Conservatives on immigration are the most vicious people on earth

The BBQ Pit
141

It isn’t known how many of the total immigrant population arrived legally vs. crossed the border without permission. What we currently know as fact is based on relatively recent increased tracking of visa overstays. By estimates, the number for the total population shouldn’t be all that lopsided toward illegal entry over overstayed visa. Are you trying to argue that the number is 0? Because otherwise any argument you’re making is totally irrelevant anyway.

For the question of a term becoming considered to be an offensive slur it wouldn’t matter if it was 2%. It still could become an offensive slur. Respecting the sensibilities of a minority class pretty obviously can’t be based on them being a majority.

You still can’t assume that any one unauthorized immigrant is a criminal based on the idea that at least some of them must be, or that just because they are working they necessarily falsified any documents. Do I understand correctly that you are or were a criminal defense lawyer? It seems very odd to need to explain this to you in that case.

Besides coming with their own savings or finding a bag of money on the ground, there are a whole lot of other possibilities that don’t involve fraudulent papers.
Maybe someone is paying them to do day jobs without doing any identity check or reporting. Maybe they are self-employed. Maybe they live with family or friends who are legal residents or citizens. Maybe they collect cans and turn them in to recycling centers.

You’re already swimming upstream by arguing in favor of a term that is well on its way out of polite use regardless of any arguments against it. But the argument that “Some of them must be doing something illegal so it’s accurate to call them all illegal.” is still remarkably stupid.

142

I’m arguing that the number is below 50%, as the cite you yourself offered shows it to be. And since it’s below 50%, the claims above that a majority of illegal immigrants are not guilty of any crime is false.

That’s what I’m arguing.

What??? A mere 2% can cause a term to be considered an offensive slur?

Then why not 1%? 0.1%?

No, no, I completely reject that claim. It cannot possibility the case that the definitive declaration of an offensive slur can rest on such slim grounds.

What’s the authority for this claim? Ate you simply making up rules?

Yes, yes, again I agree that’s possibly true for any given individual. but you cannot possibly want me to take seriously the claim that it’s likely to be true for the vasy majority.

Do you genuinely believe this is true for the vast majority?

I say that it’s correct to refer to a person who is in the country without lawful authorization for that presence as an illegal immigrant. Each one is illegally here, by definition. They are immigrants, by definition.

143

I eagerly anticipate seeing your posts peppered with “spics” and “wops” and “niggers” and “kikes” and “micks” and “chinks” and “gooks”.

144

Here’s where I believe this type of thinking is inevitably leading:

145

You’re just willfully refusing to see the forest for the trees. It wouldn’t matter if I said “a lot of…” instead of “half of…”, or even “some percentage of…” you’re still classifying an entire group of people with a term that is undoubtedly incorrect in more than zero cases. And better than more than zero it’s even fair to say a “lot” or even “millions.”

Of course it can. What percentage of the population was black when “colored” became a slur or Asian when “oriental” did. What percentage of the population is gay, Irish, or Japanese? Why would you think that if a group makes up only a small percentage of a population that alone would be a justifiable reason for not respecting their sensibilities?

146

And another:

The school was never able to articulate what, precisely, was being appropriated.

Perhaps Crazyhorse complained.

Did you do that, Crazyhorse? Did you insist that just because you were offended at “Bad(minton) and Boujee,” that the kids had to cancel their event? Was it your 0.1% theory being tested?

147

Wrong.

If a person is here unlawfully, then they are an illegal, if non-criminal, immigrant.

Explain how that’s factually incorrect.

Because it takes a majority to agree to shift perception. It has nothing to do with the size of the population described; ot has to do with the size of the population using the language.

You want to take a minority view and transform it into a majority one by insisting and shaming. “Decent people don’t use ‘illegal immigrant’ as a term,” you insist.

I don’t concede you get to define decency for the country. Neither does the country.

148

So by your way of thinking it isn’t a slur to use the terms homo or wetback either. Because after all technically a gay person is homosexual, and it shouldn’t matter if the term has been used pejoratively to the point that gays are offended by it since they are just a minority anyway. And out of all the undocumented immigrants in the united states surely at least some of them literally got their backs wet swimming across a river.

Your arguments on this subject have become patently absurd instead of the mere ignorant drivel they were a few posts ago. Good luck with your continued use of a slur until the social shift toward seeing it as unacceptable in all circles makes it clearer to those who don’t realize that you’re just using it to be a dick.

149

I didn’t say that – you have done valiant battle against, and defeated, a strawman.

Notice the difference here between “illegal immigrant,” which is undeniably true and accurate for every immigrant here illegally – and “wetback,” which is not.

“Homo,” is not an accurate word so much as it’s a prefix for a number of words, but standing on its own cannot be defended as accurate.

But “homosexual,” is an accurate word, and while it’s rather dispassionately clinical, I don’t agree it’s a slur.

Notice how my responses address your actual claims, and yours require that you make up things?

150

The point is still missed, that is for the courts to decide, not someone that decides (for example) in a parking lot that it should be OK to raise a mob against someone that the one using the slur ends it up directing it to a legal resident or citizen also.

151

No it isn’t. Not by the intended use of the word illegal as an attempt to imply a violation of a criminal law. We’ve come full circle. And you’ll be wrong at the end again no matter how many times we go around it.

152

Basic moral decency–something you appear to have a massive problem with. You really need to fix that.

153

That’s a bizarre anticipation. And now I’m triggered from seeing such a concentration of hate speech. Actually, I’m not triggered. Because they are just words. Words I’ve heard in music, read in books, and seen in movies for decades. Not phased one bit.

Just because those words don’t bother me doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to use them if such usage is counterproductive. But I’m also not going to correct my former, older black neighbors who uses the word “colored.” They must not have gotten the memo from PC Weekly.

Even in the Pit you have to have noticed that I don’t even use much profanity. It’s unnecessary for what I want to say to be free with vulgarities.

But anyways back to your so-called logic. It’s a huge fallacy to come to the conclusion that because I support freedom of speech that I personally engage in every possible permutation of speech. I support freedom of religion even if I think many aspects of religion are straight up retarded. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to eat a pork chop just because some random fool thinks doing so is a ticket to Hell.

Since when is homosexual a slur? Or is it just the shortened version? And by that logic why isn’t Jew a slur?

What are your moral axioms you are deriving the stance that the US should have open borders and unlimited immigration?

154

Another strawman defeated.

I’m not arguing that it’s accurate to choose an individual in a parking lot and call that person an illegal immigrant.

I’m arguing that, in aggregate, it is appropriate to use the words “illegal immigrants,” to refer to the class of persons that are present in the country without either being a U.S. citizen or having a lawful immigration or non-immigration status.

It’s also appropriate to refer to an individual as an illegal immigrant if that particular person is present in the country without either being a U.S. citizen or having a lawful immigration or non-immigration status.

OK? Do you understand?

155

And who anointed you as the authority on decency? Why should I accept your decision on the matter?

156

Sorry, I’m going to short circuit it this time: I don’t agree that “illegal,” implies a crime.

We speak confidently about “illegal waste disposal,” when we’re discussing civil violations of EPA regulations. Trump’s lease of the Old Post Office Pavilion was said to be “illegal,” when discussing the argument that the lease forbid any party leasing the property from being a federal official. None of those are crimes; all of them are common uses of the term.

In fact, in recent discussions of United Airlines’ actions, there was little hesitation to call them the “illegal” removal of a boarded passenger when the issue was a civil breach of the Code of Federal Regulations, and it seems to me you took the opposite position when arguing with manson1972: he insisted that “illegal” should mean crime, and you argued that civil breaches also counted. Am I mistaken?

In this post, for example, manson1972 spams a litany of “That does not make something illegal,” in arguing that “illegal” should be synonymous with criminal, and you dispute his approach.

Well?

157

And no one objects to that, as long as bringing people on board is done legally. In other words, they come up the gangplank with a ticket rather than climbing up the anchor chain and stowing away.

158

Do you understand that I was referring to the ones on your chosen tribe that do use it against an individual when there is no finding of their legal status? Indeed I was not saying that you did, so I was the one doing the defeat of your straw man.

And you do not read what I cite, you useless straw man builder, the AP cite did say that

“use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.” My point was indeed about what is happening to many immigrants, regardless of status. If you are still rolling on the hay, what I’m saying also is that as a class it can be used, but it does become a slur at the personal level.

159

I’m not at all sure where “illegal immigrant” or “illegal” fall on the “black”/“colored person”/“darkie”/“coon”/“nigger” scale, but the above argument is just silly, because it could be used any time anyone uses any noun to refer to people.

If I call someone a “painter”, or “murderer”, or “Jew” or “genius”, or any number of other words, that doesn’t acknowledge whether they’re a mother or father, sister or brother. So? Presumably, in the context of that discussion, the important question is whether they can paint things, or have committed murder, or are Jewish, etc.

Similarly, it’s entirely reasonable (and in fact, at times necessary) to say things like “with the total number of illegal immigrants residing in Peoria rising from 10,000 in 1994 to 15,000 in 1997, some statistic measured by some blah blah blah”. That’s a discussion of illegal immigrants, and in the context of that discussion, the important quality distinguishing illegal immigrants from others is that they’re illegal immigrants. And while using language to divide people into groups is what bigots and racists do, it’s also what EVERYONE does all the time. It’s very very hard to talk about people at all without making distinctions that don’t specifically acknowledge “oh, and also, all the people I just put into a group are also fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers”…

Now, it’s possible that “illegal immigrant” has become too offensive to use. But if so, that’s just because it’s used in individually offensive contexts, not because it somehow denies that people are mothers or fathers. ALL words do that, which means that NO words do that (with very few generally contrived exceptions).

As for “illegal”, while I can certainly believe it used sneeringly in some contexts, I can imagine using it as purely a conversational abbreviation when illegal immigration is already being discussed. And again, my position is that it might be offensive because it’s used offensively frequently. But that’s not something inherent in the “dehumanizing” quality of the word, that’s just based on usage.

160

Do you know who else was called all four of those?