ABSTRACT
This chapter aims that articulating more clearly and forcefully the claims that proponents of a more liberal policy on irregular migrants make on the state. It starts by what Onora O'Neill calls a certain intuitive understanding of what one must require from moral reasoning for it to have any hope of guiding actual practice; namely that the reasons one provides in support of a moral claim are not morally arbitrary. It suggests that, with respect to the claim of state responsibility to meet the needs of irregular migrants, principles of human rights do not fulfil these criteria. Current liberal democratic state policies towards irregular migrants is characterized by a reluctance to recognize little more than irregular migrants right to privacy and procedural justice. In contrast to the conceptualization of positive duties of justice as generated by particular connections, this understanding of positive moral duties as generated by the existence of universal human rights is intuitively appealing.
