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Why is it a bad law? What if the movement of people is, in many cases, bad for society?
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US states aren’t sovereign countries and don’t have distinct national identities to preserve. That having been said, I do think the US is too big and we would be better off if we were multiple smaller countries.
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Plenty of countries have in fact had controls on internal migration. China still has them today, at least in theory.
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Illinois has borders in the sense of geographic lines on a map, and in the sense of some laws being different in Illinois than its neighbors, but the borders of Illinois (or any US state) don’t really mean all that much, since as you point out they can’t exclude people from entering.
Melania Trump is said to had broken the immigration law !
They don’t have “the same” rights as individual humans, they have many more rights than individual humans, most importantly the right to use force. And that’s because societies are, ultimately, more important than individuals, since individual people can only flourish within the context of a society.
Whether something is “good” or “bad” for society is almost always subjective. Subjective opinions should form no basis for restricting individual liberty (which is of course, my own subjective opinion).
They gave up that sovereignty because of the recognition that they were better off giving it up in exchange for belonging to a union. A worldwide union with free migration could work just as well. We may have a common culture now, but that was not always the case. Do you think Massachusetts and Arizona shared a common culture in 1900?
Totalitarian regimes are always about control. Freedom is more important than control, because life is too short to be bound by any one society’s mores if one does not wish to be.
Being able to define the law within those borders should be sufficient, so long as the law applies equally to all, regardless of national (or state) origin.
Here I entirely agree with you, we should be doing all we can to encourage economic development in Mexico through investment, foreign aid, and yes, buying Mexican goods.
To be clear, why I’m a strong believer in the absolute right of states to control migration in principle (both to keep people from entering, and if necessary to keep them from leaving), whether that right should be exercised in any particular case is a less clear question. I don’t think the answer is always yes, and in particular I don’t, at the moment, have a strong feeling about how much immigration from Mexico or Central America the United States should take.
Do you have the slightest bit of evidence for either of these interesting claims?
And yet, for all its claimed importance, it doesn’t even exist without those individuals. Why should society have the right to use force on someone who has not proven himself a detriment to that society’s peace? Society is incapable of being harmed unless at least one of its members is harmed. In much the same way that the the collective entity that is me does not hurt unless some specific part of me hurts.
Society is of zero import without its members, so to say it is more important than its members just seems like some sort of paradox to me. And again, society is nothing more than an idea. It does not feel, it does not love, nor does it suffer, so why should I esteem it more than I would the individuals that make it up—individuals who do feel, do love, and do suffer?
We’re still discussing legal immigration, right?
Yes. My point is that if you aren’t currently serving a sentence for a crime, you should be able to move wherever you want at will.
Assuming you can afford the house or rent payment. I’m not demanding landlords and homeowners start housing immigrants involuntarily, which is what a lot of people seem to think immigration is, judging by facebook.
It is a bad law for the reasons I already state, notably that moving is a human right. Also, free migration is economically advantageous to society for the same reasons free trade is.
Repealing slavery was bad for the society of the American South, according to the people making the rules. Doesn’t make emancipation wrong. Doesn’t mean those rules were right. Society survived, and the word is a better place now. “Bad for society” is what autocrats and tyrants say when they’ve given up trying to oppose something on its merit. What they really mean is “I don’t like it”.
So you think it should be illegal for people to freely move between US States? :eek: At least you’re consistent.
So the US didn’t have any borders in the 19th century? Or are you just trying to redefine the phrase “national border” to align with your 21st century political stance against human migration?
I first heard about the idea of “liberals” versus “conservatives” when I was a teenager, way back just after we killed off the last brontosauruses.
From the beginning, I saw that the terms were confused and mucked up by more people than had them right. On top of that, people who THINK they are one or the other, are often completely wrong, if you look at what they do and don’t actually believe.
All that means that attributing a particular viewpoint to someone being “liberal” is tricky, at best. The main phenomenon I’ve seen most often, is eager beavers off all sorts, jumping to attack or defend all sorts of things, just because they think they “should,” based not on thinking things through (or on being liberal or conservative), but rather based on their habitual allies or enemies.
I know that I have seen conservatives and liberals alike (actual ones), charge in and make declarations that any CALM AND REASONABLE person would instantly recognize were the opposite of that person’s claimed principles.
In the case of the fight over illegal immigrants, over the years, I’ve seen both “liberals” and “conservatives” take sides opposite to what this thread starter seems to expect, for a variety of reasons. I’ve seen conservatives oppose enabling the INS to go after illegals, not because they were anti-law-and-order, but because they thought that businesses would be too disrupted by the actions. I’ve seen "liberals’ oppose the same thing, not because they opposed law-and-order, but because they worried that the way the proposed details of how the laws were to be enforced, would result in lots of innocent people being stopped and interrogated, just for “looking foreign.”
I’ve also seen plenty of people in the news, who were chosen by the reporters to speak for “liberals” or “conservatives,” say silly or outrageous things. Sometimes, it’s obvious to me at least, that the particular person was suffering from a sort of hyper-something phenomenon, taking an extreme stance in public, more because they were angry at the people who they saw as opponents, than because they really cared that much about the exact concern of the moment.
That’s where I think we get most of the stuff that the OP here refers to.
Discussing anything. There is not a nation on earth (current or historical) that doesn’t trample on human rights, daily. The US is better than some, but you see we’re still talking about keeping it illegal to move here. We’re still murdering black children on an almost daily basis. We’re still filling our prisons with political prisoners who simply had the wrong plant residue on their persons. I could go on literally forever. And we’re still one of the good ones. Most countries are far worse than that.
But yes, extorting the poor of the third world by telling them “want to move? Give us ten thousand dollars, ten years of your life, and more lawyer fees and plane trips than you can count, or else become a felon who can’t vote or work the second you show up” IS a human rights abuse, if you’re keeping score at home.
Nobody is actually for illegal immigration. the question is what to do about it. I’ve always advocated a three-prong approach. First, increased border security, to keep the problem from getting worse. Second, effective action against employers who, as a matter of course, hire illegal aliens. Third, steps to identify, categorize, and deal with the folks that are here in a fashion appropriate to their circumstances. I think that most liberals and most conservatives would be in accord with this general concept but it breaks down when deciding which to prioritize and how to deal with the folks that are here.
That’s funny, because I’d say exactly the same thing about the phrase “human rights”. (I.e. that I generally stop listening to the argument when people invoke ‘human rights’, because it usually indicates that they are unable to actually, you know, make an argument on its merits. Human rights are mostly a legal fiction anyway).
If you want me to be more specific: I want a world in which there are lots of distinct societies which maintain distinct ethnic, genetic, cultural, religious, political, and ideological identities. Maintaining their distinctness means the ability to exclude anyone who doesn’t conform to the kind of society they want to maintain. The existence of cohesive societies- which, to me, is a big part of what makes life worthwhile- depends on the ability of such societies to exclude. At the more prosaic level, I also think social trust and solidarity are good things, and having a diverse society tends to put those things in danger and make people more individualistic.
That being said, I think the negative aspects of mass immigration need to be balanced against the positive aspects (of which there are some, most importantly, in this case, for the Mexicans and Central Americans who would like a better standard of living). I think most societies are probably best off if they stay mostly ethnically homogeneous, but I don’t think all societies need to do so, and in particular I think there’s a lot to be said for the United States serving a role as a worldwide haven for immigrants, and as a destination for people who, for whatever reason, no longer want to live in ther home country. I am very resistant though, to trying to export the US model to other countries.
As for whether the US should have internal migration controls on people moving between states, I don’t really have a position on that. I would just note that plenty of other societies have had such restrictions and generally functioned OK with them.
I think cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants, plus an amnesty + path to citizenship for people who are already here, would be a good idea. (And incidentally, a compromise which public opinion polls suggest would have more than 50% approval).
If you don’t think humans have rights, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re not going to bridge that gap.
I also think your vision of every nation as a bland tundra of cultural sameness leaves a lot to be desired. Again, if you think diversity is a bad thing, I don’t think there will be any meeting of minds here.
That UN resolution just said you need to have the right to* leave your country. In the USA we have that, unlike many other nations. That UN resolution said nothing at all whatsoever* about having the right to enter and reside in any nation of your choosing.
That’s a silly argument. There are (and were) places that don’t let their citizens leave, like North Korea, Cuba, and the former Soviet bloc.
It doesn’t follow that every other country must accept them, if they do manage to leave.
Tell me, if the Smiths kick out their drunken lout of a brother-in-law, are you required to board him?
What does the UN have to do with anything? 
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CoastalMaineiac
Article 13 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Quote:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Borders are definitely an infringement of the right to leave, so long as any state has the authority to deny entry.*
Okay. I mean, the UN can make their own standard, and that’s useful to point to as support in an argument sometimes, but the UN isn’t what determines whether something is a human right or not.
And specifically, what kind of right is it that can easily be infringed by silly loopholes like that? “Oh, we said you had a right to leave, not to actually move anywhere”. That’s like “We said you had a right to vote, not that we are obligated to count it or anything”. You either have a right to move or you don’t. “Right to leave” is pointless by itself. Like the “right to vote by writing your preference on a piece of paper and then throwing it in the trash”, it’s not actually a right at all.