Obligations of Solidarity---continued

                              IS PATRIOTISM A VIRTUE ?

   Patriotism is a much contested moral sentiment. Some view love of country as as unassailable virtue, while others see it as a source of mindless obedience, chauvinism, and war. Our question is more particular : Do citizens have obligations to one another that go beyond the duties they have to other people in the world ? And if they do, can these obligations be accounted for on the basis of consent alone ? 
   Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an ardent defender of patriotism, argues that communal attachments and identities are necessary supplements to our universal humanity. "It seems that the sentiment of humanity evaporates and weakens in being extended over the entire world, and that we cannot be affected by the calamities in Tartary or Japan the way we are by those of a European people. Interest and commiseration must somehow be limited and restrained to be active." Patriotism, he suggests, is a limiting principle that intensifies fellow feeling. "It is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow fellow citizens takes on new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them." But if fellow citizens are bound by ties of loyalty and commonality, this means they owe more to one another than to outsiders. 

     Do we want people to be virtuous ? Let us begin then by making them love their country. But how can they love it, if their country means nothing more to them than it does to foreigners, allotting to them only what it cannot refuse to anyone ?

   Countries do provide more to their own people than they do to foreigners. U.S. citizens, for example, are eligible for many forms of public provision --- public education, unemployment compensation, job training, Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and so on --- that foreigners are not. In fact, those who oppose a more generous immigration policy worry that the new entrants will take advantage of social programs American taxpayers have paid for.  But this raises the question of why American taxpayers are more responsible for their own needy citizens than for those who live elsewhere.
   Some people dislike all forms of public assistance, and would like to scale back the welfare state. Others believe we should be more generous than we are in providing foreign aid to assist people in developing countries. But almost everyone recognizes a distinction between welfare and foreign aid. And most agree that we have a special responsibility to meet the needs of our own citizens that does not extend to everyone in the world. Is this distinction morally defensible, or is it mere favoritism, a prejudice for our own kind ? What, really, is the moral significance of national boundaries ? In terms of sheer need, the billion people around the world who live on less than a dollar a day are worse off than our poor.
   Laredo, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, are two adjacent towns separated by the Rio Grande. A child born in Laredo is eligible for all of the social and economic benefits of the American welfare state, and has the right to seek employment anywhere in the United States when she comes of age. A child born on the other side of the river is entitled to none of these things. Nor does she have the right to cross the river. Through no doing of their own, the two children will have very different life prospects, simply by virtue of their place of birth. 
   The inequality of nations complicates the case for national community. If all countries had comparable wealth, and if every person were a citizen of some country or other, the obligation to take special care of one's own people would not pose a problem --- at least not from the standpoint of justice. But in a world with vast disparities between rich and poor countries, the claims of community can be in tension with the claims of equality. The volatile issue of immigration reflects this tension. 

                                   BORDER PATROLS 

   Immigration reform is a political minefield. About the only aspects of immigration policy that commands broad political support is the resolve to secure the U.S. border with Mexico to limit the flow of illegal immigrants. Texas sheriffs recently developed a novel use of the Internet to help them keep watch on the border. They installed video cameras at places known for illegal crossings, and put live video feeds from the cameras on a Web site. Citizens who want to help monitor the border can go online and serve as "virtual Texas deputies." If they see anyone trying to cross the border, they send a report to the sheriff's office, which follows up, sometimes with the help of the U.S. Border Patrol. 
   What in the fuck motivates the people who sit at their computer screens and watch ? It must be rather tedious work, with long stretches of inactivity and no remuneration. An NPR reporter interviewed a South Texas truck driver who is among the tens of thousands who've logged on. After a long day of work, the trucker "comes home, sets his six-foot, six-inch, 250-pound frame in front of his computer, pops a Red Bull  and a couple of dexedrine tablets.. . and starts protecting his country." Why does he do it, the reporter asked. "This gives me a little edge feeling," the trucker replied, "like I'm doing something for law enforcement as well as for our own 
country." 
   It's an odd expression of patriotism, perhaps, but it raises  a 
question at the heart of the immigration debate : On what grounds are nations justified in preventing outsiders from joining their ranks ?
   The best argument for limiting immigration is a communal one. As Michael Walzer writes, the ability to regulate the conditions of membership, to set the terms of admission and exclusion, is "at the core of communal independence." Otherwise, "there could not be communities of character, historically stable, ongoing associations of men and women with some special commitment to one another and some special sense of their common life."
   For affluent nations, however, restrictive immigration policies also serve to protect privilege. Many Americans fear that allowing large numbers of Mexicans to immigrate to the United States would impose a significant burden on social services and reduce the economic well-being of existing affluent citizens. It;s not clear whether this fear is justified. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that open immigration would reduce the affluent Americans' standard of living. Would that be sufficient grounds for restricting it ? Only if you believe that those born on the affluent side of the Rio Grande are entitled to their good fortune. Since the accident of birth is no basis for entitlement, however, it is hard to see how restrictions on immigration can be justified in the name of preserving affluence.
   A stronger argument for limiting immigration is to protect the jobs and wage levels of low-skilled American workers, those most vulnerable to displacement by an influx of immigrants willing to work for less. But this argument takes us back to the question we are trying to resolve : Why should we protect our own most vulnerable workers if it means denying job opportunities to people from Mexico who are even less well-off ? 
   From the standpoint of helping the least advantaged, a case could be made for open immigration. And yet, even people with egalitarian sympathies hesitate to endorse it. Is there a moral basis for this reluctance ? Yes, but only if you accept that we have a special obligation for the welfare of our fellow citizens by virtue of the common life and history we share. And this depends on accepting the narrative conception of personhood, according to which our identity as moral agents is bound up with the communities we inhabit. As Walzer writes, "It is only if patriotic sentiment has some moral basis, only if communal cohesion makes for obligations and shared meanings, only if there are members as well as strangers, that state officials would have any reason to worry especially about the welfare of their own people . . . and the success of their own culture and politics. 


                          Is It Unfair To "Buy American" ? 

   Immigration is not the only way that American jobs can be lost to outsiders. These days, capital and goods cross national boundaries more easily than people do. This, too, raises questions about the moral status of patriotism. Consider the familiar slogan "Buy American." Is it patriotic to buy a Ford rather than a Toyota ? As cars and other manufactured goods are increasingly produced through global supply chains, it becomes harder to know exactly what counts as an American-made car. But let's assume we can identify goods that create jobs for Americans. Is that a good reason to buy them ? Why should we be more interested in creating jobs for American workers than for workers in Japan or India or China ?
   In early 2009, the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama signed an economic stimulus package of $787 billion. The law contained a requirement that public works funded by the bill --- roads, bridges, schools, and public buildings --- use American-made steel and iron. "It just makes sense that, where possible, we try to stimulate our own economy, rather than the economy of other countries," explained Senator Byron Dorgan, (D--N.D.), a defender of the "Buy American" provision. Opponents of the provision feared it would prompt retaliation against American goods by other countries, worsen the economic downturn, and wind up costing American jobs. But no one questioned the assumption that the purpose of the stimulus package should be to create jobs in the United States rather than overseas. This assumption was made vivid in a term economists began using to describe the risk that U.S. federal spending would fund jobs abroad : leakage. A cover story in Business Week focused on the leakage question : "How much of Obama's mammoth fiscal stimulus will "leak" abroad, creating jobs in China, Germany, or Mexico rather than the U.S. ?"
   At a time when workers everywhere are facing job losses, it is understandable that American policy-makers take as their first priority the protection of American jobs. But the language of leakage brings us back to the moral status of patriotism. From the standpoint of need alone, it is hard to argue for helping unemployed  U.S. workers over unemployed workers in China. And yet few would argue with the notion that Americans have a special obligation to help their fellow citizens contend with hard times. 
   It is difficult to account for this obligation in terms of consent. We never agreed to help steelworkers in Indiana or farm workers in 
California. Some would argue that we've implicitly agreed ; because we benefit from the complex scheme of interdependence represented by a national economy, we  owe an obligation of reciprocity to the other participants in this economy ---even though we've never met them, and even though we've never actually exchanged any goods or services with most of them. But this is a stretch. If we tried to trace the far-flung skein of economic exchange in the contemporary world, we would probably find that we rely as much on people who live half a world away as we do on people in Indiana.