Moslem Immigration to the West – An Individual Rights Perspective

A free state, which is to say an individual rights respecting state, has jurisdictional authority only. A free state is not a private property owner of the entire landmass over which it has jurisdictional authority. Consequently, a free state is not a private club whose members decide whom to let in and whom to exclude. The sole mandate of a free state is the protection of individual rights.

Immigration, as such, is a natural right in that a private individual has the right to leave the nation he was born under and to emigrate to a nation of his choosing. The protection of individual rights takes three forms –

a.     To protect the individual from domestic crime by instituting a well-funded police force, and an impartial and objective judiciary to keep the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

b.     The existence, again, of an independent and impartial judiciary to be an objective arbiter when there are disagreements among private citizens subject to a contract. Thus, the judiciary, in this capacity, acts as the settler of contractual disputes and the enforcer of valid and objective contracts between private individuals.

c.      To protect the individual from foreign aggression by instituting a well-funded military force – (land, air, and on sea).

  An objective state policy on immigration must satisfy the following criterion. 

-        The state must respect the individual right of the immigrant and the individual rights of its citizens.

To fulfil this criterion, the state must satisfy itself of the following parameters.

-        Under no circumstance is immigration policy to be based on welfare statism and / or economic protectionism. This means that occupation, job, and labour quotas are a violation of both the individual right of the citizens and the individual rights of immigrants. A state whose sole mandate is the protection of individual rights has no moral or legal right to tell private citizens whom they hire and how much to pay. This also implies that welfare spending by the state for both private citizens and immigrants is forbidden in any form.

-        Second, the immigrant must not be a convicted criminal evading the laws of the country he is emigrating from. An immigrant, who is a fugitive from the laws of the country he is emigrating from, is also an immigrant who is a potential violator of the rights of citizens of the country he is emigrating to. To put it concretely, a man convicted of homicide in the country he is emigrating from and who is a fugitive will not be admissible to another free country for emigration.

-        Third, if an immigrant originates from a totalitarian state – a state that routinely violates the rights of its citizens – the free state must ensure that such an immigrant is, himself, not an agent of such a totalitarian state with malicious intent. Thus, the state would like to ensure that an immigrant from the Islamic Republic of Iran or the People’s Republic of China is not an agent of these totalitarian states with an intent or mission to harm the individual rights of the citizens of the free state.

Within this context of immigration from an individual rights perspective, I discuss the specific instance of Moslem immigration to the West.

Today, the reality is that most Islamic states are not free, rule-of-law states that enforce a strict separation of state and religion (mosque). Thus, state sanctioned religion and state-sanctioned religious teachings are an integral part of Islamic society in such states. Given this complexity, immigration from these states must be categorized as immigration whose origin is from a totalitarian state that routinely violates the individual rights of its citizens. Consequently, a free state in the West that does enforce a strict separation of state and religion must satisfy itself that immigrants from Moslem countries are not agents of these totalitarian states. Indeed, given the pervasive state-sponsored religious indoctrination that occurs in Islamic states like Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. at an early age of children, a free state must assume that every immigrant from such states is a potential agent of these Islamic states with malicious intent. Thus, the criteria for entry to immigrants from Islamic states must be considerably higher than for immigrants from another “normal” democratic state. It is entirely possible that given the complexities of the religious indoctrination prevalent in Islamic states, it may be impossible for a free state of the West to objectively determine whether an immigrant from an Islamic state is a genuine, rights-respecting individual or an agent of the Islamic state with malicious intent. Under such circumstances, I recommend a blanket ban on immigration from such nations until such states have instituted sufficient political reform for a free state to make an objective determination.