Refuge and Aid†

Horrific scenes of needy migrants attempting to enter wealthy countries, often after expensive, arduous, and dangerous journeys, move many to believe that more such migrants should be permitted to enter and reside. But there are also horrific scenes of desperately needy people at a distance from wealthy countries—the distant needy—who are persecuted by their states, internally displaced due to armed conflict, or who suffer from preventable disease, insecurity, malnutrition, homelessness, and poor education. Wealthy countries could use resources under their control to assist these people. Just migration policies are part of a more general scheme of international justice owed to needy migrants and the distant needy.

One question concerns the overall stringency and source of duties of the duties wealthy countries owe to the needy. Many will agree that they do too little. These obligations arise because wealthy countries exploit poorer countries by misusing economic and military power; or they have benefited from the historic unjust exercise of colonial power and economic exploitation; or the norms of distributive justice that apply due to (or independently of) global economic or institutional integration; or simply because of the general duty to assist those in need.

I explore the distinct issue of the comparison between duties owed to needy migrants and the distant needy. International law prioritizes at least some needy migrants over the distant needy. Some needy migrants have refugee status, resulting in legal obligations to protect them. But states owe no general legal obligations to assist the distant needy, even those facing identical threats to needy migrants. Needy migrants also figure more vividly in the popular imagination than the distant needy, leading people to fight more vociferously for improving immigration rights than for increased international aid.

I focus on cases where it is costly to assist needy people. I assume that wealthy countries have duties to impose costs on their citizens to assist needy people, and that particular wealthy countries are not required to assist all the needy people they can assist. Given this, who should be prioritized?

Section I briefly explores three factors that might seem relevant: distance, identity, and risk. Without exploring these issues in depth, I argue that they are unlikely to justify systematic prioritization of needy migrants over the distant needy. Section II explores whether needy migrants should be prioritized either because they are easier to assist or because the threats of wrongdoing that they face are especially grave. Neither factor typically supports assisting needy migrants over the distant needy. Sections III and IV consider whether duties to needy migrants are more stringent than duties to the distant needy because, unlike the distant needy, needy migrants will be harmed (or its moral equivalent) if they are prevented from making themselves safe by being excluded from territory controlled by wealthy states. This idea is forceful, but applies only to those needy migrants who do not rely on resources generated either by the wealthy state or by others. Section V explores whether wealthy states violate the rights of needy migrants because they fail to fulfil their duties to the distant needy. They do violate those rights, and this justifies fighting for more expansive immigration rights in non-ideal circumstances such as ours.

One argument for prioritizing needy migrants is that they have made costly efforts to get to wealthy countries. This can make a derivative difference. For example, prioritarians plausibly believe that duties to assist those who are worse off are stronger than duties to assist those who are better off. The fact that migrants have borne costs makes them worse off than some of the distant needy, so prioritarianism favours assisting them.

Some might argue that their being badly off is less significant because they chose to migrate. But many needy migrants act with inadequate information in the face of pressure and threats. Given that, their choices have relatively little importance in limiting duties owed to them. Nevertheless, this consideration does not typically favour prioritizing needy migrants. Even given migration costs, many needy migrants are no worse off than many of the distant needy.1

Some might argue we have more stringent duties to assist those who are striving to escape threats than those who passively accept those threats. We should reward their effort or help them to complete their valuable plans. Here are two reasons to doubt the significance of this. First, many of the distant needy are also strivers. They just don't strive to get to the shores of wealthy countries (or fail to get there). Furthermore, it is doubtful that striving is very significant in the real world, even if it matters in some ideal circumstances. Strivers often strive due to advantages that they have over non-strivers. People often don't strive because they find their circumstances hopeless, or because their confidence in success has been undermined by social injustice. When the contrast between strivers and non-strivers is explained in that way, it is at best much less important.

Here are three more arguments for prioritizing needy migrants. First, we have stronger duties to assist those near to us, and needy migrants are nearer than the distant needy. Second, we have stronger reasons to assist identified individuals than anonymous individuals, and needy migrants are identified individuals whereas the distant needy are not. Finally, because they have been identified, officials are aware that particular needy migrants face high risks of being harmed if nothing is done, whereas officials are not aware of particular needy non-migrants facing high risks of being harmed.

I cannot tackle the deeper issues involved in these arguments here. I am at least tempted by the view that none of these things is very significant. I doubt that considerations of distance and identity are morally important. And even if they are, it is questionable that they have political significance—any relevance they have might be more important in interpersonal moral relations than the relationship between states and individuals. And although I think that risk distribution is morally significant in itself, it is typically dwarfed by the significance of the outcomes that different risk profiles will bring about.

Rather than defend these views, I argue that these factors do little to support prioritizing needy migrants in practice, even if they are important in principle. One general reason is to do with the structure of political assistance for needy migrants and the distant needy. The ability of ground-level officials to assist different people depends on resource allocation at the policy level. When policy-makers decide how to allocate resources between the distant needy and needy migrants, though, the three factors under consideration do not favour needy migrants over the distant needy. The allocation of resources occurs in advance of conflicts between identifiable needy people without knowledge of different levels of risk faced by different people.

It might be objected that decisions of high-level policy-makers should depend on the duties officials on the ground will have given the circumstances they will face. Suppose that we have stronger duties to assist those who are nearby, for example, and that officials will be nearer to needy migrants than to the distant needy. Policy-makers who are equally distant from both groups should divert resources to assist needy migrants so that officials on the ground can satisfy their duties.

Even if this is right—and it is contentious—it doesn't normally favour needy migrants. Where officials and needy people will meet, who the officials are, and who the needy people are, depend on high-level policy decisions. For example, diverting resources to assist needy migrants rather than the distant needy results in the recruitment of many more people to assist needy migrants. These policies determine who is recruited. Furthermore, policies to assist needy migrants determine who will travel where: people are more likely to attempt to migrate to countries with more relaxed immigration policies. So, there will be more immigration officials near to more needy migrants.

But diverting resources to assist the distant needy will result in recruiting officials who will travel abroad to assist the distant needy. They will be nearer to the distant needy than to needy migrants, they will be more likely to be acquainted with the former, and the latter will be at significant risk from the epistemic perspective of these officials. So, overall, how resources are allocated determines who are identified, nearby, and (from the epistemic perspective of officials) at high risk. It is then hard to see how any more stringent duties owed based on these facts can have a profound effect on how resources must be allocated. Perhaps distance, identity, and risk matter. But they do not support policies prioritizing needy migrants.

Perhaps needy migrants should be prioritized because it is easy to help a person at the border, much more difficult to help those far away. One countervailing reason is that needy people might prefer to be assisted in their home country rather than having to migrate.2 This consideration, while significant, is only relevant when we are concerned with two different ways of assisting the same people. Normally, though, the choice is between helping some needy migrants or helping other distant needy people.

It is sometimes argued that restrictions on migration are less significant, and need not be justified on a democratic basis, because these restrictions prevent a person from securing a benefit rather than coercing them.16 This view treats coercion as especially hard to justify.17 The more important contrast, though, is between harming and failing to benefit.

We have seen that the origins of resources that assist different needy people make a significant difference to whom to prioritize.

It may seem from my discussion that many needy migrants are not wronged by wealthy states who prevent them from entering their territory. Particular wealthy states need not help everyone, let us assume. No particular needy migrant has a right to assistance, because no needy migrant has priority over other needy people. As no needy migrant has a right to be saved, wealthy states do not wrong any particular needy migrant by failing to save that migrant. It might also seem that the range of legal protections that wealthy countries should offer to needy migrants should be narrow—it should restrict the right to protection to those for whom access to territory is sufficient to avert the threats they face, or of whom that would be true if the territory had not been altered by the wealthy country. My arguments, therefore, might seem to support restrictive migration policies that are typically adopted and endorsed by right-wing political parties in wealthy countries. Here is why this is not so.

The view outlined only implies that wealthy countries do not wrong migrants if they fulfil duties to assist the distant needy. If wealthy countries do not do enough to assist the distant needy, they violate the rights of needy migrants by excluding them. That has implications for how we should understand the ethics of migration, and our duty to fight for justice for needy migrants. The issue is especially important because wealthy states surely do not do enough to assist those in need, and right-wing political parties are especially inclined to this wrongdoing.28

Begin with the general problem where an individual or state lacks an obligation to assist all members of a large group in need, which we are assuming of particular wealthy states. Suppose that there is some large class of people {X1–Xn} who are identically placed. X1 claims a right to assistance against some individual or state, Y, where assistance is costly. The argument we are considering is:

The action is in premise 2). Is it true that if Y lacks a duty to assist all members of some group, she lacks a duty to assist each member of that group?

Here is how we might bolster that premise. Y owes X1 a duty to perform some act, v, only if Y would wrong X1 by not performing v (at least pro tanto). Where rescuing all is too costly for Y to be required to do this, Y could assist other members of {X1–Xn} without wronging X1. Therefore, Y does not owe X1 a duty to rescue her. This argument rests on a relatively uncontroversial view about duties—a person owes another a duty to v iff that person would necessarily wrong the other were she not to v.

Still, the argument can be resisted. Here is one way. Perhaps Y has a pro tanto duty to rescue each member of {X1–Xn} that is owed to each member of that group. Y violates each pro tanto duty unless she is justified in breaching it. But she is justified in breaching it only if she in fact saves some other members of {X1–Xn}. Thus, X1 has a pro tanto right to be saved that is violated if Y rescues no one. Thus, Y wrongs X1 by not saving her unless Y saves sufficient members of the group so that her not bearing costs to save X1 is justified. Indeed, she wrongs all members of {X1–Xn}.

Following my suggestion earlier, Matt lacks a right to be saved simpliciter. Matt has a right to be saved iff my failing to save him necessarily wrongs him. If I save Nat, I don't wrong him. Therefore, he lacks a right to be saved. But as our analysis of Matt or Cat shows, this does not imply that Matt lacks a right to be saved if I save no one. Compare Matt or Cat: Matt lacked a right to be saved simpliciter, in that my failing to save him does not necessarily wrong him, but he has a right to be saved if I bear the cost of death. Similarly, Matt lacks a right to be saved in Matt or Nat simpliciter, but has a right to be saved if I don't save Nat. The option of saving Nat makes it true that Matt lacks a right to be saved simpliciter. If I don't take this option, I violate Matt's right—his right to be saved if I don't save Nat.

Similarly, many needy migrants lack rights to be saved simpliciter. Wealthy countries would not wrong them were they to devote sufficient resources to assist the distant needy. But they have rights to be saved if wealthy countries do not use sufficient resources to assist the distant needy.

Some may think things are different where the distant needy have priority over needy migrants. In Matt or Nat, I was permitted to save either Matt or Nat. But wealthy countries are often required to spend their resources on international development aid. Does this make a difference? I think not.

Thus, even if many needy migrants lack rights to be saved simpliciter, because wealthy countries need not assist everyone, and they lack priority over the distant needy, their rights may nevertheless be violated. In the real world, where wealthy countries do too little in general to fulfil their duties of assistance, all needy people are wronged, even those who are at the back of the queue.

Suppose that this argument is resisted, perhaps because it proliferates rights violations too far. We might then retreat to a narrower view about cases where a person can help themselves to resources that are under the control of the wealthy, which the wealthy will retain, but which they are required use to help others.

Needy migrants are in a similar position to Y in Selfish Prevention. They sometimes seek to escape harm in circumstances where wealthy countries could permissibly exclude them and help the distant needy. But wealthy countries will not do this, and these migrants are normally in no position to ensure that the distant needy are helped. They can only help themselves. Wealthy countries are permitted to prevent them from helping themselves in order to assist the distant needy. But they are not permitted to prevent them from helping themselves without doing this.

On this basis we might also justify campaigns to expand assistance to refugees. We know that wealthy countries are very unlikely to fulfil their obligations to assist needy people by providing sufficient development aid. So, we also know that they will violate the rights of needy migrants; even those who need access to resources developed by wealthy countries. If the prospects of securing sufficient development aid look dim, and if there are better prospects of securing assistance for needy migrants, we should fight to expand legal immigration rights, even though this will result in states acting unjustly.

There is often little reason to prioritize assisting needy migrants over the distant needy, and sometimes a strong reason to prioritize the latter group. This does not imply that we should accept the status quo in refugee and migration policy where only a narrow range of needy migrants is legally entitled to secure access to wealthy countries through restrictive refugee laws. Fighting to expand those laws is justified, if doing so will secure better protection for needy migrants, given how unlikely it is that wealthy states will fulfil their obligation to the distant needy. In doing so, we ensure that wealthy countries do not violate the conditional rights of needy migrants.

Often, there will be no conflict in our ambitions to ensure that the needy receive the assistance they are entitled to—we can support both expanded migration policies and international aid, confident that we will have made a positive contribution if we achieve anything at all. But we do sometimes face choices about what to promote—which charities to support, which policies NGOs should adopt, which questions to ask of our governments, and which injustices to highlight in our media outlets. In general, where such conflicts arise, our priority should be compelling our governments to fulfil their duties to provide international aid.