Normal means for a UBI would attack immigrants – it would exclude them from benefits and would lead to calls for more restrictive immigration policies.

But comparatively little thought has gone into the global perspective. Even the most progressive nation-based approach to basic income faces a fundamental justice challenge in the reality of human mobility. Almost all basic income proposals focus on the country as a unit. (Exceptions include Philippe Van Parijs and Juliana Bidadanure.) Responding to the assertion that nations with UBI programs open to all would be overrun by outsiders seeking to access the benefit, most make citizenship a prerequisite for a grant. A number also call for increased restrictions on immigration (other than of temporary laborers) in order to make such programs politically feasible. Surely advocates of such programs do not envision Qatar as their model society. And yet it is too easy to imagine a version of a Gulf state arising from a basic income initiative that provides cash support to citizens, who no longer need to take work that is unsatisfying, while denying it to noncitizens, who are brought in do the difficult and dangerous jobs that remain. Even if UBI programs include immigrants, it is far from clear that UBI is the right response to concerns about the future of work. The extent of automation and the reconfiguration of traditional employment are policy choices, not inevitabilities, and a critical question is how the exercise of countervailing power by workers and of the regulatory state might result in different outcomes than the replacement of work as we know it with a cash transfer program. Nonetheless, especially in communities and countries where a majority of people are already under- and un-employed, a more universal vision of universal basic income is a demand worth making. On this front, cash transfer programs created in response to Covid-19 may have some insight to offer. In the United States, many of the state and federal government Covid benefit programs restricted access by immigration status. Their implementation illustrated the problems with an exclusionary approach. A few state and local initiatives, however, broke new ground in their incorporation of undocumented people. These suggest pathways to a reconstruction of UBI as an immigrant-inclusive intervention. Among U.S. pandemic relief programs, the federal CARES Act was closest to a traditional UBI proposal. It authorized a one-time payment from the government of $1200 to each adult and $500 to each child, which resembled UBI in being non-needs-based and no-strings-attached. It had something else in common with UBI as well: it excluded all undocumented people and many other noncitizens, as well as the citizen children of undocumented parents and citizens with undocumented spouses. (The exclusion of some citizens in mixed-status households was rectified in a new relief bill passed by Congress in late 2020, but others—including citizen children with two undocumented parents—remain outside the program, as do all undocumented individuals.)