I

think it's quite controversial to think that, for instance, somebody who's living in latin america, who to come into britain is, in a sense, part of the group that should be enfranchised in deciding what happens in terms of imigration laws in britain. Youare suggesting something which is moving towards everybody on earth having some kind of interest in how each state that they might want to visit or live in sets its own criteria for entry.

I think there are good arguments in favour of that kind of position. Let's take another kind of example. Let's assume that breton decided we're going to start imposing a tax on french citizens living in france. We're just going to start directing these kinds of tax laws at them, and we're not going to give them any voice in this. It's just something that's going to happen. People say, well, this isn't you can't just suddenly assume this kind of control over people who are not your citizens and who don't live here. But isn't that comparable, in some sense, to what's going on in the imigration case? A state like briton is deciding to direct some of its laws at people who are not its citizens, namely, people who want to come and enter and settle within its state. But

let's say you got all the right people and a democratic procedure was carried out. My question is, would a democratic decision be sufficient to ground this morally?

So it still might not be sufficient, because there's still the question of whether or not that group of people has the rights with respect to the space that we're talking about. So let's say, for example, we had a group of people who decided to get together and try to exclude others from a public park. Well, that looks problematic, because they don't have rights over that particular place, so why should they be able to exclude those people. Now, they might be able to exclude them from membership of their group, but can they exclude them from entering and indeed settling in that place?