, and as such a severe infringement of human rights. A better approach would be to keep the borders open and then use regular law enforcement services to bring those who do commit crimes to justice - the way that is done with any native born.

New immigrants are expected to abide by the laws of the land, like everyone else. No one has argued that immigrants should be allowed to break the law. Designing a law that keeps people out because someone else has broken a law and "we think these people might break the law in the future" goes against some fundamental legal principles, like "presumed innocent until proven guilty".

"Allowing immigrants in undermines social cohesion"

People who argue this often refer to Robert Putnam's famous study E Pluribus Unum, which found that local trust levels tend to go down when new immigrants settle in a neighbourhood. They tend to read that piece selectively, however, because the piece then goes on to explain how that can be remedied by building networks between newcomers and long time residents. In short, when people get to know each other, they develop trust. He also cites a number of organizations that have done well with an ethnically diverse workforce.

Also, note how political leaders who speak of how "multiculturalism has failed" and how it challenges "social cohesion" (like David Cameron) never manage to define social cohesion. It's one of those words that sound important but has no real meaning. That makes it particularly useful for xenophobic groups.

"Immigrants bring disease"

During the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, this argument was used by some who wanted to close the borders for people from the affected areas. This, again, would be a form of collective punishment that is completely disproportionate to the health risks involved. See this piece for an elaboration on how destructive a border closure would have been. If it can't be sustained for a pandemic of that level of seriousness, I can't see how it could be sustained for other matters of health either.

Some would say that the concern is that migrants will burden the health care system. If that is so, a better solution would be to keep the borders open but say that immigrants who are not citizens do not get access to health care. That way, the immigrants would have a few rough first years, but eventually, would become naturalized. If I have to choose between closing the borders and keeping the borders open while deny newcomers health care services, I would go with the latter. Personally, I think that solution is excessive.  There will there be some immigrants who need health services, but there will also be many who a) contribute with tax dollars to fund health services as they work and b) who either arrive with professional health care expertise and thus can work in the sector, or choose to become doctors or nurses after arrival.

"Illegal immigrants should be deported because they entered the country unlawfully"

It is technically true that people who enter the country outside the auspices of the official channels do so unlawfully. Notice, however, how the remedy to this, for those who raise "the issue of illegal immigration" is always to deport people and close down borders. A more straightforward solution would be to change what is, ultimately, an expensive and inhumane law for everyone.

Let us probe a good example: Prohibition. That law was formulated with the best of intentions: to save people from the evils of alcohol abuse. The method chosen, banning alcohol, probed incredibly costly and inhumane. Governments had to spend incredible resources enforcing the law, the alcohol that was produced was less safe precisely because it was done on the black market, with little to no accountability, and organized crime flourished. The sensible solution was to repeal prohibition.

Notice the many parallels to closed borders: smugglers can line their pockets, migrants have to constantly worry about government law enforcement (which gives scrupulous employers ample opportunity to exploit them) and risk injury and death as they travel across borders in dangerous and remote areas. Alan Kurdi's fate is a case in point; the migrants dying on the Mediterranean do so because European governments have put up fences and closed the borders where it is safe to travel.

If the borders were, instead, open, travel would be without risk. Exploiting smugglers or employers would no longer be able to threaten migrants without documents with deportation, so they could get proper jobs, with proper labour protection and thus be as productive as anyone else in society. The migrants could send their children to school without fear of government persecution. Governments could save all that money that is currently plowed into control measures that create more problems than they solve.

Next time a politician suggests building walls to "protect the border", some should ask why that is a good idea when it would be so much easier and more beneficial to everyone to just re-write the law an open the borders. Today, we consider the prohibition of coffee in Sweden enacted periodically during the 18th and 19th century) outlandish and absurd. The ban on movement across borders is much more destructive.

We never had multiculturalism

...is the headline of Johansson Heinö's latest piece in Axess magazine. It's the latest installement in the wave of debates surrounding multiculturalism in Sweden during the past months, and presented as critique of the same. It's quite an interesting text, much more sophisticated than many others I've seen, but one should not be surprised, since a scholar penned it.

In short, the author argues that Sweden needs to come to terms with multicultarlist policies in order to be able to deal with current issues of ethnic diversity. I find this conclusion somewhat surprising, given the different arguments he presents. First, he, correctly in my opinion, asserts that the multiculturalism that came out of the late 1960s and early 1970s was inherently a reaction to the homogenizing nation-state project that had been dominant during the century before.

He then, again correctly, goes on to state that Sweden's commitment to multiculturalism has been somewhat limited historically. While immigrants have been accepted into the country in great numbers, the significant spheres of Swedish society have continued to be very homogenous ethnically Swedish arenas. So, while multicultural rhetoric has been dominant during the past three or four decades, there has been no genuine interest in "the other" on the part of Swedish gatekeepers.

Evidence for this abounds, of course. Political parties speak a lot about how important integration is and how important diversity is, but has made no real efforts to establish any genuine ties with or in immigrant communities. Indeed, immigrant or ethno-cultural organizations in Sweden are quite weak, particularly in comparison with their equivalents in the US or Canada, where these NGOs are entrusted with the delivery of settlement services to newcomers. For all intents and purposes, Sweden retains a strongly hierarchical nation-state.

What comes across as so strange to me is how Johansson Heinö lands in the argument that some form of reckoning with multiculturalism is needed to proceed with better integration. If multiculturalism has only been adopted in a most constrained form, then surely it is difficult to argue that the multiculturalism in a wider sense (i.e. the multiculturalism Sweden apparently never adopted fully) is to blame for current social issues confronting immigrant populations.

Against this background, the energy spent on critiquing multiculturalism also becomes somewhat of a mystery to me. If the goal is to establish a society based on respect between both individuals and groups, and a mutual understanding of different cultures and practices, which Johansson Heinö clearly argues that the goal should be, then it would seem more prudent to me to pay attention to power relations between majority and minority communities in society. This is, of course, because a respectful dialogue between communities can only be achieved when one is not subjected to dominance by the other.

This links directly into issues of empowerment and how to combat ethnic discrimination. Since Sweden has centraliezd social services to powerful paternalistic public agencies, immigrant communities remain disempowered, and the legal framework for combatting ethnic discrimination remains weak, since it is not framed as an issue of human rights, but rather as part of labour market regulation. Instead of addressing these issues of practical legal and organizational matters, the Swedish debate remains focused on what appears to me as a game of shadow boxing against an imaginary enemy - that of a set of policies that were never adopted whole heartedly by the Swedish polity anyway.