Of course not. The vast majority of gun owners have committed no crime. For those that have, deportation is not the appropriate punishment. There are also practical obstacles I’ve already mentioned.
Then we should deport all drivers from the USA, since everyone has violated the law at some point. And legally entering but overstaying your visa is about as serious as a traffic violation.
Besides drivers killed about 40,000 people last year, far more than undocumented aliens did.
Try again.
Great. Now substitute “undocumented aliens” for “gun owners” here, and you’re basically done!
I know, I know, you’re going to grasp at the “but being undocumented IS a crime” straw. Fine. All gun owners who have never committed any crime or tort (no matter how small) can stay.
“deportation is not the appropriate punishment” for “any crime or tort (no matter how small)”. It’s the appropriate punishment for one particular crime (or perhaps a handful, IANAL).
Just to clarify. In your proposal, are the employees or the employers paying the tax?
A person making minimum wage picking lettuce can’t afford the taxes that would be necessary to pay for their fair share.
If you shift the burden to the employers, they wouldn’t hire people.
Apart from the begged question of what constitutes a “fair share,” ISTM that this issue has nothing to do with immigration at all. If a person making minimum wage is a net drag on society, as you seem to suggest, that would appear to be a fundamental problem with how we value labor in general.
Any response to this?
Actually no. It’s not a problem at all. See, we have a progressive tax system, where despite the efforts of the GOP, the rich pay more in taxes than they get out, thus the poor can pay less.
Well, Omar Little claimed that open borders would benefit the economy.
Exactly how are low wage workers who are consuming more resources than they contribute benefitting the economy?
Perhaps because they are not actually “consuming more resources than they contribute?” Or is that too bizarre a concept to even contemplate?
I’ll respond to this part -
- by pointing out that it is wrong. That is not the whole point of the argument.
[ul][li]Group A should not be in this country.[/li][li]Group A commits X amount of crime.[/li][li]If Group A were not in this country, crime would go down by X.[/ul]That’s the argument, and it is entirely true for any value of X > 0.[/li]
It does not matter if Group A commits more crime on average than the rest of the country, or less on average, or the same on average. If X > 0, the syllogism holds.
Regards,
Shodan
This presumes that there’s no possibility that the presence of some people prevents or otherwise reduces crime committed by others. If Group A’s presence prevents or reduces crime by Y (whether because they’re a positive influence on some potential criminals, or because they include more watchful eyes and ears, or more action hero vigilante crimestoppers, or the positive economic activity and wealth they generate decreases crime in the way that wealth does, or many other possibilities), and Y is > or = X, then the syllogism does not hold.
Right, but it still doesn’t constitute an argument. Remove any group, and crime goes down by however much crime they commit. Sure, illegal immigrants are unique in that they should not be in the country, but that’s completely independent from the crime they commit. There’s no connection there that makes sense.
That they shouldn’t be here in the first place **is **the connection. If they weren’t in this country, they wouldn’t be able to commit crimes in this country.
Because you are correct - remove any group, and you remove the crimes committed by that group. Illegal immigrants are unique in that it is morally justified to remove them from the country, because they don’t belong here in the first place. That’s not true of native born citizens, or legal immigrants, or gun owners, or store customers. We can’t remove them - we can, and should, remove illegal immigrants.
Regards,
Shodan
Come on, the error here is obvious. The absolute number of crimes is not relevant to anything, it’s the rate of crime per capita - that’s what determines whether you are a likely to be the victim of a crime. Unless population density is correlated with crime rate, removing some subpopulation that contains the same proportion of criminals as the entire population does not reduce the crime rate.
Then all we need is evidence that the presence of illegal immigrants reduces crime, and we can discuss it.
Regards,
Shodan
If you accept that some of them engage in economic activity and wealth creation, and if you accept that economic activity and wealth creation have a positive (meaning less) impact on crime, then you already have that evidence.
Alternately, if you accept that some of them have functioning eyes and the ability to be watchful, and if you believe that more watchful eyes can prevent crime, then you already have that evidence.
This quote is about crime in general. What is it about the crime of illegal immigration in particular that you think makes it so in need of attention? There are laws against it, and they are being enforced. How do you reckon they aren’t being enforced strenuously enough compared to other laws which are enforced with less than 100% success?
Good one, except in Abes time, America had open borders, and it wasn’t a crime to enter it outside a quota. In fact that’s what made America great. So, rather than Abe’s quote helping your “cause” it destroys it.
And now, it’s not really a 'crime" to enter the USA legally but outstay your visa.
Let me give you a few more Honest Abe quotes: President Lincoln, in his Annual Message to Congress on December 8, 1863, called for government assistance. “I* again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. All though this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for several years before the insurrection occurred, there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture, and in our mines, as well as of iron and coal as of the precious metals. While the demand for labor is thus increased here, tens of thousands of persons, destitute of remunerative occupation, are thronging our foreign consulates and offering to emigrate to the United States if essential, but very cheap assistance, can be afforded them. It is very easy to see that under the sharp discipline of Civil War, the nation is beginning a new life. This noble effort demands the aid and out to receive the attention of the Government.”*
or “We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of Patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
In fact if Abe found out you were misusing his words to oppose immigration, he’d roll over in his grave.