Should you stay or should you go?
An examination of the ethics of illegal immigration and states
Congress is considering a bill which grants legal status to high school graduates who came to the country before they turn sixteen and have lived here for at least five years.
Why is it appropriate to make an exception for students alone? The truth is that the answer may tell us something about the value of citizenship, as well as why states have the right to confer citizenship upon some persons while denying it for others.
A common philosophical position, often used to justify immigration policy, likens countries to communities. There is enough cultural homogeneity within countries to sustain bonds between members of that country, the argument goes. Citizenship means being part of this shared cultural experience – a common life among the members of a country.
Citizenship is valuable not only because of the community bonds themselves, but also because these bonds help countries achieve further goals. For example, the cultural similarities and feelings of fraternity among citizens make it easier to sacrifice for the common good.
If this view is right, then protection of this common way of life should be a state’s priority. This would imply that a state has a right to reject citizenship to anyone who might hurt the common way of life enjoyed within.
This could be one reason to offer students this special exception. Students who have received an American education were raised within American culture and society. They are already part of this common way of life, they have already formed the cultural bonds that some use to define citizenship.
The first obvious reply to this argument is to say that countries don’t really possess much in the way of cultural homogeneity. Modern liberal democracies like the United States tend to be hodgepodges of different ethnicities, traditions, and languages.
Some might reply by arguing that, even absent a shared way of life, we still have a shared civic culture. This refers to our common political system, which some argue comes from the common political and social ideals embodied within our institutions and founding documents.
These ideals, which may be communicated to high school graduates through their years of formal education and informal interaction with other American students, can be seen as a kind of culture that defines citizenship.
The shared culture in question is not about television and music, but about how we approach one another as free and equal citizens, how we come together to solve collective problems, and our commitment to our basic constitutional freedoms.
One problem with this argument is that many high school graduates may not have bought into the American system and culture in this way. In fact, many non-students may have done so.
For this reason, it seems unfair to except high school graduates alone.
That said, we always have to draw lines. Some include too many, some too few. It’s not a perfect test, but if we think of citizenship as membership in a shared civic culture, and we believe that going through school is a part of absorbing residents into this culture most of the time, then the proposed law, while odd, makes at least philosophical sense.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user DreamActivist used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
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