Immigration policies often favor high-skilled over low-skilled migrants. Wealthy Western states like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia express their desire to attract the “best and the brightest.” In contrast, low-skilled workers often are portrayed as dangerous and undesirable, a drain on social welfare, and an economic threat to citizens. Désirée Lim’s new book with Oxford University Press, Immigration and Social Equality: The Ethics of Skill-Selective Immigration Policy, challenges the status quo. The philosophical framework developed in the book casts skill-selective immigration policies in a new light—as forms of wrongful discrimination.

An interdisciplinary panel will discuss this important new book and the issues it raises, with particular attention to its insights for immigration policy today.