Foreigners and the Social Contract

    According to Smith, it cannot be contract that causes obedience to government. That reasoning would only explain why the individuals who originally entrusted the government with certain powers obey its laws. Only those original individuals can be said to have engaged in a contract. Unconscious of any contract, those individuals' descendants would have no reason obey the government. Since we know through observation that the descendants do obey the government, it seems that contract is not the cause for obedience to government.
    In defending the contractarian account, one could argue that a descendant consents to be governed and consents to be bound by a contract by remaining in the country. Smith refutes this claim, rightfully noting that an individual has no say in where he is born and may lack the language skills or financial means to relocate (Smith 403). Smith does admit, though, that one who does leave the state "expressly declare[s] that [he] will no longer continue a subject of it" (Smith 403). This raises an interesting question: what is the relationship between the foreigner and the state?
    Smith points out that aliens "who come into a country preferring it to others give the most express consent to it" (Smith 403), but somehow the state is particularly suspicious of the alien. The state suspects the alien to have allegiance to his motherland. Smith suggests that this would not be so if it were really the contract that produced government obedience. 
    Locke also speaks on aliens, but he declares that an alien cannot be put to death or punished by any government for committing crimes in its country (Locke 4). He insists that the legislature's laws have no authority over the alien. Presumably, this is because Locke does not consider to alien to have agreed to the contract. 
    Even though Smith does not believe in a contractarian account of government, his description of an alien as having agreed to the contract of the state he enters seems reasonable. If it is only through gaining the consent of the governed that a government gains authority, an individual choosing to live in a new country can reasonably be assumed to consent to its governance. In contrast, Locke's view seems to suggest that the alien is still party to the contract of his home country or that the alien is party to no contract at all. This view seems to limit the individual's choice to consent to being governed or not. 
    Locke could defend his view if he clarified that by "alien" he meant visitor or passerby rather than new resident. Does that seem like a more probably reading of his view? Or, does Locke really think that one can live in the territory ruled by a government without being subject to its laws just because he does not consent to the contract? If he does think so, isn't that contrary to our notion of a typical state where its government's authority is bounded by the limits of its territory?

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