Borders, Immigration, and the Prism of Private Property in Catholic Social Teaching

This paper explores the tendency of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to analogously inform its reflections on immigration and border control through the lens of private property. Recent CST on immigration and border control has increasingly appealed to the ‘law of necessity’ (which traditionally justifies the appropriation of privately-held goods in times of extreme necessity) to promote a general right for migrants to enter new lands and pursue economic opportunities, even when this is not related to extreme necessity. This paper recalls CST’s predominant emphasis on the paradoxical role of stable private property in serving the common destination of goods. Hence, by analogy, it highlights how CST on private property can alternatively support stable and (forcibly) regulated borders in order to foster mutually-beneficial exchange and better address global poverty. Once facilitated by (still-needed) global governance structures, nation-states can appropriately use admission to their territory to better promote the universal common good.