The Price of Selling Citizenship 27 3. Perhaps it is unfair to allow people to buy citizenship, because other less fortunate outsiders are thereby disadvantaged. The playing-field is simply not even. If so, the same response follows: this is an objection not to selling citizenship, but to making it easier for anyone to obtain citizenship merely because they are wealthier or, indeed, because they possess ‘desirable’ skills. Selling citizenship is only a very visible instance of wider distributive unfairness in allocating citizenship. It may not be the most important example. 4. Perhaps selling citizenship cheapens that ‘good’, and, as Shachar rightly points out, sends a terrible signal to existing citizens about what makes a good citizen. This is, I agree, a profound concern, but we can respond in the same way as to the last objection. Any policy which makes it more likely that some, rather than others, will be admitted to citizenship sends such a signal. A policy which makes it easier for wealthier or more highly-skilled people to obtain citizenship sends just the same signal. If the objection is a good one, its implications ripple beyond the mere selling of citizenship. 5. Finally, we might object that what Malta is doing is unfair to other EU member states, since all of those states potentially bear the costs of granting citizenship to outsiders, but only Malta reaps the benefits. This, I suspect, is at the heart of much of the resistance to what Malta is doing. But several responses can be made. First, this objection obviously applies only to EU-member states, and not to states more generally. Second, for an EU member state to link citizenship to buying property or investing in their country should be equally objectionable. Third, and more importantly, we can point to ripple effects again. If it is wrong for one state to pursue a citizenship policy which delivers benefits to itself but imposes costs on others, what else might fall foul of that principle? What about countries that attract wealthy citizens of other states by offering them lower taxes and which thereby make it more difficult for progressively-minded states to pursue egalitarian policies? What if state competition for those wealthy individuals always imposes externalities, making progress towards a more equal world more difficult? Selling citizenship might then be, as Peter Spiro observes, merely the tip of a very large iceberg. And not necessarily the worst part. I am not sure, in the end, that I agree with Shachar that selling citizenship is always wrong. Perhaps it is safer to say that it usually is, though we can imagine situations where the reverse is true. But either way, selling citizenship, even if it (often) appears repugnant, pales in comparison to many of the other inequities attendant on the ordinary transmission of citizenship, as Shachar’s own work has forcefully hammered home. I am tempted to