I’m talking about the OP. Just saying that if you accuse Christians of being hypocrites, it helps if you aren’t being a hypocrite in the process. YMOV, because you agree with him politically. If you didn’t, you’d be making the same argument I am.
In the end the argument you are making is helping hate groups, just saying.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/21/us-news-ignores-racist-ties-and-history-of-nati/192755
Virtually all the kids we are talking about are Christian too.
The difficulty is that there is a technical definition and a colloquial definition. For the purposes of defining immigrants as illegal you rely on the technical definition under which the following statement holds
- Anyone who breaks a law (such as an undocumented immigrant) is a criminal criminals
Then there is the colloquial definition of criminal (see definition 4 which I notice you conveniently left out), and which is entirely based on morality. In fact (in spite of what Bricker might say) under this definition an act need not even break a law. “The amount they are charging for a soda at this concert is criminal!” Under this definition the following statement holds.
-
All criminals are bad people
It is not the case that both statements are true for the same definition. But by shifting the understanding of what it means to be a criminal between the technical definition in the first statement and the colloquial understanding of the second statement you can by slight of hand Reach the following conclusion. -
All undocumented immigrants are bad people
The practice by those on the right of focusing on the word “illegal” is not out of a desire for technical correctness, but instead is clearly designed to promote this faulty line of reason in the listener. You will notice for example how those that call undocumented immigrants illegals fail to use that same term when referring to say Christian Missionaries in Saudi Arabia, or journalists in North Korea.
No shit.
.
Under the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR) it is only after they have been determined not to be genuine refugees that they become “illegal” aliens.
A refugee has the right to be free from penalties pertaining to the illegality of their entry to or presence within a country, if it can be shown that they acted in good faith- that is, if the refugee believes that there was ample cause for their illegal entry/presence, i.e. to escape threats upon their life or freedom, and if they swiftly declare their presence.
This right is protected in Article 31:
"The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.
As has been said the use of the term illegal is designed to increase hatred/intolerance.
I heard that reported, but didn’t pause to wonder about it, that these kids were surrendering themselves immediately to whatever authority is at hand. Clearly, then, they are not like such persons as seek to evade detection long enough to get some work, make a few bucks for the people back home. For those people, getting caught and sent back is a bump in the road, part of the deal.
For these kids, its a much more serious set of consequences if they are turned away, yet they declare themselves refugees by their actions, and more or less throw themselves on our mercy.
Now, it is possible that the conditions are exaggerated, that the gang stresses they face are no more lethal than a dinner theater production of West Side Story. But the desperation of their risk taking testifies convincingly to the sincerity of their motive.
Except that none of that confusion concerning “criminal” and it’s two definitions exists when using the phrase “illegal immigrant.” That statement is unambiguous: a person who violated the laws concerning immigration.
What, specifically, are these immigrants fleeing?
Your argument is that members of the First Church Of I Don’t Wanna Go To Nam were excused (having shown sincerity of belief) without inquiry into whether they were actually following the stated tenets of a set of existing religious doctrines? 'Cause that’s not how I remember it.
Now, if your argument is simply “public policy is based on unprincipled catering to whoever can pull enough strings”, fine. I’ve known this to be the case for some time, particularly where religious claims are concerned (as I recall, everything logically followed when I contemplated the irrationality of prison “religious accommodations” for people who wouldn’t be in prison in the first place if they’d followed the most elementary rules of their professed faith).
What do you remember? Certainly some inquiry into sincerity of religious claims would allow looking at past conduct, and a finder of fact could certainly use a total lack of evidence as reason to deny a claim.
But I think your memory is faulty. In Gillette v. United States, Gillette claimed exactly what you highlight above: a religious objection to the Vietnam War.
But we can certainly make room for the concept that, having been imprisoned, a person turns to religion anew (and sincerely) as a form of comfort.
Thanks, my friend.
And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor.
Wouldn’t it be easier to bring America to them?
It is our destiny. Manifest, even.
It occurred to me during the night that “undocumented” has the virtue of specifying the nature of the illegality in question.
Specificity is often a good thing, no?
That’s not exactly correct. The term is used to describe illegal immigrants even if they have been documented in some way – for example, a person subject to a deportation order has been documented by that order. If the term were applied only to persons without documentation, I could see it.
That just adds a step.
- all illegal immigrants broke the law
- all those who break the law are criminals
- all criminals are immoral
so
- all undocumented immigrants are immoral
Again I’m less bothered by the use of illegal immigrants than I am about just calling them Illegals, but the goal is still to imply that they are by nature immoral.
If you don’t want to bring libertarians into it, then don’t use their buzzwords. As was said earlier by myself and many others, the term “illegals” is used to stir up fear and hatred. Sometimes they’re called “illegal aliens” to drive home that “they’re not one of us”, perhaps to the point of being less than human.
Because they had a high risk of dying in the crossfire of gang warfare in their countries of origin? Because it’s the American drug appetite that provides the fuel for the fires they are fleeing?
Let’s use Syrian refugees as a reference.
Over a million have poured into Lebanon, a nation with much less wealth than the US. Over 600,000 into Jordan, over 500,000 into Turkey, over 200,000 into Iraq. Do people in these nations show up at the border and scream racial epithets at them? Do these nations have a political party that tries to stir up fear and hatred of these refugees? No. There’s a simple reason for that. They don’t have Teabaggers. These countries have much less room and much fewer resources than the US, but they’ve taken in these refugees without fucking whining about it.
I agree with you that “illegals,” is not proper usage, but I don’t agree that “illegal immigrants,” has an impermissible inference attached to it. It’s true that there’s an automatic implication of immoral activity when we hear of a criminal act, but that’s because, in general (and contrary to an often-repeated refrain here at the SDMB) we do tend to associated following the law with morality and breaking the law with immorality.
Still, there are plenty of individual instances where criminal acts are worn as badges of honor – being arrested for apartheid protests, for trespassing when the goal was to protest nuclear weapons, for unlawful assembly protesting Walmart labor conditions – all of these kinds of acts don’t suffer from quite the same infirmity.
So I’d say the problem rests with the illegal immigrants, not those who use the phrase “illegal immigrants.” The conduct being described is clear; any moral repudiation is not achieved through trickery.
**These **are the people I was referring to. Not people who just want a better life in the US.
Fine, we agree that drug traffickers and murderers should be kept out. I don’t see anyone arguing on their behalf.