Look! A protester in my yard, wheres my gun.

The BBQ Pit
41

Well, then don’t make claims about something that can’t possibly be proven.
**

And it’s a good thing you’re not advancing that particular argument, because I would indeed ridicule you. It’s “common knowledge” that Mikey of Life Cereal fame died by mixing Pop Rocks and Pepsi. It’s “common knowledge” that blacks tend to be criminals. Hell, the proponents of this latter argument can even point to some statistics to “prove” their point, which is one better than you can do. The proponents of the former argument can give anecdote after anecdote, shit like “My cousin John knew Mikey’s mom’s aerobic instructor, and she said it’s true.” Both of these viewpoints are as unsupported as yours.
**

Oh, I see, I just need to start posting anecdotes, and then I “win.” Or better yet, get lots of people to post their anecdotes, and I’ll not only win, I’ll make you look bad. How much sense would it make for me to say, “Anecdotes prove shit. Now, I submit some anecdotes for your approval…”?
**

While I appreciate the amateur psych analysis, don’t quit your day job. No, I’ve never had an illegal immigrant steal my job, or my admission slot at college, or my car stereo, or anything. But thanks for playing.
**

Well, as has already been pointed out, this is a pretty silly question, as they became criminals the second they crossed the border. Do I have any cites showing they’re criminals beyond the border jumping? Why should I do your work for you? You made the opposing claim, you back it up. If I claim that Martians like to sell Amway, it’d be pretty stupid for me to require to prove me wrong. In other words, put up or shut up.

As far as “What am I advocating?” Maybe you missed it
**

42

Actually, Quix, YOU were the one who first said illegal aliens were more likely to commit other crimes. So that makes it your argument, and therefore your resonsibilty to find something that backs it up. As has been pointed out, while one side of this argument has only anecdotal evidence, your side of the argument has no evidence at all, at least so far. Personally, it seems more likely that after going to all the risk and effort of getting into this country illegally, an immigrant is going to be careful about commiting a serious crime and attracting the attention of a law enforcement agency with more teeth than the INS. In other words, and my personal expierience bears this out, illegal aliens are less likely to commit a crime than a native.

43

And you are missing my point, which is that our immigration laws ENCOURAGE undocumented workers.

We want them here. We need them here. Even you and drachillix would be screaming to let more in if we booted them all out.

They are people too. (damn, I sound like such a liberal:)) If we need them, and use them, then we should not be surprised when they start organizing and demanding better treatment.

I realize that I live in the NE, and I only offer this as further anecdotal evidence, but most of the undocumented workers I know never snuck across the border. They came in with a visa and then overstayed. I think it is a distortion (at least) to claim that undocumented workers are criminal.

Is there a lawyer out there who can tell us if an undocumented worker is legally considered a criminal in the same way a thief is?

I may not be have volumes of cites to offer, but at least I am talking about a subject I am familiar with.

Ummm…maybe because you were interested in knowing the truth?

44

INS statistics reckon that about 41% of illegals are visa overstays. I’m not sure if they would count fraudulent entry in the remaining 59%, or if border-hoppers make up the remainder. Of course, they can’t be entirely sure about the numbers.

Entering and/or remaining illegally in the US is very definitely a criminal offense. See INS v. Lopez-Mendoza (468 US 1032).

45

I’d love for you to point out where I said illegal aliens were more likely to commit other crimes. Maybe you’re thinking of when I said:

**
If you think that’s me claiming that illegals commit more crimes, let me introduce you to the subjunctive verb form. Its presence is predicated by the word “suppose” and is indicated by the verb form “were.” The subjunctive form means that the thing being stated didn’t actually occur, but are dependent upon something. So no, I made no such claim. In fact, I would make no such claim, because I don’t have the numbers to back it up. I offered the hypothetical to contrast in particular with this line from tclouie

**
Then you said, Miller,
**

Well, I guess a person could respond with “a person willing to break one law is more inclined to break more than one law.” Hell, this position makes even MORE sense, considering that border jumpers can’t exactly take a U-Haul worth of stuff with them. They broke one law with the rationalization “It’s for my family,” why not steal with the same rationalization? (Note: I’m not offering these musings as a valid argument, I’m just illustrating that your analysis isn’t necessarily the only one).

Freedom
**

Er, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it also illegal to stay after a visa has expired? Hence, even if they never jumped the fence, they’re still criminals?

As far as needing immigrants, I’d refer you to the post by cleosia. I’d also offer this for you to consider: I’d imagine that there are more illegal immigrants in cities such as Miami, LA, and San Diego than there are in, oh, say, Des Moines (if someone wants to be a dick, yes, I will dig up cites). Is the city of Des Moines able to staff all its janitorial, agricultural, etc. jobs? Do people in Des Moines pay “$20,000 to paint their houses”?

Last post for the night, sleepy.
Quix

46

Well, actually it was the part where you said:

I mean, jeez, you even qouted it yourself in the post right before mine, with the emphasis that this was the main point you were trying to make. Sounds to me like your saying you don’t want illegals in this country because they’ll break into your house and steal stuff.

47

Open the borders! Let 'em all in! Period.

The bigger a working class we’ve got here in the U.S., the better. More people to organize :smiley:

This whole definition of “illegal” is a diversionary tactic. Who is it that decides who’s illegal and who’s not? It’s not us folks here on the ground, it’s our “elected” representatives in Washington. The only times they really crack down on “illegal” immigration is when they’re worried about recessions and depressions, when unemployment presents a serious threat and they know that everyone who wants a job won’t be able to get one. The Exclusionary Act White Lightning referred to is a prime case in point. It was passed during a serious economic downturn (if I remember my cycles of depression correctly) and at a time when Chinese immigration was at its height because of previous demand by the railroads for cheap construction labor.

Any time there’s a serious demand for labor, especially in job fields where ‘legal’ citizens wouldn’t take employment if they could choose otherwise (like fruit picking or housecleaning, for example) then undocumented immigrants are winked at. When the belt tightens, the first ones on the chopping block are those same immigrants, who have the audacity to sneak across our borders and steal jobs from hard-working Americans. (Who make the decisions to move factories and plants across the border, anyway? The unions?)

Additionally, not all undocumented immigrants are heaped with equal amounts of opprobrium. Visa overstays are committed by immigrants with skilled jobs as well; but since they’re a little more well-placed and have access to better legal resources, they aren’t bothered as much because they can put up a fight. No, the hard time is given to the unskilled immigrants, primarily the Latinos and Hispanics. I notice Operation Gatekeeper hasn’t put up triple-barrier walls on the Canadian border.

Finally, I seriously doubt the protestors at the DMV were immigrants who’d crawled out of the Rio Grande two weeks earlier for the express purpose of getting a driver’s license. More than likely they’ve been here a while and have worked just as hard as any of us and, justifiably so IMO, feel they have rights as well. The whole series of firehoops immigrants have to jump through just to get permission to enter the country is stupid and unecessary. Get rid of it and allow anyone who wants in to get in.

Full disclosure: I’m a total WASP, whose ancestors mostly came to America in the 17th and 18th centuries. While I don’t condone the way they conducted themselves towards the native population by any means, I certainly believe that if they felt they had the right to come to this continent a make a living for themselves, then no-one who followed them should be denied that right, and that right should be easily and quickly obtained.

48

Since reading comprehension obviously isn’t your strong suit, I’ll help you out here. Here is what I said, with the appropriate commentary

They are illegal immigrants.

“This argument” being the one I presented in the immediately preceeding sentence. To wit, the rationalization that extreme desire (in this case, betterment for one’s family) excuses actions.

The “one case” here refers to the case in the immediately preceeding sentence. To wit, the case of a border jumper.

Ok, maybe I was unclear here. The “dick” to which I refer isn’t an illegal immigrant. It’s a random citizen who uses the same rationalization argument that an illegal uses.

Even if you did miscontrue what I said, I certainly wasn’t the one to mention the moral upstandingness of illegal immigrants (see my previous post, which addresses that).

Q

49

Well, now I see where the problem was, Quix. That was my inital interpretation of that paragraph, but I discarded it as being too unbearably stupid. Sorry for giving you too much credit.

50

A question to those who consider immigrants criminals. What do you think about anti-sodomy laws? A law is meaningless if it is not enforced. Immigration laws were never meant to be enforced. They are only there to allow us to kick them out whenever we don’t like them. Because we are such a freedom loving country we have to resort to making other people criminals justify what we do to them.

In the case of immigrants they only break the law because they feel that the law is unjust. Most would not feel that the law against stealing someones computer is also unjust. I hope that most people follow their own ethical code before they follow the law.

51

I know this is a minor point, but it speaks volumes about the awareness of most Americans towards Hispanics in this country. I seriously doubt any of Freedom’s hard working neighbors are from SPAIN. I don’t doubt the existence of Spanish immigrants in this country, but when you are talking about illegal immigration, the vast majority of the immigrants are from Mexico and Central America, and not Spain. Spain is in Europe, the vast majority of illegal immigrants are of meso-american origins and only speak Spanish because the Spanish colonized and overwhelmed their native cultures. Spaniards and Mexicans (except for the ones who are of Spanish descent) are VERY different. The food is different, the culture is different. It always bothers me when people call all latinos Spanish. It just sounds ignorant. Especially when people go eat Mexican food and say they went to a Spanish restaurant!

52

Miller, care to take a stab at why you consider what I said stupid? Or are you taking your ball and going home?

Sterra, I would accept that you have a point, if there existed something called the Sodomy Patrol (analagous to the Border Patrol). You know, a group of heavily armed guys who patrolled people’s bedrooms, making sure no sodomy occured. Yes, a law is meaningless if it isn’t enforced, but that’s simply not the case with anti-immigration laws. These laws are enforced to the extent that the Border Patrol can enforce them, with limited resources and a monumental amount of land to patrol. I used to live in Coronado, CA, roughly 10 miles north of the US-Mexico border in San Diego. I’ve seen BP agents in Coronado! If your argument were to be believed, the Border Patrol would have shrugged their shoulders and said, “Fuck it, they made it, kudos to them.” Instead, they pursued them 10 miles north of the border.
**

You know what’s unfair and unjust? Angelina Jolie is with Billy Bob Thorton instead of, say, me. :slight_smile: Let me see if I understand what you’re saying, though. Impoverished illegal jumps the border to get a job in America and feed his family–ethical. Impoverished citizen breaks into some schlep’s house to steal some jewelery to feed his family–unethical. What’s the difference? And before you say, “The guy in the second scenario hurts somebody else, whereas the guy in the first scenario doesn’t,” let me add this. The guy in the second scenario broke into Bill Gates’s house to steal $1000 worth of jewelery. Is it still unethical? BTW, $1000 is approximately 0.0000017% of Bill Gates’s wealth, a negligible effect in every sense of the word.

Quix

53

This is just my opinion, of course, but it seems like if people are crossing the border illegally, that’s a bad thing. That doesn’t mean that I think illegal immigrants are bad people, or even that their desire to come to this country is bad, because I don’t think either of those things are true, but a country has the right to control who enters it, and who they want as residents. What we should be doing is reforming the immigration laws in this country to make it easier for immigrants to come legally, because if these immigrants came legally, they would be better protected by the law, and less in fear of those people who would exploit them.

54

Well quixotic a negligible effect doesen’t make it less wrong. Really having someone break into your house is never negligible. Though I don’t think exactly your border patrol is the same because of the OP’s experience. Sure they pursued to 10 miles to the north of the border, but what did they do when there were the immigrants protesting in the OP? They enforce the law when it suits them, just like anti-sodomy laws.

55

This doesn’t address the difference between a person breaking into a house vs. a person breaking into a country. Again, why is the former wrong but the latter is ok?
**

I believe someone already answered this, see the previous page. The people protesting weren’t necessarily immigrants (and in all likelihood, very few of them were illegals).

Quix

56

Quix: I apologize for my earlier comment. Your “reading comprehension” crack got to me, and I was a little too tired to squelch my automatic flame response. Which is not to say that I don’t find what you said (that illegal immigration is somehow going to inspire legal residents to take up burglary) to be particularly stupid. But you do deserve an explanation. Once again, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction.

57

Well, I was out of line with the reading comprehension crack myself. I remember a thread someone started a while ago, flaming people for “reading comprehension” cracks, because without inflection and such, there are many ways to interpret something written. That thread was absolutely right. Fuck you, Quix, you stupid syphillitic cocksmoker!

Ahem. That said, no hard feelings.
Quix

58

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to clarify something you said

I’m not saying an illegal breaking the law is going to “inspire” a citizen to do the same. What I’m asking is, if a man broke into your house, would you accept the “I did it to feed my family” excuse? Personally, I would feel for the man, but his excuse is shit. There are right ways to do things, and there are not-so-right ways to do things. Breaking into a house, or a country, is not excusable because a person “really wanted” to do it and felt that s/he had no other options.

Carry on.

59

Quix, the problem with that argument is that the guy braking into my house is taking something away from me. An illegal immigrant isn’t taking anything from me that I wasn’t already giving away anyway.

60

er, that would be the guy “breaking” into my house. Although braking into my house isn’t any more appreciated, let me tell you.