Author : Yin Yuan Chen
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 33,50 MB
Release : 2020
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ISBN :
This dissertation examines laws and policies in Western receiving countries concerning migrants' health care entitlement and queries their defensibility. Using Canada as a case study and drawing international comparisons where appropriate, it is shown that Western receiving countries often provide migrants with a level of health care coverage inferior to what is bestowed on their respective citizens. Proponents of such unequal health care entitlement between migrants and receiving-country citizens have commonly rationalized it as a measure to reduce public spending and to deter immigration-related fraud. Available evidence, however, challenges the validity of these claims. Instead, migrants' lesser health care entitlement is more appropriately understood as a product of their social exclusion in receiving societies. To characterize all migrants as "others" fails to appreciate the reality that certain migrants constitute rightful members of receiving communities according to the theory of social membership. Like their citizen counterparts, migrants who are ordinarily resident and those whose establishment of ordinary residence can be confidently foretold are closely linked to Western receiving countries given their communal affiliations, involvement in social cooperation, self-identification, and subjection to the relevant state's coercive authority. As their members, Western countries ought to afford these migrants the same extent of health care entitlement as they do their citizens in order to satisfy the dictates of equality and reciprocity. In contrast, differential health care entitlement between citizens of Western receiving countries and migrants whose residence therein is not ordinary in nature is morally permissible. In a world that largely depends on broad-based, ongoing resource redistribution within each nation to realize individuals' right to health care, membership in these political communities is key to generating the solidarity needed to sustain such communal resource sharing. The inclusion of migrants who are not members of receiving societies in these redistributive processes raises concerns about illegitimacy. Nevertheless, given their territorial presence, pursuant to the principles of causation and remedial capacity, even non-member migrants should be entitled to a basic set of health care rights in Western receiving countries, including, at minimum, coverage for primary care and provision of medical treatment that cannot be deferred.