cussed. The existing human rights orthodoxy includes a profound contradiction: "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights concedes the rights to be a citizen of a country, to be free to move within that country, not to have a passport of that country withheld, and to leave and reenter that country at will and without restriction. And then silence" (Sutcliffe and O'Kane 8). Each of us has a universal human right to depart, then, but no right to arrive, for arrival is regarded as a privilege that each nation state may withhold or disburse on the grounds of political or economic expediency or any other criterion unrelated to human rights. The one exception is the granting of asylum for bona fide political refugees, a provision which derived from the postwar realization that the lack of a right of refuge for Jews and others contributed to Nazi genocide in the 1930s and 1940s. However, even this right is now being severely curtailed as the number of migrants is growing rapidly. In addition, in some political contexts, migrants are being blamed for all manner of social ills and even coming under physical attack in some countries (Sutcliffe and O'Kane 8).
Certain political rights have become virtually synonymous with human rights in general, including the right to opposition, to the vote, to freedom of speech, to freedom from arbitrary detention, and so on. The absence of these rights in one country thus justifies the right to political asylum in another country. There is no such right of asylum bestowed for the violation of other human rights, such as the right to employment or adequate nutrition. Indeed, what has been happening in places like Western Europe in recent years is that a distinction is being made more and more between "good" migrants who are fleeing political persecution and "bad" migrants who are simply looking for a materially better life. The result is an aura of suspicion on all immigrants, and the distinction...