Yes, Border Control Is Absolutely Moral

Border control is not only moral, it’s absolutely imperative

A depressing amount of plain nonsense too often pollutes public discourse because of, as Orwell said, “the fact that the average human being never bothers to examine catchwords”. On few topics more notably than on borders.

A great deal of the problem is that few people are truly neutral on the topic. Which is a great impediment to thinking rationally about it. Even many philosophers fail when it comes to the impassioned topic of borders. For instance, Harvard philosopher Edward Hall, in a recent issue of Philosophy Now magazine, sought to attack border control advocates – with humbug and unexamined catchwords.

For instance, Hall repeatedly used the phrase “unauthorised migrants”. This is the sort of tiresome euphemism that often goes unchallenged. Call “unauthorised migrants” illegal immigrants or unlawful entrants and the issue becomes much clearer.

Despite Hall’s insinuations to the contrary – questioning ‘whether or not states have a unilateral right to exclude would-be migrants from their territory’ – that is the very essence of a state. Borders are what define states, as Belgian philosopher-politician Thierry Baudet argued in his doctoral thesis-turned-book, borders matter. Controlling its borders is a base principle of a state. Unless a state has the right to exclude would-be migrants (legal or illegal) from its borders, it is no longer a sovereign state.

After skating over this bedrock challenge to his pro-open borders stance, Hall tried to argue that the real issue is the “real-world practices of immigration control”.

What bothers Hall is the “morals” of how a state controls its borders. Which might have some merit, were it not that illegal immigration and human smuggling are, by definition, criminal activities. Hall might as well wring his hands that states have criminalised theft or murder.

Still, lawbreaking by one party isn’t a license for the law-enforcing party to exact any punishment whatsoever. Even for crimes like murder, we rightly regard cruel and unusual punishments as unacceptable, even unlawful. This is Hall’s real argument: that states controlling their borders “inflict much cruelty and suffering”.

While this is indeed an argument worth considering, that doesn’t make him correct.

Hall distinguishes between what he calls “remote cruelty” – measures aimed to deter would-be illegal immigrants and people smugglers – and “proximate cruelty”, the punishments meted out to those who successful enter a state illegally.

With regard to the first, it is more correct to say that would-be illegal immigrants and people smugglers impose any “cruelty and suffering” on themselves. They, after all, choose to attempt to break the law of their would-be destination state. Quite often, in fact, they also break the laws of their point-of-departure states. People smuggling is as illegal in Indonesia as it is in Australia.

Successful illegal immigrants and people smugglers are, Hall says, ‘detained in state-run facilities: prisons, immigration removal centres, or temporary processing centres.’ ‘Conditions are often grim; mould and vermin thrive, and disease is rife.’ This is, quite frankly, difficult to accept.

Firstly, illegal migrants in most of what Hall calls “rich democracies in the Global North” are more likely to be ‘detained’ in hotels of varying luxury, or, in Britain, private homes acquired at the taxpayers’ expense. Far from ‘detained’, these illegal immigrants are also granted more-or-less free movement, often at taxpayers’ expense. The Biden administration spent a small fortune on passenger jets and buses ferrying illegal immigrants from the southern border to cities and towns across the US.

The illegal migrants are also often showered with luxuries like (once more, taxpayer-funded) mobile phones, food, new clothes and food, and cash benefits. Iin the UK they have priority access to free NHS medical treatment, ahead of the law-abiding UK citizens whose taxes pay for it.

Resorting to mendacious arguments does little to bolster Hall’s credibility on the topic. More, it makes him look like a stunning hypocrite when he berates Oxford Professor of Political Theory David Miller’s pro-border control arguments as “shady” and “damning”. (Miller correctly argued that border walls, for instance, are not coercive, because they simply prevent illegal entry.) As Hall admits, “philosophers generally accept [… that] acts of prevention” are not coercive.

Finally, what Hall doesn’t consider, in his handwringing about the ‘cruelty’ of border control measures, is the greater cruelty of open borders.

Open borders in Europe have unleashed a wave of human suffering on innocent Europeans: the undeniable rise in rape, robbery and murder perpetrated by illegal immigrants. Most infamously, the well-co-ordinated mass-rape attacks by illegal immigrants in multiple European cities on New Year’s Eve 2015-16. In the US, as well, illegally migrated criminals and brutal crime gangs have perpetrated similarly horrific crimes, such as the rape-murders of mothers, young women, and underage girls.

Unchecked illegal immigration and people-smuggling also imposes much greater suffering and cruelty on the illegal immigrants and would-be illegal immigrants than anything border control authorities could conceive. The rape of women by other “unauthorised migrants” is endemic, as attested by multiple NGOs. “You have to pay with your body,” people smugglers gloat.

Their fellow “unauthorised migrants” grotesquely brag of the suffering and cruelty they impose with so-called “rape trees”, where the underwear of raped women is hung as horrific trophies. Tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and children are trafficked as sex slaves across borders.

When the Rudd-Gillard ended mandatory detention of illegal immigrants, illegal boat arrivals surged, culminating in a horrifying shipwreck and the loss of thousands of lives. Open European borders have similarly resulted in the deaths of thousands of ‘would-be migrants’, particularly children.

To blithely ignore all of this, as Hall does, brings into serious question not just his status as an agent of reason, but his near-parodic assumptions of moral superiority.