Are closed borders/immigration restrictions morally defensible?

[ingemann]

I fail to see why it's immoral. A state is nothing more than institution, which seek to monopolise force on a specific territory. Limiting the access of people to that pierce of territory is just the enforcement of the that monopoly. People are welcome to think that the state's monopolising of force on its territory is immoral, but in that case you're not a liberal democrat, but a anarchist.

If we look at human rights which set up the few limitation of the state's monopoly of force. It gives people the right to leave a state's territory, not a right to enter. That right is limited to citizens, who can't be banned from entering their country, unless they have done something to lose their citizenship.

Also this entire discussion sum up why the Left keep losing election and people become more nationalistic. So crabcake if you want to know why UK left EU, a large part of the answer lies in you even asking a question like this.

[ingemann]

Well, from a utilitarian point of view, if something, on average, hurts people, then restructing it can hardly be immoral.

Nationalism was an outgrowth of the French Revolution. But prior to that you had states, they just weren't nation states. Those states were far more restrictive of immigration and far more protectionist than the era of nation states that followed it. Because those states, practiced mercantlism and aimed to horde money, figuring that was how you enriched your country.

I know, but pre 19th century states took their legitimacy from something that was not national or ethnic solidarity. The concept of a state taking its legitimacy from nationalism was a construct largely used for political purposes. All I was saying was that the Nation State isn't a "natural" phenomena.

The pre-19th century states did limit the access to its territory, not just as much but even more than the national states which replaced them. A national state is in fact often more open than the dynastic and regional states which came before them. Of course with the development of the non-discriminatory welfare state, the state had to protect its territory from outsiders again.

[ingemann]

Well, from a utilitarian point of view, if something, on average, hurts people, then restructing it can hardly be immoral.

Nationalism was an outgrowth of the French Revolution. But prior to that you had states, they just weren't nation states. Those states were far more restrictive of immigration and far more protectionist than the era of nation states that followed it. Because those states, practiced mercantlism and aimed to horde money, figuring that was how you enriched your country.

I know, but pre 19th century states took their legitimacy from something that was not national or ethnic solidarity. The concept of a state taking its legitimacy from nationalism was a construct largely used for political purposes. All I was saying was that the Nation State isn't a "natural" phenomena.

The pre-19th century states did limit the access to its territory, not just as much but even more than the national states which replaced them. A national state is in fact often more open than the dynastic and regional states which came before them. Of course with the development of the non-discriminatory welfare state, the state had to protect its territory from outsiders again.

That's not really the point I was making.

But in any case, it is not entirely true that all pre 19th C states did restrict access to their territory, I mean for a start, the Mongol or Moorish empires were so conceptually different to a modern state that you almost couldn't compare them in any meaningful way.

And in much of medieval Europe, the institutions of state were often so weak as to be practically irrelevant. Look at the Holy Roman Empire and the way it completely fell apart in the thirty years war. There wan't much control of migration going on at that point in time.

It's true that state's which was so weak that it couldn't control its own territory, really didn't restict access to its own territory. But honestly that's obvious. That's like saying that states which can't defend itself don't defend itself.

The monopoly of force is a ideal, not something which always exist. But whenever a state could enforce a large degree of control over its own territory, like the Hanseatic city states, it was fully able and willing to limit the access of outsiders inside the state's territory. There was a reason the Imperial City of Bremen succeed in being a calvinistic enclave between the Lutheran county (later duchy) of Oldenburg and the Lutheran prince-archbishopric (later duchy) of Bremen. It was because it was able to enforce access to the city.

[ingemann]

I fail to see why it's immoral. A state is nothing more than institution, which seek to monopolise force on a specific territory. Limiting the access of people to that pierce of territory is just the enforcement of the that monopoly. People are welcome to think that the state's monopolising of force on its territory is immoral, but in that case you're not a liberal democrat, but a anarchist.

If we look at human rights which set up the few limitation of the state's monopoly of force. It gives people the right to leave a state's territory, not a right to enter. That right is limited to citizens, who can't be banned from entering their country, unless they have done something to lose their citizenship.

Also this entire discussion sum up why the Left keep losing election and people become more nationalistic. So crabcake if you want to know why UK left EU, a large part of the answer lies in you even asking a question like this.

But why does this right exist? Why is it moral for the northern unemployed man in Britain to "get on his bike" to find work, while it is immoral for an African man to get in his bike to go after work?

Is it moral to eat, to breathe, to sleep?

The problem is that you tries to set up moral agency to a fundamental amoral entity. A state have only one goal the continued survival of the state. As such making this a moral question (and one where you shifted the goal post, from purely philosophical to practical, which you said you didn't want to discuss) is meaningless. Immigration is a question about it being beneficial or not. And there's no doubt that not controlling the access to a state is not beneficial for the state, in fact several states have collapse because of thir unwillingness or inability to control the access to its territory.