Immigration and Human Rights

In this paper I examine the claim that immigration should be regarded as a human right. Given significant opportunities for living a flourishing life that different countries can provide, it is plausible to suggest that immigration should be regarded as a universal human right. I argue that countries have a responsibility to promote the flourishing of all of the world's people, not just their own citizens, but that this moral commitment would be better achieved through regulated borders which grant priority to the world's most vulnerable and needy people. Since countries would be unable to grant priority to the world's poorest and most desperate people if immigration was a human right and borders were effectively open, a commitment to promote the flourishing of all of the world's people, not just those willing and able to immigrate, actually militates against seeing immigration as a human right.