ABSTRACT
Ethical territoriality is especially valuable in its effort to acknowledge and honor the real attachments people develop in their daily lives, in its commitment against the perpetuation of caste in democratic political communities, and in its insistence on ensuring individual protections against the exercise of state power. The operation of a state's immigration admissions and citizenship allocation systems produces an array of statuses among members of the society's population, so that at any given time, some people are citizens and some are aliens, and among aliens, there are various status locations assigned by the state. In contrast to the status-based approach, the territorial conception of rights for immigrants treats a person's geographical presence itself as a sufficient basis for core aspects of membership. However, limitations on access to territory via restrictive immigration and citizenship rules raise their own problems of justification.
