Locking the Borders

Abstract

This paper highlights the means for the exclusion of groups deemed undesirable within the Lockean liberal tradition, particularly as the American Federalists modified it. It further explores the consequences of the practical application of this vision for immigration in the American case. The author contends that controversies about immigration in America demonstrate a deeply communitarian strain within Lockean liberalism that feeds rationalized exclusionary practice. This argument turns on an analysis of liberal theories of consent in Locke and early American thinkers. The goal of the paper is to make the Lockean tradition and its American adaptations speak more clearly about immigration, so that the issue can be better defined. In framing both the use and abuse of immigrants and the foundations of such behavior as problematic, the author hopes to provoke fresh thinking about the nature of and possible solutions to American exclusionism.