I honestly don’t understand the moral outrage about undocumented immigrants. I don’t care. I don’t care if they come to make a better life for themselves. More power to 'em. I don’t care if more people in the US speak Spanish. Or French. Or German. Or Vietnamese. It’s no big deal to me. Why SHOULD it offend me? Our immigration policy has been pretty racist since at least the late 19th Century. Fuck it.
But that seems inaccurate; some of them are documented, aren’t they? Isn’t it a common refrain that visa overstays are a big portion of what we’re talking about: folks who came here, with documentation, and stuck around past the expiration date? Such that they may have the documents in question on them as we speak, thereby making it relatively easy to ascertain their legal status?
Reported.
You are saying you don’t understand why nations have an interest in controlling their own borders? That’s a naive stance.
No, he’s not saying that at all. There is no inconsistency between his statement and a recognition of the need for controlling borders.
While some conservatives like to mischaracterize the liberal position as advocating open borders, i’ve barely heard a single person in the whole debate over immigration argue for just opening the gates and letting anyone in.
I consider myself a leftist, and i believe that it is proper and appropriate for nations to police their borders, for reasons related to security and to economic issues like employment, among other considerations. I also believe, in the United States, that a significant proportion of our attention to border control needs to be focused on the border with Mexico, precisely because, in terms of sheer volume, that’s where the largest number of potential unauthorized entries are likely to occur.
At the same time, though, just like jayjay, i can’t muster any moral outrage about those who do manage to slip through. I understand why they do it, and in their position i might be tempted to do it myself. I don’t believe that they pose any sort of existential threat to the nation, and in many ways they contribute greatly, both economically and socially, to the United States. I understand why we can’t just let in anyone who wants to come, and i also recognize that there are some valid arguments to be made that immigration can place downward pressure on wages and economic opportunity for domestic workers in certain industries and under certain circumstances. But that doesn’t make them bad or dangerous people, and it doesn’t justify using disproportionate measures to keep them out, such as building a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle on the border, or spending billions more on the Border Patrol.
And i have no time at all for those whose anti-immigrant position is rooted in ideas about cultural invasion and the decline of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America. Because make no mistake, while it might not be the only, or even the dominant position among the anti-immigrant brigade, that sort of xenophobia and nativism represents an important strand of anti-immigrant ideology.
I’m an immigrant. I’ve lived in the United States for about one-third of my life now, but i still speak with my foreign accent, and it’s obvious to anyone who talks to me for more than 15 seconds that i’m not a native-born American.
In the fifteen-plus years i’ve been in the United States, not a single person has asked me what the hell i’m doing here, or accused me of taking a job from an American, or suggested that i go back to my own country. And yet i know people here in San Diego County, where i live, who have been confronted with exactly those sorts of questions and accusations in grocery stores and supermarkets and gymnasiums and doctors’ waiting rooms and airports. Often just by random strangers who noticed a strange accent combined with brown skin, and took it upon themselves to come to America’s defense.
I guess it’s possible that i’ve just been lucky. But it seems more likely to me that the reason i’ve never been hassled is because of my white skin, and the fact that my accent is from Australia, and not Mexico or El Salvador or China or Somalia or India or Argentina. If i left the United States tomorrow, there would be other people who could slot quite easily into my job. You could argue that i’m taking a job from an American in exactly the same way as a short-order cook or a field worker or a computer programmer or a bio-tech researcher is. But no-one cares about that when you’re white and from a place considered to be culturally similar to America; in fact, the main reaction i get from people is “Wow, Australia. I’ve always wanted to go there!”
Go ahead and call me an ill eagle. I’m feeling rather birdlike and not perfectly well today.
“Illegal” is far more inaccurate, since so many (most, even) have not been convicted of any crime, and many may have a legal status (refugee status, for example) that they are unaware of unless and until they gain skilled legal representation.
But, again, how is that relevant?
When I refer to murderers, I don’t mean to limit it to people who’ve been convicted of murder; I mean to encompass everyone who’s committed murder. I use that word because I need a term that means “both those murderers who’ve been convicted of murder, and those murderers who haven’t” – and, well, “murderer” fits.
Now, if I wanted to refer only to one subset or the other, I would; but sometimes I do want to refer to both, and so I mundanely do so.
I do this a lot; don’t most people? If you hear that a business loses a certain amount of merchandise to shoplifters every year, would you interrupt to angrily protest that we shouldn’t lump convicted shoplifters in with those who get away with it? If a guy patiently explains to you that he committed rape, would you wag your finger at him to insist that where there is no conviction there is no rape?
Let me see if I got this straight.
When California (home of Google, Disney, etc., and 6th largest economy in the world if it were an independent country) and New York (home of Wall St. etc.) secede and no longer have right-wingers watching out for them, they will crumple. Alabama, Mississippi and the rest of Trumpia, freed from the libtard yoke, will bloom. Is that about it?
Bartender, Give me whatever Pepper’s drinking. 
(And hold on to my car keys for me.)
I’m willing to concede, for the sake of this argument, that you might be telling the truth. You might have run into one or two people that actually, really, truly do believe in completely open borders. There are certainly some such people around. You can even find essays they’ve written on the internet.
Now show me some evidence for where this sort of ideology has had any impact whatsoever on Democratic Party pronouncements, on Democratic Party platforms, on Democratic Party voting patterns, and on Democratic Party policy formation. You can’t, because it simply isn’t there.
Obama and the Democrats, for two years, held the White House and both houses of Congress. Why didn’t they pass some massive amnesty? Why didn’t they drastically cut the Border Patrol? Why was Obama known by immigration activists, for much of his Presidency, as the Deporter in Chief?
Very few Americans, including very few Democrats, believe in open borders. I live less than 15 miles from the Mexican border. I have friends who came here from Mexico, and i teach at a university where some of our students are undocumented immigrants who have benefited from the DACA program. Many of my colleagues are leftsist immigration activists, with a deep concern for the immigrant communities (documented and undocumented). And for all the discussions i’ve been involved in on the issue of immigration over the past seven or eight years, i can count on one hand the number of people i’ve met who even hinted that they would support an open border policy.
And all of this shows in government actions. About the most radical step that Obama took on immigration was to put in place a program to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children. That’s about it. Big fucking deal. Not sending people back to a country that they barely even know, and where they haven’t lived since they were young kids, should be the minimum concession a civilized country is prepared to make, not the maximum it’s willing to do.
So in your first paragraph you talk about sheer numbers. Don’t you think that sheer numbers and geographic proximity have something to do with the concern of immigration? Furthermore, there has been quite a bit of gleeful talk about demographic change and what that means for voting in the US. Do you not think that there is a rational reaction to that?
If California was an independent country and had open borders how do you think it would work? Better hope those folk can build power and desalination plants.
If not open borders what sort of actual controls and numbers are being advocated by the left?
So jayjay makes a general comment about not understanding the “moral outrage about undocumented immigrants.”
Then you, being either a douche, or dishonest, or both, suggest that this means he wants open borders.
Then, after i explain to you that this is probably not what he meant at all, and that the left does not generally want open borders, and explain some of my own thinking on immigration, you now want me to give you a rundown of the various liberal and leftist immigration policies in the United States?
You sure have a lot of criticisms over something you apparently know nothing about. Why don’t you piss off and educate yourself about the sorts of immigration proposals the left has been making, instead of engaging in a game of “shift the goalposts” around here?
None of this justifies calling anyone by a slur like “illegal” (and like it or not, that word has become a slur) anymore than it does a slur like wetback. Why not just refrain from calling people slurs?
I don’t want “open borders”. There’s a lot of ground between open borders and a wall. I want to get rid of national origin as a criterion for legal entry. I have no problem with background checks and vetting and all of that. National origin as a criterion for legal entry has a long racist history in this country and the whole concept feels immoral.
So Pepper’s political argument is correct because Southern California is a natural desert.
Uh … Got it, I guess?
Well, you are making predictions. And those predictions are based on a very poor understanding of your political opponents.
First you made an implication, then you denied that you made the implication, and now you are admitting it. Make up your mind.
You are wrong. “want illegals to stay” is different than reforming immigration programs and creating a path to amnesty and citizenship.
You have extremely poor comprehension skills, as you are miles from understanding me correctly.
Once again, you show off your lack of comprehension and reading skills. Do you think that your quote there is accurate? If so, you are stupid, if not, then you knew that you were being dishonest when you quoted it. Note that there is a prepositional phrase that modifies that sentence that you for some odd reason left off. Stupidity or dishonesty, I cannot tell for sure, but in either case, it does show why you have such difficulty understanding things.
As such crackdowns on undocumented immigrants inevitably end up violating the rights of citizens, it is obvious that it is okay with you, becuase those are not important citizens, they are just hispanics to you, even if their families were here before Columbus brought smallpox to the new world.
“Papers please” laws violate the rights of citizens, and yet are the only method of “cracking down” on undocumented immigrants.
Unfortunately, I cannot respond to this, as it is only your poor reading comprehension or dishonest rhetoric that leads you to make this sentence. Try again.
My implication is, you are either incredibly stupid, partisan, or a troll (or all three). You have simply made up the positions that you believe that I and others take, either that or spectacularly misunderstood them to the point where I have to wonder what is wrong with your head.
I would suggest you re-think things, but you would be using the same brain that has lead you to make shit up to think about, so I don’t know if it would do any good. The only suggestion I can make is to try to pay attention to things and be a bit observant. Don’t assume that the other person is wrong from the get-go, and then assume that they said things that were wrong. Try actually paying attention to what they say, and then respond to that.
You are so far off the mark it would be funny except it is just #sad.
I’ll give you a hint, I said, “Do you want to come here and make a better life for you and your family?”(along with other things in that post you probably ignored as well, but we’ll start here), which is different from what you are implying I said. It’s subtle, maybe, but I’m sure you can figure it out. Try looking at the paraphrases that you have spat at me, and what they have different from what I actually said.
So,m you call someone who breaks a law by murder a murderer, someone who breaks a law by raping a rapist, someone who breaks a law by arson an arsonist, someone that breaks a law by littering a litterer. That’s consistent. You are referring to them by the specific law or catagory of laws that they broke. So, do you refer to someone who has immigrated without proper documentation as an undocumented immigrant? No, you refer to them as an illegal. That’s not consistent, so you cannot try to use your argument there to justify your use of a slur, in fact, the argument you just used there, where you claim to refer to law breakers by the laws they broke contradicts your use of the word “illegal” to refer to a person who broke immigration law.
So, nice attempt at justification, but it really just shows that you are not just a shitty person, you are also shitty at logic.
Well, what’s to stop you – or a guy like you – from asking me to refrain the next time? Let’s say I once again make reference to shoplifters; and let’s also say that someone steps in to say That Word Is A Slur, and so Why Not Just Refrain?
And what can I say, in reply, to that? “Oh, hey, I agreed to iiandyiiii’s point back in November; and, shucks, this seems significantly similar to that; so now I guess I’ve got to refrain from saying that about shoplifters, because, hey, who wouldn’t recoil from that accurate term as if it were a slur?”
And if someone – maybe you, or maybe someone like you – later takes me to task for mentioning that convicted felons are “convicted felons”, then what can I say in reply to that? “Gosh, I did sign on for the Just Refrain From Slurs agenda; and you seem to be right about whether convicted felons would feel it’s a slur to be referred to as what they are; and so, once more, I am to trade away accuracy.”
Now, don’t get me wrong; even if I knew where to stop, I’d see no point in starting. But the fact remains that I wouldn’t know where to stop; it’s bad enough in its own right, but there’s presumably no end to the number of accurate terms that could be taken as slurs precisely because they’re true, and why give them all up?
Instead, if illegals find their status to be a slur, why shouldn’t they abandon it?
Well that escalated. Funny how people never want to give a concrete or even an approximate number when denying the advocation of open borders.
That seems a fair and reasonable point. I don’t think national origin test is intrinsically immoral though.
Politics don’t exist in a vacuum. And all those people who like to brag about California’s economy and relative power like to conveniently forget many facts which make it so.
You hit people over the head with your paper towel tubes? :barf:
You could use the exact same logic to continue calling them wetbacks, or any other slur. It’s bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now. Slurs aren’t slurs because one guy says they’re a slur – they’re slurs because they’re used, over and over again, by many people, in a very negative and derogatory fashion against another group. “Illegal” has become one, whether you like it or not. “Shoplifter” is not. Lots of people call kids “illegals”, even when those kids have done nothing wrong. That’s a slur. If you continue to use it, but rationalize “well I don’t call kids that word”, then you’re just rationalizing using bigoted slurs for your own purposes.
This isn’t that hard. I think you’re trying to pretend it is, but it’s not. Using slurs is a shitty thing to do, and it’s entirely unnecessary. It’s just a handy way to dehumanize.