YOU BROUGHT UP THE LAW. The OP was very obviously about morality, referencing perfectly legal but immoral actions like racism. Grude, the guy you were responding to, even said “should be illegal,” which is inherently about judging the law by morality.
Yes, it is a familiar path. Someone makes a thread about a horribly immoral action. You then try to make it about the law, and then say shit like this to pretend you won. You project your own actions onto others.
I could say a lot more, but I honestly want to see if I fight your ignorance here. This is the very thing that so many of us get upset at you about.
I will just say there is far more to the moral argument than “it’s wrong because it’s wrong.” Here’s a hint: two thousand people at least are going to die because of this. And none of the 250,000 people actually performed a wrong action–their parents may have, but not them.
It is possible to engage in ethnic cleansing based on a jus sanguinis approach to citizenship, but the vast majority of countries with this system (which includes every country in Europe) do not do this. It’s also possible to have a jus soli system and be horribly racist – the morally superior U.S. system applied only to whites until 1868.
This says nothing about whether the particular actions in The Dominican Republic are wrong, just that it’s not the particular type of citizenship law that is causing the problem.
The fact that we have a jus soli system is more an accident of history than anything. I mean, I’m in favor, but let’s not pretend we have it because of our Superior Morality. It’s because the drafters of the 14th Amendment were sloppy.
But he also made a factual claim about the law’s effects, BigT, and it was to that factual claim that I responded.
To refresh your memory:
Notice that I don’t engage his claim about retroactive legislation that should be illegal. Instead, I replied:
No, BigT. There are very few people on this board whom I regard as reliable moral compasses. So as far as I’m concerned, a claim about a horribly immoral action is simply posturing. But factual claims can – and were – rebutted.
“Many of you,” aghast at the idea that right-wingers want to impose their morality upon you, are perfectly happy to impose your morality upon others. Again, though, since I don’t regard “many of you” as particularly keen judges of morality, I don’t remotely care what aspects of this, or any, case you feel are immoral.
But I will continue to correct “many of your” factually inaccurate claims.
And I notice in passing how important it is for “many of you”" that “many of you” share your opinions. I assume safety in numbers substitutes for a well-formed conscience.
The choice not to change that system in the century and a half since was the correct one and has been, more than any other single policy decision, the reason that American immigrants assimilate and succeed, as opposed to forming a permanent explosive underclass as in Europe/everywhere else.
In the U.S., immigrants become American. In the Dominican Republic, anyone who has a French name gets driven over the border (or, in the past, dumped in a mass grave). It’s incredibly obvious which system is better.
I’d assume liberals are worried about this being a “bad influence” and it could increase the popularity of such measures here. Gotta head it off at the pass, I s’pose.
Too many powerful people make way too much money off Mexican immigrants for there to be any real change, though. The border’s gonna be wide open for the foreseeable future.
Your quote is not about having nationality from birth, but about one of the ways of acquiring it: if you’ve been born in Italy and lived there from birth, you have a way to acquire citizenship. The citizenship is active from the day your paperwork is finished, not from the day you were born.
It is not automatic, it is not instantaneous, and it is not retroactive.
The US does not have 100% jus sanguinis: the child of an American citizen is not automatically an American citizen. Is that wrong? It’s US law. Does the US have a procedure to attain nationality based on being the grandchild of an American expatriate, when the parents of the immigrant were not Americans themselves? Other countries do; I don’t know if the US does.
Wait… what? I’m all for pre-emption, but to dismiss moral concerns is basically psychotic, right?
You’ve done a find job of arguing your side of the case on legal and also moral grounds. But the legal questions are indeed separate from moral questions, though there’s some tricky overlap.
You may believe that you believe this, but your participation in explicit moral reasoning belies this.
I’m guessing the underlying issue is that you are an A level lawyer and a C level philosopher* and you are playing from your strengths. Which is ok, until you denigrate moral conversation.
Not much of an insult really. I flatter myself, thinking that I’m a C+ philosopher. That may be too generous. I sure as heck don’t reach the B+ level. Arbitrary yardsticks, I know.
How about American Samoa? We’re probably not going to be deporting them any time soon, but native-born Samoans aren’t currently being granted American citizenship.
“Even so much as impotently expressing your disapproval of genocide on a message board is ‘imposing your morality on others’” gets a passing grade from you?
This is what happened the last time the Dominican government started getting antsy about whether “Haitians” (which actually means “blacks” (which actually means “people who speak French”)) were secretly living in their country:
What’s the argument here – it’s just mass expulsions and property deprivation based on race, so we’re not allowed to care yet?
I hate anchor babies. They don’t hold in coral for shit.
Seems to me its much much easier on average to have proof that you were born and lived your life in the country your in than it is to prove your ancestors were born somewhere else so they will let you move there.