DACA – World Citizen Theory

Why Political Freedom Must Be Won Again and Again

Imagine that a movement for Foot Democracy wins an important victory.

After years of organizing and campaigning, a country changes its laws. People born elsewhere now have a meaningful opportunity to seek admission, establish residence, and eventually become equal political members.

A woman who could not previously qualify applies under the new rules.

Her application is refused.

The authority offers little explanation. She cannot tell whether she failed to meet a legitimate requirement or whether the decision was arbitrary.

What has happened to the freedom that people struggled to win?

Early in this series, I distinguished between recognizing a political right and guaranteeing its effective exercise. I also left two questions open: how can outsiders win the right of Entry, and how can that right be protected once it is won?

The previous essay examined the first question.

This essay takes up the second, but with an important qualification.

Political freedom is not won once and for all.

When Does Admission Become a Right?

Consider two ways a government might admit people from abroad.

Under the first, officials grant permission when they consider admission desirable. Applicants may request admission, but the government retains broad discretion.

Under the second, the law establishes meaningful opportunities to seek Entry. It specifies conditions, requires authorities to follow them, and provides ways to challenge unlawful refusals.

Not everyone is guaranteed admission.

But the applicant is no longer merely asking for a favor. There is a legal claim that the government must consider.

This difference matters.

Yet even fair procedures cannot turn an extremely restrictive admission system into Foot Democracy.

Entry must offer a meaningful opportunity, and the institutions administering it must make that opportunity real.

Winning both requires political action.

What International Law Does Not Yet Guarantee

International human rights law already protects important freedoms of movement.

Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom to leave any country, movement within a country for people lawfully present there, and protection against arbitrary denial of entry into one’s own country.

Article 13 provides certain protections against expulsion for foreigners lawfully present in a state.

These are important rights.

But they do not establish a general right to enter and settle in any foreign political community a person chooses.

That is the gap the World Citizen framework seeks to address.

The task is not simply to enforce existing movement rights more effectively. A further political freedom must be won.

Courts can sometimes develop existing protections. But the wider right of Entry cannot be expected to emerge from judicial interpretation alone.

The laws governing admission must change.

What European Law Can Teach Us

The European Union provides one example of legally protected movement across borders.

Directive 2004/38/EC recognizes movement and residence rights for qualifying EU citizens and their family members.

These are not simply favors granted by receiving governments.

The Directive specifies when rights may be restricted and how those decisions must be handled.

Article 27 addresses restrictions based on public policy, public security, or public health. Articles 30 and 31 provide protections concerning notification, reasons for decisions, and opportunities for review.

Article 15 extends important procedural safeguards to certain restrictions imposed for other reasons.

The distinction matters. Not every disagreement about residence concerns national security.

The Directive does not make Entry unconditional. Nor does it apply to everyone who wishes to settle in Europe.

EU citizenship remains connected to nationality of a member state, although qualifying family members may also enjoy rights.

Still, the example shows that cross-border movement can become a legal entitlement, protected by rules that authorities must follow.

Foot Democracy would require a broader transformation of who can claim such rights.

Why Reasons and Appeals Matter

Return to the woman whose application was refused.

Perhaps she failed to provide a document. Perhaps an official relied on incorrect information. Perhaps a legitimate restriction applied.

Without an explanation, she cannot know.

Without a meaningful opportunity to challenge the decision, an error may remain uncorrected.

A right therefore needs procedures people can actually use.

The requirements must be understandable. Officials must apply them according to law. Applicants need appropriate remedies when those rules are violated.

But judicial review differs across legal systems.

In Department of State v. Muñoz (2024), the US Supreme Court rejected an American citizen’s claim to a fundamental constitutional right to have her foreign-born husband admitted. American law also places substantial limits on judicial review of consular visa refusals.

This does not mean every immigration decision is beyond legal challenge.

It shows why the scope of legal protection must itself be addressed when an Entry right is established.

What must officials explain? What can courts examine? What remedies should applicants have?

Such questions are part of making political freedom real.

Who Protects Rights Across Borders?

Foot Democracy concerns relations between political communities. Protecting its rights may therefore require institutions operating under agreements between governments.

Brexit offers an example.

The EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement protected certain rights of citizens and family members affected by the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.

In the UK, an Independent Monitoring Authority, or IMA, was established to monitor how public bodies apply those protections.

It can receive complaints, investigate possible failures, and take legal action in appropriate circumstances.

But the IMA does not directly resolve every individual’s case.

Its role includes identifying wider problems in the way authorities implement the law.

An unlawful decision may require an individual appeal. Repeated unlawful decisions may point to a failure in the system itself.

The Withdrawal Agreement did not establish a general right of Entry.

Nevertheless, it shows how cross-border rights may be supported by both individual remedies and independent oversight.

Neither replaces the need to win broader political rights.

A Right Must Be Won Again When It Is Threatened

Even a protection that has changed people’s lives can become vulnerable.

The United States’ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—DACA—offers an example.

Created in 2012 following years of advocacy by undocumented young people and their supporters, DACA allowed certain people brought to the United States as children to apply for temporary protection from removal and eligibility for work authorization.

It did not give them permanent residence or citizenship.

But it made an important practical difference.

Recipients could work under the program’s conditions and build their lives with greater protection against deportation.

In 2017, the federal government attempted to end DACA.

For the people affected, that decision threatened the protection on which they had come to rely.

The withdrawal was challenged in court.

In June 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled, by five votes to four, that the attempted rescission violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

The government had not adequately considered important issues, including the consequences for people who had relied on the program.

But the Court did not establish DACA as a permanent constitutional right.

It did not rule that a future government could never lawfully end the program.

The legal struggle continued.

Further litigation in Texas led to another significant federal appeals court ruling in January 2025.

At the time of writing, in October 2026, existing DACA recipients can generally continue seeking renewals. Federal authorities continue accepting initial requests, but are not processing them to approval.

The situation remains subject to legal and policy changes.

For recipients, this uncertainty is part of everyday life.

A favorable Supreme Court judgment in 2020 did not give them permanent legal status or settle the program’s future.

DACA is not an example of Foot Democracy’s general right of Entry. Its recipients were already living in the United States.

But it illustrates something essential.

A political victory can establish protection without securing it forever.

Courts may prevent an inadequately justified withdrawal. They cannot necessarily transform a temporary policy into lasting political membership.

The people who fought for protection must remain capable of defending it—and demanding something more secure.

A Right Must Work in Everyday Life

Political rights may also become ineffective without being formally withdrawn.

In Why the World Citizen Society Cannot Be Created Overnight, I examined the Windrush scandal in Britain.

Some long-term residents had legal rights to remain but could not produce the documents demanded by employers or public authorities.

People suffered serious harm because institutions failed to recognize rights they already possessed.

This is why records matter as much as rights.

Reliable documentation and fair procedures are essential. But institutions must not place impossible burdens on people to prove legal status that public authorities failed to document properly.

Foot Democracy will require dependable ways to recognize admission, residence, and membership.

A legal right must exist.

It must also be usable in daily life.

Entry Cannot End at the Border

An enforceable right of Entry is only part of Foot Democracy.

Someone may be admitted yet remain in insecure residence for decades, with no credible opportunity to become an equal political member.

That would expand mobility without completing political-community choice.

Meaningful Entry must therefore connect to lawful residence and a secure pathway toward full membership.

Resident Sovereignty identifies durable residence, rather than inherited nationality, as the primary basis of ordinary political membership.

Resident Equality and Membership Security concern the equal and secure standing of those who become full members.

These requirements do not mean immediate full membership upon arrival.

They mean that Entry must open a political future that is genuinely attainable.

Otherwise, crossing a border may simply lead to another form of lasting exclusion.

Political Freedom Must Be Won Again and Again

What ultimately protects a political right?

Laws matter. Courts matter. Fair procedures and independent oversight matter.

But the history of political rights gives us no guarantee that a victory will endure forever.

Governments change. Laws are revised. Officials may apply rules restrictively. People who remain excluded may demand that rights be extended further.

DACA shows how protections can be threatened even after they have transformed people’s lives.

European law demonstrates how cross-border rights can be made enforceable.

The UK’s Independent Monitoring Authority shows why protection sometimes requires scrutiny of institutions, not only individual decisions.

None eliminates the need for political action.

The people who seek Entry must first become political actors capable of challenging exclusion.

When they succeed, they must remain involved in shaping the institutions through which the right is exercised.

When those institutions fail, or the freedom is threatened, they must act again.

In the previous essay, I described people who struggle to change the inherited rules of political belonging as those who give birth to world citizenship.

But giving birth is only the beginning.

They must also nurture, defend, and develop the freedom they have brought into being.

Courts and laws are indispensable achievements of political struggle. They do not replace the people whose actions made them possible.

The rights of Foot Democracy are not won once and then handed over to institutions for safekeeping. They must be won, protected, expanded, and won again through continuing political action.

The World Citizen Revolution is therefore not simply an event through which a new right is recognized.

It is the continuing struggle to transform the Nation-Based Feudal Order and build institutions in which meaningful political-community choice becomes possible.

World citizenship is not merely a status to be obtained.

It is also a freedom that people must keep winning.

References

European Parliament and Council, Directive 2004/38/EC of April 29, 2004, especially Articles 15, 27, 30, and 31. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32004L0038.
United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), especially Articles 12 and 13. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 27, Freedom of Movement (Article 12), CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9 (1999). https://www.refworld.org/legal/general/hrc/1999/46752.
Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens’ Rights Agreements, “Can I Complain?” https://ima-citizensrights.org.uk/complaints/can-i-complain/.
European Commission, “Citizens’ Rights Under the Withdrawal Agreement.” https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/relations-non-eu-countries/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-withdrawal-agreement-new/citizens-rights-new_en.
Supreme Court of the United States, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, 591 U.S. 1 (2020). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf.
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Texas v. United States, decision of January 17, 2025.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” https://www.uscis.gov/DACA.
Supreme Court of the United States, Department of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899 (2024). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-334new_hfci.pdf.
Wendy Williams, Windrush Lessons Learned Review, HC 93 (London: Home Office, March 2020). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/windrush-lessons-learned-review.