The recent report of the federal advisory panel on immigration policy despairs of the "unspoken censorship" that inhibits honest debate about immigration, "as if to raise the issue itself were tantamount to questioning its benefits." But the report itself is steeped in the most politically correct assumption of all: that the existing members of a nation-state have the unrestricted right to exclude others from joining them.

Whether you share the committee's view that Canada should place more emphasis on immigrants who can "contribute" to Canadian society, or the humanitarian conviction that Canada should give first priority to those who need our help, the premise in either case is that we get to choose.

This seems strange. We do not apply the same restriction when people move into or out of cities, or provinces. The community, we have decided in those examples, is not justified in excluding others -- certainly not those, like most immigrants, who come in peace, desiring only to live by our laws. So why do we get so sticky about national borders? On what grounds may we coerce others not to live here?

A simple answer might be: because it's ours. It's hardly coercion for a homeowner to bar entry to a thief. But refusing to let immigrants enter Canada is not like blocking the door to your house: it's not a case of defending a property right.

If the "property" is considered to be the territory of Canada, the analogy fails on two counts: they're not taking it, and we don't own it. Immigrants do not come here to steal our land, but to buy it -- or rent it, as the case may be, but from willing agents in any event. Property rights, second, have already been assigned for the entire territory of Canada, public and private. To claim a third, collective property right to Canada as a whole would be to negate the first two.

The right to Canadian citizenship cannot belong to a select group of people merely for having claimed it. For what if other groups also lay claim? If two people claim ownership of the same house, there are courts to settle the matter. But there is no such independent arbiter to decide who gets to be a Canadian. The governments and courts that decide these questions are strictly the creation of one group -- those of us who live here now.

We cannot apply Canadian law to people outside our borders. So the only way the state could legitimately bar would-be immigrants from peacefully entering Canada would be if they were already Canadian citizens, and thus agreed to be bound by our laws. But we can't very well make them citizens just to tell them they can't be citizens.

Is this, as is commonly objected, a denial of Canadian sovereignty?

Nonsense. We obviously can pass laws limiting immigration. The question is whether we would be right to do so. It is no less an act of sovereignty to renounce immigration controls than it is to impose them.

What, then, is the basis for the restriction? By way of a hint, I might point out that there are no restrictions on the numbers of people who enter Canada every year via the womb. And that is what the case for immigration controls comes down to: where you were born. The same freedom of movement we recognize as an absolute right in those who were born here we routinely deny to those born elsewhere, and on no other basis than their birthplace. It is among the last examples of the use of hereditary privilege as a means of organizing society.

We can argue back and forth whether immigrants' net effects on society are positive or negative. But if they were born here, it wouldn't be an issue.

Whatever ill effects may arise when current residents move about -- economic, social, environmental, whatever -- in no case is the remedy proposed that we should impose draconian limits on their freedom of movement.

Why are we unwilling to extend the same rights to immigrants? We would not, after all, deprive them of the right to a fair trial just because they weren't born here. True, not all rights apply universally. Nothing requires us, say, to let foreigners vote in Canadian elections. To enjoy that right, it is necessary to be a citizen, with all of its rights and all of its obligations.

But immigrants are not asking to have only the rights and not the obligations of citizenship. They only want the same rights and obligations that apply to everyone else -- including the right to become a citizen. They have agreed, in short, to all of the terms in the social contract. They ask only to be allowed to sign.

To deny to one group of people the rights we claim for ourselves -- to do so, what is more, solely on the arbitrary consideration of birthplace -- flies in the face of our most basic values: namely, the equal intrinsic worth of every individual human being. It is no different, no less capricious and no less unfair, than if the criterion were skin colour.