Comments Elsewhere

“Your questions challenge the some of the most basic elements of international customary law”

That’s deliberate, and it’s a matter of conviction rather than ignorance. I don’t accept the legitimacy of “international law.” My interest is not in how well governments get along with each other, but rather in the kind of powers that governments do or do not have over peaceful individuals who are harming no-one.

“We make immigrants and non-immigrant visitors identify themselves and their intentions (filling out paperwork) to demonstrate to foreign countries that we are taking steps to ensure the safety of their citizens (read: we can easily find and identify them upon request). You would be surprised to know how many criminals and terrorists can be turned away by a little paperwork and an interview.”

You seem to have switched from one justification to another in mid-sentence. In the first case you seem to claim that the government is justified in using force against immigrants without documentation in order to assure the governments over their former home that the U.S. government is adequately attending to their safety. In the second you seem to claim that the government is justified in using force against undocumented immigrants to block or remove “criminals and terrorists,” presumably for our safety. Those are two separate claims; and frankly I don’t find either very persuasive. The latter because the government has no right whatever to force people through ex ante screening (that is, treating them as presumptive criminals) without probable cause. The former because the rights of peaceful immigrants not to be molested are more important than how comfortable the governments they formerly lived under are made. Neither you nor the government have any right to arrest, beat, restrain, confine, or exile an immigrant who has chosen to come here without a permission slip from the federal government, just in order to make their former government feel better, of all things, about the physical security (!) of their emigre subjects.

“I am not advocating that we criminal illegal border crossing, but we should be able to take such individuals back to the border to fill their paperwork out properly before re-entry.”

You act as if La Migra were just walking them home after school. In fact what you’re proposing is that La Migra use force against undocumented immigrants, arrest them, restrain them, confine them, beat or shoot them if it’s necessary to ensure compliance, and ship them in chains down to the border to get them to fill out the right forms in triplicate. Whether you call this “criminalizing” or not, that’s treating innocent people as criminals when they have violated nobody’s rights. And for what?

“Finally, allowing foreign citizens to enter the US in contravention of their domestic laws causes unnecessary political headaches.”

So what?

“Changing citizenship is a big deal and customary law dictates that both states involved in the immigration process have a voice in the process.”

Well, I didn’t say anything about changing citizenship. What I’m talking about is whether people who are in this country without a permission slip from BICE and who don’t have citizenship status should be arrested and forced into exile for it. I don’t think they should. If undocumented immigrants were free to live on property where they were welcome, and free to work for willing employers, with or without citizenship status—if they weren’t treated as outlaws and put at the mercy of La Migra, then I really wouldn’t care much at all how byzantine the rules for changing citizenship were. The issue here isn’t so much changing citizenship as whether or not non-citizens have rights that the State is bound to respect, and if so how far those rights extend. I think that they extend, at the very least, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“The core values of an immigration system should be responsibility, expediency, and fair treatment.”

The core values of an immigration system should be packing up their guns and going home. Moving is not a crime, and it’s not a problem to be solved.