Ontologically ambiguous immigrants

Tacitly authorized unauthorized immigrants are officially unauthorized, but their presence is tacitly sanctioned by the state because of the economic or political benefits their presence provides. Most arguments about them claim they have a moral right to remain because the state is complicit in their presence. This complicity argument, however, is fundamentally flawed because it suggests there is nothing inherently unjust about the practice of tacitly authorizing unauthorized immigrants. This article argues that states commit an injustice when they tacitly authorize unauthorized immigrants because it socially constructs them in a way that uniquely and unjustly undermines their planning agency. To make this claim I introduce a novel form of injustice, what I call ontological ambiguity, which occurs when an individual is socially constructed as a member of two social kinds simultaneously and the individual experiences the constraints and enablements constitutive of both social kinds as incompatible. I show that tacitly authorized unauthorized immigrants are necessarily socially constructed as ontologically ambiguous and then argue that recognizing the injustice of ontological ambiguity reveals a more compelling argument regarding their rights: while it may not establish a right to remain, it does entail that states are morally prohibited from tacitly authorizing unauthorized immigrants.

Duke Scholars

Author Thomas Carnes