Are objections against regularisation justified? An ethical, political and pragmatic appraisal of regularisation

This paper undertakes a critical appraisal of a set of independent but loosely related objections against regularisation: that it rewards deviant behaviour (rule of law concern); that it undermines the integrity of migration governance at large by sending an unwanted message to both migrants and citizens (system integrity concern), that it disadvantages migrants complying with immigration rules (fairness concern); that it incentivizes future irregular migration (pull-effect concern); that it undermines deterrent policies and undermines migration enforcement (enforcement credibility concern); that it is not sustainable as regularised migrants often fall back into irregularity (sustainability concern); and that it fosters "immigration into the welfare state", burdening already stretched welfare systems (social welfare concern). The paper finds that these objections are weak, in ethical, economic, social and pragmatic regards. Rather than as an exceptional and the least desirable option to address the presence of irregular migrants, regularisation should be considered as part of the regular toolkit of migration governance and as an instrument that effectively prevents that the stock number of irregular residents increase continuously.