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Illegal Aliens and Amnesty

Should illegal aliens get amnesty


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Redress

Liberal Fascist For Life!
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Yes, but make them start the naturalization process from the beginning (rather than just making them citizens, with or without punishment).
 
Make them pay reparations? Aside from the fact that many Latin American illegal immigrants are Amerindian mestizos whose poor economic conditions have been inherited from a violent European invasion and colonization of America and the centuries of racial segregation and discrimination that were to follow, recent history has been marked by governmental establishment of trade liberalization and the expansion of U.S.-based agricultural companies into Mexico that has uprooted and displaced farmers and associated laborers into urban areas, and then into the U.S. itself due to the vastly inequitable wage differentials between the U.S. and Mexico.
 
You're trapped in a confused cycle of circular reasoning that doesn't lead you to examine the actual ethical basis behind immigration restrictions to begin with, instead choosing to point to the law without actual logical analysis of it. That would be a poor choice if one wanted to claim that civil rights era blacks' violation of Jim Crow laws was evidence of their criminality and justification for racially discriminatory legal policy against them, and it's a poor choice in this case also.

Bull****!

There is an appearance of circular logic, but in fact it is not if you examine it closely. I am saying that to choose to enter the country illegally, you are showing a willingness to ignore the laws of this country for personal gain. This alone makes you unfit to be allowed to become a citizen. I am all for legal immigration, and have no problem with it being expanded significantly. What I do not like is people who choose to violate laws for personal comfort.

To put it another way, I think that some one who has broken laws in this country should be ineligible for citizenship/extended work visas. This includes murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and entering the country illegally. You are latching onto the one, and not seeing the totality.
 
Bull****!

There is an appearance of circular logic, but in fact it is not if you examine it closely. I am saying that to choose to enter the country illegally, you are showing a willingness to ignore the laws of this country for personal gain. This alone makes you unfit to be allowed to become a citizen. I am all for legal immigration, and have no problem with it being expanded significantly. What I do not like is people who choose to violate laws for personal comfort.

To put it another way, I think that some one who has broken laws in this country should be ineligible for citizenship/extended work visas. This includes murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and entering the country illegally. You are latching onto the one, and not seeing the totality.

His analogy makes sense though. The black people who refused to give up their seats on buses to white people were breaking the law too. Is that not showing a willingness to ignore the laws of the country for personal gain?

The only distinction that I can see is that you think segregation laws were wrong, but do not feel that way about illegal immigration laws. But this still does not explain why.
 
There is an appearance of circular logic, but in fact it is not if you examine it closely. I am saying that to choose to enter the country illegally, you are showing a willingness to ignore the laws of this country for personal gain. This alone makes you unfit to be allowed to become a citizen. I am all for legal immigration, and have no problem with it being expanded significantly. What I do not like is people who choose to violate laws for personal comfort.

And as noted, that's an extremely flimsy premise. There's no ethical basis behind immigration restrictions to begin with, so violation of them is hardly consequently unethical, just as violation of Jim Crow laws was hardly consequently unethical, nor was it indicative of a willingness to violate ethically legitimate laws.

To put it another way, I think that some one who has broken laws in this country should be ineligible for citizenship/extended work visas. This includes murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and entering the country illegally. You are latching onto the one, and not seeing the totality.

Then you'd have nothing that would warrant particularly widespread policy guidelines, considering that allegations of widespread immigrant criminality are largely mythical in nature.
 
His analogy makes sense though. The black people who refused to give up their seats on buses to white people were breaking the law too. Is that not showing a willingness to ignore the laws of the country for personal gain?

The only distinction that I can see is that you think segregation laws were wrong, but do not feel that way about illegal immigration laws. But this still does not explain why.

Yes, but they where already citizens, so that could not be denied them. They where criminals, and prosecuting them under the laws was appropriate, as was changing those laws.

Saying that people used civil disobedience so we should not have passed civil rights legislation...well, if that is your contention, that is a highly inaccurate analogy.
 
Building a 50 yard section of wall along the border seems an appropriate form of reparations to me.

Those that are here are here, not a hell of a lot we can do with them since there is no way we will ever dedicate the resources necessary to evict them.

Let them earn their right to citizenship, and in the meantime take away the incentive for more illegals coming over. It is too easy to attain a social sec # illegitimately and simply write that in on an I-9 and fulfill the requirements to snow an employer into hiring illegals.

Deal with the fake identity issue, and once that is done we can take steps to ensure that they are not being hired holding employers accountable if they do decide to hire.
 
And as noted, that's an extremely flimsy premise. There's no ethical basis behind immigration restrictions to begin with, so violation of them is hardly consequently unethical, just as violation of Jim Crow laws was hardly consequently unethical, nor was it indicative of a willingness to violate ethically legitimate laws.

Yes there is an ethical basis for such restrictions. We as a country are perfectly allowed to choose whether to allow immigration and how much to allow, whatever is in our best interest. It is unethical of people to not respect the laws of the land they want to live in.



Then you'd have nothing that would warrant particularly widespread policy guidelines, considering that allegations of widespread immigrant criminality are largely mythical in nature.

Illegal immigrants are criminals by definition. There is believed to be > 10 million in this country. Sounds widespread to me.
 
Yes, but they where already citizens, so that could not be denied them. They where criminals, and prosecuting them under the laws was appropriate, as was changing those laws.

Saying that people used civil disobedience so we should not have passed civil rights legislation...well, if that is your contention, that is a highly inaccurate analogy.

OK, then let's use a hypothetical example instead of an historical example: Suppose that everyone in Congress gets drunk one night and passes a law making it a crime for any non-citizen to wear T-shirts with silly phrases on them. When there are protests, some people say that the law should not be changed because it rewards lawbreakers.

Do you see any problem with this argument? It offers no rational explanation for why such a thing should be a crime in the first place.
 
OK, then let's use a hypothetical example instead of an historical example: Suppose that everyone in Congress gets drunk one night and passes a law making it a crime for any non-citizen to wear T-shirts with silly phrases on them. When there are protests, some people say that the law should not be changed because it rewards lawbreakers.

Do you see any problem with this argument? It offers no rational explanation for why such a thing should be a crime in the first place.

That is not the argument being used though. Let me try and make it more close to what is the point.

Suppose the t-shirt law gets passed as you suggest. Suppose further that to join the military, you cannot have a conviction. If you have a conviction for the stupid T-shirt law, it is appropriate to not allow you to join the military.

The fact that the law that illegal immigrants are breaking is immigration law is irrelevant. It's the fact that they choose to break a law. If you enter the country legally, and start on the immigration process legally, and then mug some one, you should also be deported and not allowed to finish your immigration process.

Edit: The reason it is a crime in the first place is that there are processes to enter the country, and requirements for citizenship/work visas and all that. An illegal ignores those processes.
 
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Yes, but they where already citizens, so that could not be denied them.

In terms of clearly defined legal policy, they were designated into a category of second-class citizens. You're again improperly conflating legal and ethical standards, at any rate.

They where criminals, and prosecuting them under the laws was appropriate, as was changing those laws.

Prosecution was hardly ethically appropriate, whatever the legal standards of the day might have been.

Saying that people used civil disobedience so we should not have passed civil rights legislation...well, if that is your contention, that is a highly inaccurate analogy.

Not every violation of Jim Crow laws was an act of deliberate civil disobedience; more often than not, there was simply a refusal to adhere to segregationist policy because it unduly burdened the targets of it. If a black man went into the white bathroom because the toilet paper in the colored bathroom chafed his ass, that would hardly be a serious political protest, but neither would the unethical nature of racially discriminatory public policy be diluted. That illegal immigrants aren't engaging in formal political protest when they violate immigration laws hardly grants those laws ethical legitimacy either.

It is too easy to attain a social sec # illegitimately and simply write that in on an I-9 and fulfill the requirements to snow an employer into hiring illegals.

The reason for the provision of false social security numbers is because of restrictions on entry into the formal labor market without them, as well as on acquisition of sufficient human capital to obtain skilled jobs because of restrictions on school attendance. If illegal immigration were not criminalized, this problem would of course be minimal.

Yes there is an ethical basis for such restrictions. We as a country are perfectly allowed to choose whether to allow immigration and how much to allow, whatever is in our best interest. It is unethical of people to not respect the laws of the land they want to live in.

That's also not an actual ethical claim, and there is no legitimately unethical aspect of violation of laws that are themselves unethical. An ethical claim would be "illegal immigrants kill, rape, and rob people at disproportionately high rates when they enter the U.S., and should thus be disallowed from entering." There's of course no basis for that specific claim, but you should get the meaning.

Illegal immigrants are criminals by definition. There is believed to be > 10 million in this country. Sounds widespread to me.

There's no legitimate basis for ethical comparison between murder, rape, and robbery and illegal entry into a country.
 
The reason it is a crime in the first place is that there are processes to enter the country, and requirements for citizenship/work visas and all that. An illegal ignores those processes.

That's also not an argument or ethical claim; that's statement of an existing legal standard as though it's somehow self-validating. It's akin to stating that the reason that violation of racially discriminatory legal policies is illegal is because there is segregation and legal division between whites and coloreds and all that. A violator ignores those laws.
 
There's no legitimate basis for ethical comparison between murder, rape, and robbery and illegal entry into a country.

This is, at it's most basic, the heart of the issue I think. To me there is a definite comparison. They are all illegal acts.
 
This is, at it's most basic, the heart of the issue I think. To me there is a definite comparison. They are all illegal acts.

Illegality is not a basis for ethical comparison, unless you believe that violation of Jim Crow laws is morally equivalent to murder, as mentioned.
 
Illegality is not a basis for ethical comparison, unless you believe that violation of Jim Crow laws is morally equivalent to murder, as mentioned.

I am not discussing ethics, I am discussing legalities. Entering the country illegally is a crime. There is a legal path to citizenship. I believe in rewarding those who adhere to our laws, and punish those who do not adhere to our laws. Your whole Jim Crow law thing is simply misdirection.
 
We have no reason at all to import a lower-class of seasonal workers from other countries while Generation X-Box has the highest unemployment rate in history for young people.
 
We have no reason at all to import a lower-class of seasonal workers from other countries while Generation X-Box has the highest unemployment rate in history for young people.

I doubt there are many Generation X-Boxers who are willing to pick strawberries in the sweltering sun for a couple dollars an hour.
 
No amnesty period. If you reward illegal immigration you encourage it, just look at the Reagan Amnesty.

Immigration both legal and illegal is primarily caused by the displacement of agricultural laborers and those uprooted by that displacement in Mexico, which was itself caused by the expansion of trade liberalization. Focus on immigrants themselves is a mere red herring designed to function as a distraction from the reality that the wealthy financiers that have invested in this liberalization effort are far more responsible for illegal immigration than corn farmers are. This in turn leads to ignorance of the facts that there are unjustly inequitable wage differentials between the U.S. and Mexico and that there is a disproportionately high demand for unskilled labor in the U.S., and the manipulation of public policy according to the interests of the financial class.

I am not discussing ethics, I am discussing legalities. Entering the country illegally is a crime. There is a legal path to citizenship. I believe in rewarding those who adhere to our laws, and punish those who do not adhere to our laws. Your whole Jim Crow law thing is simply misdirection.

You haven't made an argument yet; you've simply been repeating statements rather than claims. Simply droning that illegal entry is against the law over and over again fails to actually examine any logical or ethical basis behind the construction of that law, and accordingly, whether it's the most rational public policy to maintain. I'd say that there are fairly compelling reasons why it is not.
 
I doubt there are many Generation X-Boxers who are willing to pick strawberries in the sweltering sun for a couple dollars an hour.

If you make it several dollars an hour or more and cut off any welfare benefits then they will pick strawberries in the sweltering sun.
 
I doubt there are many Generation X-Boxers who are willing to pick strawberries in the sweltering sun for a couple dollars an hour.

20 years ago when I was 15 I picked corn on the local farm from 6:30 am to 11 took a break then I did menial farm-tasks till 4.

I made $3/hr.

It was all under the table & I'm thankful for it, because it taught me a lesson on work-ethic & the value of money earned.
 
. . .? Aside from the fact that many Latin American illegal immigrants are Amerindian mestizos whose poor economic conditions have been inherited from a violent European invasion and colonization of America and the centuries of racial segregation and discrimination that were to follow, recent history has been marked by governmental establishment of trade liberalization and the expansion of U.S.-based agricultural companies into Mexico that has uprooted and displaced farmers and associated laborers into urban areas, and then into the U.S. itself due to the vastly inequitable wage differentials between the U.S. and Mexico.
This may be the longest sentence I've seen all year.
 
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Immigration both legal and illegal is primarily caused by the displacement of agricultural laborers and those uprooted by that displacement in Mexico, which was itself caused by the expansion of trade liberalization.
Focus on immigrants themselves is a mere red herring designed to function as a distraction from the reality that the wealthy financiers that have invested in this liberalization effort are far more responsible for illegal immigration than corn farmers are. This in turn leads to ignorance of the facts that there are unjustly inequitable wage differentials between the U.S. and Mexico and that there is a disproportionately high demand for unskilled labor in the U.S., and the manipulation of public policy according to the interests of the financial class..


Irrelevant to the issue of illegal immigration.
 
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We have no reason at all to import a lower-class of seasonal workers from other countries while Generation X-Box has the highest unemployment rate in history for young people.

Of course there are reasons. Unemployment will be a perpetual element of capitalism because it's needed as a disciplinary stick to coerce laborers into not shirking inside the workplace. And the U.S. in particular has a disproportionately high demand for unskilled labor. I'd certainly favor examining these fundamental problems in our economic structure before focusing on immigration, but too many have been deluded by propaganda to consider these issues.
 
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