Can Liberal States Treat Political and Economic Refugees Alike?

• In Event: Beyond, Within and Across States: Considerations on Immigration and Migration

Abstract

Liberal states have long endorsed a double standard regarding the treatment of refugees, which requires them to accept the maximum number of political refugees while leaving the number of acceptable economic refugees totally at the discretion of the recipient countries. However, it seems necessary to reconsider its validity, as many liberal states seem to reject a significant number of asylum claims simply because they are based on “economic” reasons, which makes the refugee regime quite unstable in the age of refugee crises. This paper reconsiders the proper policy for economic refugees in terms of their admission and their treatment after entry from a liberal perspective. It contends that certain types of economic refugees have definite moral claims at least to be admitted into the recipient country. It also argues, however, that liberal states should still treat political and economic refugees differently by granting only renewable working permits to economic refugees.

This paper begins by considering whether economic refugees can make stronger claims for admission than has previously been discussed. It begins by outlining the way in which previous literature has justified the discretionary admission policy for economic migrants in reference to such thinkers as David Miller, Will Kymlicka, and Sarah Song. It then challenges this dominant understanding by comparing the case of political refugees who suffer from non-physical, mild forms of oppression and economic refugees who suffer from starvation due to civil war or climate change. This paper contends that the latter have more urgent needs for admission than the former, and argues that the best admission criterion for liberal states is to admit refugees who face inescapable critical conditions at no fault of their own, be it political or economic.

Second, this paper examines whether it is appropriate to provide equal status to both political and economic refugees alike once they are admitted. It begins by outlining one dominant view among open border and free movement scholars such as Carens and Oberman, who propose equal treatment for all refugees by granting full automatic citizenship status composed of both economic and political rights. It then maintains that this view is subject to three major objections. First, this paper examines the objection of fairness, i.e., that revising admission policy in a more generous direction towards economic refugees is unfair to those formal migrants who have spent considerable time and energy for obtaining their status through formal procedures. Second, it examines the issue of majoritarian democratic consent, which argues that the idea of automatic citizenship overlooks the democratic requirement that asylum decisions should be based not only on the willingness of the asylum seekers but also on the consent of the existing members of the recipient society. Third, it examines the question of overcompensation, which states that economic refugees are not necessarily interested in gaining formal citizenship status that includes both political and economic rights, but rather in securing decent economic opportunities.

Finally, this paper proposes an alternative policy that requires liberal states to issue the maximum number of renewable working permits to economic refugees. It argues that this policy can counter fairness objections because it honors the efforts of formal migrants so long as full citizenship is granted only to them. Moreover, the paper contends that this policy can withstand objections based on majoritarian democratic consent as the policy allows the recipient society to express its consent by issuing new permits. It also demonstrates that this policy can respond to the objection of overcompensation so long as it grants only economic rights to economic refugees. After considering the details of the institutional designs of the permit system, this paper concludes that the working permit policy is the most tenable way to increase the number of admitted economic refugees without invoking excessive reactions from the recipient society.

Author

• Fumio Iida, Kobe University