Immigration Ethics: Sacred and Secular

The U.S. and other nation-states regularly impose horrific harm on immigrants, would-be refugees, asylum seekers: ‘migrants’, for short. Migrants are separated from their spouses children, detained long periods under brutal dehumanizing conditions, forced to live in squalid camps, threatened with state-sanctioned violence, deported foreign lands which they have little social connection or means of support, forcibly prevented fleeing violence poverty, more. vast majority migrants subject such treatment non-criminal people looking honest work, hoping make a better life themselves children. In this paper, we will argue that the plausibility usual justifications harms depends importantly metaphysical framework one approaches ethics immigration. We that, within secular framework, God plays no role matters moral, there is at least surface-level some standard service border control, but given theistic sort heart Judaism Christianity, fall flat: none even remotely plausible. upshot this, shall urge, denizens those religious traditions should support policy nearly open borders.