  Given the psychological importance of social membership and the fact that (authorized or not) a migrant will typically become deeply socially imbedded in her new society after a prolonged period, the appeal of this judgment is easy to appreciate. Critics might counter, however, that this account wrongly presumes that psychological attachment is sufficient to generate moral entitlement. To see why one might doubt this, imagine that I grow incredibly attached to the Mona Lisa during the ten years that it takes for the authorities to discover that I am the one who stole it from the Louvre. No matter how attached I become to the painting (and regardless of how psychologically difficult it will be for me to find happiness in my new life without it), most would presumably deny that I have therefore acquired a right to retain the stolen painting. And given that we are so resistant to suppose that the right of authorities to reclaim the Mona Lisa and return it to the Louvre erodes with the passage of time, perhaps we should similarly be suspicious of the notion that the “moral right of states to apprehend and deport irregular migrants erodes with the passage of time” (as in the quote from Carens above). 