Generally a person is breaking into someones house. They however are not breaking into someones country. The only thing the two really share in common is the fact that both are against the law.
quixotic78. This is your contention.
You seem to be saying that you feel no pity for illegal immigrants because of the fact that they are in violation of immigration law. Is your claim that an action is wrong simply because it is against the law of the United States of America? Absent the legality issue, your claim can only be that illegal immigrants, on an emotional level, are not deserving of sympathy due to the quality of their lives. Is that your claim?
For the record: The difference between immigrating illegally into the U.S. and breaking into my house is that in one case you violate something that’s been legislated arbitrarily (unless you have some idea that political borders mean something in a greater sense), and in the other case you violate my personal right of property. In one case the “criminal” is breaking a law to gain opportunity, and in the other case the “criminal” is breaking a law to damage my (extended) person, assuming that the right of property is one that you respect (you seem to). You could make a case that the presence of illegal immigrants damages me indirectly in a zero-sum job market because they can work “under the table” for less than minimum wage, thus taking opportunities away from legal citizens, but so far you haven’t said any of that. Even if that were the case, the difference between crimes would be one of degree.
Well, do what you like. My point is this. Someone (not me, so don’t tell me again not to “make claims about something that can’t possibly be proven”) claimed that illegal immigrants work hard. Other people chimed in with “yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.” You showed up and castigated them for being cite-less, then moved on as if your point was won. If you’ll allow me to use your analogy, it would go something like this:
romantic156: I’d like to point out that Martians like to sell Amway.
Poster1: They sure do! My next door neighbor was a Martian, and boy did she sell that Amway!
Poster2: That’s strange that you should mention that, because I have a Martian uncle, and he sells Amway too.
Poster3: Funny that. There used to be a whole group of Martians that had their Amway meetings in our local community center.
Pale Electricity: Geez, you guys. Cites please? I, for one, am tired of hearing about these Martians selling Amway. It’s such bullshit! Piss off with your anecdotal evidence. It’s meaningless.
See what I’m trying to get at? Given the above exchange, an unbiased observer might get the impression that Martians did in fact like to sell Amway, regardless of how ridiculous that idea may seem to you personally-- I’m sure you can see that Pale Electricity (really lame, i know, and it’s damn hard to think of a synonym for “quixotic”!)'s position is pretty weak. To answer your other examples, if someone claimed that Mikey died from a mixture of Pop Rocks and Pepsi, other people agreed, and no one backed up the claim with evidence, well, if I cared enough to invest a couple minutes of work I’d link them to SNOPES. If someone claimed that black people tended towards criminal behavior, other people agreed, and no one backed up the claim with evidence, if I cared enough to invest some work, I’d answer their claims with evidence of the bias of the U.S. justice system (among other things) (no hijacks here please).
HOWEVER, in either case, if I did NOT care enough to invest some time coming up with evidence to the contrary of the original claim, I would not consider saying “prove it!” to be a sufficient argument, which is essentially what you’re doing. I’m not saying that the burden of proof is upon you to disprove other peoples’ claims. I’m saying that when you want to break from consensus and/or play devil’s advocate, you can expect people to assume you’re intending to trump their anecdotal evidence with more reliable sources. Failing that, you have little to stand on. While I agree with you that anecdotal evidence proves very little and is unreliable, you’ve got to understand that there’s basically a bunch of people standing around here with a similarity of opinion, and you’re not going to go far by telling them their opinions are baseless. I’m not saying that’s fair, or good argumentation, but it seems to me that that’s just the way it is.
And, by the way, no one in this thread, before or after your first post, made ANY claims (unless i missed it-- you never know) to the tune of “Oh, they love this country. They only broke the stupid immigration laws because they want a better life for their children.” Just so you know. I believe the original claim that is being contested is this:
While tclouie does make the claim that “aliens” (on the 5th reading, I notice that he does not actually specify illegal, or undocumented immigrants when making these arguments) work hard, that contention is (IMO) not central to his main position, which is that anti-immigration laws are ‘senseless and ridiculous,’ an opinion that has been seconded by others in the thread. Would you agree or disagree?
I was discussing this thread with a friend, and he related a story to me:
A few years ago he was helping his daughter renovate a row house she had recently purchased. They had been at the house on a daily basis, the house was locked and in no way could be misconstrued as abandoned. One day he went by the house to get something and when he arrived he noticed someone stealing the metal railings they had stored inside the lower level of the house. He was extremely upset and confronted the man. The man had the audacity to reprimand my friend for the way he was being verbally accosted. Luckily for the thief, the situation ended with the man returning the items he had stolen and only being reported to the police.
My point in relating this story is this: If you knowingly and brazenly break an established law, you have no right to complain about the treatment you then receive.
The US has laws against people being in this country illegally. Anyone who comes to this country illegally or stays beyond their legally sanctified time span is breaking US law. People who break the law have committed a crime. People who commit a crime in this country are, by and large, punished for their transgression. (Yes I do know that the enforcement of the immigration law is variable, as is true with other laws in this country. Underage drinking anyone?)Just because a large group of people break a law does not make that law moot. It means that the law should be reconsidered and perhaps changed.
My point remains.
The laws are set up to encourage undocumented workers.
We (the country)want a group of people with lesser rights than us in this country. We want their cheap labor. We all benefit from it.
The immigration laws and how we enforce them are only our way of making us “feel good” about pushing these people into semi-human status.
Breaking into a home is illegal because we don’t want people to do it.
Undocumented workers are illegal because we want their cheap labor without screwing up the economy for those of us who are citizens.
How do you justify this? Lets say there is an established law against left handed people. The penalty for left handedness is death. But, since it is a well established law there is nothing wrong with it. Correct? Laws mean nothing beyond the punishment you recieve from them. They do not make your actions ethical or unethical.
I’m all for analogies to aid in clearing up or making a point, but umm… wow… Let’s try and keep it plausible.
Why? The point is that theoretically if you grant that illegal immigration is wrong because it is illegal, then you must logically grant that capital punishment for left-handedness would be morally acceptable as well, because it would be legal. the fact that it’s ridiculous is the whole point.
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I’m all for analogies to aid in clearing up or making a point, but umm… wow… Let’s try and keep it plausible. **
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I agree, especially when there are so many really plausible examples out there.
Consider Rodney King. Consider the soccer mom who was put in jail for 48 hours for failure to wear her seatbelt. Consider the small-time dealers who are sentenced to life in prison for selling reefer.
All of these people broke laws, but none of them, IMO, should have been subjected to the unrestrained power of the government. All of these people damn well did have a right to complain about the treatment they received. That’s what it means to by governed by law and not by authoritarian fiat.
Originally posted by White Lightning;
O.K. First of all, I believe that illegal immigration is wrong. And an illegal immigrant should not have the same rights and privilges as a citizen.
Having said that, using fantasy “theoretical” examples to try and make a point isn’t going to convince me (I won’t speak for everyone - although theoretically I could) to change my views.
The fact that the analogy is ridiculous? Then why should I take it seriously?
The fact that you believe that the laws surrounding “illegal immigration” are ridiculous? Then please come up with something better than firing squads for southpaws.
Isn’t Cecil left-handed?
I know I should just let this thread die, but White Lightning did a pretty good post, so I’ll respond now that I have some time.
Kind of, but I’ll change it a little. I definitely DO feel pity for people who feel they have to come to the US to feed their family. Poverty sucks, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. That said, I get the impression (and this is just my opinion) that people often see illegal immigrants as, in some sense of the word, heroic. I pity immigrants, I feel sympathy towards them, but I draw the line at praising them. People I do praise are the ones who come to the US legally and fluorish.
I’m not sure where you got this from. Are you saying, in other words, I’m a cultural snob? I don’t think that’s accurate. “Absent the legality issue,” i.e., where immigration is done legally, I just established my position. Praise.
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I don’t see what any perceived arbitrariness about U.S. borders has to do with it. There’s a pretty big fence near San Diego that would disagree with you about the borders being arbitrary. The borders are quite real. Anyways, imagine a driver pulled over for doing 100 MPH instead of the designated 65 MPH speed limit. Can he say, “Well, 65, 100, it’s arbitrary, so I can ignore it”? I do respect the right of property, but I also respect the right of a country to say, “This country is the property of the U.S.” Plus, I don’t think you really treated my “Good Intentioned Burglar” fairly. Poor ole GIB didn’t steal Bill Gates’s jewelry to damage Microsoft; he did it to gain opportunity, just as a border jumper does.
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I do see what you’re trying to get at. I didn’t say “Cites, please” in an effort to “win.” I asked for people to refrain from using anecdotes as evidence because it’s dangerous and misleading. It does seem like dirty pool, in that I’m not bringing anything meaty to the table, but that’s because I don’t have anything meaty. My original point was just to point out that tclouie et al. weren’t bringing anything meaty to the table either.
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If all it took was a simple link to SNOPES to make everyone see the light, I’d do it! To be frank, I’m not even sure where I would look for criminal statistics of illegal immigrants. Department of Justice? Immigration and Naturalization Services?
You’re right, I don’t have anything “meaty.” My original point wasn’t to say, “Freedom, you’re WRONG when you say illegals are hard-working etc.” My original point was to say, “Freedom, that’s just your experience, it doesn’t make it true.” I also freely admit that I, ahem, overzealously attacked anyone questioning this silly point 
No, tclouie’s central point isn’t that immigrants work hard. But that contention DOES deal with MY original point: one, two, a hundred people having the same opinion don’t make it right. As I said, it’s a tremendously silly point, and I went overboard.
As far as whether anti-immigration laws are “senseless and ridiculous,” hey, Captain Amazing said it (heh) amazingly well. I won’t clutter the board further by re-posting what he said, but I urge everyone to re-read it. Legal immigration is a good thing. Illegal immigration, even with the best intentions, is just not something I can cheer for.
Quix
Well, quixotic78, now that we’ve got it all worked out, I agree with you. I’ll try to reduce:
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I wasn’t trying to call you a cultural snob. What I was saying was, once I thought I understood what your point was, it seemed like there were two options; you thought illegal immigrants didn’t deserve sympathy either because illegal immigration is morally wrong simply because it is illegal, or because their lives didn’t warrant your pity. I now understand that you weren’t saying illegal immigrants don’t deserve pity, you were just saying they don’t deserve praise, and I agree.
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"There’s a pretty big fence near San Diego that would disagree with you about the borders being arbitrary. The borders are quite real. " I’m not saying the borders are arbitrary in enforcement, and vary from day to day, i’m saying their creation was arbitrary, and when the San Diego border was established after the Spanish-American war (was that the one?), it could just have easily been a mile in either direction and in a big-picture sense it wouldn’t have mattered. My point is that there’s no inherent ownership of the land beyond the political borders that we make up and decide to live with. As far as the speed limit thing, you misunderstand me: I don’t have a legal right to ignore a speed limit and drive 100 MPH, but driving 100 MPH isn’t morally wrong; if it were legal, I’d do it, so would you, no one would get tickets, and we’d never know the difference. Now imagine that the speed limit is 100 MPH and all immigration is legal. Now imagine that the speed limit is 30 MPH everywhere and no one at all is allowed to immigrate into the U.S. The point is simply that moral and ethical values are independent of legal concerns, and that if someone lives in abject poverty and can’t feed their kids, or if someone falls down and breaks their arm and isn’t allowed to be treated in a hospital, I don’t think that’s right regardless of whether they are “legal” or not.
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Your clarification regarding your lack of meatiness is appreciated. It takes a big person to say something like “I also freely admit that I, ahem, overzealously attacked anyone questioning this silly point,” so I thank you. That ability to actually listen to what other people are saying and identify points of agreement rather than points of contention is a rare, rare quality. At any rate, I agree with your essential argument: anecdotal evidence can be dangerous and misleading, and it can be valuable to point that out. Let’s say it together, here goes: “Freedom and tclouie, that’s just your experience, it doesn’t make it true.”
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Captain Amazing is right. But the thing is, he agrees with what tclouie was saying, and actually most of the posters on this thread. Immigration law needs to be seriously examined and modified, because it doesn’t work. Well, it works in the sense that Freedom is talking about, in that the Powers that Be want undocumented workers as a cheap labor source. But it doesn’t work in the way that we here at the SDMB want it to. There oughtta be a law!!
Illegally entering a country is morally different from illegally entering someone’s home, because sovereignty is different from ownership. Most people, I think, would not consider a violation of sovereignty to be as immoral as a violation of someone’s personal property rights…unless you’re a hardcore collectivist Stalinist Maoist commie. 
So pooey on your GIB.
Come to think of it…global corporations tend to violate everyone’s borders, while the old East Bloc societies tended to very zealously defend their borders against anyone crossing, in or out.
Let’s make some protest signs calling the INS a bunch of commie rats.