Resolved: Justice requires open borders for human migration.
1AC (high-level)
V/C: Justice → Protect Rights (Locke/Carens). C1 — Autonomy: Freedom of movement is a basic right (Carens '87) → borders treat people as state property. C2 — Preventable deaths: Border regimes cause avoidable deaths (UNHCR '21) → preserving life outweighs. Spikes: Rights outweigh utility; reject new theory in 2NR/2AR. Voters: Rights first; irreversible harms to life/agency.
1NC (two paths)
Path A (Trad): V/C — Morality → Maximize Wellbeing (Mill). DA — Welfare collapse: Influx strains safety net (Borjas '17) → harms poorest → moral duty to protect residents first. Case defense: Carens overgeneralizes; autonomy conditioned by social obligations. Path B (Prog): CP — Managed Migration PIC: Implement humanitarian visas, labor mobility compacts; exclude unconditional entry. Net benefit — Avoids welfare/instability DA while solving deaths. K — Security: Aff securitizes movement; alt = reject control discourse.
CX (Aff→Neg)
- “If humanitarian visas solve deaths, does your CP concede freedom of movement as a right?”
- “What is your net benefit uniqueness now? Are safety nets currently collapsing?”
- “Under your K, can the plan coexist with rejecting control discourse?” (sets up perm)
1AR (grouping + weighing)
On DA: No link—empirical evidence shows net fiscal neutrality; even if some strain, rights outweigh under our V/C; timeframe—our harms are immediate. On CP: Perm do both—adopt rights-affirming policy frame and allow humanitarian pathways en route to open borders. CP lacks full rights solvency (solvency deficit). On K: No link—our framing is rights-based, not control; perm do both—plan under care-centered evaluation. Weighing: Rights are irreversible; DA is speculative and reversible; judge should sign Aff on rights-first weighing.
NR (collapse example)
Collapse to CP+DA: Competition: Perm fails—keeping unconditional entry triggers our net benefit. Net benefit outweighs: Protecting the poorest residents prevents systemic collapse—duration and scope. Answer weighing: Even if rights matter, judge evaluates comparative worlds; ours preserves life quality broadly with less risk.
2AR (ballot story)
Under Justice → Protect Rights, our C1/C2 offense proves rights to movement and life now; the CP concedes these rights and doesn’t fully solve—solvency deficit. On weighing, prefer reversibility and immediacy: rights harms are irreversible and current; their DA is speculative and mitigable. Vote Aff.