Interesting.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) includes information on its website about “Sensitive Locations,” which is CBP-speak for “Places where we won’t arrest you if you are an illegal immigrant.” In careful, oh-so-delicate and respectful language, the agency explains that immigration laws are not to be enforced at designated “sensitive locations” so that illegal aliens can be “free” to live their lives “without fear or hesitation.”
It reads in part…
“The policies provide that enforcement actions at or focused on sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship, and hospitals should generally be avoided, and that such actions may only take place when (a) prior approval is obtained from an appropriate supervisory official, or (b) there are exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action without supervisor approval. The policies are meant to ensure that ICE and CBP officers and agents exercise sound judgment when enforcing federal law at or focused on sensitive locations, to enhance the public understanding and trust, and to ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation.”
“This policy is designed to ensure that these enforcement actions do not occur at nor are focused on sensitive locations such as schools and churches” without meeting special exceptions, the ICE Sensitive Locations Policy states.
Locations covered by Sensitive Locations Policy include, but are not limited to:
- Schools, such as known and licensed daycares, pre-schools and other early learning programs; primary schools; secondary schools; post-secondary schools up to and including colleges and universities; as well as scholastic or education-related activities or events, and school bus stops that are marked and/or known to the officer, during periods when school children are present at the stop;
- Medical treatment and health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities;
- Places of worship, such as churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples;
- Religious or civil ceremonies or observances, such as funerals and weddings; and
- During public demonstration, such as a march, rally, or parade.
“The enforcement actions covered by this policy are (1) arrests; (2) interviews; (3) searches; and (4) for the purposes of immigration enforcement only, surveillance,” the ICE further explains.
The CBP “FAQ” answers are accompanied by a Spanish translation, and the CBP website provides a toll-free number and email address so aggrieved illegal aliens can report immigration that violate these policies.
As I said…
Interesting.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is this a responsible, competent and ethical exercise of government power?
I have seen a few right-wing sites that are foaming at their metaphorical mouths over this, calling it a virtual “how-to” guide for illegal aliens, and a literal advertisement for illegal immigration.
I wouldn’t go that far. Still, this is Hanlon’s Razor at its most insidious, as is the Obama administrations entire illegal immigration policy.
It is stupidity, not conspiracy, but it is so stupid that it is sinister. The government that is pledged to enforce the law cannot intentionally instruct law breakers about how they can best avoid apprehension. I shouldn’t have to explain why this is true. If illegals want to engage in strategies to avoid the rightful consequences of their illegal acts, then let them find lawyers. Such lawyers, by the way, would be violating ethics rules by assisting clients in illegal and unethical conduct.
This disgraceful–but with this administration, typical—rule of law-undermining conduct will indeed get the Ethics Alarms “This Will Help Elect Donald Trump” designation, and it’s this kind of idiocy under Obama that has made Trump a viable candidate.
That’s unethical all by itself.
The government posts about “sensitive locations” show how unhinged by progressive cant and political correctness nonsense Democrats have become, with incalculable damage to the nation.
______________________
Pointer: Jasper and Sardine
Ethics Alarms 
I’ll have to disagree. Illegal Immigration is a problem large enough that it isn’t going to be effectively enforced. Ever. Part of any solution will be a component of amnesty. A person who is here illegally should do their best to be or become good civilians. Church, school, and keeping good health are exemplary courses in making the population good. I imagine they throw in weddings, etc because it would not only be tacky to kick someone while they’re down, but if you’re talking about an international family like this, how many attendees might be foreign anyway and the time consumption in sorting out who’s got the right stamp on what passport is onerous. (“oh, you left your passport in your hotel room? sure you did.”)
But I’ll side with you on Rallys, Parades, and other gatherings. If you have intelligence about someone’s legal status and they’re in public, that’s the prime time to go get them. That’s just ridiculous.
I feel the medical assistance piece is important. Regardless if they are being a burden on our society and eating up resources, if their condition worsens because they were apprehensive about seeking help, they’ll eat up further resources. If they die, we’ll have to do a death investigation. I’ve yet to hear of a police department not opening a death investigation because the victim wasn’t in the country legally.
Since I didn’t address the “advertising” portion of it, I’ll tack on that with any policy which has good intentions, it has to be effective and it can’t be effective if it’s being violated and subverted. If you say “seek medical attention” and people don’t seek it and have to amputate parts or die, then you’re just providing lip service to a problem.
Good intentions don’t justify dumb policies. Fact: if a law forbid something, the authority that must enforce that law and protect its integrity must not simultaneously undermine the law by instructing violators on how to avoid accountability.
How does someone get separated from this obvious principle? I really am curious.
Another example: free needle programs. Makes no sense at all, but really well-intentioned. If conduct is worth making a law against, the government can’t facilitate breaking that law.
How can anyone dispute this in good faith?
The advertising isn’t placed in Mexico advocating that people illegally immigrate to the United States. The crime has already been committed and the people are already here. The game is on – the cat and mouse game of law enforcement. If Law Enforcement wasn’t a game, then we wouldn’t have a constitution and rules and policies. ICE and Border Patrol are out there looking for people to deport and they’re keeping their hands full.
As a society, we decided it was better to treat the wounded and ill rather than have them suffer in hiding and spreading that affliction to the rest of the population. You think if we don’t offer them treatment for rabies, zika, west nile, ebola that they’ll just head home to Mexico to seek treatment? These are people who would rather die than go back. Once you realize that, it makes sense that they would rather avoid medical treatment if they thought there was a good chance they’d get deported.
So, your good faith argument is: “Let them rot in the shadows. I don’t care if they infect 40 people a day with their disease. We’ll find them eventually.”
“Another example: free needle programs. Makes no sense at all, but really well-intentioned. If conduct is worth making a law against, the government can’t facilitate breaking that law. ”
It makes perfect sense as it cuts down on the transmission of AIDS and other diseases. People are still going to shoot up but if we can keep them from transmitting AIDS to each other and also the general public giving them clean needles is the thing to do.
http://wthitv.com/2016/07/28/published-report-calls-indiana-hiv-outbreak-preventable/
Tell me you don’t see an inherent contradiction between forbidding an act as harmful and criminal, and simultaneously facilitating it. Let’s also test heroin and make sure junkies don’t get a bad strain. Let’s give non-lethal weapons to bank robbers. Let’s have classes in ways spouses can beat up their partners without scarring or killing them. This kind of thing violates all logic, public policy process, and criminal justice theory.
If the choice is between having an epidemic of AIDS and hepatitis or supplying people with clean needles the logical and ethical choice is to supply the clean needles.
Of course, that’s not the choice. That’s the false choice promoted by people who don’t care about the law, and who just want to be compassionate to junkies, and accepted by supposedly responsible policy makers who are too lazy and cowardly to make tough choices.
Then what is the choice? Are you saying junkies won’t shoot up if they can get sick from reused needles?
You haven’t been living in a cave, you’ve met addicts, you know better.
I’m saying that governments saying “don’t do this, or else,” and simultaneously providing the means to do it to the law-breakers is idiotic, incompetent, and self-defeating, and it is.
If junkies have made the choices that lead to getting sick, they are personally responsible for having done so. There are far too many public and private methods available for little or no cost for a junkie to get clean for this line of logic to wash.
Giving needles is like giving condoms to teens because they are ‘gonna do it anyway.’ There is no way on earth that is not interpreted by the teens as acceptance of the action.
God that’s a bad argument: Rely on harder consequences to steer the decision making of groups that have never used consequences to steer their decision making processes. In what universe did abstinence education actually work? Give kids the condoms, because they WILL do it whether you approve or not. Will they do it more if you do? Maybe, buy playing chicken with AIDS and teen pregnancy because you’re stuck on a moral molehill is a bad place to be.
This is fine, as long as you don’t also tell them not to do it. “Don’t do it, but when you do, use this” undermines authority and common sense, and reinforces hypocrisy as a positive value.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/
The United States ranks first among developed nations in rates of both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In an effort to reduce these rates, the U.S. government has funded abstinence-only sex education programs for more than a decade. However, a public controversy remains over whether this investment has been successful and whether these programs should be continued. Using the most recent national data (2005) from all U.S. states with information on sex education laws or policies (N = 48), we show that increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates. This trend remains significant after accounting for socioeconomic status, teen educational attainment, ethnic composition of the teen population, and availability of Medicaid waivers for family planning services in each state.
Humble – Add on to that Abstinence education is something that would be easily subverted by other influences. School says: “Don’t Have Sex.” Everyone and everywhere else: “Meh – whatever, sex is cool.” Of course people will eventually have sex, at some age. And no one’s talking to them about condoms? People are apprehensive about buying something for the first time and will rationalize their way out of it. Teens need the education and the experience. Remember – after HS – there are no educational government indoctrination programs. If you want your government to have an influence on behavior in someone’s life, HS is the end of the line.
Of course there’s a contradiction, but that’s the reality we face. Human nature and epidemiology have conspired to present us with a problem that has no easy solutions. Denying that in favor of iron-handed enforcement of law for law’s sake is what’s “idiotic, incompetent, and self-defeating.”
No, you find a solution that doesn’t undermine and contradict the law, and indeed doesn’t make the state an accessory to breaking its own laws.
You just gave the “it is what it is” rationalization along with about ten others. If we adopt easy, dumb measures to respond to difficult problems, we stop looking for good ones.
In that case, the solution is to amend the law to remove the contradiction. Make needle exchange an explicit exception to crime-facilitating behavior. For that matter, you could legalize all drugs. That too would remove the legal contradiction.
Passing a law against something and assuming against decades of evidence to the contrary that the law can be made perfectly effective without causing collateral damage is what’s an “easy, dumb” measure. And if you’re saying the law should always be obeyed, even when that does more harm than good, that’s a rationalization all its own.
In that case, the solution is to amend the law to remove the contradiction. Make needle exchange an explicit exception to crime-facilitating behavior. For that matter, you could legalize all drugs. That too would remove the legal contradiction.
Exactly, Mark. I don’t care, for the purpose of integrity, how you remove the contradiction, but you have to remove it.
Yeah because compassion for people is so wrong. Lets just let people die and let a horrible disease spread because its easier to do that then to make the tough decision to supply junkies with needles so they and others don’t spread a horrible disease.
The easy decision is not to supply the clean needles . The easy decision can be defended as being hard on drug users and hard on drugs. The difficult decision is say to people that to protect the public health we are going to do this. That’s the difficult decision. And if you don’t see that you have no idea what leadership or tough decision making really is Jack.
Compassion for criminals for the consequences of their own choices is a good thing, but not in law enforcement, Bill. If a non-profit organization wants to raise money to hand out needles, let the government give them immunity from prosecution, but the government can’t do it. It can either have a law and enforce it, or eliminate the law. It can’t both enforce a law and undermine it.
Competent leadership, as I know you know, involves achieving objectives within boundaries, not erasing the boundaries every time they create complexities.
“How can anyone dispute this in good faith?”
What I can’t understand arguing in good faith is having a subsection of people that America needs to survive, labelling them illegal, meting out “justice” haphazardly at best, and being shocked, shocked! When they try to make a go of it.
This is a fundamental dishonesty on the right, and one we need to do a better job at combating. Did they come here illegally? Sure they did. But that was the plan. It’s encouraged. It’s necessary. And sending them all home would be an unmitigated disaster. It’s like holding a piece of cake out to a fat kids and then smacking a couple of them across the face when they reach out for it. I can’t fault the kids in that scenario.
Humble Talent said, “Did they come here illegally?”, “It’s necessary.”
“It’s necessary.”
You’ve got to be kidding me!
Please explain how is it “necessary” that these immigrants intentionally break our immigration laws and come here illegally?
Because they fill a labour niche that is necessary, because if they weren’t here it would utterly cripple the infrastructure of some of the Southern States.
If you feel that they should all be deported, if you feel the destitution of the states reliant on the cheap labour they entail is an acceptable price to pay for those deportations…. You’re at least consistent. And that consistency is sorely lacking in this conversation.
“Because they fill a labour niche that is necessary”
Baloney. This is a rationalization. It allows corporations to pay exploitive cheap wages, that’s all. If the job needs doing, then there is a labor cost that will induce non-illegals—you know, citizens?—to do it. Pay me enough, and I’LL pick apples.
Except they won’t. America has a HUGE skilled labour shortage because you can’t pay labourers enough to build the infrastructure you need. This is a well documented phenomenon, and if you can’t pay someone six figures to do skilled work, how are you going to convince them to pound sand?
Humble Talent said, “Except they won’t. America has a HUGE skilled labour shortage because you can’t pay labourers enough to build the infrastructure you need. This is a well documented phenomenon, and if you can’t pay someone six figures to do skilled work, how are you going to convince them to pound sand?”
Holy crap Humble Talent; I think you’ve become a bit unhinged on this topic. Please take a long break, grab a soda, have some lunch, relax a while, gather your thoughts and come back this afternoon.
You are sorely testing my resolve to attempt not to make personal attacks on here. You’re commenting from a position of profound ignorance, and it shows in the bumper stickers and platitudes you choose to make your points with. If I, a staunch and proud conservative, think that America’s approach to illegal immigrants is petty and cruel, then instead of falling back on the comfortable “Dey tuk are jerbs”, maybe you should take a step back and think about what I’m saying. You can still disagree, but calling me unhinged because you aren’t even comprehending the argument I’m making is… frustrating.
Humble Talent said, “You are sorely testing my resolve to attempt not to make personal attacks on here.”
Threats will get you nowhere with me; by all means Humble Talent “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war”, I can take care of myself.
Humble Talent said, “If I, a staunch and proud conservative, think that America’s approach to illegal immigrants is petty and cruel, then instead of falling back on the comfortable “Dey tuk are jerbs”, maybe you should take a step back and think about what I’m saying.”
I did think about what you said and I obviously completely rejected it.
You stating in that sentence that you’re a “staunch and proud conservative” is the equivalent to you saying “trust me” which is just as irrelevant and, in my opinion, is a BS rationalization.
Humble Talent said, “calling me unhinged because you aren’t even comprehending the argument I’m making is… frustrating.”
It’ll probably be dismissed as semantics and deemed irrelevant but I didn’t actually “call you unhinged” I said “you’ve become a bit unhinged on this topic”, there is a difference between using nouns and adjectives. You’re going over the deep end with this topic and you need to take a break; that’s actually a “friendly” suggestion not an personal insult.
Additionally; I didn’t say “you’ve become a bit unhinged on this topic” because I’m not comprehending what you are saying, I said it because I thought you were “become a bit unhinged on this topic”.
Humble Talent said, “I, a staunch and proud conservative..”
By the way, that’s completely irrelevant; the argument is false regardless of any perceived ideological affiliation.
“You stating in that sentence that you’re a “staunch and proud conservative” is the equivalent to you saying “trust me” which is just as irrelevant and, in my opinion, is a BS rationalization.”
No, me stating that I’m a proud and staunch conservative professing a position that isn’t popular among conservatives was supposed to make you think about why a conservative could take that position. Which you failed to do. Not many people say “Trust me” and “You can still disagree” in the same goddamned sentence.
Humble Talent said, “Not many people say “Trust me” and “You can still disagree” in the same goddamned sentence.”
Go back and reread what you wrote; that’s NOT what you did. 😉
Dude, please take a break and come back later when you’ve calmed down.
“If I, a staunch and proud conservative, think that America’s approach to illegal immigrants is petty and cruel,(<- That's a comma) then instead of falling back on the comfortable “Dey tuk are jerbs”, maybe you should take a step back and think about what I’m saying. You can still disagree, … ”
Don’t hoist your reading comprehension problem on me and tell me what I did or did not say. The best you can come up with is that “Think about it” and “You can disagree” were separated by a period. My bad. Two sentences. Fucking dumbest argument I’ve been in in a very long time.
Humble Talent said, “Don’t hoist your reading comprehension problem on me and tell me what I did or did not say. The best you can come up with is that “Think about it” and “You can disagree” were separated by a period. My bad. Two sentences. Fucking dumbest argument I’ve been in in a very long time.”
My reading comprehension; nice twisting of reality. I pointed out the simple fact that what you said you said didn’t correspond with the sentence structure you had actually presented; in other words, what you said you said wasn’t factually correct. Call me a grammar police if you choose, but the period at the end of a sentence ends that idea or thought. Heck I even added a little winkie smilie face at the end of my grammar police comment as a gesture of friendliness, in other words “no hard feelings”.
By the way you falsely accuse me of reading comprehension problems and then you prove twice that the problem is actually yours; once with the period and now with this; it was “staunch and proud conservative” (translation “trust me”) and “you can still disagree” that were the two ideas that were separated by a period NOT “think about it” and “you can disagree” as you just stated; talk about reading comprehension problems.
Humble Talent said, “Fucking dumbest argument I’ve been in in a very long time.”
I suppose this whole discussion is my fault for pointing out your errors and illogical assumptions, I should just let such things go unchallenged; well damn me, I should be strung up for such terrible honesty.
Seriously; you’ll get absolutely no argument from me about this being the dumbest argument I’ve been in in a very long time; see we can agree on something. 😉 😉 😉 😉 😉
I think we’ve both said what we felt needed to be said; it’s time to let it go and move on before we build any more brick walls between us.
It’s your choice if this conversation needs to go any further.
The argument has now come down to grammar? And drinking water? And even needles? This is so bad I am starting to feel normal.
Rick M. said, “The argument has now come down to grammar? “
Better not make claims surrounding grammar when that Zoltar dude is around, he might state the errors. 😉
Rick M. said, “This is so bad I am starting to feel normal.”
Better you feeling normal than me; if I start feeling my “normal”, head for the hills and dive for cover! 🙂
THAT has been shown to be a lying bit of propaganda, long discredited. The whole ‘some jobs Americans won’t do’ is the worst sort of drivel.
How about we go for the root of the problem? The dirty secret is that businesses are allowed to profit on the backs of these poor people, becoming complicit in their crimes. How about we start prison sentences (not just fines, as those become a ‘cost of doing business’) for employers caught hiring illegals? I’m am not talking about the lawn care guy; go for the CEOs who allow this practice. When THAT law is enforced, the illegals will self deport (as shown in the recent economic turn down) because there is no economic reason to be here.
I’d love you to reference a refutation of that “propaganda”, I think you’re wrong on this. Everything I’ve read, from the supply side increase to the cost of infrastructure to trade school enrolment rates, coupled with a lifetime of business experience and admittedly anecdotal experiences lead me to believe I’m right. But I’ll listen.
And damn right that would help. It would be a consistent, gradual fix that wouldn’t beat the destitute while their down, and instead go after the people luring and abusing these people. My point here wasn’t we throw our hands up in the air and do nothing, it was that picking THIS stop along the way to draw the line punished the wrong people and was unnecessarily cruel.
I also think that as the self deportations happen, America will be forced to open the gates of legal immigration and take a whole lot of those people back legally, because yes, your economy needs those people.
Humble Talent said, “Because they fill a labour niche that is necessary, because if they weren’t here it would utterly cripple the infrastructure of some of the Southern States.”
The assumptions “supporting” your argument of necessity are false.
It is not necessary that that selective labor niche be filled with only illegal undocumented immigrants; the work exists with or without their presence and there are plenty of legal and documented immigrants and a HUGE young adult labor force to fill those positions. Nothing is going to crumble; that’s hyperbole based on false logic.
Additionally; justifying illegal activity because it is deemed “needed” is way over the edge of reasonable logic. That ridiculous logic can be spewed to support other illegal activity like shoplifting, theft in general, burglary, etc, etc. We don’t choose to enforce or not enforce laws based on the “necessity” of the illegal action to directly or indirectly support something. Let’s extend your logic; I need lots of food to feed my family, so I should be allowed to roll a shopping cart down any grocery store aisle, take whatever I deem necessary and walk out the door without any consequences; I demand that grocery stores be identified as a safe places from legal prosecution. I need a vehicle to transport me to and from the grocery store to get my free from prosecution groceries; based on my need, I’ll take your vehicle; I demand that vehicles be identified as safe places free from legal prosecution.
Humble Talent said, “consistency is sorely lacking in this conversation.”
You want to know what’s wrong with the whole illegal immigration conversation; the utter ridiculousness of the “logic” that condones, ignores, justifies, and encourages blatant illegal activity and then intentionally does “nothing” to physically prevent it and then tops all that off by telling the individuals committing illegal activity where the law can’t touch them.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re muddying the waters with it. The unwillingness of Americans to do these jobs is well documented… Somewhere in the 80’s a narrative started to be pushed (“Work Smarter, Not Harder.”) that led to this strange cultural attitude towards labour jobs, there’s a subliminality that if you’re working with your hands, there’s something wrong with you. It’s why we have such a hard time filling trade schools, despite your average journeyman plumber starting out at a rate higher than your average starting lawyer. And you think it’s hard to fill skilled trade positions that actually pay mint? Try getting a ditch digger! Could we entice people to do dirty jobs for more money? Maybe, but recent history has not borne that out.
Look, spend 20 minutes and listen to Mike Rowe’s Ted Talk, it’s one of the best speeches on the topic I’ve heard. The first 10 minutes are a story that basically amounts to “Sometimes the Experts get it Wrong.” and the second 10 minutes are about destygmatizing work.
It is interesting that this fellow speaks on paripetea and anagnosisis.
Peripeteia: “A sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances”.
Anagnorisis: “Anagnorisis was the hero’s sudden awareness of a real situation, the realisation of things as they stood, and finally, the hero’s insight into a relationship with an often antagonistic character in Aristotelian tragedy.”
I would reverse this away from the way that you want to play it and I would emphasise that this entity ‘America’ needs to gain a great deal of Anagnorisis through understanding the Paripetea of a Mexican national invasion.
You could invoke paripetea for the illegal Mexican nationals and suppose that they need to be awakened to reality: they need to return to their own country and make their fortune there. To go through all the cultural and political changes to radically transform both their own selves and their political system. In doing that they will gain anagnorisis.
Similarly, the host population needs to wake up to the historical truth of what it means to allow such illegal immigration to have occurred and what it has done to the polity. That is coming about through a ‘reversal’ and it requires a special insight (anagnorisis).
Life is tragic and difficult and must be seen in real terms, not in social fantasies.
They are illegal because their very presence in the country is against the law.
They came here on the promise of a better life (which they usually get), allowed through a porous border, and then sheltered by a system designed to enable them, because it needs them. You pick up the stupid or the violent and make them scapegoats for a problem you have no intention to actually solve. But they’re illegal, right?
Humble Talent said, “They came here on the promise of a better life (which they usually get), allowed through a porous border”
They could have come legally, it was their choice to enter illegally, PERIOD!
Humble Talent said, “sheltered by a system designed to enable them”
It’s illogical to enable illegal activity and shelter those that are known to be actively committing illegal activity. Alcoholics and drug addicts blame their addictions on everyone else, they are being enabled by others; therefore, using your logic the addict is right.
Humble Talent said, “because it needs them.”
I’ve already covered this false logic above.
“They could have come legally, it was their choice to enter illegally, PERIOD!”
And yet, this worked for them. The positions aren’t mutually exclusive. They were promised a better life, they were given it, even if it’s not as good a life as the Average American, they did it by coming over a porous border, and they’re being enabled by the system. It’s a hard position to defend… “You shouldn’t do the best thing in your interest because I call it illegal.” If you make a situation where a rationally self-interested person would do something, you aren’t going to dissuade them by labelling that thing illegal.
This is why Liberals think Conservatives are racist, we spend more time and energy on hard to defend rhetoric about people who are just doing what people are going to do, and not the system that enables them. “But Jeff, we’re specifically talking about a system that enables them” No, you’re talking about a system so far down the list it’s beyond petty to draw the line there. No one will make the decision to come or not based on whether the cops might pick them up at church.
Makes no sense, Tim. Enforceable or not, if someone doesn’t belong here, the government can’t make it intentionally easy for them TO remain here. They should be accorded the bare minimum of humanitarianism assistance, but with the understanding that after “Gracias” their next communication is “good bye.” Deny them work, social safety nets and basic citizen rights, and they leave, as they should. Romney’s “self-deporting” was absolutely correct. Grandfather in however many long-time illegals and let them come out of the shadows, and then stop being a patsy.
There’s a component of propaganda as well. How long would it take 11M illegals to figure out how to run underground schools and their own medical centers, aided and abetted by actual citizens? We’ll waste more time and energy in that fight, and they’ll be well organized and blossoming….but still here illegally. Withholding these basic services won’t do them harm as a group (individuals will suffer) but they’ll figure it out as a group.
And what will you have in 10 years? An underground society in our actual society of citizens that hold actual malice and might be pushed to violence. They might be raised by gangs instead of teachers. Etc Etc Etc. Illegal immigration is a problem, but it’s a problem that can be solved with a little more ghandi and a little less hitler.
Those two are both dead, so we’ll have to settle for Trump or Hillary.
That’s adorable, as if enforcing border integrity and the rule of law is tantamount to war and genocide. Pro tip, it’s not, and Ghandi was a one trick pony who’s knowledge of ethical foreign and domestic policy ended at the borders of British controlled India – to wit, his signature-significance letter To Every Briton.
Why would they have actual malice?
Bad Socrates, Bad!
They have malice because America’s illegal immigration policies are a bug zapper, but unlike the unthinking flies that don’t understand the function of the bug zapper, illegal immigrants are still people.
It makes sense. You don’t want people deliberately avoiding going to the hospital, or failing to enroll their kids in school because of their legal status, or the legal status of their parents. The greater harm is clearly on the side of withholding medical treatment or education. ICE can always follow them home or wait for them to get discharged if they are interested in arresting someone for their illegal status.
That’s their choice. Stop protecting people from their own choices. Sure, you get to go to the hospital, once. Then you get sent packing. Why should criminals have to deal with that dilemma and not illegal immigrants? At least the criminals are citizens.
We do have the same policy with people who are overdosing on illegal drugs, or underage drinking. They, and their friends who might drop them off, can’t be prosecuted for using illegal drugs if they sought help for overdosing at the hospital. For much the same reasons as illegal immigrants are given amnesty there, I suspect.
That response doesn’t really address the ethics of government responsibility does it? Is it the government’s job to enforce laws or is it the government’s job to not enforce laws and instead try to save people from their bad choices? I’ll give you two guesses and the first one doesn’t count…
We can’t have a “pure” society with no illegal immigrants because….constitution. Bad people do bad things and they get away with that because….constitution. Now…if we could just violate the constitution a little bit here and there, we could force everyone to carry around a National ID card so that everyone is identified. We could then have ID checkpoints so everyone has to show their papers. Lose your ID and there’s a penalty. Forget it today? There’s a penalty. But it will help us identify those among us who aren’t supposed to be here. We can then deport everyone who isn’t supposed to be here. That would be responsible government…if responsible government is to enforce a law in spite of the constitution.
That would be a really interesting question to ask: Would you rather spend $250 Billion to save the $50 Billion that is being lost in services?
As I said before, and it is yet to be contradicted: the people who are here will eventually get sick with communicable diseases and they would rather die than get deported. If they get sick and going to a medical center means they will be identified and deported, then you know they won’t go to a medical center.
If we can’t identify them before they get sick and start spreading disease…well…disease doesn’t care about “legal resident status”. These are the people who might be cleaning your restrooms in transit centers or picking your fruit in an orchard. Maybe you’re really good about with whom you associate, but are the people you associate with really good about with whom they associate?
So let’s kick the destitute while they’re down, and ignore the other 10,999,999 of them. If you aren’t willing to remove them all, you’re being sadistically inconsistent, and if you are willing to give all 11 million the boot, you’re arguing putting some of the Southern States in a state of destitution. Removing illegal immigrants cannot be the first step in this process, and until you take those first steps, removing them is petty and cruel.
America’s policy on illegal immigration is a bug zapper, and no one should be proud of it.
Agreed. The system is horrible. But why is it so? Business interests on the right and vote buying on the left seem to be a good first hypothesis.
I think you’re oversimplifying, but that doesn’t make you wrong. But where do you go from here? You can’t possibly think the logical first leap is “Make it harder for them to pray”, I mean really… Agree or disagree: This is a petty line in the sand to draw.
It is an interesting question and problem: such a large group of people who come into a country not to become members of that country, in the sense of joining the nation, but only because they seek work or more opportunity while they hold to their own national identification.
My impression is that illegal Mexicans — I have known quite a few — do not ‘identify’ with the US. In fact they hold to their Mexican national identification. A very large percentage do not have enough basic education to be capable of analysing or comparing the two governmental systems and most I have met do not desire to. Their objectives are simply to succeed in getting a better material existence.
Objectively, these might be ‘good people’ and often very good workers, but they are not participants in a political or social sense. They are a foreign population.
I suspect that the developing intolerance for large groups of illegal Mexican nationals has roots that are complex. Not the least being a simple, visceral reaction. The sense that an invading culture is present and that the laws of the land seem to allow no action to be taken against them. Only if that sentiment becomes more crystallized could some national policy decision be made. But there are powerful — more powerful — forces that desire to protect illegal Mexicans.
I think that I would have to say that in the absence of a will repatriate a very significant number of illegal Mexican nationals, and establish a clear and consistent policy in respect to a Mexican worker population, that this indicates the ebb of a will to have and hold to a national idea, and is symptomatic of giving in, of surrender. Given the left-liberal-socialistic trends I wounder how this will bode for the US and its basic institutions.
I think that many Mexicans are aware of this lack of will and of course they take advantage of it.
Is white nationalism your answer to every political question? You do know that the KKK won’t have you right?
That may be so but I have no affiliation with the KKK. You do know — I hope you do — that when you incorrectly frame someone’s argument or when you put a false or incorrect label on them that you are engaging in bad argumentation? I assume that you are aware that this goes on all the time, is done by the Left and the Right. I try to stand back and observe how argument is conducted and it is not very common that people engage in it fairly.
I am interested in a whole range of topics, many of them forbidden topics, because I am convinced that false-designations function to keep us from *seeing our world*. I also begin to think that the primary deception is one that is carried out as-against one’s own self. I mean it starts there. Then, it aggregates to itself many other false-designations, mistatments, deliberate misunderstandings, etc. If what I say is true it leads to the notion that detox or unwinding or disindoctrination is necessary. I assume that you will have followed me this far and yet I imagine that it won’t help me at all: There is too much to be gained by holding me to your false-designation.
There is no culture but our own Jewish culture which has better demonstrated racial and cultural consciousness and employed it as a strategy for survival and flourishment. It is an interesting topic.
What I would say to you is that 1) I am aware that my orientation is so outlandish to your perspective that you (plural) cannot really hear it. But I am convinced (mostly) of the cogency and rationality of the ideas I work with and in fact I am pretty sure I can defend them in any context. And if I am not at that point I will get there, sooner or later. 2) To confront Our Present is to confront a system of interconnected lies and misrepresentations. The very structure of our personalities, unfortunatley, have been built on such bases. So, to confront indoctrination is to confront and challenge the self. People hold on to their notions with a cat’s grip and to confront them means you’ll have to get cut up to some degree.
My basic predicate is that culture, ethnicity and race are a system or perhaps a ‘package’. The biological aspect has been deemphasised for political and ideological reasons. But there is such a thing as ‘biological truth’. I desire to balance the equation. To bring understanding back to a sane, accurate and balanced point.
It is hard for me to imagine the ramifications of ‘white nationalism’. Yet I am 99% convinced that white culture needs to reassess itself; get out from under a whole system of contrary or counter-definitions; reassert itself.
Also, when one ceases to identify as Jewish, and when one ‘deconstructs’ that historical identity, it unravels pretty quickly. It is a rather flimsy identification. A stronger and a better one is pan-Europeanism. In my case it is a question of emphasising a part of my biological self that is just that: European. It is there.
The backdrop here — as always — is ethics. The more time I spend examining these issues in an ethical context, the mosre I come to see my position as having substance within ethics. That is, the position is ethical. I am not sure what your own overall position is — you don’t articulate it — but if it is lefty-liberal and if it excludes biology, culture and race, then I would assert that it is unethical.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Either our government is run by utter imbeciles or it’s run by political hacks hell bent on the total destruction of everything the United States has stood for since its inception.
Jack said, “it’s this kind of idiocy under Obama that has made Trump a viable candidate.”
That’s true but somehow it feels like an gross understatement.
Political choices for the November 2016 Presidential election:
Choose the continuation of Obama ideological policies under Clinton or choose Trump. Either we choose to dive head first off a 2,000 foot cliff to the left or we choose to dive head first off the 20,000 foot cliff to the right; either way you know full well that you’ll reach terminal velocity prior to that sudden stop at the bottom and the action will result in a self-inflicted suicide.
Don’t worry, Jack, by this time next year the whole country will be a safe area.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “Don’t worry, Jack, by this time next year the whole country will be a safe area.”
Isn’t that 100% dependent upon Clinton being “elected” the President of the United States and Congress not being able to act to reverse such “policies”?
Yes, which is exactly how I think it’s going to play out.
As for the ethics of this…
This is way, Way, Way, WAY, WAY beyond unethical!
It’s nucking futs to advertise this; furthermore, isn’t it illegal to aide in criminal activity by telling someone how they can avoid being caught by law enforcement while committing criminal activity?
I think there’s really good argument that what the government is doing is actually illegal; and, if it’s directed by Obama, it’s likely an impeachable offense!
” if it’s directed by Obama, it’s likely an impeachable offense!”
That’s never stopped him before.
Undocumented Democrats.
They’re fairly religious. They’d rather be republicans.
Not enough “Free Stuff,”
Oh…I thought we were talking about the Mexicans. You mean the Canadians. Now we’re on the same page.
No….undocumented Democrates. Wrong page as Gerry Studds would say.
Mexicans are AMAZINGLY Catholic, like… 90% Catholic. Doesn’t stop them from voting Democrat.
Then again, being dead doesn’t stop some people from voting Democrat.
Zing!
Similar to the Irish then.
My study of the Mexico immigration issue has indicated to me that it is a problem with a long history. In some seasons they desire the hired hands and do nothing to stop them entering. In other times when too much immigration is an issue, they try to reverse it. In the immidiate aftermath of WW2 there were numerous voices who tried to point out that the Mexican peasant, and likely Mexicans generally, were incompatable with the republic and that their entry should be curtailed. Obviously, at the Sixties came into view, is became no longer a thinkable thought to see and describe things in these (racial) terms.
So, the illegal entrance of Mexican and Meso-Americans was never curtailed.
Semi-consciously but also overtly consciously among some Mexicans hold to a historical resentment of America for the lands it stole. It is hard for Americans to grasp Mexican (and Latin American) resentment. I’d suggest there is on the part of Mexicans a social will to reinhabit these areas. It may not be thought about but it is enacted. The insertion of the body as it were.
Because the US state has been so collusive in allowing millions of Mexicans to enter when it was convenient, it is hard to make a case that it should now become draconian and shipt hem out in rail cars. So at least to some degree the State is doing the ethical thing by allowing ‘safe space’. Some part of this is a result of Mexican American activism.
It will I think prove impossible for the people of the US to develop the political will to turn back millions of Mexicans. At this point the demographic shift (in general) may be beyond the point of turning back or reversing. Obviously, the issue hinges directly on race and culture and — just as on this blog — America cannot bring itself to think in such terms. For after all the only people who could form such a unified and directed political will to restrain southers immigration, and immigration from the third world, is white people. They cannot formulate such thoughts because of anti-racist indoctrination. To reverse that indoctrination with a sane and a balanced racial-cultural perspective that is not cruel, is beyond them (IMO).
Fairly obviously (I think) some large percentage of the present issues and problems in the US right now, though it often seems submerged and unspoken (unspeakable), has so very much to do with race and culture. While in my own case I continue to study the issue (‘discedited material’ such as Lothop Stoddard and Madison Grant), and it all becomes that much more clear to me, I can see why most people cannot and will not think in these terms.
So, better get used to the third world and the Meso-American brown world having their way in your polity. *You* have no way to influence a change.
I disagree.
I think you have to ask what the end game is. America has 11 million illegal immigrants. They do the work that Americans don’t want to do at rates of pay less than Americans would accept. America probably doesn’t have the infrastructure to oversee 11 million deportations, and it would probably cripple a lot of Southern States financially if they tried to.
So then, let’s be honest: The plan is to have them in America.
I think the best case scenario for the right side of the spectrum would entail that damn wall being built, some kind of registry for temporary foreign worker status for everyone that’s already here, maybe a higher rate of taxation, maybe a fine, but at the end of the day, don’t kid yourself: those people are going to be your neighbours, whether you like them or not, whether they’re citizens or not.
And then, knowing that it’s the plan to have them here, what kind of sadistic do you have to be to make these already miserable people fear for their livelihood as the sacrificial scapegoat for tough on illegal immigrant rhetoric? Think Kant, if nothing else! ‘We can’t deport you all, because we need you here, but let’s make sure you’re fucking miserable while you’re doing what we need you to do, and if something goes wrong you’re out of here so fast your sombrero will spin!’
How do we seperate the “Good” Mexicans from the “Bad” Mexicans? Do I go to Lowe’s parking in the morning and assume none are Naco’s?
How do you separate the ‘Good’ Americans from the ‘Bad’ Americans?
For Hillary and Trump the good are who will vote for them and the bad who will not vote for them. Easy. I will vote my Johnson and be in limbo.
You will vote your Johnson?????
Bad, bad boy, Jack Marshall. Go stand in the corner.
What?? Just clarifying…
I see three circumstances wherein this may be acceptable:
1: At a hospital, where you’re being treated for illnesses or injuries that may leave you unlikely to survive the rigors of your return trip to your country of origin.
2: At a bus station, provided you’re in possession of a ticket for the trip back over the border.
3: At a police station, prior to turning yourself in to answer for violating federal law.
It will have to be Gary as my own Johnson is a limp candidate.
So some of the states are cracking down on sanctuary cities and now the agency laughingly called U.S. Custom and Border Protection is telling “undocumented immigrants” where all the safe spaces are. Oh great! We can certainly preserve our sovereignty if we follow their guidelines.
“Is this a responsible, competent and ethical exercise of government power?”
My first gut reaction before clicking show more.
NO! and Hell NO!
Nothing said here has changed my mind.
I’d love to see the Mexican government issuing similar information printed in English in Mexico.
Illegal immigration and what to do is the social version of Goldbach’s Conjecture. Exactly what is the trade off? How much of a plus and minus is it on our system? Are they contributors or non contributors?
Every even number greater than 5 is the sum of two primes? I don’t understand the reference.
Unsolvable problem.
I see the reference now… I just don’t agree. No quick answers, maybe. And we’re not going to get there while sending all these mixed signals, but there are a couple of realistic and viable paths to take here.
All I know is that if ICE came into my classroom to try and deport one of my students, they’d probably end up having to arrest me too.
Please elaborate. Why? What right does the illegal immigrant have to US services provided by citizens? Why should we create such a right?
For that matter, what right do they have to our clean drinking water? We should put a thumbprint scanner on every water fountain that has clean drinking water paid for by taxpayers to ensure that only legal residents and visitors get clean drinking water.
Tim, I’m loving your comments here.
Jack–why? Seriously? After (rightfully) condemning a school for having a child arrested for burping, you see nothing wrong with law enforcement barging into a classroom and arresting a child for the crimes of their parents?
It isn’t a question of “rights,” it’s a question of basic decency. Don’t arrest kids at school for stupid crap.
I am perfectly happy for them to wait until after school, if that was the issue. I misunderstood: I thought the arrest was the issue, not the timing of the arrest.
Protecting the boarder and enforcing the law isn’t “stupid crap.” Sometimes I wonder what amoeba crawled into progressive brains and made previously rational citizens think that ope3n borders weren’t ethically indefensible, which they are, as well as national suicide. I really don’t get it.
You didn’t misunderstand. The government looks at certain things as basic human rights and has said they won’t use those as lures.
Why do we have truancy laws? Why is it illegal to grow up without an education?
Why do we have vaccination laws?
You have 11M illegal immigrants that avoid deportation everyday and are in our society. The question for you is: do you want them hiding in the shadows raising idiots that become nothing more than criminals and patient zeroes? (Keep in mind that the kids they’re raising probably have birth rite citizenship…so they aren’t the ones being deported.)
If there are 11 million illegal Mexican nationals in the country, and their own government is aware of it, and the government of the US is aware of it, and if the US is forced because of its principles to educate them, and otherwise care for them, the situation is plainly absurd. It is in the interest of Mexico to encourage Mexicans to raise up their kids in the US where the US pays for it.
When an immigrant enters the US illegally and has a child here, it seems intuitively obvious that the constitutional protection that makes that child a US citizen automatically, should be challenged.
One thing that I notice is how soft and weak and indulging *you* are of these people. On what basis exactly do these sentiments rest? Given that I am from Latin America, and given that I understand the Latino mentality, I am very aware that a majority of Latinos hold to an idea that someone OWES them something. It’s like they see and describe themselves as history’s victims and someone — someone who is not themselves — has to come up to the plate and rectify their problem. Certainly Mexicans and to a lesser extent Central Americans have this idea. I assume you have NO IDEA that this mentality exists, and it amazes me that you have no strength and determination to resist being turned into the purveyor or a cure for the Latinoamerican problem. But this is what you do. You enable. And you do this — supposedly — because you see yourself holding to a higher principle.
But in fact you are contributing to a problem, enabling it. It reminds me of the welfare dispensations to African American and other colored women: have babies and get lots of money. Get benefits. Become dependents. If one sponsors this policy one are encouraging an astoundingly negative and destructive outcome.
It is true that the Mexican illegal immigration issue has been allowed to get totally out of hand, and blame must be laid on bad and ambiguous and non-consitent policy, but one must be able to get to the root and at the very least to see correctly: To allow illegals to abandon their own country; not to politically and socially change their own country, is to become complicit in processes of destruction that are inconscionable.
But little of this matters to the bleeding heart liberal. Maybe they vampirize their own sentiments? and drink down their own blood? Maybe this *feeds* some bizarre distorted sense of *goodness*?
The first level of deception is always a self-deception. People who allow these distortions and these enablings likely have been enabled through some other circumstance. Someone is enabling them and they get benefit. How weak you seem, how un-virile. The whole nation seems infected with this weakness. It is incredible.
Alizia,
That one of the most concise detailed opinions from you I’ve seen.
One point that’s way off base is, “the whole nation seems infected with this weakness”; if there is anything that this election cycle is showing us, besides how to flush ethics down the toilet, it’s that a statement like “the whole nation seems infected with this weakness” is demonstratively false! Just look at Trump and his supporters for blatantly clear evidence to contradict your assertion.
Here’s a photo representation of the 2016 Presidential election cycle:
Thanks Zoltar. I take it to mean that you see Trump and Trump supporters as being strong and resolute in regard to this issue? If so I would say: It remains to be seen. Although I appreciate that Trump has, by opening a bigger-than-average mouth, managed to spurt out certain things that were previously unmentionable (one main one is to have said, openly, that the Iraq war(s) were very misguided, but there are others), I cannot imagine that he will be able to act politically within the field of politics. I think if he is elected the conduct of politics may become impossible. The opposition will set their heels. World leaders will not want to deal with him. I cannot imagine what will happen. It is unimaginable.
Alizia Tyler said, “Thanks Zoltar.”
You’re welcome. Give credit where credit is due.
Alizia Tyler said, “I take it to mean that you see Trump and Trump supporters as being strong and resolute in regard to this issue?”
Yup, that’s exactly what I mean. Agree with it or not, the rhetoric about illegal immigration from Trump and his supporters is at a fever pitch and can’t be denied. It’s a huge swath of Americans.
Alizia Tyler said, “If so I would say: It remains to be seen.”
Now you “seem” to be talking about actions based on the actual rhetoric that’s already seen; you can’t just shift the goal posts that way. You previously stated “the whole nation seems infected with this weakness”; the fever pitched rhetoric about illegal immigration proves that the whole nation is NOT infected with this weakness; that’s all.
Ah, I see the problem you are having. I think I can clear it up. Again, and this is consistent with my overall discourse, I see the first order of activity, of all sorts, as beginning with and in the Self. The self is the seat of consciousness and terrestrial power.
If I am fired up rhetorically, even to a ‘fever-pitch’, I have learned that this does not mean much in and of itself. Perhaps it is a first step, or perhaps I may expend my energy in *fevers*. But only when my sentiment or my idea translates into action do I consider it to be noteworthy. (My position right now is to hold back from action since I cannot well understand this Present, and for this reason I spend my time with theory).
Now, as much as I appreciate on some levels (with qualifications) the rhetoric or the fever of Trump supporters, I also am of the opinion that this in and of itself means not much. I make an interpretation of this mass of people who are fired-up; I focus my radar on them; I observe them and I listen to them; and I understand that — like so many of us — we are ‘seeing things through a chink in the door’ to quote Chinese wisdom. If I make this statement it is because I assume there is a fuller picture to be gotten. And I also assume that it is there to be gotten. I further assume that many who might assume they *know* and *understand* may be deceiving themselves. Just as I assume that is possible for *them* so too it must be possible that I am in that condition. We are all in a very difficult position in these senses.
Thus, much depends on education. Perhaps everything depends on it. And it is not just education about a small issue like immigration but it hinges into existential knowledge. The way that we define the very platform of our existence. That is where ethics arises and it must turn back to those definitions. Now, I suspect that I have lost you at this point. You do not deisre to think in expanded terms as this. This is ‘orbiting Jupiter’ as I think you put it. And I suspect this is why a large percentage of what I write is unintelligible to you. Yet that does not mean it is not intelligent or intelligible.
Now, it is possible — and I agree with you — that some people may be fired up or angry about different things. Maybe they feel that America needs to become ‘great again’. If they think such a thing, and if they think it in the way I imagine they are thinking it, we are likely lost. Because the question of what it means to be great is no small one. To be great, in my book, means to have claimed some inner ground which renders one potent and powerful or wise, and this is not gained through hopped-up rhetoric or ‘fevers’. If one cannot do the work, one cannot gain the result. It is quite possible that, as it happens, what we witness is the beginning of the unravelling of the Republic, not the healing of it.
You feel when I talk that I shift goal posts. That’s not the case. I couch all that I write and think in the one area that makes sense to me: knowledge, understanding, vision, capacity, self-consciousness. This is the base of my cultural-ethnic-nationalistic concerns despite how they are framed. So far no one seems to understand. To ‘be great’ means to claim the present through application of knowledge, which means a great deal of study and sacrifice, which means becoming open to new currents of idea while simultaneously shutting down the ceaseless noise-channels of The Present and side-stepping while deconstructing propaganda.
To jettison (which is effectively what it means) an invading meso-American underclass and to understand them as undesirable to the American Project will amount to a work of high-level reasoning. If it happens it will be radical and also meaningful. But you can only get high level reasoning among high level reasoners. It is a bit of a problem you see when you demand that people come up to a level that you recognize and define and you refuse to descend to the level they define. Sounds arrogant and presumptuous. But you cannot fool nature and existence.
Time and time again we will encounter these areas where you have difficulty grasping my discourse at an ideational level. But I am supremely patient! 😉
Alizia I think you just resorted to your standard comment technique of blurring and muddying this by piling on generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing exercises.
What I stated above was pretty clear and straight forward.
Alizia said, “This is ‘orbiting Jupiter’ as I think you put it.”
That’s not a bad analogy; but, I just searched every I single comment I’ve ever made online on any website and I’ve never, ever, used that phrase.
I understand and also appreciate your perspective. I think that is Jack’s quote, no? about angels and navel-gazing?
It seems to be a question of perspective, interest, area of focus and study, but also philosophical orientation.
Nations are conceived, born, live for a certain time, sometimes get sick, and sometimes up and die. What interests me — fundamentally — is what gives health to a people and a nation.
What I feel I am ‘gazing upon’ is not my own navel but a nation that is approching crisis. Europe and America share in some senses a disease. No one can say that have exclusive rights to the final perspective.
Alizia Tyler said, “I think that is Jack’s quote, no?”
Yes it is a Jack quote.
I appreciate your comment, but the whole comment is a dodge of my point. The effect of turning medical centers and schools into “fishing lures” or “traps” to identify, incarcerate, and deport illegal immigrants is that it will not cause self deportation but create an underground society within the United States. So, this is the true question: what do you do with an underground society that isn’t properly vaccinated or educated? What do they become? Keep in mind that you can’t identify, incarcerate, or deport them because you can’t find them. What do they become and what is that subsequent effect on the United States?
I often look at the ethical questions that Jack brings up from a ‘meta’ perspective. Maybe it is a positive, maybe a negative trait. So, I am not really paying attention to particulars. I am trying to locate the larger issue, the underpinning of the issue, and to solve the question at that level.
Obviously, raids on places of worship, on children’s schools, and the like is not a good plan. There is definitely a problem and the solution needs to be agreed on. But it cannot be agreed on. So it is in one of those limbo situations.
I’d imagine that you’d agree that there is a lack of ‘political will’. Do you agree that the Democrats encourage this immigration and use it to expand their voter base?
To avoid ‘the dodge’ as you say (and I think your argument has merit) a real solution has to be arrived at. If not, it is all a waste of breath. Maybe you are ethically right: If no decision will be made, then it is realistic to base decisions on that (that they will never be made), and so if that is true it is best to keep those kids in school. Best for them certainly. It is the ‘high-road’ approach of course, and yes the nation is wealthy enough to absorb the cost.
Anyway, I use these exercises to try to get clear about my own positions.
As with you, I don’t like it either. If ICE identifies the family and the kid gets deported mid-semester, good. I don’t care. That’s the process and the game and how it works. I might be cold in that regard, I don’t care. Deport as many as you can. But the ones left behind that will always find a way to dodge ICE – they need to be assimilated. Vaccinations work when something like 90% of the population is vaccinated. We can’t have an entire underground segment of our society contributing to low vaccination rates and spreading disease. We can make their life hell and make it difficult for people who violated our immigration laws to make it, but lets not lose the basic humanitarian compassion and encourage rampant disdain that will eat at the fabric of our society. It’s a balancing act. It’s not Pokemon, we don’t have to catch them all.
That’s not the issue for me, Tim: I’ve been very clear. Get them out of the shadows. Give them a reasonable way to make restitution and become citizens. It’s unfair, but there’s no other choice: you can’t deport millions.
Meanwhile, stop enticing and pandering to new illegal immigrants. Enforce the law; make the border more secure, require employers to check a database, and fine them, hell imprison them, if they don’t. get an exception to the natural born citizen rule that excludes the children of illegal immigrants.
Oh, I didn’t know that was your position. So you’re saying 1) Let ICE operate at Medical centers and schools 2) Stop ICE from deporting the people they find, and 3) Have ICE put these people on a path to full citizenship which includes some form of restitution. Did I sum that up correctly?
No. I’m saying put these people on a path to full citizenship which includes some form of restitution, which is Congress’s job, not ICE, and in the meantime, until that time, have ICE do its job, which is catching and deporting as many illegals as it finds, wherever it finds them.
So, it’s ICE’s job to scare them away from medical centers and education centers so we have rampant disease and uneducated thugs?
Won’t work. Latinos don’t drink water. Just soda pop. 🙂
They have no right to the drinking water. The fact that it’s impossible to reasonably and affordably enforce a rule withholding water from illegals doesn’t that doesn’t mean the rule would be inappropriate.
Maybe not a right as defined by US law, but perhaps a basic native Human Right? A divine right that supersedes the constitution and all subsequent laws? The rule would certainly violate those concepts, no?
No different than the view that nobody owns land or property, and everyone has a right to take what they want or need. As with the right to kill anyone who annoys us without consequence, this “right” doesn’t exist because society becomes chaotic with such “rights.” They are wrongs, not rights.
Isn’t water, strictly speaking, a commodity, just like food, shelter, and medical care? I know that if I don’t pay my water bill, the meter-man is going to shut it off.
The Law of Basic Human Rights. Now you have gotten to the core, and the core can be examined. If you propose such a think it measn that the idea *lives* in you on one level or another. Obviously, in our hyper-liberal present, and a post-Christian present, I think you will find the link is to ‘Christian sentimentalism’. A law of Christian sentimentalism therefor.
But if one accepts the notion of such a metaphysical platform (that some Universal law exists in this Cosmos), why is it assumed that you *understand* it and know of what it consists? Revelation?
I would suggest that it is just as possible — and likely better — to hold to far harsher Cosmic Laws. Not at all that one should assume that his neighbor should or must sacrifice his goods for your benefit and because you are needy, but rather that you should find ways to cooperate with the stronger to self-enable you to achieve your own dignified sustanence. And by yourself becoming powerful (materially, intellectually, emotionally, in all ways) that you inspire others to do the same.
But, and in fact, the way the liberal-tinged law of human rights functions is sadly, and tragically, different. It is not rational, it is emotional and sentimental. Drunk is a good way to describe it. A drunk is not responsible, a drunk is just a drunk. But it is drunk policies, and drunk sentimentalism. That allows for a distorted ‘law’ to be seen as METAPHYSICALLY established by a Higher Power.
The country is DRUNK with the strangest concoction of railroad gins, Texas medicine, snake-oils, faith-cures and polluted backlot distillations and so few seem to have much of an idea how to achieve sobriety.
Wow, it’s like I stole Humble’s online identity for this one. Thanks for saving me the trouble Humble — even if I am a little confused…..
Beth said, “Wow, it’s like I stole Humble’s online identity for this one. Thanks for saving me the trouble Humble — even if I am a little confused…..”
I’m not understanding the “even if I am a little confused” part of your comment; what’s that mean?
We very rarely agree. We surprise each other now and again when we do and it’s always a pleasant experience. It reminds me that I’m dealing with people the next time we disagree (and we will).
I like to think I talk with a little more panache, but we do agree on some things. Sometimes. It’s nice, no?
Absolutely! I can say with complete sincerity that I would love to meet you in person if we are ever in the same neighborhood. Just let me know. We can go grab a burger with Jack in DC!
I’m trying not to get into this because it is an ethics blog and ETHICALLY, Jack’s arguments are prime. To set the record straight, however, I would hope it would make a difference to those with outdated, uninformed or unsubstantiated opinions on NSP (Needle Syringe Programs) exchange in terms of educating the public and its politics to support such programs openly and legally because … wait for it … they are effective in significantly reducing blood-borne diseases in IV drug users (first recognized in 1971 in Hepatitis B, by the way, not for AIDS a dozen years later or more for other viruses) and thence into the general public “without evidence of exacerbating injecting drug use at either the individual or societal level.” (that was a summary of conclusions by major medical and public health agencies that have been gathering data per empirical evidence for the past 40 years) And quite incidentally and significantly lowering the cost of maintenance and treatment, i.e. everyone’s health care cost.
Not by much, granted. But proven to work, nonetheless, all by itself for short periods (one-to-five years at a time). Because NSP is illegal, and unethical by definition, however, the data collection became systematized where it was partnered with a legal, psychological/behavioral backup system.
What is legal (therefore ethical, in this case) are the referrals to medical and social services, particularly connecting with the harm reduction method that partners most of the exchange programs that were initiated or raised aboveboard with the assistance of public health education and local government authority (unethical as that was or may be: I merely state a fact). That the NSP was/is attached to a harm reduction program run by trained health care personnel and overseen by medical or hospital direction made and continues to make the final difference. The problem (besides the lack of public education and bias similar to that against NSPs) is that one is not entirely effective or hasn’t the necessary outreach to be so without the other. Barring that kind of connection, an “underground” exchange program is generally hounded out of existence without having had its data tracked. In the case of harm reduction or similar professional techniques, when the psychological (behavioral, emotional, etc) element lacks connection with the practical component — the one that prevents disease transmission — it just continues to concentrate on legal addictions such as nicotine without being able to promote the techniques necessary to temper IV drug use itself.
It’s one of those Catch 22 situations. Neither is an easy fix.
Failure is pretty much guaranteed in the hands of people who demand a 100% “cure” “right now” or “yes/no” “like/unlike” answers to everything, or who vote for or legislate arbitrary limitations or closures to health care activities due to lack of funds (valid, temporary, presumed ethical until proven otherwise), or via personal distaste, bias, or ignorance (invalid, unethical, sometimes temporary), or who deny further funding or support on the basis of the program failing, as predicted, because it was unsupported or shut down prematurely thereby guaranteeing no similar programs will succeed in future (unethical, likely permanent, stupid and wrong).
Success, unlike failure — depending on multi-tracking and complex coordination between professionals and non-pros — is peripheral, and invisible*, requiring long term monitoring of a congenitally secretive, necessarily illegal population — (I hear the immigration argument trying to intrude here where it does not belong!) — its anonymity and support both more than justified by the concomitant and well-proven reduction in health care costs for the population at large. The correlation between stopping the transmission of a disease and providing ways to encourage and assure compliance with the means to stop it can be perceived (by any reasonably intelligent human being, I would say) to be a positive one; so too the equation of stopping disease transmission and eradicating the disease.
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*Of course, the way television or the Internet is going, one of these days we may have an I Love IV “reality” show starring a cast of “loser-users” who volunteer to live in a “bubble” house with all the drugs they require, the cast replaced regularly as they die off. The gimmick is that America’s Famous Viewing/Interacting Public could vote on the most entertaining addict of the week whose prize would be to keep one clean syringe to himself for seven days while the others shared the second. It would be relatively cheap to produce and the kids would love it! I’m not being sarcastic (for no reason): this is what happens when old customs, poor education, stubbornness, blind superstition and moral judgements will not permit life-saving behavior to intervene . . . legally.
The sticker price for the incredibly successful treatment for Hep C by Gilead is $84,000. Think of how much is transfered via sharing needles? The needle exchange program is a public health issue.