Civil disobedience is justified when citizens experience injustice Essay

Civil disobedience is justified when citizens experience injustice from the government - Essay Example It includes disobeying particular laws that are considered as unjust and other laws in drawing attention to the perceived injustice in the society. Examples of civil disobedience include the Civil rights Movements of 1960s and the recent Arab uprisings in North African countries and Asian countries. Some unlawful acts that citizens may engage in include non-payment of taxes, trespassing to government buildings, and damage of property and obstruction of traffic in the major highways. Citizens accept the adverse consequences of their actions as a means of furthering the objectives and causes. Civil disobedience was a major tactic of advancing the rights of Women in the USA, and the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa in early 1990s. This paper will discuss the reasons why civil disobedience is justified when citizens experience injustice from the government. Civil disobedience has been successful in ending injustice in the society. Many government policies are flawed and civil disob edience is only effective method of ending injustice in the society. Civil disobedience is mainly geared at advancing social issues that affect the majority of the citizens in the society. According to Martin Luther King, Jr letter from Birmingham jail, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. If injustice affects a single group of individuals directly, it will also affect other members of the society indirectly. According to his letter, the government should address the causes of the demonstrations in Birmingham and not the effects of the demonstrations (Ingram 90). Martin Luther’s letter clearly indicates that the minority has used all the available channels like negotiation but civil disobedience is the last resort to end the injustice. Negro leaders had sough negotiations but political leaders consistently refused to negotiate in good faith in ending the social injustice. According to Martin Luther, it is essential to create tension if the society has refused to negotiate so that leaders can confront the real injustice issues. According to Luther, justice delayed is the same as justice denied but violence should not be used to achieve justice. According to Luther, racial segregation in the society has denied Negros fundamental constitutional rights thus are justified to demonstrate so that authorities can resolve the injustice (Ingram 90). According to John Locke (1632-1704), the government derives its authority from the people and its major duty should be to protect the basic rights of the citizens. Locke asserts that people have the rights to alter the government if it has failed to protect their fundamental rights. Locke rejects absolute monarchy since it will harm the rights of the citizens to choose their government. According to Locke, the citizens are justified to engage in civil disobedience if their rights and liberties have been violated by government policies. According to Locke, the legislative government should not alter la ws in order to limit the rights and liberties of the citizens. According to the Social Contract theory by John Rawls, free people need to agree on the rules governing their relationships in order to live in harmony. According to Theory of Justice by Rawls, every individual should have equal rights and freedoms in the society and economic inequalities should not disadvantage the minorities in the society. John Rawls assert that all citizens should be treated as ends and no means to an end thus justice can only be attained through fair distribution of resources and according to free choices of the citizens. All individuals are entitled to equal natural rights and the rights protected by justice

To What Extent is a British Immigration Policy a Product of a Essay

To What Extent is a British Immigration Policy a Product of a Hollowing Out the State - Essay Example Britain has had to redefine itself as a nation-state and to create for the first time a national citizenship. The confused and bitter politics of immigration during the last quarter-century have been due to the absence of a strong identity as a nation-state and a well established national citizenship until 1981. Thus Britain lacked a criterion for deciding whom to admit to its territory. The government later drew distinctions in the immigration law between persons of Britain and its colonies; it the created a special second-class citizenship status, without the right of immigration for the residents of Hong Kong and others (Black and Kniveton 2008). With the continued influx of persons, Britain had to change the immigration policies, aiming to integrate and assimilate those immigrants who had already settled and being closing its borders to any further immigration. The concerns of the British government were not only social, cultural and political, they were also economical in that u nemployment and other risks had started to crop up (Ian and Spencer 2007). With reference to the discussion question given, this paper assess the hollowing out the state Rhode’s theory has an effect on the main British policies in the case of immigration. The paper will also assess to what extent a British immigration policy a product of hollowing out the state. To the economy of Britain, immigration has become highly significant in that immigrants comprise more than 12% of the total workforce in Britain with the biggest portion of these immigrants being based in London. However, it was found that the argument that was being made by the British government that net immigration – immigration minus emigration – generates significant economic benefits for the existing British population had no backing evidence. The GDP, which the government uses in making its argument, was found to be an irrelevant and misleading criterion for assessing the economic impacts of immig ration of the British population. It was suggested that the focus of analysis should rather be based on the effects of immigration on income per head of the current population (Ian and Spencer, 2007). The economic impacts if immigration depends critically on the skills acquired by the immigrants. Immigrants with different qualifications and levels of education can have different impacts of the economy of a country. It was found out that many business and public services at the present in Britain make use of the skills and hard work of the immigrants. Sind the implementation of successive immigration acts since 1962, Britain successfully managed to keep the net migration levels low heading into the 1980s. This was by accepting and overall number of migrants at a rate which was lower than the other European countries. In addition to that it allowed Britain to successfully control and channel migration which is the strength that the core executive enjoys within the immigration policy m aking process (England 2009). In the 1970s for example, the British immigration office began allowing male immigrants to bring their wives and children into the country from other countries but discouraged women from bringing their husbands into the country from other countries. The 197 Immigration act was the only piece of legislation in Britain which gave the resettlement rights to the immediate family members of the immigrant residence. This