Migration policy, and should you favor your own country?

There is a longstanding debate — for centuries in fact — as to whether you should consider only your national (or regional) interest, or whether you should think in cosmopolitan terms when evaluating policies with cross-national ramifications.

Some commentators, for instance, suggest that American immigration policy should be set to serve the interests of current American citizens only.  Whether or not one agrees, I can understand where that argument is coming from.

But what if an American is evaluating a French decision to take in or exclude some potential Algerian migrants?  You might think the French should take a French point of view, and that the Algerians should take an Algerian point of view.  But is the American allowed to be cosmopolitan in his judgment?  Even if he or she is otherwise a self-regarding nationalist on questions concerning America?

It seems to me Americans should in fact take the cosmopolitan perspective.

Alternatively, you might argue that there are degrees of relation.  American culture, politics, and gdp are much closer to their French equivalents than to anything in Algeria.  So perhaps the American can side with France after all.

But then I wonder about two things.

First, this scheme might count Algerians for less, but it doesn’t seem it counts them for zero.  Maybe America and Algeria have “better rap music” is common, or some degree of religiosity in common, or other points of similarity.

Second, once you start playing this sliding scale game, why look only at the dimension of nation?  You also could classify people by their taste in music, how smart they are, and many other dimensions.  I first and foremost might decide to identify with people on the grounds of their openness and their desire to travel.  Or how about kindness and generosity as a standard?

As a result, the major moral lines will not cut across nations in any simple way, even if in the final analysis the French people count for more than do the Algerians.

While this is not exactly simple cosmopolitanism in the Benthamite sense, it is just as far from strict nationalism.  Once you let partialism in the door, it seems like a tough slog to argue nationality is the only relevant moral fact for partial sentiments.

It is interesting to look at how people choose their friends.  Most of us have many friends of the same nation, but that is largely for reasons for convenience.  Unless perhaps I were living abroad, it would seem strange to be friends with someone because they were an American.  But it is not strange to be friends with them because they are smart, have good taste in music, like to travel, and so on.  So when it comes to our actual choices, nationality is just one fact of many, and it is (beyond the dimension of practicality) not an especially important fact for how we choose our partial commitments for our own lives.

So why should it be such a dominant factor for how we make moral decisions when it concerns other countries?