Luz shares her apartment with her husband, also from Mexico and also undocumented. They met in America. He works in a bar. They have a young daughter who was born in America and is therefore a US citizen.
What constitutes a legal channel is not “simple” and you’re either being disingenuous or are wildly ignorant of the practical reality of immigration. Regardless, it also is totally reasonable to believe that “circumnavigating immigration laws” is very much a non-issue and by and large it is totally unimportant whether an immigrant is documented or not, as far as the state is concerned–if anything, the state, such that it is a unitary entity with its own interests, benefits from undocumented immigrants as they pay into the system and minimally draw out of it (this is also a bad thing, imo, but I suspect we disagree on why).
It doesn’t matter whether the immigration system is simple or convulsed. It is still the immigration system of the country, and you have to respect it. Feeling dissatisfied or impatient with it is not a valid excuse to actually smuggle yourself into the country illegally. With the sole exception of genuine asylum seekers, nobody has a moral argument, let alone, a legal one to be in any country illegally. Nobody is entitled to being an immigrant to any country. Immigration is a privilege, always has been and always will be, and you have to respect the customs of the country you want to immigrate to. If they’re reviewing your case then you have to be patient, and if they rejected you then you have to accept that decision.
Also, it’s completely asinine to try passing off illegal immigration as some sort of non issue. That’s just an out of touch take. It is an absolutely MASSIVE issue. Here’s just a few ways where it’s a problem:
Security: You have random people inside the country that are not known, tracked, and vetted. That’s a major national security threat as it leaves your society vulnerable to smugglers, foreign adversaries’ agents, human traffickers, terrorists, and a whole host of other criminals that could wander in and out of the country with no supervision, approval or consequence.
Legal: Countries have laws for a reason, they’re there to reflect the public interest and will. Having people blatantly violate them is a serious challenge to the country’s institutions. If these institutions, like immigration, border, and customs agencies can’t enforce the laws they’re tasked to enforce, then their authority and legitimacy have been undermined. If you read any history book, you would know that a country with weak institutions that cannot carry out their basic duties, like enforcing the laws they were created to enforce, is a country that’s headed to towards instability and collapse because it is no longer able to govern properly. The consequences of illegal immigrants breaking immigration laws are very serious.
Economic: While illegal immigrants technically do contribute more in taxes than they take out, I would argue that it’s a bad thing because their undocumented status makes them vulnerable to exploitation by employers who pay low wages and offer poor conditions, thus creating a shadow labor market that undercuts American workers and erodes labor standards. This two tiered system isn’t just unjust, it incentivizes lawbreaking and devalues citizenship. Prosecuting employers alone won’t fix it, and simply granting undocumented immigrants full rights sidesteps the core issue which is that we’re normalizing illegal entry and undermining the rule of law.
Moral: Let’s zoom out of the technical aspects and think about morals. Our immigration system, while flawed, is still functional. There are millions of people all around the world from all backgrounds, who are waiting their turn to get into the country legally. Why should these people get shafted in favor of people who chose to cut in line? How is that fair? By illegally migrating, not only have they disrespected this country, but they also insulted all these people who are trying into the country legally as well as all legal immigrants in the country who sacrificed so much to be here. There’s no good argument for illegal immigration, the most common excuse that I hear is that these people come from a place of hardship and they just want a better life, but that’s not good enough. If empathy is the standard, it should be extended first to those who respect the process, not those who disregard it.
All these points are just common sense. It’s absolutely crazy that I even have to argue why basic immigration laws are necessary. I understand Lemmy is off the rails politically, but even then, has the state of our education system degraded so much that people genuinely cannot comprehend the importance of immigration laws? Seeing people unironically defend open borders without understand why that wouldn’t work makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
The only point you’ve made that has any real practical weight is the issue of labor exploitation of undocumented immigrants, which I agree is terrible, but even then you seem to not care as much about the inequity of it as much as that it “devalues citizenship,” whatever the fuck that is. None of your other points are more than baseless handwringing. Your argument about the legal ramifications is circular and based on nothing more than post hoc mental gymnastics to reach the unsupported conclusion you started with. Your economic argument is hollow and literally concludes that it isn’t important because your circular legal argument is what is important. The moral argument assumes a zero sum game and, again, is not based on anything factual. Finally, your security threat argument is evidenced by effectively nothing–the things you raise are threats regardless of immigration and are most actively guarded against at other points throughout their respective threat trajectory.
I think before you flap about complaining about education quality, you should reflect on your own reasoning as presented. You have applied zero logical process and effectively thrown a heap of conclusory axioms in the air and sputtered with indignation. You have effectively argued nothing and only shown your own severe lack of self-reflection.
The only point you’ve made that has any real practical weight is the issue of labor exploitation of undocumented immigrants
All of my points are both true and perfectly valid. You not liking them doesn’t invalidate them nor does it make them any less significant.
even then you seem to not care as much about the inequity of it as much as that it “devalues citizenship,”
I’m against the exploitation because it’s exploitation, but the solution people like you come up with is not even remotely practical. Your solution to make illegal immigrants have the same benefits of citizens without them actually being citizens. f anybody, anywhere can come into this country without approval or documentation, and start working and getting benefits from the state… then it doesn’t take genius to see how this opens up other types of exploitation.
Not only that, but since there are no controls to regulate the flow of people, then what’s there from stopping the billions of people out there who have live in places with worse economic conditions from just packing up and moving here? The answer is nothing, and with any massive influx of people, you start heavily over burdening the nation’s already stressed systems and start losing social cohesiveness. In other words this is a textbook recipe that leads to collapse.
This type of thinking sounds just and moral on the surface level, but it’s in reality surface level is all it is. The idea falls apart the moment you start looking into the consequences, there’s a reason why unchecked borders haven’t worked well throughout history. The one and only real, practical solution is to overhaul the immigration system to make it more consistent, efficient, quick, and have it work to the benefit of the nation. Once you have that in place, then you make sure that it’s strictly enforced. The only people who are allowed to come here are the people we want to be here. This is common sense.
Your argument about the legal ramifications is circular and based on nothing more than post hoc mental gymnastics to reach the unsupported conclusion you started with.
Your economic argument is hollow and literally concludes that it isn’t important because your circular legal argument is what is important.
The moral argument assumes a zero sum game and, again, is not based on anything factual.
Finally, your security threat argument is evidenced by effectively nothing–the things you raise are threats regardless of immigration and are most actively guarded against at other points throughout their respective threat trajectory.
These are all meaningless buzzword salads. It’s fine if you disagree, but you actually have to put in the effort to explain both your disagreement and your position, otherwise your words hold no weight. Simply saying things like “hollow” and “mental gymnastics” means nothing, and the same goes for insisting that my points are ciruclar and not factual. You saying they are doesn’t make them so, if you aren’t capable of explaining yourself or aren’t able to critique my points on their own merits, then perhaps this conversation isn’t for you.
The only semi-argument you made here is that you think there’s no need to do anything about immigration, because the security threats that I brought up also happen outside of immigration and these issues are being countered elsewhere, but the problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that the way our immigration is handled a big part of why these issues are much bigger threats than they should be. These threats need to be countered within and outside of immigration.
I think before you flap about complaining about education quality, you should reflect on your own reasoning as presented. You have applied zero logical process and effectively thrown a heap of conclusory axioms in the air and sputtered with indignation. You have effectively argued nothing and only shown your own severe lack of self-reflection.
Look, you’re demanding I present counter arguments to statements that literally aren’t argued. Your entire position is effectively “this is bad because I say it is” so of course I’m not going to spend time and energy to counter that. Explain the actual mechanism of harm without resorting to “it’s clear from history” or “it’s a textbook recipe that leads to collapse.” I mean, if you are making your statements disingenuously as I suspect, that’s fine, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re in fact sincerely not understanding how you are in no way making logical arguments but just rattling off conclusions.
So, here are some actual facts. Immigration of all stripes has been pretty thoroughly shown to only improve economies in terms of productivity and diversity. Immigrants, no matter what, pay substantially into the system, and thus enable scaling of the resources only some of them end up benefiting from. Immigrants, again of all varieties, are significantly less likely to engage in crime than their native-born counterparts. These are all well established in the literature, so I will take them as axiom.
Given the above, your hypothesized concerns simply don’t track as population flows scale. Crime rates don’t increase (actually go down), economies don’t implode (actually improve), and social systems don’t collapse because they inherently scale in resource allocation proportionally to population (in a competently structured system–i.e., where this fails, it is not due to immigration but to extant deficiencies already in play).
Now, let’s address another deficiency in the “reasoning” you presented. People don’t just magically immigrate between countries, regardless of Immigration laws. Even if we had no borders and lived in a space age utopia, most people would nevertheless stay where they are unless that place was inhospitable to their survival–this isn’t to say there aren’t many economic migrants, but they are still inevitably a fraction of the population of their country of origin and so the naive assumption that “billions” would flow across an open border is just absurd and completely unreasonable.
Ultimately, understand that I am not expecting erasure of borders to happen anytime soon. However, yes, it is patently clear that the current “crackdown” on immigration is a solution looking for a problem so that it can justify totalitarian authoritarianism and immigration is not and has never really been a significant threat to the US, documented or no.
What constitutes a legal channel is not “simple” and you’re either being disingenuous or are wildly ignorant of the practical reality of immigration. Regardless, it also is totally reasonable to believe that “circumnavigating immigration laws” is very much a non-issue and by and large it is totally unimportant whether an immigrant is documented or not, as far as the state is concerned–if anything, the state, such that it is a unitary entity with its own interests, benefits from undocumented immigrants as they pay into the system and minimally draw out of it (this is also a bad thing, imo, but I suspect we disagree on why).
It doesn’t matter whether the immigration system is simple or convulsed. It is still the immigration system of the country, and you have to respect it. Feeling dissatisfied or impatient with it is not a valid excuse to actually smuggle yourself into the country illegally. With the sole exception of genuine asylum seekers, nobody has a moral argument, let alone, a legal one to be in any country illegally. Nobody is entitled to being an immigrant to any country. Immigration is a privilege, always has been and always will be, and you have to respect the customs of the country you want to immigrate to. If they’re reviewing your case then you have to be patient, and if they rejected you then you have to accept that decision.
Also, it’s completely asinine to try passing off illegal immigration as some sort of non issue. That’s just an out of touch take. It is an absolutely MASSIVE issue. Here’s just a few ways where it’s a problem:
Security: You have random people inside the country that are not known, tracked, and vetted. That’s a major national security threat as it leaves your society vulnerable to smugglers, foreign adversaries’ agents, human traffickers, terrorists, and a whole host of other criminals that could wander in and out of the country with no supervision, approval or consequence.
Legal: Countries have laws for a reason, they’re there to reflect the public interest and will. Having people blatantly violate them is a serious challenge to the country’s institutions. If these institutions, like immigration, border, and customs agencies can’t enforce the laws they’re tasked to enforce, then their authority and legitimacy have been undermined. If you read any history book, you would know that a country with weak institutions that cannot carry out their basic duties, like enforcing the laws they were created to enforce, is a country that’s headed to towards instability and collapse because it is no longer able to govern properly. The consequences of illegal immigrants breaking immigration laws are very serious.
Economic: While illegal immigrants technically do contribute more in taxes than they take out, I would argue that it’s a bad thing because their undocumented status makes them vulnerable to exploitation by employers who pay low wages and offer poor conditions, thus creating a shadow labor market that undercuts American workers and erodes labor standards. This two tiered system isn’t just unjust, it incentivizes lawbreaking and devalues citizenship. Prosecuting employers alone won’t fix it, and simply granting undocumented immigrants full rights sidesteps the core issue which is that we’re normalizing illegal entry and undermining the rule of law.
Moral: Let’s zoom out of the technical aspects and think about morals. Our immigration system, while flawed, is still functional. There are millions of people all around the world from all backgrounds, who are waiting their turn to get into the country legally. Why should these people get shafted in favor of people who chose to cut in line? How is that fair? By illegally migrating, not only have they disrespected this country, but they also insulted all these people who are trying into the country legally as well as all legal immigrants in the country who sacrificed so much to be here. There’s no good argument for illegal immigration, the most common excuse that I hear is that these people come from a place of hardship and they just want a better life, but that’s not good enough. If empathy is the standard, it should be extended first to those who respect the process, not those who disregard it.
All these points are just common sense. It’s absolutely crazy that I even have to argue why basic immigration laws are necessary. I understand Lemmy is off the rails politically, but even then, has the state of our education system degraded so much that people genuinely cannot comprehend the importance of immigration laws? Seeing people unironically defend open borders without understand why that wouldn’t work makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
The only point you’ve made that has any real practical weight is the issue of labor exploitation of undocumented immigrants, which I agree is terrible, but even then you seem to not care as much about the inequity of it as much as that it “devalues citizenship,” whatever the fuck that is. None of your other points are more than baseless handwringing. Your argument about the legal ramifications is circular and based on nothing more than post hoc mental gymnastics to reach the unsupported conclusion you started with. Your economic argument is hollow and literally concludes that it isn’t important because your circular legal argument is what is important. The moral argument assumes a zero sum game and, again, is not based on anything factual. Finally, your security threat argument is evidenced by effectively nothing–the things you raise are threats regardless of immigration and are most actively guarded against at other points throughout their respective threat trajectory.
I think before you flap about complaining about education quality, you should reflect on your own reasoning as presented. You have applied zero logical process and effectively thrown a heap of conclusory axioms in the air and sputtered with indignation. You have effectively argued nothing and only shown your own severe lack of self-reflection.
All of my points are both true and perfectly valid. You not liking them doesn’t invalidate them nor does it make them any less significant.
I’m against the exploitation because it’s exploitation, but the solution people like you come up with is not even remotely practical. Your solution to make illegal immigrants have the same benefits of citizens without them actually being citizens. f anybody, anywhere can come into this country without approval or documentation, and start working and getting benefits from the state… then it doesn’t take genius to see how this opens up other types of exploitation.
Not only that, but since there are no controls to regulate the flow of people, then what’s there from stopping the billions of people out there who have live in places with worse economic conditions from just packing up and moving here? The answer is nothing, and with any massive influx of people, you start heavily over burdening the nation’s already stressed systems and start losing social cohesiveness. In other words this is a textbook recipe that leads to collapse.
This type of thinking sounds just and moral on the surface level, but it’s in reality surface level is all it is. The idea falls apart the moment you start looking into the consequences, there’s a reason why unchecked borders haven’t worked well throughout history. The one and only real, practical solution is to overhaul the immigration system to make it more consistent, efficient, quick, and have it work to the benefit of the nation. Once you have that in place, then you make sure that it’s strictly enforced. The only people who are allowed to come here are the people we want to be here. This is common sense.
These are all meaningless buzzword salads. It’s fine if you disagree, but you actually have to put in the effort to explain both your disagreement and your position, otherwise your words hold no weight. Simply saying things like “hollow” and “mental gymnastics” means nothing, and the same goes for insisting that my points are ciruclar and not factual. You saying they are doesn’t make them so, if you aren’t capable of explaining yourself or aren’t able to critique my points on their own merits, then perhaps this conversation isn’t for you.
The only semi-argument you made here is that you think there’s no need to do anything about immigration, because the security threats that I brought up also happen outside of immigration and these issues are being countered elsewhere, but the problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that the way our immigration is handled a big part of why these issues are much bigger threats than they should be. These threats need to be countered within and outside of immigration.
This honestly proves my point more than anything.
Look, you’re demanding I present counter arguments to statements that literally aren’t argued. Your entire position is effectively “this is bad because I say it is” so of course I’m not going to spend time and energy to counter that. Explain the actual mechanism of harm without resorting to “it’s clear from history” or “it’s a textbook recipe that leads to collapse.” I mean, if you are making your statements disingenuously as I suspect, that’s fine, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re in fact sincerely not understanding how you are in no way making logical arguments but just rattling off conclusions.
So, here are some actual facts. Immigration of all stripes has been pretty thoroughly shown to only improve economies in terms of productivity and diversity. Immigrants, no matter what, pay substantially into the system, and thus enable scaling of the resources only some of them end up benefiting from. Immigrants, again of all varieties, are significantly less likely to engage in crime than their native-born counterparts. These are all well established in the literature, so I will take them as axiom.
Given the above, your hypothesized concerns simply don’t track as population flows scale. Crime rates don’t increase (actually go down), economies don’t implode (actually improve), and social systems don’t collapse because they inherently scale in resource allocation proportionally to population (in a competently structured system–i.e., where this fails, it is not due to immigration but to extant deficiencies already in play).
Now, let’s address another deficiency in the “reasoning” you presented. People don’t just magically immigrate between countries, regardless of Immigration laws. Even if we had no borders and lived in a space age utopia, most people would nevertheless stay where they are unless that place was inhospitable to their survival–this isn’t to say there aren’t many economic migrants, but they are still inevitably a fraction of the population of their country of origin and so the naive assumption that “billions” would flow across an open border is just absurd and completely unreasonable.
Ultimately, understand that I am not expecting erasure of borders to happen anytime soon. However, yes, it is patently clear that the current “crackdown” on immigration is a solution looking for a problem so that it can justify totalitarian authoritarianism and immigration is not and has never really been a significant threat to the US, documented or no.