How to Reason Prudentially about Immigration: A Reply to Feser

As Catholic philosophers and fellow disciples of St. Thomas Aquinas, I would guess that Ed Feser and I are on the same page about many things. Even in his recent take on Catholic teaching on immigration, there is one point on which we are wholly in agreement: namely, that in evaluating policy decisions about immigration and immigration enforcement, we must consider “the entirety of Church teaching” on the subject.

Taken in its entirety, however, the Church’s teaching does not weigh, as Feser suggests, in favor of the Trump administration’s “restrictive immigration policy.” That claim is made to seem plausible only because Feser presents critics of the administration’s policies as consisting exclusively of “advocates of virtually open borders.” In reality, the very Church documents that Feser cites illustrate how it is possible both to criticize specific immoral forms of regulation and enforcement and defend moral forms of regulation and enforcement. Indeed, the whole point of Church teaching on immigration is to enable Catholics to assess whether specific policies are moral or immoral.  

Feser’s essay does not properly reflect how this assessment works, however, because it misunderstands the role of prudence in applying moral principles.  

Feser’s Relativistic Portrayal of Prudence

There is a puzzling disconnect between the beginning and end of Feser’s essay. Titled “A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws,” it opens by taking the position that “the administration’s restrictive immigration policy” is “on much stronger ground” vis-à-vis Catholic social teaching than the alternative that he presents as “virtually open borders.” He then identifies relevant principles from Church documents for the administration’s defenders to embrace: First, that the government ought to regulate immigration; second, that in doing so, it should consider immigrants’ potential impact on the well-being of its citizens, including with respect to employment, overall development, and cultural heritage.  

(I should pause to note that this second point does not quite align with what the cited documents actually say. The point of section 2241 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, about respecting cultural heritage, is phrased in terms of the immigrant’s duties to the host, rather than as something governments should consider in admitting immigrants. The 1988 document Church and Racism introduces “[a country’s] possibilities for employment and perspectives for development” as criteria that justify more limited intake. As the reference to development illustrates, however, this passage is evidently meant to justify a proportionately more limited responsibility for poorer countries in the developing world. Moreover, it takes a more open-ended perspective on the good of society as including that of the potentially admitted refugees, rather than being a one-sided consideration of the “economic well-being of its own citizens” as Feser suggests. Feser takes this same text to justify considering “preserving cultural identity” as a reason for restriction. In reality, what the text actually says is that governments should avoid creating “serious social imbalances” that would impel the home population to reject newcomers due to the perception that their identity and culture are threatened. The Church’s concern, again, is for the good of the newcomers taken together with the preexisting population.  I set these observations aside for the sake of argument, though, and simply address matters the way Feser presents them.)

Now none of this yet makes a case for the essay’s opening position—everything is still too abstract. In the concluding paragraph, however, Feser seems to think that the existence of these principles already settles the question in his favor: 

It would be intellectually dishonest, and indeed contrary to justice and charity, to accuse Catholics who appeal to such considerations in defense of enforcing U.S. immigration laws of somehow dissenting from the Church’s teaching. The truth is that the entirety of that teaching—not only what it says about the obligation to welcome the stranger, but also what it says about the limitations on that obligation—must inform our judgments about how many migrants to allow in and under what conditions.

After presenting this position as objectively preferable in light of Catholic teaching, though, he veers into surprisingly relativistic territory:

And as Aquinas teaches, here “it is not possible to decide, by any general rule” but requires the exercise of the virtue of prudence. As to what prudence calls for, Catholics of good will can reasonably disagree. Those who demand mercy toward immigrants should afford the same courtesy to their fellow Catholics who simply express a legitimate difference of opinion about a matter of public policy.

Two moves occur in this paragraph. First, although Feser is right to emphasize the need for prudence, he relies on an essentially relativistic notion of prudence—one in which objective moral principles only get us so far, and the rest of the work is done by prudential judgment in a personal realm of mere “difference of opinion,” shielded from objective moral scrutiny. Indeed, the phrase “legitimate difference of opinion about a matter of public policy” places public policy outside the realm of things one can objectively morally evaluate—a view commonly found in company with relativistic notions of prudence, as I have argued elsewhere.  

I am not sure why Feser makes this move. It seems at odds with his judgment that Catholic social teaching positively favors “the administration’s restrictive immigration policy.” What makes such a judgment “legitimate”? If it is because the judgment correctly reflects the action’s objective moral status, then Catholics cannot reasonably disagree. But if it is because one has the right to apply moral principles prudentially as one sees fit, then this can only be true if the action has no objective moral status or its true status is for some reason undiscoverable—and then one prudential judgment cannot be “more in line” with Church teaching than another.  

Moral Considerations Are Not Moral Justifications

But there is a second problematic move as well. Feser is at his strongest when he reminds us that many considerations must inform moral analysis of immigration policy—considerations that his conclusion divides roughly into the good of the host society and the good of the immigrant. But the point is (or should be) that all those considerations should inform every moral judgment in this domain. Instead, the conclusion treats social good and welcoming the stranger as separable justifications for irreconcilably opposing moral judgments, one justifying “restrictive” policy and the other justifying “merciful” policy.  

Why is this problematic? Here’s an analogy: In morally evaluating a medical treatment, many considerations are relevant, including expectation of success, the patient’s health and age, the procedure’s cost relative to family and community resources, the absolute wrongness of intentional killing or forgoing ordinary lifesaving means, etc. But the mere fact that age is a relevant factor does not mean that anyone can legitimately appeal to it to sufficiently justify a particular moral judgment. For instance, when my grandmother with Alzheimer’s starts refusing food, I cannot legitimately conclude, “She is old; therefore we can stop feeding her.” Or, if my task is to demolish old buildings, I must take possible outcomes into consideration: a vagrant who may be sleeping inside would be killed or seriously injured. But that does not mean that I am justified in refusing to demolish any buildings on the grounds that a vagrant might be inside. Obviously, instead I should look inside and see if there is a vagrant actually sleeping there or not.

In other words, an item’s being on a list of relevant factors does not automatically make it into a plausible moral justification in an actual case. Otherwise, I could simply pick the factors that give me the answer I want and ignore the others. Rather, through prudence, I need to identify which factor actually does morally determine the case—or, to use more Thomistic language, to identify which moral form “specifies” the particular act, making it right or wrong.  

Consequently, different factors may morally determine different cases. But it is not true that different people may legitimately appeal to different factors to justify opposing judgments of the same case. The principle of noncontradiction applies just as much to moral judgments as to any others. And prudence is the light that illuminates an action’s moral status.  

An Authentically Thomistic Account of Prudence

These two problems are symptoms of something gone awry in the underlying picture of moral reasoning in Feser’s essay, which I want to contrast with an authentically Thomistic view of prudence.  

Consider: Feser cites Aquinas saying that “it is not possible to decide by any general rule” whether in a given situation I should aid a less needy family member versus a more needy stranger. Instead, one must decide by prudence. This can sound as though I must make my decision, not by considering a rule, but by something else: prudence.  

But the English translation is misleading. What Aquinas actually says is that “a general rule cannot determine” which person I am obliged to aid in this situation, something that only prudence can do. The difference sounds innocent, but it is important.

What does Aquinas mean? Here are three important characteristics of Thomistic prudence.

First, Thomistic prudence is objective, not relativistic. For Aquinas, deliberately chosen actions are always objectively either good or evil. Prudence is the virtue for discerning that moral status. Disagreement is legitimate when prudence fails, not when prudence is operating normally. For instance, my options may be equally good and thus morally indistinguishable. Or poorly informed agents may reach different judgments where one or both are unwittingly wrong, but they disagree “legitimately” in the sense of both acting in good faith.

Second, prudence judges in accord with the moral law, not outside it. Prudential reasoning is supposed to identify the features defining a concrete action as good or evil, thus uncovering which moral law the action falls under. Aquinas’s point in the passage above is that there are many relevant rules that might govern aid: e.g., I should aid those nearer to me, and I should aid the needy, both as a general matter. But there is no overarching rule adjudicating between them—i.e., a rule that dictates “in cases of conflict, always prioritize proximity” or “always prioritize need.” Indeed, as Aquinas observes, need and proximity come in degrees, so one can’t know which will be morally defining without having a particular situation in mind. 

Different situations, then, have different “features” that make them fall under different morally defining rules. By examining an action in its particular circumstances, then, the prudent person can discover which rule objectively morally specifies it. In one situation I should prioritize, say, buying a thoughtful gift for my sister to strengthen family ties. In another, I should prioritize, say, buying food to stock the kitchen of a newly arrived refugee to alleviate her hunger and loneliness. (Incidentally, that’s why Aquinas’s ordo amoris isn’t a priority rubric or moral triage principle for allocating aid. Rather, it is one moral principle among many others, and prudence’s task is to detect whether a given action falls under this principle or a different one.)

Third, Thomistic prudence relates principles to particular actions. The reason Feser can make the choice between “restrictive” versus “merciful” policy seem legitimately open is that it remains so abstract. No morally defining features have yet come into view. One cannot morally evaluate “health care procedures” any more than one can morally evaluate “immigration policy” or “enforcing laws” in the abstract. What can be analyzed is a specific law or policy or enforcement activity—e.g., the six-month waiting period for work permits for asylum seekers, or ending refugee admissions in the U.S. in 2025, or the policy of ceasing to consider humanitarian impact when determining whom to deport, or the specific actions that agents of the state take to enforce a law or policy. These are not morally neutral, and the virtue of prudence should enable us to detect their true moral status.

Thomistic Reasoning on Immigration

With this picture of Thomistic prudence in mind, let us now examine how one might exercise moral reasoning on questions pertaining to immigration policy and enforcement. Since there is no room here for full-fledged analysis of any of these actions, I will instead examine how the considerations Feser identifies intersect with the particular circumstances of America in 2025.  

As noted earlier, Feser suggests that the good of the host society has been neglected in previous Catholic discussions—for example, “concerns about security, the economic needs of its own citizens, and the preservation of its own cultural identity.” It is notable that he assumes these factors must count on the side of limiting immigration—one could just as well point to lower crime rates by immigrants and their positive economic impact in favor of expanding immigration. (This illustrates, again, how such abstract considerations are meaningless without reference to particular circumstances.)

In any case, let us take cultural identity as an example. In the abstract, cultural identity looms large as a problem for immigration policy to address. But I want to suggest that when considered in connection with concrete facts about U.S. history, society, and politics—which is how prudence must consider it in order to reach concrete judgments about particular policies—there is little reason in our present circumstances to think that cultural identity will be weighty enough to become a defining moral factor in this domain at all.

In order to understand why, we need to see that in a Thomistic account, a human community is not a mere collective or agglomeration of individuals, but something much more like a living organism capable of self-maintenance. In other words, a community is not like a cake mix made up of various ingredients, which could be easily unbalanced by putting in too much baking powder. Instead, a community is like a tree that is continually taking up nutrients and incorporating them into its own life—reshaping what was once outside itself to make it be part of itself.  

In this framework, communities are normally strong enough to carry out this work of incorporation—which is a basic task they must constantly perform, not just with foreigners, but also with newborn children and even with internal movements of people. A community must be unusually fragile, or take on an unusually large number of incomers, or set up unusually strong barriers to integration, in order to fail in this vital activity. Indeed, this task is not essentially a threat to, but precisely part of, the good of a society (as the example of children illustrates)—just as any living thing stays alive precisely by taking up new material into its life.

Historical examples amply illustrate how most societies are fully capable of incorporating newcomers. American culture has absorbed Irish, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Polish, Chinese—and each group has gone on to be “digested” into American culture. This is not to say each group of immigrants did not have and even retain unique identifying features. But these did not displace American culture; instead, they became part of the life of American culture. The nation did not become less American after incorporating a wave of Jewish refugees after World War II. Despite initial panics about each new wave of immigration, ultimately, these fears have proved to be unfounded.  

(Compare the widespread fear of conceiving a second child in case one cannot love her as much as one’s first. In reality, the family, being a living entity, expands to take up the new child into its life, making her just as loved and indispensable as the others. Is the family permanently shaped by her presence? Of course. But does the family thereby cease to be what it was, and become something else? Of course not. Instead, the new child is taken up into the family’s identity. Later, one can no longer imagine the family without her.)

Indeed, concerns about the fragility of American culture are hard to maintain in the face of its vigorously self-exporting nature. Wherever it goes, it recruits. So in terms of concrete fragility, it is hard to find any culture on earth whose identity is less fragile. But the U.S. is not unique in its capacity to absorb newcomers. My point is rather that this is what communities essentially do by their nature: like an organism, a community takes up incoming “material” into its own life.

Of course, there are examples of cultures that were instead overrun and destroyed by newcomers. Generally, these are extreme cases involving extraordinary disparity in numbers or resources, such as in the near-annihilation of Native American cultures by a vastly larger number of better-armed European incomers. Some cultures, too, are uniquely fragile because they are already under pressure from a dominant majority. In the Canadian province of Quebec, the only French-majority enclave in a majority-English country, for example, there is a policy of preferring Francophone refugees—a policy that seems defensible specifically because French speakers are already under significant cultural pressure. (Notably, this policy manages to balance protecting Francophone heritage with obligations to the vulnerable, illustrating that attention to one need not exclude the other.) In contrast, there is little evidence that recent waves of immigrants, large as they have been, pose any kind of special threat to American culture and identity.  

My point is not to dismiss social-good factors. National identity (or security for that matter) is just as much a factor for moral reasoning as humanitarian need—in the abstract. But in a concrete set of circumstances, not all the factors may be morally relevant. In the abstract, there is simply no answer to the question whether national identity matters “more” or “less” than humanitarian need (or migrants’ right to pursue their own safety). But in the concrete, there are determining facts of the matter. This is equally true of humanitarian need: one cannot appeal to humanitarian need in defense of a “merciful policy,” without first showing that there is actual humanitarian need, and that such need is morally determinative in the situation at hand. 

Thus Feser is right to say that all factors must be “taken into consideration.” But this only gets us as far as laying out the materials for the project of moral reasoning. It certainly does not mean that anyone who selects one of those considerations as morally determinative is right to do so. One can “legitimately” appeal to those factors if they are in fact morally determinative in the concrete case at hand. If they do not apply, or do not apply in a morally defining way, then one cannot appeal to them in defense of anything.

In short, it is meaningless to talk of the morality of “restrictive” versus “merciful” immigration policies. Prudential reasoning has an important role to play, yes—but that role is to illuminate the objective moral truth about specific immigration laws, policies, and enforcement activities.  

In this response, I haven’t sought to make the case that the specific immigration policies pursued by the Trump Administration fail to align with Church teaching. But that work practically does itself, as soon as we allow ourselves to evaluate concrete policies and the people affected by them in light of the Church’s entire teaching—rather than cutting off discussion at an abstract level and putting further reasoning into a box marked, “Prudential matter! No moral scrutiny required.” It’s the same sort of thing we already do when we stand by a hospital bed, evaluating the morality of specific treatment options for a loved one. And by the light of prudence applying all the principles that Catholic social teaching urges, we can do so in the domain of immigration too.

Image by Rob Goebel and licensed via Adobe Stock.