Ezra Klein interviews immigration expert Doug Massey:
According to Massey, the rise of America’s large undocumented population is a direct result of the militarization of the border. While undocumented workers once traveled back and forth from Mexico with relative ease, after the border was garrisoned, immigrants from Mexico crossed the border and stayed.
“Migrants quite rationally responded to the increased costs and risks by minimizing the number of times they crossed the border,” Massey wrote in his 2007 paper “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis.'” “But they achieved this goal not by remaining in Mexico and abandoning their intention to migrate to the U.S., but by hunkering down and staying once they had run the gauntlet at the border and made it to their final destination.”
The data support Massey’s thesis: In 1980, 46 percent of undocumented Mexican migrants returned to Mexico within 12 months. By 2007, that was down to 7 percent. As a result, the permanent undocumented population exploded.
The militarization also had another unintended consequence: It dispersed the undocumented population. Prior to 1986, about 85 percent of Mexicans who entered the U.S. settled in California, Texas or Illinois, and more than two-thirds entered through either the San Diego-Tijuana entry point or the El Paso-Juarez entry point. As the U.S. blockaded those areas, undocumented migrants found new ways in — and new places to settle. By 2002, two-thirds of undocumented migrants were entering at a non-San Diego/El Paso entry point and settling in a “nontraditional” state.
In recent years, the net inflow of new undocumented immigrants arriving from Mexico has fallen to zero. Some of the decline is due to the U.S. recession and a falloff in construction, which employed a lot of migrant workers. But some is due to an improving economy in Mexico, where unemployment is 5 percent and wages have been rising. “I personally think the huge boom in Mexican immigration is over,” Massey said.
Yet the political debate over immigration is stuck in 1985. Congress is focused above all on how to further militarize an already militarized border — despite the fact that doubling the size of the border patrol since 2004 and installing hundreds of miles of barriers and surveillance equipment appears to have been counterproductive.
No, it hasn’t been counterproductive. It’s accomplished the aim of making it much harder to get across the border illegally. Now we need to couple it with aggressively finding and deporting the people who are already here illegally (which should have been done in the first place). Now that it’s harder for them to get back across the border once they’ve been deported, we should see a net decrease in the actual number of people who are here illegally.
Help me out with something, here. Why is the left so eager to assist people who broke our laws to enter our country? Why should lawbreakers who have managed to evade the law for a given length of time be awarded citizenship (no matter how long it takes)? What is the problem with making sure our immigration laws are obeyed?
And why do activists insist that this is an issue of immigration, and not illegal immigration, and paint opponents of giving citizenship to people here illegally as “anti-immigrant” when 99% of them are perfectly fine with providing a path to citizenship to people who have immigrated here legally? Does the rampant dishonesty of this bother anyone?
I’m speaking as a liberal flavored libertarian, not a leftist. Firstly, the part of my mind which thinks most government action leads to unintended consequences is laughing and laughing. I suspect that most of the unintended consequences are the result of forgetting that people are conscious and goal-seeking.
As for the general point about law-breaking– I judge laws by their effects, and immigration restriction is basically evil. Part of it is that almost all the world kept Jews from escaping the Holocaust, and I still bear a grudge.
The other part is that limiting immigration makes people’s lives worse– why is freedom to travel and work good inside countries and bad between them?
How can it make sense to cripple people’s ability to make money (by denying them driver’s and business licenses) and then blame them for being poor and possibly using government services?
I don’t believe countries have the right to make any laws they want. They obviously have the power, but I don’t rank law-abidingness all that high on the list of virtues.
As has been pointed out, the path to citizenship just barely exists. It seems very inconsistent for conservatives– who generally mistrust government bureaucracy– to all of the sudden insist that the immigration bureaucracy is a respectworthy font of social order.
I’m speaking as an immigrant, who has spent tens of thousands of dollars to get a green card, and has not been out of status for an hour.
I look at immigration laws, the way I look at property laws. I do not think that there are somehow natural, just or fair. But they are the law of the land, it can be argued that they serve an important purpose, and it seems that a majority of people supports their existence. I certainly do. I want to be able to control who gets inside this country, the same way I want to be able to control who shows up at my parties. It can easily be argued in both cases, I am showing my privilege and prejudices.
I do believe that, for a person like me, this country has the best society on Earth. I have lived in only three countries, but together with my five best friends, the number grows to over 30, and we all agree, this is the best country to live in, for us, right now. It is an undeniable fact that when people from a different society enter ours, ours will have to change.
Well, in my misguided bigotry, I believe that the changes are usually for the worse. I have an idea how France has changed. (Despite being of African ancestry, my family had lived in France since the very beginning on the 19th century) I have been told by my sisters how Sweden has changed in their lifetime. I have seen how California has changed in the last ten years… and although I actually like the way it is changing, if I had been in a different socioeconomic group, I’d be probably singing a different song.
So, I am all for immigration, but I want the immigration to be controlled by rules, which I can work to tune to my liking. I am all for parties too, and we even have a guest room which is often occupied… but I get to decide who stays there until they get their legs underneath them. (Disclaimer: When I graduated from college, I had a clear path to a Green card because friends of mine, immigrants themselves, help me with a job in which I could built a reputation, and later a loan to start my own business.)
Sebastian,
I’ve seen variations on the “party” analogy you made above many times regarding immigration. Usually it goes along the lines of “I like all sorts of people and am generally a welcoming sort. However, that still means that I want to control who is able to come into my house. And it also means that, if I found that someone had snuck into my house without my permission, I’d be angry, even if that person turned out to otherwise be very kind, friendly, hard-working, etc. They’d be trespassing, and would need to leave my house, regardless of how admirable they are otherwise.”
The problem I have with that analogy, and the reason I think it fails goes like this: the immigrant isn’t in your house. He’s in your neighbor’s house. Here’s how I see it.
Sally, who lives in your neighborhood, wants to invite Martin into her house. Martin isn’t from your neighborhood. The reason why she wants to invite him in is nothing malicious. Maybe she’s his friend and wants to spend time with him, maybe she wants him to fix her toilet, maybe she wants him to help design a new semiconductor.
Sally’s neighbor (let’s call him Ron) says, “That’s not right! Sally is obliged to check with the rest of us before she invites someone from outside of the neighborhood into her own home. She doesn’t have the right to simply interact with whom she pleases. Plus, we all know that she’s inviting him in to fix her toilet. Well I have a brother in-law down the street who’s a plumber, and he is entitled by virtue of being from this neighborhood to having first dibs at fixing Sally’s toilet. Even if Sally likes Martin more than my brother, or if she thinks that Martin charges less or does a better job, that doesn’t matter. She needs to get our permission first before Martin is allowed to set foot onto Sally’s property.”
I think that Ron (the fictional Ron from my analogy, of course) is being an interfering busybody. He thinks that he gets to dictate who his neighbors are and are not allowed to interact with. If he is successful in persuading the others around him to keep Martin out of Sally’s property, then he’s not just harmed Martin. He’s harmed Sally, his own neighbor, by revoking her right to interact peaceably with whom she wishes.
Actually the numbers of undocumented immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico had already been decreasing.
Illegal border crossings lowest in 40 years.
It’s believed the last recession played a role in this as well.
Kohai, do you believe in any laws?
Because my liberty is somewhat restricted in the sense that I have to answer your argument instead of punching you (or getting my friends to punch you, or getting them to shoot you, or organizing them into a nation, and shooting you under the laws of land)
If Sally signed an agreement in which she agrees not to invite plumbers from outside the neighborhood, she lost the right to ‘interact peaceably with whom she wishes”. If you want to invite a farm worker from Mexico to pick strawberries for 30 dollars per day, you better make sure that you have the legal right to do so. Because the only reason you can have a farm is that you live in a country that has laws governing property. You can’t benefit from these while ignoring the ones governing immigration.
Or you can go to a country where you can have anything – a farm, slaves, child soldiers, the right to associate with whomever you wish, and do whatever you wish as long as you have more people with guns than whomever you are likely to encounter. There’s still a few left on Earth, but you better hurry. There aren’t many people who like living there.
@4: ” I judge laws by their effects, and immigration restriction is basically evil. Part of it is that almost all the world kept Jews from escaping the Holocaust, and I still bear a grudge.”
This is preposterous. Because one group was wrongly kept out of the U.S. and other countries 75 years ago, ANY restriction a country may impose on immigration is evil? That’s like arguing that it’s evil for anyone to lock their own front door because nobody offered sanctuary of their home to Kitty Genovese.
Seems to me something is either evil or it isn’t. A waffle iron is either evil or it isn’t. It doesn’t become evil because somebody once refused to make waffles for a starving child.
Moreover, if all immigration restrictions are evil, would you have allowed Nazi war criminals to immigrate to the U.S.?
@6: I don’t think your analogy works at all. In the “house” (or “party”) analogy, the house is our country. If our neighbor has a house, then that’s got to be a different country. So, sure, it wouldn’t be our place to tell our neighbor, “Cambodia,” whom she can or cannot let into her house.
In your analogy, I take it that America is the **neighborhood** rather than just one house in a neighborhood. So, “Ron” represents the part of America that wants to keep illegal immigrants out and “Sally” represents the part that wants to invite them in. There are some big problems with this:
First, in real life, immigrants don’t just stay in one little corner of America as the polite houseguests of those Americans who invited them in. Sally may tell Ron that Martin is only coming over to her house to fix the toilet and manufacture semiconductors, but Martin in fact is pretty much free to do whatever he wants once he gets here.
Second, your analogy ignores that we have a mechanism for resolving the dispute between Ron and Sally called the Constitution. Nothing like this really exists in a typical neighborhood; neighbors DON’T get to veto one another’s choices of houseguests. But in real life, we have established a legal framework (the Constitution) whereby laws are enacted — including immigration laws — and it’s agreed that everyone is subject to the laws that are passed. If Ron and Sally put something to a vote and Ron wins, then Sally must abide by that unless she get her neighbors to change their minds the next time they vote on it. Actually, the only way your neighborhood analogy makes sense is if the neighborhood is a condo association or co-op, in which owners do get to vote on rules that are binding on everyone in the community. Of course, in real life, those rules would concern more mundane matters such as whether pets should be allowed, and not who can be someone’s private houseguest. So, if we pretend Ron’s and Sally’s neighborhood is a condominium community and pretend that Martin is a French Poodle rather than a French plumber/semiconductor manufacturer, then there’s nothing remotely unsettling about the idea that Ron can vote to exclude Martin from Sally’s house. Under the condo by-laws, Ron is perfectly entitled to vote Martin out.
I do think that anyone who is in favor of completely unrestricted immigration should reflect on the house analogy. If the idea is that it’s morally wrong to exclude someone from the U.S. who had the simple misfortune of being born in an impoverished Third-World country, then why is it not also morally wrong to keep someone out of your own home who had the simple misfortune of being born in an impoverished neighborhood across town? Indeed, what entitles you to keep the clothes on your back if someone with fewer clothes wants you to share them? Eventually, ISTM, it all comes down to whether people have a right to own personal property and to live in ordered societies or not. If they do, then the right to declare “this is mine” or “this is ours” goes along with that.
Kohai, do you believe in any laws?
…
Or you can go to a country where you can have anything – a farm, slaves, child soldiers, the right to associate with whomever you wish, and do whatever you wish as long as you have more people with guns than whomever you are likely to encounter. There’s still a few left on Earth, but you better hurry. There aren’t many people who like living there.
Sebastian, this entire comment seems to me to only support following laws for the sake of following laws. It would work equally well in defending a law that all citizens must wear purple socks on Thursdays. Or rather, defending following that law if it’s already in place. As a criticism of people who break existing immigration laws, it works, but it has nothing to say about people who want to change the law. Based on Kohai’s comment, we only know that he disagrees with the law.
Well, duh.
I was responding to “He’s harmed Sally, his own neighbor, by revoking her right to interact peaceably with whom she wishes.” which is applicable to pretty much any law. Laws restrict the freedom of those with power to act.
He leads with a comment attacking all laws, I try to confirm that he opposes all laws. Those that restrict my freedom to oppress those weaker than me, those that restrict the freedom of hungry people to raid your fridge when you are not home, etc…
Now, if he thinks that immigration laws need changing, or even need to be removed altogether, he’s free to give it a try. If his try is limited to flawed analogies like the one about Sally, the immigration laws have nothing to fear.
You think reasoned arguments based on a rational and logical examination of the facts have nothing to fear from emotional appeals and 30-second soundbites? Have you paid no attention at all to American politics?
I don’t see how murder, assault, vandalism, theft, or negligence constitute interacting peaceably with whom one wishes. Sebastian, I disagree witb your reading of Kohai’s comment.
Last I heard (2010 IIRC), net migration was FROM the US TO Mexico. (Someone can check up to date stats.)
The US is so unattractive that the illegal immigration problem is one of AMERICANS moving to MEXICO.
As far as I’m concerned, if the US is so unattractive people won’t break the law to move here, we’re doing it wrong.
I would be highly suspicious of any numbers purporting to measure net migration between Mexico and the U.S. First, are accurate numbers being kept? Have any recent administrations seen it in their best interests to keep such numbers?
Second, how are people counted? For example, Jose sneaks across the border in 2009. He works in the U.S. for 3 years. He loses his job, can’t get another, and goes back to Mexico. Does he count as a U.S.-to-Mexico immigrant in 2012?
Maria crosses the border in 2008. She goes back in 2009 for a couple of months to visit her mother. She come back in the end of 2009 and works for another 18 months. Then she goes back to see her mother again, and then comes back after 2 months. Was she counted each time?
Jesus has crossed the border to work seasonally and then go home again for many years. Is he being counted as an immigrant – who is someone who moves from country A to country B intending to leave country A forever and stay in country B for the rest of his life?
The leading project in that field, afaik, is the Mexican Migration Project, an academic project co-run by Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara.
Edited to add: But I don’t know if they do any tracking of Americans migrating to Mexico, or who does track that. So although I think it’s interesting, it may not be relevant to the immediate question, I admit.
I don’t see how murder, assault, vandalism, theft, or negligence constitute interacting peaceably with whom one wishes.
You do not? I’ll explain then. “Peaceably”, like “morally”, “naturally”, “God given” is a weasel word.
First I will assume, that your heart, just like Kohai’s is bleeding over Sally’s trampled rights. Let us remember, Sally’s rights to interact peaceably with whomever she wishes were violated by Ron, because he would not let her invite Martin ‘peaceably’ to her house. But the reason that Ron managed to do so is that their neighbors have made rules governing who gets invited and who does not.
Just like all rights in society, Sally’s, Ron’s and their neighbors have been granted, by society, so that it can function better. Whether it is so that society’s resources can be husbanded, so that society’s members can feel safe and dedicate their efforts to improve society, so that society’s members can feel good about themselves and thus be more productive, it does not matter. Rights and laws exist through society, and all societies have mechanisms through which their members can change them.
All laws restrict someone’s freedom. All rights restrict someone’s freedom. The freedom to act in a way someone does not like. Whether someone is acting peaceably or not is very hard to define, and frankly, who cares? Lets go through your list.
Negligence. Nothing more peaceable than that. Neglect someone long enough, and they’ll expire, increasing entropy, and leaving the world a more peaceful place.
Theft. Nothing says that taking something has to be done in a violent manner. Pickpockets, cat burglars, all these worthies do their best to keep things peaceful. It’s usually those who think they own something that disturb the peace when it has been taken while they were not holding it.
Vandalism. Seriously, have you seen the Hell some people raise when they disagree with the artistic expression of those society labels vandals?
I grow tired of this. It is clear that our society has plenty of laws violating people’s right to peaceably do whatever they wish. And don’t give me the bullshit that ‘peaceably’ means ‘promoting peace’. One man’s right to peacefully marry another man clearly triggers non-peaceful reactions in other men, to offer just one example.
So, I’ll come to my point. Just like killing people without permission, crossing the border and working in the US without permission is only illegal because at some point, a law was passed. Both laws were passed, because at that time, people with the power to pass laws thought the US would be better off with those laws than without them. Both laws can be changed, in the US, through constitutional means.
If you want to change the immigration laws, you should not be whining about Sally not being able to associate with whomever she wishes, or about someone not being able to enjoy the protection of one law after he broke another. You should be trying to prove that our existing laws are not working to the benefits of those with the power to change them.
Of course, there are plenty of different people. Some are so unskilled that they fear the influx of cheap labor. Useless scum! Others have spent a lot of resources to legally immigrate, and resent others managing it for free. Greedy assholes! There’s those that believe that people in the US are culturally, morally and biologically better than the unwashed hordes outside the borders, and want to preserve the purity of the population. Bigoted ignoramuses! Some have relatives abroad, and what to reunite their families. Selfish bastards! Others feel good about themselves when they selflessly work to help the socially weak. Whatever…
You do not? I’ll explain then. “Peaceably”, like “morally”, “naturally”, “God given” is a weasel word.
Until I read your interpretation, I thought it was pretty straightforward. Actually, the other ones, while subjective and therefore imprecise, are not what I would call “weasel words”, either.
Negligence. Nothing more peaceable than that.
Really. Nothing more peaceable than crashing your car into a mother and her sons who were trying to cross the street, because you were drag racing (to use one example from the recent news). Nothing more peaceable than carelessly poisoning someone by exposing them to mercury. You keep using that word…
And I think negligence was my weakest example.
I grow tired of this.
Pity. I was really looking forward to seeing you explain how you could assault or murder someone peaceably.
Anyway, no, I do not believe there is anything “peaceable” about, through force or through stealth, harming a person, or harming or stealing their property. Is that clear and un-weaselly enough for you? I was going to add that I can’t speak for Kohai, but frankly, I don’t think your interpretation of “peaceably” is reasonable. It’s a very uncharitable reading at best.
This all seems like a pretty standard libertarian pro-immigration argument to me. Do you believe that all libertarians are crypto-anarchists?
And don’t give me the bullshit that ‘peaceably’ means ‘promoting peace’.
I find this comment bizarre, although perhaps a bit less surprising given your bizarre interpretation of ‘peaceably’ above.
Also:
Some are so unskilled that they fear the influx of cheap labor. Useless scum! Others have spent a lot of resources to legally immigrate, and resent others managing it for free. Greedy assholes!
your heart, just like Kohai’s is bleeding over Sally’s trampled rights.
whining
Well, duh.
Seriously?
There’s those that believe that people in the US are culturally, morally and biologically better than the unwashed hordes outside the borders, and want to preserve the purity of the population. Bigoted ignoramuses! Some have relatives abroad, and what to reunite their families. Selfish bastards! Others feel good about themselves when they selflessly work to help the socially weak. Whatever…
Did you just switch to being in favor of open borders halfway through the paragraph?
Well, looks like quite a bit of discussion came up! Due to space reasons, I don’t intend to make a detailed reply to every point people brought up, but I will try to cover a few things people mentioned.
First up, Sebastian,
I don’t think there is any reasonable interpretation of what I wrote that could construe me as believing in no laws. I think people have a right to choose their friends and trading partners with the mutual consent of the parties involved. I think this right arises out of our personhood. And I think this right exists regardless of whether the neighbors approve. Obviously not all of my neighbors agree with this, judging by the regulations our representatives have put in office.
You add later:
Clearly you and I have very different outlooks on the world. Yours appears very authoritarian to me.
Let’s say a movement emerges to utterly ban all religious practices, and to censor any profession of religious belief, whether in public or private. This movement is successful in persuading two-thirds of both houses of Congress, the President, and 3/4ths of the states to amend the constitution in accordance with their policy preferences. Violation of these anti-religion laws is a capital crime.
Is it your interpretation that this law is legitimate? Clearly the new legislation must be immensely popular, given the size of the majorities that have approved it.
My interpretation is that it is not legitimate because it violates peoples’ rights. I think respecting and defending those rights is one of the things that makes a government legitimate.
closetpuritan,
FWIW, I don’t identify as a libertarian. I do think that the best arguments I’ve heard re: immigration policy are libertarian ones, but I don’t necessarily want to label myself that way since 1) I don’t agree with everything libertarian (and don’t like labels in general), and 2) some libertarians seem awful to me, and I don’t want to be associated with them.
But thank you for speaking up earlier! :) I can’t tell whether you agreed with my comment, but I do think you interpreted it correctly.
Kohai,
I didn’t think that you were necessarily a libertarian, just thought the phrase that Sebastian particularly objected to seemed like a standard libertarian argument, and since it wasn’t a new argument, was surprised by his reaction to it.
I don’t identify as libertarian myself, either, though I lean libertarian in some ways. Your statement that people should be able to peaceably interact with whoever they wish sounds good, but then depending on how you interpret it could be applied as an objection to things like the minimum wage law. (And hiring someone below a minimum wage, arguably, harms other workers, but that’s broadly similar to the anti-immigration argument that the immigrants will take all our jobs. [You know, the ones Americans don’t want to do.]) I’m willing to recognize indirect harm as a form of harm. So I’m not sure I want to commit to it.
Kohai: I think people have a right to choose their friends and trading partners with the mutual consent of the parties involved.
Except that the parties involved may mean, theoretically, every homo sapiens on Earth. I may want to hang out with my friend in Times Square, but if he carries a virulent disease, other people may not want that.
I think this right arises out of our personhood.
Pfft… Or is our God given right, or is a natural right, or can be derived from basic principles, or I said so. There are no rights except those we, as a society, grant ourselves. Nice sound bite, though.
And I think this right exists regardless of whether the neighbors approve.
Well, you are allowed to think so. But I cannot invite someone to my party if the neighbor has a restraining order against her. Nor rent to pedophiles if my property is adjacent to a grade school. Nor trade in alcohol or marihuana in some areas of the city.
Why do I have to go on? It is absolutely clear that we as a society have chosen to abridge some liberties. You can argue that you disagree with some of these decisions, and you may want them changed, but don’t come and pretend that there is something fundamentally right about your opinion. It’s just your opinion, and the way to make it carry any weight is to find people with similar ones. Babbling about rights which our laws do not recognize as rights, and the deeper meaning of personhood will get you some sympathy, but not from anyone whom I’d respect.
Closetpuritan:Did you just switch to being in favor of open borders halfway through the paragraph?
I did not. I was listing people with reasons for or against tighter border control. I actually listed my own as well (under greedy assholes) Honestly, I do not feel threatened, one way or another. I’m already in, so tightening does not scare me, and my personal situation is unlikely to be worsened by an influx of Mexicans in California. I believe that California is only improved by becoming more Hispanic, and even if I’m wrong, I’ll still have more people to play soccer with, and more places to get good Mexican food. Now, if I was holding a minimum wage job, or relying on public assistance, or did not have the financial stability to absorb a decrease in public services… I may think differently. But selfish as I am, I would not worry even if I believed that more immigrants would necessarily lead to all of the above (I do not)
Let’s say a movement emerges to utterly ban all religious practices, and to censor any profession of religious belief, whether in public or private. This movement is successful in persuading two-thirds of both houses of Congress, the President, and 3/4ths of the states to amend the constitution in accordance with their policy preferences. Violation of these anti-religion laws is a capital crime.
Is it your interpretation that this law is legitimate?
You know that legitimate means ‘according to the law’, right? If the constitution has been amended to allow for the passing of the law, yes, the law is legitimate. Is that a trick question?
My interpretation is that it is not legitimate because it violates peoples’ rights.
The rights are what the laws say the rights are. Your definition seems to be ‘rights are what I say they are’. Anywhere on Earth, at any time in history, people have had the right to religious practices ONLY as far as they do not violate the law on the land. There are countries is which public or private expression of certain religious practices is illegal, and in some countries, some practices do carry a death penalty. There are fringe cults of Kali that sporadically run afoul of India’s murder laws. I doubt they would be any more welcome in the US.
I think respecting and defending those rights is one of the things that makes a government legitimate.
Which rights? If you claim that some rights are objective, you have done nothing to substantiate those claims. If society does not recognize a right, that right does not exist.
I am really tired of this conversation. You are Kohai repeat the same thing again and again:
“I believe some rights exist objectively outside of society, and all laws that limit those rights are illegitimate, and why are you not falling over yourself to remove them?”
To which I say “Not only have you failed to convince me, but you have made me more likely to oppose your action on general principles, because you appear to be arrogant and irrational.”
Sebastian,
I am really tired of this conversation.
Yeah, me too. It’s really tiresome to have people put words in your mouth. (Or other people’s mouths.)
“I believe some rights exist objectively outside of society, and all laws that limit those rights are illegitimate, and why are you not falling over yourself to remove them?”
No.
For one thing, I don’t expect you to advocate for something you don’t believe. For another, I don’t really believe in “objective rights”. There are some “rights” that I think are immoral to infringe upon; that is my opinion and there is no way to know if it is objectively true [or indeed, whether it’s possible for such matters to be objectively true] and I am advocating for my opinion, as is my right [socially agreed upon, at least] in a democracy. You talk as if the only opinions it’s possible to hold are either 1) My opinion of what is right, and what is objectively right, are one and the same, and 2) We should do what’s best for the country as a whole. [That is my interpretation of this comment:
If you want to change the immigration laws, you should not be whining about Sally not being able… You should be trying to prove that our existing laws are not working to the benefits of those with the power to change them.] What does “should” even mean in this context? Are we “allowed” to count “most people think we should repeal X law because of moral reasons”, or are we only “allowed” to look at economic or security reasons? Do you feel that we “should” look at what’s best for the country, or only what’s best for us as individuals?
Also, you know that most of the quotes after “closetpuritan:” in your comment are Kohai’s, right?
I’m not the one who used it, but I’m already familiar with the etymology of “legitimate”. Did you know that sometimes words are used in a sense different from their original etymology?
Both that usage of “legitimate” and the general sentiment of Kohai’s “peaceably” phrase have a pretty long history.
“Not only have you failed to convince me, but you have made me more likely to oppose your action on general principles, because you appear to be arrogant and irrational.”
Back atcha! Although actually, you’re less “irrational” in a general sense, and more, “so angry at your opponents that you can’t seem to actually read and understand large parts of what they write”. And actually, I try not to base my political positions on whether someone on the internet has been pissing me off. So, I guess just the “arrogant” part. Especially given that Kohai and myself keep prefacing our statements with “I think” or “I believe” and you flat-out state that yours are true, with a side of arrogance:
There are no rights except those we, as a society, grant ourselves. Nice sound bite, though.
If you want to change the immigration laws, you should not be whining about Sally not being able… You should be trying to prove that our existing laws are not working to the benefits of those with the power to change them.
ClosetPuritan: I apologize for mixing up what was said by you and by Kohai. I also completely own up to the ‘arrogant’ accusation, but that does not bother me. As for the rest, I fully intend to answer it, but it will probably have to wait for a while… I hate days in which I have next nothing to do, only to have to get a call from a second shift.