Anti-immigrant backlash: the Democratic Dilemma for immigration policy

Anti-immigrant backlash has emerged in recent years as a considerable threat to democracy. In many countries illiberal and anti-democratic political forces driven in part by anti-immigrant sentiment have damaged or threaten to damage the proper functioning of democratic institutions. Should policymakers try to avert this threat by implementing more restrictive immigration policy? If they do so, they may expose immigrants to unjust exclusion. If they do not, they may risk democratic dysfunction, even democratic failure. I will call this the Democratic Dilemma for immigration policy. In this paper I argue that this is a hard ethical dilemma that does not lend itself to a straightforward resolution. I propose an analytic and evaluative framework for assessing possible policy responses to the Dilemma to aid policymakers’ as well as the public’s ethical judgement.