Discrimination and Policies of Immigrant Selection in Liberal States

• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329218820870
• Author: Antje Ellermann,Agustín Goenaga
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329218820870

Politics & Society

2019, Vol. 47(1) 87 –116

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329218820870

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Article

Discrimination and Policies

of Immigrant Selection in

Liberal States

Antje Ellermann

University of British Columbia

Agustín Goenaga

Lund University

Abstract

How should liberal societies select prospective members? A conventional reading of

immigration history posits that whereas ascriptive characteristics drove immigration

policy in the past, contemporary policy is based on the principle of nondiscrimination.

Yet a closer look at the characteristics of those admitted reveals systematic group

biases that run counter to liberalism’s core moral commitments. This article first

discusses liberal states’ basic moral obligation to treat their citizens with equal

respect. It then identifies ways in which the group biases produced by immigration

policy violate that principle, when states either deprive their citizens of fundamental

rights or stigmatize them through hierarchical constructions of citizenship. Three

mechanisms are presented—structural bias, profiling, and positive selection—by

which seemingly liberal admissions policies produce illiberal outcomes. The empirical

analysis explores the resulting discriminatory group biases in the context of language

and income conditionalities on family migration, excessive demand restrictions against

economic migrants, and visa waivers for international travelers. We conclude that

immigration reforms that mitigate, if not erase, these morally problematic patterns

are within the reach of liberal states.

Keywords

discrimination, immigrant selection, equal respect, family immigration, medical

inadmissibility restrictions, visa waiver programs

Corresponding Author:

Antje Ellermann, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Buchanan C425, 1866

Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6R 1Z1, Canada.

Email: antje.ellermann@ubc.ca

820870PASXXX10.1177/0032329218820870Politics & SocietyEllermann and Goenaga

research-article2019

88 Politics & Society 47(1)

Days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13679,

which banned citizens from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering

the United States. The “Muslim Ban,” as the media dubbed it, triggered vocal opposi-

tion from civil society and public officials, including several Republican legislators.

Behind the reactions was the conviction that Executive Order 13769 violated the lib-

eral principle of equal respect by explicitly excluding immigrants based on nationality

and, implicitly, ethnicity and religion. In this article we show that, although unusual in

its explicitness, the so-called Muslim Ban is not the big exception to the rule of other-

wise liberal immigration policy. Rather, it coexists with long-standing illiberal prac-

tices of immigrant admissions across the Global North. Those practices have tended to

be subtler and sometimes (but not always) unintentional. Here we will focus not on

this newly surfaced tip of the iceberg but on the much more sizable chunk of sub-

merged ice of illiberal practices in immigrant selection.

The dismantling of the racially stratified immigration systems of Canada, Australia, and

the United States in the 1960s and 1970s has been hailed as the beginning of a new era of

“nondiscriminatory” and “universal” immigration policy.1 Although liberal states retain

the right to determine who is admitted into their territories, immigrant selection is sup-

posed to be based on clearly stated meritocratic criteria, on the potential contributions that

the individual will make to her host community, on her relationship to citizens or perma-

nent residents, and, under certain conditions, on the individual’s need for protection.

This liberal understanding of immigrant selection has led some migration scholars to

argue that the era of discriminatory immigration policy is over. Christian Joppke has

described the prevalence of skill-based selection as the epitome of nondiscrimination:

“The state may consider the individual only for what she does, not for what she is. . . . The

individual is selected according to ‘achievement,’ not ‘ascription,’ that is, according to her

agency rather than according to what she is immutably born with.”2 Joppke’s argument

reflects a conventional reading of Western immigration history in which the reforms that

began in the Civil Rights Era abolished long-standing discriminatory practices. Without

denying their import, we must critically examine whether these normative and legal

trends have translated into immigration policies that are truly nondiscriminatory.

To be sure, the history of citizenship in liberal societies is marred by examples of

exclusionary policies targeting citizens and noncitizens alike. We are certainly not the

first to identify ways in which liberal principles and policies have ignored persistent

forms of exclusion and discrimination (explicit and implicit, intentional and struc-

tural). Feminist, critical race, and critical legal scholars have pointed out numerous

contexts in which immigrant admissions reflect systematic group biases along the

lines of ethnicity, gender, ability, nationality, religion, and class, even in the most lib-

eral of policy regimes.3 These arguments, however, often grounded in contested claims

about the moral obligations of liberal states toward noncitizens, either lead to embrac-

ing an open-borders view or impose costly demands on liberal states (e.g., addressing

global structural inequalities). Our project contributes to that body of scholarship by

bringing to light some hidden ways many of those policies not only discriminate

against noncitizens but also violate the principle of equal respect toward citizens. In

this regard, our critique is less radical but more immediately applicable.