Abstract

This article asks whether it is morally acceptable for a liberal democratic state to consider refugees’ religious beliefs when determining which refugees it will allow to resettle in its territory. I examine four arguments that might be advanced to defend such religious discrimination: i) that it is not even pro tanto wrongful; ii) that refugee resettlement is a supererogatory act, and therefore the way in which a state might choose to engage in it cannot be a proper subject of moral criticism; iii) that religious discrimination is necessary in the refugee resettlement context in order to preserve the political culture of the receiving state; and iv) that selecting refugees for resettlement in a religiously discriminatory manner may lead to a net increase in the total number of the world’s refugees that are resettled. I conclude that the first and second rationales should be rejected outright. I argue that the third argument could theoretically succeed in justifying religious discrimination in refugee resettlement decisions, but is not at all plausible in the actual world we inhabit today, given the very low number of refugees that are resettled. I recommend caution in advancing the fourth defence of religious discrimination, and elucidate the range of considerations – as well as the empirical facts that cannot be assumed into existence in advance – upon which its success would depend.