This isn’t a sex abuser saying the victim liked it. It is the simple recognition.
Again I am for the idea that there should be enforcement. And I am for addressing the issues that cause harms before that.
But consent can be over prioritized. If I am drowning and someone pulls me out I am not too worried that I had not consented to their touching me. Extreme version of course. Objecting to consent on principle is fine though.
It’s so extreme I fear it misses the point: this is a situation where the electorate can say, “no, we do not want you to do that; we are hereby withholding consent; you have plenty of time to find out whether we are giving you permission, and we are not in fact giving you permission; we shot a guy yesterday for trying to do what you’re about to try to do today; please stop.”
It’s also worth pointing out that the current system most benefits those who underpay illegal immigrant labour. That situation skews a lot of the discussion.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans broadly continue to think immigration is a good thing for the U.S. (73%), though that share has slipped from a record high of 79% last year. Still, it remains above the 25-year trend average of 67%.
Of course plenty of people “think immigration is a good thing for the U.S.” Even I think immigration “is a good thing for the U.S.” But we’ve chosen to make some of it legal and to make some of it illegal; we’ve officially put that ’a yes to this one and a no to that one’ into place; we’ve decided which individuals to consent to, and which to withhold our consent from.
Per the title of the thread, the question of How Much Is Too Much is answered by saying: However Much We Decide Is Too Much.
Well, more we’ve decided which racial and ethnic groups to consent to, and which to deport to outsourced concentration camps.
“Who do you mean, ‘we,’ kemosabe?”
Trying to use a rape analogy for illegal immigration is stupid, because individuals are not being personally “violated” by illegal immigration, and a country can’t be.
“Being raped is good for you” is a completely unethical statement in the case of an individual, because violating an individual’s bodily autonomy cannot be justified by any alleged or even genuine accompanying benefit.
Violating a country’s laws, on the other hand, is very much a situation where we have to consider unforeseen upsides and advantages of the violation, to determine whether and how the laws should be changed.
Plenty of badly-designed laws actually make conditions worse if everybody strictly obeys them. So we need to be aware of situations where lawbreaking is actually being helpful overall. Instead of frantically blubbering ”Butbutbut you broke the official law that’s officially on the books! We didn’t consent to your breaking the law, so it’s just as though you collectively raped us!!” Bullshit.
Personally, I have no problem with enacting legislative immigration restrictions and (humanely) enforcing them against violators. However, especially because it’s such a complex issue with so many moving parts, I recognize that we have to keep a pragmatic eye on circumstances where enforcing the law is actually doing worse at producing the outcomes we want than violating the law is. Mindlessly clinging to the letter of the law and insisting ”never mind the outcomes, this is the law and you broke it without our consent and that’s bad, end of story” is not a grown-up approach to handling immigration policy.
The more interesting bits in that link are beyond the top line.
To the specific of the thread, overall and among Independents pretty even split between overall amount should be increased, decreased, or kept the same. Big differences between Democrats and Republicans there though!
And this:
Citizenship Pathways More Popular Than Enforcement Measures
Beyond general views on immigration, the telephone poll measured Americans’ support for five specific policy proposals. The highest levels of support are seen for two proposals related to citizenship, with slightly more in favor of allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements (81%) than doing the same for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally (75%). In each case, more Americans “strongly favor” the proposal than just “favor” it.
So if it should be whatever we decide it should be then legalization of those here is what it should be and same or more wins over less.
We murdered a person yesterday without a trial or proof of wrongdoing, because they were “trying to” live here. That’s one step away from “we don’t want your kind here, and have constructed these camps and gas chambers to get rid of you, so you may want to leave before we find you hidden in an attic.”
Which, for the record, we would absolutely do if “enough voters” wanted it.
I don’t believe I made a rape analogy there. You quoted me as saying — in full — that “I’m not really a fan of people doing things while being denied consent, and then insisting that it was, overall, a benefit to those who denied consent.” I said that because it’s true; I’m not really a fan of that, full stop.
Yeah …
So if you are choking and passing out you are not a fan of someone doing the Heimlich on you because you had not given consent?
As interesting as the “what does consent mean, and how much violence is appropriate in response to a lack of consent in any circumstance whatsoever” conversation is, may I gently suggest that it’s got fuckall to do with the OP’s central question?
As the OP I endorse this comment and regret my getting distracted by the aside. Thank you LHOD.
And it remains a stupid analogy for illegal immigration, because violating the immigration laws of a country is not meaningfully comparable to nonconsensually violating the bodily autonomy of an individual. (Which is what is generally meant by, and what you intended us to infer from, the phrasing ”doing things while being denied consent”.)
You made that analogy to have an excuse to ignore the posters who were validly pointing out some of the beneficial aspects of illegal immigration. But it doesn’t hold water, because as I said, nonconsensually violating the bodily autonomy of an individual is such a core infringement that no possible compensating “advantages” should even be considered.
Violating the immigration laws of a country is different. We always need to pay serious attention to the actual outcomes of violating legal restrictions on people’s movements, including advantageous outcomes, because those give us crucial information about whether and how the legal restrictions in question should be changed.
If you still don’t understand that, I won’t repeat it a third time.
We need to pay attention to the will of the people; if you talk about advantageous outcomes, and state that it’s crucial information, I figure that we’re still to defer to the electorate if the reply is, no, we heard what you said — and, really, thanks for bringing it to our attention — but, even taking that into account, we’ve decided not to grant permission; we’ve thought it over, and concluded that the legal restrictions in question should not be changed in the way you propose. Maybe we should make things harsher, though?
Let us make one thing clear- “Illegal aliens” - there is no such criminal law. Undocumented aliens are not criminals.
How are you calculating “the will of the people”? Your own personal feelings? The obviously broken mish mash of laws currently causing most of our problems with immigration? The results of the last election? Poll results?
Obviously it is not clear what “the will of the people” is because, I don’t know, the fact that we’ve been arguing about this topic for DECADES with no resolution. If the will of the people was clear, then we would not currently be having this debate, because all of us are people, and we all have feelings, therefore no one person gets to claim that they represent “the will of the people”. This is the flaw of the nation as a house metaphor. We, as a nation of 350 million people do not have one “will” on this topic, the way a single homeowner does about who is welcome in their home.
I really think continuously using the phrase “the will of the people” in support of your views is quite presumptuous. None of us represent “the will of the people” by ourselves.
See the Gallup poll: it appears the will of the people is overwhelmingly a path to citizenship for many of those you object to as here without consent, and for at least the same amount of immigration overall.
Since what should be is what most want do you then agree that such is what should be?
I don’t think I did it continuously; did I use it more than once?
And what I mean by it isn’t my views; I’d vote to make things harsher. My point is that the existing laws — not just for immigration, but, y’know, you name it — are meant to result from elected officials (a) representing their constituents or (b) getting voted out of office, so their replacements can reflect the electorate’s consensus about the issues of the day, what with governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and thus and such.