  The libertarian is right to suggest that a state’s dominion over immigration is inconsistent with individuals having unlimited rights in this domain, but it is not clear why we should presume that the individual’s right must always prevail. Certainly the state’s right would be over-ridden if individual rights were always perfectly general and absolute, but this construal of moral rights is implausible. A person’s right to freedom of movement does not give her the right to enter my house without my permission, for instance, so why must we assume that it gives her a right to enter my country’s territory without first getting the permission of the political community as a whole? One could make a similar point about a property owner’s rights over her land. A property owner would have the right to unilaterally invite foreigners onto her land if property rights were general and absolute, but most eschew this account of property. Few would say that each property owner has a right to unilaterally enforce the criminal law on her own land, for instance, and if property owners must defer to the state as a whole when it comes to the enforcement of criminal law, why must it be any different for the immigration of foreigners?