However, I provided citations (which I thought made the bar for substantiveness) and believed I was civil. Was I inciting flames by backing up the parent's comment?
Because former are inhuman and latter a human?
The most jarring part, of course, is that most of "illegal aliens" are rural Mexicans of Native American heritage, being detained in states like Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, on land belonging to their country not too long ago, and to their ancestors for centuries.
Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico's new boundaries or receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose to become U.S. citizens.
Ukrainians who lived in Crimea got full Russian citizenship too, but I'm not sure if that makes it fair and a done deal for the rest of the Ukrainians.
But I thought my other point was more important. Most Americans are newcomers to the Americas, a few generations tops. Most Mexicans are not, and nobody really asked them before erecting new borders on their lands.
How easy is to repeat the same mistakes from the past! Add some new terminology, change some laws, add more layers ofcomplexity to definitions. And it's done: we can repeat the evils from past and nobody will notice in the present.
Republicans have suggested that the US repeal the Constitutional right of birthright citizenship specifically to allow people born in the US to illegal immigrants to be rounded up and "deported" to their parents' or grandparents' countries of origin.
The entire scope of this discussion involves more that simply arresting and deporting people who sneak into the US illegally - it also includes a movement to redefine American citizenship in terms of generational purity.
Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is, some people see free movement across borders as a human right, while others view a country as their home, and so should have the right to decide who to let in.
The tragedy is when some people view a country as their home, and so should have the right to kick out other people who also view a country as their home.
"Illegal alien" encompasses everyone from the murderous narcotic kingpin, whom I think we can all generally agree should have little more than a jail cell for a home, to grown adults who immigrated as a toddler, and have only found out when they were much older that it was done without their parents having the right paperwork. It encompasses the queue cutting asshole, and it encompasses the panicked refuge fleeing certain death.
As our application of 'justice' is not perfect, I imagine mass deportation has ended up prosecuting - and even deporting - a few perfectly upstanding, legal citizens. Mistaken identity, misleading evidence, a little racism preventing people from digging a bit deeper... shit happens, and our institutions are made up of fallible people. We're already deporting millions a year - can you tell me with a straight face that not a single mistake will be made? That not a single mistake has been made?
> Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial
It would be strange, but that never really happened in substantial way. Most of what gets framed that way by one side of the debate is not controversy over the idea of "enforcing borders", but rather:
1. Controversy over whether the particular preferences, limitations, and exclusions of current immigration policy are desirable, and
2. Controversy over whether current and proposed mechanisms for enforcing the current preferences, limitations, and exclusions in immigration policy (which, in the case of proposed mechanisms, often involve creating additional limitations and exclusions, and more rarely additional preferences) are desirable.
This gets generalized into claims that "enforcing borders" has become controversial as a means of avoiding debate over the specific details that are actually controversial.
I am surprised by the same thing. We have a legal process for crossing those borders, and if you circumvent that process you are a criminal. How is that controversial?
Separately, if you believe the process is bad, or borders should be open, or whatever -- by all means, fight for that using the frameworks we have.
So your viewpoint is that, if the law on the books criminalizes an enormous number of people who are not really harming anyone, then one should nonetheless support rounding those people up using whatever means necessary?
I mean, I guess your view is consistent and makes some kind of sense. Selective enforcement of the law is a bad thing in many ways, and in an ideal world there would perhaps be no difference between "technically illegal" and an actually enforced crime. Perhaps disastrous policies like rounding up medical marijuana users, longtime undocumented residents, jaywalkers, "sodomites" before Lawrence v. Texas, miscegenators before Loving v Virginia, etc., etc., would "heighten the contradictions" and force civil society to legislate what it actually wanted to punish.
I'm confused how you could be confused by the opposite viewpoint though. The opposite viewpoint is informed by millenia of the reality of law, which is that laws are often not enforced because they don't make sense, and a zealous enforcement of an existing law can be a radical, destructive break with an informal rule. For those of us who see this as simply part of reality, a given proposal to increase or decrease the enforcement of existing laws must be weighed against its practical effects.
The proposal to enforce the immigration laws is controversial because it will cause an enormous amount of suffering, it solves no real problems, it will weaken the US economy, and it is motivated by racial animus and xenophobia.
All those people participated in breaking the laws they saw as unjust. From Underground Railroad in the 19th century to sitting in white-only sections in the 20th. People hiding Jews from Nazis were actively breaking the law. The founders of the United States broke the British law. Edward Snowden broke the law. Nelson Mandela broke the law. Mahatma Ghandi broke the law. The list goes on and on.
There are illegal aliens in this country because this country let them come in. We let them in so they can pick fruits, landscape our lawns, babysit our children, all at a huge discount.
So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely.
If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.
From an economics point of view, we should allow the free movement of labor (people) because we already allow the free movement of capital (money) across borders. If my understanding is correct, this is one of the pillars of the European Union.
However, I think looking at it as a basic human right is more appropriate. Restricting people crossing borders is simply institutional racism. Countries are granting permission to enter/not enter based on the person's race. If this were any other context, people would be screaming racism. But because it's become so typical over the past 150 years, nobody calls it for what it is anymore.
Because it isn't. What about the DMZ between the Koreas, the Berlin wall, the Taiwan strait? If a country leaves the Schengen area, does their citizens' race change? And which race can stroll into the US without a visa?
Some countries make it easier for people of the right ancestry to apply for citizenship, but it's more complicated than plain racism.
A hundred years ago, border enforcement was extremely controversial. In most places, customs cared about two things - goods, and keeping criminals and people of the wrong skin colour out of their country.
Passport-based travel was introduced in most of Europe as a 'temporary' measure, for the purposes of fighting WW I.
How preposterous. We have rules as a country for who is allowed to enter and stay. There is no country in the world that will allow you to stay illegally.
"...intended to detain non-citizens slated for deportation."
Your statement raises two distinct questions:
Q1) Why are these individuals being detained? Are they visitors to the United States, with a valid visa, merely subject to detention by a bigoted law enforcement agency...or are have they broken one or more existing U.S. laws by overstaying their visa or illegally entering the country?
If the former, then yes, it is shameful and should be addressed immediately.
If the latter, then they are being detained as any anyone would be if they had been accused of a crime and considered a flight risk.
Q2) How are they being detained? Are the conditions considered acceptable by third-party organizations such as the ICRC? Are detainees being provided with adequate food, water, shelter, and medical care? Is there an official timetable for the resolution of their detention? Are the reason(s) for their detention documented and available to advocates?
If any of the above questions have a "no" answer, then again it is shameful and should be corrected immediately.
Beyond that, the United States is not conducting itself in a manner inconsistent with most other nations in the world.
As for Trump and the mythical "rounding up" plans: just stop it.
Seriously.
This kind of hysterical fearmongering is just as absurd as Glenn Beck's "Obama's gonna round up conservatives and put them into FEMA camps" bullshit from a couple of years ago. It is just as unsubstantiated, just as inflammatory, and just as likely to be fought tooth and nail by average Americans.
Any social advocate will tell you that this ain't the 1940s.
