Citizens in the West should care about discriminatory immigration policies.

AuthorEllermann, Antje
PositionSpecial Report: Immigration Law

An executive order banning citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States ushered in the first major policy conflict of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Demonstrations quickly spread across airports as prominent Democrats, some Republicans and American diplomats publicly condemned the order.

The so-called Muslim ban evoked a disturbing history of discrimination in immigration policy that many had believed was a thing of the past.

But even though the Muslim ban was unusual in its explicitness, our research shows that discriminatory immigration policies remain fairly common among liberal democracies.

Discriminatory policies range from the selective requirement of language tests and minimum income levels for family unification to admission restrictions against people with disabilities. These policies produce patterns of discrimination that not only harm prospective immigrants, but also many citizens.

Racist immigration policies common

From the late 19th century to the aftermath of the Second World War, western democracies enacted openly racist policies of immigrant selection. Most famously, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited all immigration from China to the United States. Similar bans targeting people with disabilities and the poor were not uncommon.

It was only with the geopolitical changes that followed the Second World War and the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. that those policies were repealed and replaced by those based on meritocratic values and respect for human rights.

But was the era of discriminatory immigration policy truly over? Unfortunately, liberal democracies continue to discriminate, intentionally and unintentionally, in ways that often have severe impacts on the lives of citizens. Let us cite a few examples from our recent research.

Income, language requirements

Some European countries impose high income and language requirements for family unification that can cause long periods of forced family separation.

In the Netherlands, these requirements have added an average of 15 months to the separation of families. In Britain, an estimated 15,000 children with British citizenship are separated from one of their parents or forced to live outside of the U.K. as a result of high income requirements.

Income requirements are particularly burdensome for certain groups.

In Britain, the income threshold to bring in a foreign spouse is [pounds sterling]18,600, or...

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