[This is a guest post, reprinted with Carmen’s permission from the blog All About Race. Thanks, Carmen.]
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court ruled that people of African ancestry were not, and could never become, citizens of the United States of America. The Dred Scott decision asserted that blacks were property. And because no state or federal government could take a citizen’s property away from him, this decision meant that any slave who managed to escape to a “free state” would be hunted down and returned to bondage and his or her “owner.” This decision enraged many of the most vocal abolitionists and politicians in the North and was an important precursor of Abraham Lincoln’s election to President.
But still, even among those who philosophically opposed slavery, I imagine dinner conversations sounding something like this:
“That Dred Scott decision is appalling.”
“Yes, it’s simply awful.”
“But, you know, those Negroes who just up and run away? I mean, they are breaking the law.”
“Yes, and our country cannot tolerate law breakers.”
“Just to think, what if everybody just went about doing whatever they wanted to do?”
“The whole Union would collapse into chaos.”
“Absolutely!”
The issue of immigration in America is cause for this kind of conversation now. Many well meaning and good natured people are not critically examining what it means that the media uniformly and incessantly blares the term “illegal immigrant” as if the people who risk physical harm to get to America to work, are only that. The media would have you believe that these are not the same people America has welcomed to come to build and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children.
In the South, the American Civil War was termed “the War of Northern Aggression.” During the 1960’s, those who made the trip south to support Southern grassroots movements in their protests for an end to Jim Crow and racial terrorism, were called “agitators.” Now, it is all so clear. But, as the events of America’s Civil Rights movement unfolded, many decent people, with hearts in the “right” place, felt “Negroes are pushing too hard, for too much. These things take time.”
I support strong and secure borders, period. And with that, I believe that if we as a nation welcome people to come and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children, then I believe we must provide a path for those people to become full citizens of the United States sharing all of the rights and responsibilities that citizenship entails.
There was a time in America when it was illegal to gather and discuss independence from England. There was a time in America when it was illegal for an American of African descent to vote or own property or drink from certain water fountains. There was a time in America when it was illegal for Americans of Japanese descent to live in their homes. Instead, Japanese Americans were legally evicted from their homes and moved to internment camps.
So, I have a question for you. When you say “illegal immigrant,” other than relating a fact of American citizenship status, what are you saying? What do you want me to know about the people you describe in this way?
Sailorman
”
Thats true. But then again a few short years ago most of us thought we had private property rights too before the USSC magically swept them away in the Kelo decision.
Note the word “appear”, which acts as a qualifier
And please note in my previous posts, I stated what your opinion seemed to be. Are you bothering to read anything *I’m* writing?
If there is a conflict between a court having fair rules, or doing justice, it is better if the court does justice.
“Doing justice” meaning what in this context, setting aside the whole issue of the false dilemma posed?
“Doing justice” meaning what in this context
Finding people guilty who are guilty, and finding people innocent who are innocent.
If you mean the specifics of immigration courts, then reaching decisions that accord with the will of Congress when they passed whatever rule or policy is being adjudicated.
mythago:
Is my statement of what I understood your position generally to be incorrect? If so, then I apologize. It didn’t have any effect on the your argument, other than to make a particular segment of my response make more sense.
So: you care about Type I error? Why? Do you care about it more, or less than Type II? Do you think Type I error is the main issue that constitutes problems with due process, as I understood you to be implying before?
And while we’re at it, would you mind distinguishing who you are quoting, when you quote multiple people in the same post?
I disagree. There are two kinds of general unfairness complaints: results and process. But in reality the results complaints are much more common, because few people tend to complain about something that gives them what they ultimately hoped to achieve.
If you look at most people who are are complaining about process, they are doing so because of the results. Your example below is somewhat of an unusual exception; I’m not sure how it really applies to the immigration argument.
OK, right here you sort of lost me. It’s difficult to separate “torture into confessing” from the rest of the example. And AFAIK we’re not talking about torture based confessions, right? We’re talking about immigration decisions. Why are you going down this road?
I’m going to address thius part of your post as its own standalone hypothetical:
Let’s see if we can agree on one thing first: Do you agree that the worst case is “if the man’s employer later stumbles across evidence that the man WAS NOT an embezzler”? That any situation where a convicted defendant is actually guilty is “better” than an otherwise-identical situation where the convicted defendant is actually innocent?
Sure. “Better” does not mean “not bad”.
If a process is corrupt or unreliable, then what’s the point of having the process at all? How can we judge whether, in Robert’s words, whether justice is being done? “Most of the people we deport should have been deported anyway” is not a justification of a bad process. It ignores the question of whether we would have gotten the same–or better–results with a fair process, and it ignores Type I errors.