Valuing Immigrant Lives

Abstract

In Valuing Foreign Lives, Arden Rowell and Lesley Wexler bring theoretical rigor to bear on a vitally important yet atheorized area of legal policy: the valuation of foreign lives in U.S. policymaking.1 At the heart of the article is a call for transparency, aiming to enable greater understanding of the foreign impacts of American policies.2 This is a radical move that holds the potential to transform the process of making policy in the United States and to alter negotiations and relations with other nations. The article offers substantial food for thought as well as a robust research agenda going forward. In furtherance of that agenda, this brief comment focuses on U.S. immigration law and policy, highlighting the challenging questions that this highly politicized field presents for their theory. In particular, the deep political controversies that surround immigration foreground the difficulty of focusing on process rather than prescribing a normative solution. Though I am in the authors’ camp in favoring a process-based approach,3 this avenue presents thorny problems that remain to be worked through as the authors pursue their larger research agenda. I applaud the authors for their innovative and provocative theory, and offer up these challenges from the field of immigration law in the spirit of a fellow traveler aiming to help them ensure that their theory is as effective as possible.