For the tradition-minded thinker a self-determining community will be one which so far as possible is able to draw its boundaries so as to include those, and only those, who subscribe to its traditional and customary practices. In this way, as Devlin puts it, a society is 'held together by the invisible hands of common thought'. For the liberal and the radical a self-determining community cannot be entirely self-determining. It must shape its major policies by reference to universal standards of morality.
The issue may be illustrated by discussions of the question of citizenship—of who is to be permitted within the boundaries and to have rights of membership in the community. The Greeks believed that internal harmony or consensus was requisite for self-determination and self-sufficiency. A respectable means of achieving this consensus was ostracism. This is not a generally accepted device in the modern world (apart from the Soviet Union's practice of exiling dissidents). But immigration restrictions—the converse case—are very widespread indeed and raise the problems of tradition, community and self-determination in an acute form.
The liberal conscience is deeply offended by immigration measures. Logically, the liberal ought to defend the free movement of people, as of trade, across boundaries which the liberal cannot in any case justify. Citizenship should be readily granted since it is difficult, on liberal, individualist principles to set very severe criteria which could differentiate politically one member of humanity from another. The liberal's aversion to tradition should also mean that there could be little reason for concern that immigrants would challenge existing traditions. However, there is frequently a retreat from such a liberal standpoint. On what are claimed to be pragmatic grounds immigration restrictions are accepted because of the alleged effects of uncontrolled immigration on jobs, housing and the social services.
(Geraint Parry, "Tradition, Community and Self-Determination," British Journal of Political Science 12 [October 1982]: 399-419, at 415-6 [footnote omitted])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 