Who gets to be a citizen? Should your political rights really depend on where you were born? Would it be better to live in a world without borders? This week, we’re talking about citizenship, political rights, and justice.

Citizenship in a country comes with certain rights (like the right to vote, run for office, or be tried by a jury of your peers) as well as certain responsibilities (like the obligation to vote, to serve on a jury, or not to take the side of another government in a war). But what justifies us in handing out those rights to some people and not others? Many people live in countries where they are not citizens. They already obey the laws, pay taxes, and participate in the civic life of their local communities… so why don’t they get to vote or run for office?

The problem is especially serious when a country has a pattern of severely mistreating non-citizens. In the US in 2018, the Department of Homeland Security adopted an official policy ofseparating immigrant children from their parents, whichtraumatizes parents and children. But American policies of treating immigrants like criminals date back to well before the Trump administration. (Two laws passed under Bill Clinton in 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, greatly expanded the power of the federal government to put immigrants in jail.) The US also kills non-citizens in overseas drone strikes; as I write these words, theBureau of Investigative Journalismestimates that the US has killed between 910 and 2,200 civilians this way, including between 283 and 454 children.

Of course, there’s a big difference between not being eligible to run for political office, and being killed or marched off to an inhumane prison facility. Even if someone is not a citizen of a country, that country should respect their human rights. But perhaps certain rights, especially those involving political representation, should be reserved for citizens. In fact, isn’t that what it means to be a citizen—participating in the democracy you’re a citizen of?

但我不认为尊重非公民的人权就能解决所有相关问题。还有一个问题是，谁能成为公民，参与民主。对于那些出生时不是美国公民的人来说，获得美国公民身份的道路很困难:他们需要有三到五年的合法永久居留权历史。Even in the best-case scenario, achieving permanent residence is a lengthy process that involves a 20-page form, fingerprinting, and an interview with homeland security, takes the government from 7 to 33 months to process, and has a non-trivial chance of resulting in failure (15% for family-sponsored applications, 18% for employer-sponsored applications, and 8% for humanitarian applications). It’s also about to becomemore expensive.

For undocumented immigrants who arrive in the US as children, there’s not even a path to legal permanent residency.DACA, an executive order signed by former president Obama, only stops them from being deported right away. The Trump administrationtried unsuccessfully to repeal DACA, but Congress has yet to passthe DREAM Actthat would create a path to citizenship.

一个公正的公民制度将与我们今天所拥有的制度大不相同。政府将尊重每个人的人权，而不考虑公民身份，生活在一个国家并参与其公民生活的人将更容易成为公民。我想知道一个真正公正的体系是否会像现在的领土国家体系一样。它是否会涉及一个全球政府，比如欧盟，或者美国的各个州，但规模更大?还是会涉及一个松散的地方政府联盟?

虽然我能辨认出我们这个世界上的某些不公正，但我更愿意思考我的正义感的基础是什么，以及一个更好的世界会是什么样子。请收看本周的节目，届时乔希和我将与我们的嘉宾阿拉什·阿比扎德(Arash Abizadeh)一起更多地思考公民身份和正义。阿比扎德是麦吉尔大学的哲学教授，也是《霍布斯与伦理学的两面》(Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics)的作者。