The Right to Visit: Migration Control, Visa Policies and the Ethics of Temporary Entry

An estimated 1.2 billion international tourists visits are made annually. Yet, while normative political theorists have written a great deal about the justifiability of migration control, little attention has been paid to the justifiability of entry policies for short-term visitors. This paper addresses this neglect and makes the case for a prima facie moral right to visit countries on temporary, non-labour visas. The argument is made in three parts. First, the paper argues that access to short-term visitation can be both vitally important as a stepping stone to access the long-term residence one may be entitled to as a refugee or family migrant and as a legitimate and valuable pursuit in itself, whether for purposes of leisure, cultural or religious tourism, medical treatment, visiting friends or relatives, educational or professional pursuits, or transit. Second, it shows that none of the arguments which can convincingly be put forth in defence of states’ presumptive right of control over immigration are straightforwardly applicable to similarly extensive discretionary control over short-term entries, as these arguments rely on the perceived negative economic, cultural or political effects of foreigners’ medium-term or long-term settlement. Furthermore, it discusses and rejects four alternative objections which might be levelled specifically against the idea that states must generally open their borders to short-term visitors: that restricting short-term access is necessary to prevent longer-term settlement; that large-scale tourism itself can have negative economic and cultural effects which warrant giving states a discretionary right to regulate it; that it must be restricted to protect public security; and that a focus on extending the rights of short-term entry at the expense of the more important rights of permanent migration is imprudent. Thirdly and lastly, it examines the real-world institutional implications of this argument for more open borders for temporary visitors, including whether a ‘right to visit’ should be codified in international law and what it means for the legitimacy of deportation as a tool to enforce immigration policy when states are forced to open their borders to most short-term visitors.