This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is unfunded. Please help us to keep it going by subscribing or donating

at W.W. philosophy, or you can become a patron at Patreon.

How we deal with immigration is a major problem of our time.

But what are the philosophical issues at stake here? Is this simply a question of human rights or is there more going on?

This is obviously a contentious area, but David Miller thinks he has some of the answers.

David Miller welcome to philosophy bites.

Hello and I'm very happy to be re-bitten as it were.

The topic we're talking about today is immigration and border

controls. Can you just lay out what the general legal position is with countries and their right to set border controls.

Yes, well at the moment we live essentially under a regime of state sovereignty

where states are regarded as having wide and largely unrestricted

authority to control their borders and to decide who to admit as immigrants. There's one I suppose large exception to that which is the right to claim asylum

which means that states are required to respond to asylum seekers to assess their claims and decide whether the asylum

seeker has indeed a claim to come and stay in the country. That's the position.

Are there any arguments against it?

Yes, I think in philosophical discussion of immigration and borders,

many people actually challenge the status quo and argue that borders should be in principle fully open and in practice as open as is consistent with example, maintaining basic social order.

And there are a number of arguments to defend that view.

One, for example, a rather old argument goes back as far as Grotius,

appeals to the idea that human beings own the world in common,

and therefore they always retain the residual right to move across the surface of the earth and establish themselves on any part of it.

...