No it isn’t. Governments can’t own property legitimately not because they are organizations, but because they acquire property through violent expropriation instead of voluntary exchange or homesteading. Corporations do not deploy violence to acquire property. If they do, the facts of the matter are settled in a court.
You can kind of see why Norway is cool with anyone (generally Russians) settling in Svaldbard.
I don’t think this is applicable to, oh, say the US as a whole. Or even the rest of Norway…
Your opinion is duly noted. As is the case in all countries, it is rejected as being inconsistent with accepted norms.
As for the basic question, it appears to me that the question is asking whether or not the concept of adverse possession should be applied to issues of residency. That is, if I manage to avoid deportation, or if I am legally present in a country I am not a citizen of, is there some point at which my adverse residency must be given legal status as a basic right of my humanity?
I think that’s not going to be an accepted position of any country. One of the basic ideas of nationhood (as noted upthread by AK84 is that nations get to establish the rules by which you can enter and reside. We can get into a discussion of whether or not a nation has the right to terminate citizenship, but I don’t think any nation will give up the right to terminate legal residency, and certainly not the right to reject those resident without permission.
Out of curiosity, does the OP have any rationale for why a “right” to remain in a country you have resided in for a period of time should exist?
No, I don’t see that it becomes any less wrong just because they do more of it.
But the topic isn’t about the US as a whole. Or even the rest of Norway.
Well, yes, on one level.
But on another level we need to dig a bit deeper. Suppose a nation-state enacts a law saying that, e.g., Jews are stripped of citizenship or any other status they may possess which permits residence, and therefore have no right to reside in the country. If we see rights as purely the outcome of positive law, then these Jews now have no right to reside in the country. But if we see rights as moral claims antecedent to positive law, and as standards against which positive law can be judged, then we would probably say that this Jews do have a right to reside in the country, and the recently-enacted law can be criticised for infringing that right.
You can apply exactly the same analysis to laws dealing with rights of residence for people who have migrated into the country. You can argue that when people have formed attachments, put down roots, made a contribution to society, etc for long enough, they have a moral claim to be allowed to continue to participate in the community of which they are now members, and the community has a moral obligation not to exclude them from doing so. And it’s the boundaries of that moral claim which the OP invites exploration of.
That’s impossible in many cases. There is no legal avenue, for example, for an average Mexican to legally immigrate to the United States. The same is true for people who want to immigrate to America from China, India, the Philippines, and a number of other countries.
Both statements are equally true.
My point is that a country can establish any law it likes in regards to immigration and citizenship. Saying that nobody has a right to become a citizen because the law doesn’t give them that right is begging the question. Change the law and you’ve established the right. You can’t argue that something should be illegal because it’s against the law.
Interesting how the fourth largest ethnic group in Svalbard (after Norwegians, Russians, and Ukrainians) are Thais.
Not always; they can also acquire it due to lack of claimants or, in the case of monarchies, the personal property of a lord (who did not necessarily acquire it through violent means*) becomes the country.
- Very often when there is a mess whomever acts like he knows what to do (that is, the first person to start giving orders that are not completely imbecilic) is instantly In Charge. If that was solved satisfactorily, people start coming to that person for advice. Eventually that’s the person who gets people brought to when a traveler says “bring me to your leader”. One of the roots of the feudal system was the recognition of people like this; it wasn’t always (like people tend to think) conquest or royal appointment.
The legal steps thing can be enormously difficult for refugees. If your house was in flames, would you stop to pick up your diplomas? If you spend seven years in five refugee camps in countries bordering yours, where do you get those diplomas certified by your country’s ministry of education? Many of the refugees currently in Europe are educated people who in peacetime would have been able to immigrate directly to our middle or upper-middle classes, but who right now don’t have a way to prove that they’re more than a pair of hands because the procedure for that is completely paper-based; any merits-based procedures are closed to them. Some countries have been better at finding alternate ways through this (Germany) than others (I’m looking at us, Spain).
Not when they committed the original sin of violating our laws. This doesn’t mean I oppose amnesty, just that it isn’t “deserved” or “earned”. Much like Christians believe in salvation it’s a gift from us to them that they did nothing to earn and could have never done anything to earn.
As for the OP, the answer is obvious and there is only one: voters have an absolute right to decide who is a citizen, who is a permanent resident, who can stay temporarily, and who can’t come at all.
This is a fair point that is often made, but it’s not nearly as clever as its proponents think. People ARE illegal in terms of being illegal residents, illegal workers, etc. And what do you do with people who are illegal? Do you punish them? Jail them? No, you put them where they are legally supposed to be.
Now if we’re conceding that these people are committing an illegal act, then that changes things, but not in a way you’d probably like.
I think current law already gets that right. If you come here illegally, you will never be safe. Your children, however, who you gave birth to here, are citizens. We hold the people who commit crimes responsible. Not their descendants.
Almost all land on Earth that is owned by anybody, be it a private person, corporation, or government, was acquired through violence and/or theft if you go back far enough.
That’s a milquetoast liberal position in a world where right-libertarians argue that open borders are an assault on private property. A hardcore position is that immigrants, feminists, socialists, and other collectivists must be purged to establish and protect a right-libertarian society. Reading the more vicious tendencies in the movement is interesting because they seemed to have, quite by accident, re-invented and argue old leftist topics such as the vanguard party, dekulakization, dictatorship of the proletariat, and socialism/libertarianism in one country.
Yeah, private property relations requires state violence to maintain. When the European explorers set out they didn’t find the world dotted with ancap tribes.
But your sole objection to them being here is that they entered the country illegally? If that law was changed and they were able to enter the country legally, you’d have no problem with those same people residing and living in the United States?
I don’t really have much of an opinion on what our immigration laws should be. I lean towards lots of immigration, as I think it makes our country stronger as long as we aren’t spending money on people en masse with Medicaid and food stamps. The reason why it’s not really something on the table is that first, the public wants less immigration, not more:
So we should maintain current OFFICIAL immigration levels, while reordering our priorities to meet demand a little better, and also our country’s needs. And between E-verify and enough agents and courts, we can make sure we never have millions of illegal immigrants again.
In other words, my objection has little to do with the immigrants themselves and more to do with mass disrespect for our laws and politicians who believe the public needs to be lied to for our own good.
Exactly. Now you can argue that the rules should be relaxed or interpreted liberally. That’s a seperate question from whether there should be rules at all.
Applies to Little Nemo’s observations as well.