It is remarkable that a man of the Left, a self-described Social Democrat, has taken a non-open borders position. Miller covers well the arguments relating to the various aspects of the immigration issue, though at points his ideological commitments show. For example, he refers to “unscrupulous politicians” who seek votes by opposing immigration; he does not mention unscrupulous politicians who ignore their constituents’ preferences in order to gain power and patronage by indiscriminate mass immigration of persons who will be reliable political supporters because of their welfare dependency. He refers to “bigots” who don’t want to see their neighborhoods change; he does not respect people who rationally fear their communities becoming unlivable as indeed many communities in his country have. Forgive the ad hominem, but this is not an immediate problem for an Oxford Don; Oxford and environs are not getting swamped with migrants. The real estate is too expensive, and migrants prefer urban areas.
Miller argues in the liberal tradition of Rawls, Dworkin, and Ackerman, where, to quote John Gray, political philosophy is the application to the constitution of the state of the moral point of view, where this is conceived as the impartial or impersonal point of view. It is an attempt to ground argument not in particularist loyalties or conceptions of the good, but in universal principles of justice or of rights. In keeping with this tradition, Miller deploys a conception of the person as a rights-bearing exemplar of a universal humanity, a cipher without history or ethnicity, stripped of the special particularities that constitute persons as they actually exist. Because he works in this way, he seems relatively oblivious to or insouciant about the clash of cultures.
Curiously, there is no mention of the prophetic warnings of Enoch Powell’s 1968 speech, nor of terrible present day problems in the UK. No mention of the child rape “grooming gangs,” which, first exposed in Rotherham, have been found to exist in many locales, and which have now even resulted in the arrest of a peer, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham. Desperate parents who sought the help of authorities were harassed by them, rather than helped, for fear of political repercussions. Knife and acid attacks, now common, were unknown before indiscriminate mass immigration. None of this is mentioned by Miller.
Miller’s commitment to human universality (the notion that all men in all times and places are essentially the same and equally deserving of important duties and rights) is such that he does not see that persons are always practitioners of particular cultures, and those cultures (for example, Islamic and tribal cultures) may be so antithetical to the basic commitments and values of Western societies that any substantial immigration will lead to intractable strife and a breakdown of social trust and order as those migrants strive to overturn the culture of their host countries. Some do integrate successfully, and I have known some of them, but many persist in social isolation (Islam forbids having non-Muslim friends), in forced cousin marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings, etc. Miller is aware of Putnam’s work on the downsides of diversity, but he doesn’t seem to take them seriously. The idea that some populations might be in large part unassimilable is not on his radar. Miller’s discussion of cultural difference seems limited to minor lifestyle matters, which he evidently takes as superficial or epiphenomenal; of no more significance that ethnic food or dress at a neighborhood festival. He thinks that if there is a degree of civic integration, that such difference can largely be ignored. The problem is more serious than that.
I wonder how much Miller knows about Islam and its history – whether he has ever read the Koran. (Of course, immigrant problems are by no means limited to those arising in Muslim populations, it is just that the clash here is at its most severe).
He mentions in passing, as if there could be no question, that all humans are of equal moral worth. Really? Criminal thugs are of equal moral worth to responsible citizens? (No, I am not saying all immigrants are criminal). Are practitioners of tribal cultures whose notion of human obligation does not extend beyond the kin group of equal moral value to those with more universal notions?
Another aspect of mass immigration that goes unmentioned is the enormous average cognitive difference between populations. This is not a problem for migration from Eastern Europe, say Poland, but Middle Eastern populations have an average IQ a standard deviation or more below the UK norm of around 100; they are around 80 – 85; sub – Saharan African populations are in the 70s. To give some indication of how serious this is, the US Army will not accept any enlistee of 83 or below, because they have concluded they cannot be trained to do dependably even the simplest useful task among their needs. A large proportion of the current stream of immigrants are likely to be permanent social charges and worse due to their severe cognitive limitations. I note that the bulk of the prison population is in the bottom decile of IQ. I realize that no academic dares touch this issue, but for those of us who prefer to deal with fact, this is a matter of enormous importance in any consideration of mass immigration.
Miller’s project typifies Liberal academic political philosophy in being elaborated at a distance from the real world.
In fairness, he does venture occasionally into the politically incorrect. He acknowledges that there may be valid concerns regarding those closest to one (family, kin, friends, etc.) and that it may be acceptable to prefer them to remote persons. He accepts a degree of national “compatriotism,” though he prefers what he calls a “weak” cosmopolitanism. He reluctantly acknowledges that border walls may be necessary and that there are practical limits on benevolence. He recognizes the problem of “brain drain,” the harm that arises from emigration of persons whose capabilities are desperately needed at home. It is encouraging to see a man of the Left who does not wall off empirical reality to protect his ideological commitments.
Rawls, as Miller points, out, never attempted to address the question of immigration; he thought of himself as working exclusively in the context of actually existing communities. So in a sense, Miller is attempting to extend the Rawlsian approach. But this approach is wholly inadequate to the nature of a problem which cannot be addressed within the conception of the human condition, outlined above, that animates that ideological framework.
Miller wishes to invent and extend rights; and he recognizes that rights imply correlative duties. He offers the example of coming on a stranded hiker in the desert where one would be obliged to share water. Out of this he eventually spins the notion that countries and their inhabitants are obliged to show concern for and intervene to help humans suffering elsewhere in the world as well as admit many of them. But rights are, as Alasdair MacIntyre said, imaginary things. What Miller’s effort comes down to is a Rousseauan effort to urge a universal indiscriminate benevolence, somewhat moderated by considerations of prudence. We have a greatly overextended welfare commitment here in our country of 320 million; it already exceeds our ability to pay for it through taxes without wrecking the economy. The notion that we should take on the burden of contributing to the welfare of 7.5 billion, or nearly 25 persons for each of us is absurd. So too the idea that we should receive large numbers of immigrants. Pew Research estimates there are 750 million in the world who would move here if they could.
Miller envisions the possibility of grand schemes of multinational rational management for various detailed categories of migrant; refugees, purported refugees, economic migrants, etc. In a world in which populations of the Middle East and Africa are exploding as is the volume of migration, this seems utterly unrealistic. There are masses of people on the move, who simply throw away their papers. Even if they had them, conditions in their countries of origin are such that one could never verify refugee status, and in any case, they are coached in how to tell the necessary lies. The sheer volume of migrants and the disorder of the world renders the idea that the whole thing can be brought under comprehensive management absurd.
Mass migration brings about irreversible changes in the recipient countries. Getting things wrong has permanent results. Miller needs to consider the work of Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action. Small groups of intensely motivated persons can dominate democratic polities even when their actions and interests are antagonistic to the interests of the larger community. This may account in part for the amazing failure of the authorities to proceed against the criminals in the child rape grooming gang cases.
In spite of my reservations, I recommend the book for its careful sorting out of the arguments related to immigration.
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