Dramatic recent incidents have heightened calls to impose severe restrictions on immigration in order to curb crime and terrorism. By all means we should punish violent criminals and terrorists, whatever their background. But crime and terrorism risk are bad rationales for immigration restrictions. I covered the terrorism angle in some detail in a 2022 article for the Verfassungsblog website. Virtually everything I said then still applies. To briefly summarize: 1) the risk is low, 2) restricting liberty of large numbers of people because of the wrongdoing of a small minority is deeply unjust, 3) migration restrictions cause great harm, and 4) there much better ways to reduce the risk of violence.
