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III Factors, 27 Inherent Instability: Immigration and Constitutional Democracies

T. Alexander Aleinikoff

From: Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?

Edited By: Mark A. Graber, Sanford Levinson, Mark Tushnet

From: Oxford Constitutions (http://oxcon.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 20 March 2023

In this chapter, I adopt an understanding of a constitutional democracy as a bounded polity of equal citizens who choose leaders through free and fair elections and whose rights enshrined in a fundamental law are protected by an independent judiciary. On this account, immigration is a destabilizing force. The arrival of large numbers of noncitizens of the state undercuts the idea of a bounded polity; the residence of noncitizens challenges ideas of equality of those persons residing within state territory and subject to the laws of the state; enforcement measures...
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