Stephen, I agree that many actually existing corporations reap benefits from the criminalization of immigrants, in part because they can use the threat of La Migra (tacitly or explicitly) to control and exploit immigrant workers. And I’m on record as emphatically agreeing that corporatism or state capitalism needs to be sharply distinguished from the free market, and (therefore) defenders of free enterprise shouldn’t always, or even often, be defending actually existing big business. (See, for example, http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/03/31/anarquistas_por .)

And of course I agree that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be blamed. (For what? They’re doing nothing wrong.) I just can’t find this argument anywhere in MacIntyre’s piece. All I can find is a single paragraph where he says that certain sorts of Chicano activists who are currently boogey-men of the nativist Right are indeed a problem locally in California, but aren’t as big an influence on federal policy as some seem to claim.

He does say that the corporate class has more effect on immigration policy federally than those Chicano activists do. But I can find anywhere at all that MacIntyre suggests that undocumented immigrants aren’t to blame, or that they shouldn’t be punished. He does have some complaints about the “disaster” of Spanish being spoken in Los Angeles schools, apparently blames Latin American immigrants for Los Angeles’s murder rate, and generally talks about Mexican immigrants in a way virtually indistinguishable from the AFL’s anti-Chinese rhetoric of the 1880s.

He nowhere advocates decriminalizing undocumented immigration, which is the only non-immigrant-blaming policy to take. He nowhere even suggests that the criminalization of immigrants, rather than the immigration itself, is the problem. Instead he repeatedly calls for escalation of the war on immigrants, e.g. by prosecuting banks that dare to write loans to immigrants, or government-subsidized landlords who dare to rent to them.

If you want to make the argument that corporatism is at least partly to blame for the situation, and that the best solution is to stop punishing undocumented immigrants immediately and entirely, then you can and of course you should. My beef is with the claim that MacIntyre’s piece, which is a string of immigrant-blaming, protectionist fallacies, and calls for escalation of government attacks on immigrants, has anything to do with the argument that you seem to want to make.

On domestic issues such as shooting immigrants, as a form of protectionism for U.S. workers’ wages? If that’s the tent, I’ll stand in the rain, thank you.

Corporatism and a free market are indeed different things. But the only way to achieve a free market in labor is the complete decriminalization of immigration, not arresting, confining, exiling, and/or shooting immigrants who haven’t gotten a permission slip from the government, or (as McIntyre wants) arresting banks for loaning money to those immigrants, or employers for giving them jobs.

Incidentally, since when did “responsible immigration” mean producing your papers to the federal government on demand? I don’t notify the government of my whereabouts every time I move. What business is it of theirs?

Andy: “Much of the land in this country is held by government or by government connected corporations. The American people are the rightful owners of this land. Most of the American people (80% or more) do not want this country to be flooded with illegal aliens.”

Just what has this got to do with the debate over actually existing immigration policy? The government doesn’t just claim the authority to exclude or remove undocumented immigrants from government roads or schools. They claim the authority to exclude or remove them from anywhere in the United States, including private property, with or without the consent of the owner, and even to conscript employers to serve as immigration cops with their new hires. Whatever you think about the rightful ownership of government-controlled thoroughfares (and, frankly, I think that key aspects of the theory you suggest are frightfully silly), the government is currently reaching far over the boundaries that even your theory would allow for.

“We are bound to treat foreign citizens as well as we would be expect our citizens to be treated when they are abroad.”

How does forcing would-be immigrants to fill out government paperwork affect whether or not they’re being treated as well as we would expect our citizens to be treated when they are abroad?

Wouldn’t it be easier to just treat all immigrants decently, and forget about the paperwork?

“It is also incumbent upon a host government to provided foreign citizens with adequate access to the diplomatic services of their home country.”

How does using force against immigrants who haven’t filled out government paperwork improve anyone’s access to the diplomatic services of their home country?

“Most importantly, the US needs to ensure that a foreign individual’s home country will allow them to leave before we allow them to enter …”

Why?

Well, the issue isn’t whether or not Ron Paul would have to stop sitting in the House of Representatives. I agree that he isn’t necessarily under a moral obligation to do so. But he would have to stop trying to pass off himself and his colleaguesas legislators invested with the right to make laws wholly of their own device. As it stands he’s a professional usurper because whatever votes he makes in practice, he professionally claims an authority that he has not got.

Also, I doubt that he would have any right to accept a Congressional salary and benefits for his “services,” even if he were holding the position in a strictly defensive way (which of course he’s not).

Dr. Paul: “We must reject amnesty for illegal immigrants in any form. We cannot continue to reward lawbreakers and expect things to get better.”

Dr. King: “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. … Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. … One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”

Dr. King wins.

“Wasn’t the Declaration of Independence itself an act of lawbreaking?”

Well, if you take the Declaration at its own word (as I think you should), it wasn’t so much an act of breaking the law as an act of recognizing that the so-called “law” was no law at all, because it was without legitimate authority. Rather than breaking the law, it refused, and therefore dissolved, any obligation to respect the claims of legal authority over the American states at all; but folks with no legal authority can’t make law, so there was no law to break.

But, since the United States government hasn’t got any more legitimate authority over peaceful immigrants on private property than the King of England had over Americans minding their own business, the status of illegal immigrants is really much the same as that of those who signed the declaration, anyway.

Of course, for Ron Paul to recognize that, he would have to give up his job as a professional usurper, and start looking for an honest line of work. So I’m not holding my breath.

Jason,

Three things.

First, while you probably do have a right to use force to defend yourself against certain kinds of known criminals, even by forcing your way onto my property against my will in order to take her into custody, it’s quite another thing to claim that you have a right to force your way onto my property in order to do ex ante screening of everyone who passes through it, in order to find out whether they are criminals or not. But of course that’ latter is precisely what the border patrol and internal immigration cops need to do in order to enforce an immigration policy. Do you think that your right to self-defense extends to commandeering my property for ex-ante screening? If not, where will your immigration cops even find a place to stand?

Second, to confine criminals in prisons the burden is on the government to demonstrate guilt. As you note, domestic cops have no power to make you stop at checkpoints and do ex ante screening without probable cause. (Actually, they do get away with this on the roads, but that’s low-intensity occasional screening rather than systematic.)

But if your argument in favor of ex ante screening is that you have a right to keep criminals away from you, why doesn’t that give you an even stronger right to have the government do the same thing at state lines, or just randomly search other people’s houses whenever they feel like it? They have no less probable cause for people crossing state borders, than they do for people crossing international borders. And whatever microscopic contribution to your safety you think it makes to stop a criminal from moving from one city a thousand miles away from you to another city a thousand miles away from you, you surely make yourself more safe by stopping a criminal from moving into your state, city, or neighborhood.

It’s true that limiting checkpoints to the border crossings would be less inconvenient (since it means fewer checkpoints) than an extensive internal checkpoint system. But precisely because it’s less disruptive the actual meaningful contribution that it makes to anyone’s safety is correspondingly microscopic. As you remove the defeating condition, the supposedly justifying condition also evaporates.

Third, if the moral justification for confining and exiling immigrant criminals is the same as the moral justification for arresting and confining domestic criminals, why treat them differently at all? Why not throw both in prison, or exile both, rather than adopting different responses depending on the nationality of the person who’s allegedly posing a threat to your safety?

Thanks for your patience, by the way. I realize this is a pretty long pile-on and a lot of questions being fired your way over a disagreement that, from the standpoint of policy results, no doubt seems quite small when fully considered. (I’m just of the opinion that similarities or differences in moral principle are much more worth spending time on than similarities or differences in concrete policy outcomes.)

Eponym: “IMO, it isn’t a human life that should be provided the protection of law until it has a functioning cognitive brain.”

Whether it’s “a human life” or not, since when did people at any stage of development get the right to live their human lives by commandeering the use of your internal organs against your will?

The problem with Roe v. Wade is that it’s not pro-choice enough.

Jason: “I may also protect my legitimate interests through other means — as in prohibiting criminals from entering the country. It’s impossible, after all, to protect your land day and night while still making a living, and the task of the government is likewise made easier if criminals are screened out at the border. … The only groups I have advocated deporting are criminals and terrorists. These people have no right to be here, because criminals have fewer rights than the rest of us.”

1. Do you think that the government would be within its moral prerogatives to use similar “screening” procedures to keep criminals, terrorists, etc. from moving from, say, Ohio to Michigan? From Detroit to Ann Arbor? After all, insofar as it succeeded, that would materially improve my safety a lot more than stopping criminals from moving from Tijuana to San Diego.

2. There are two different aspects to immigration policy: border patrol and internal policing. Suppose that someone who is not, in fact, a criminal, a terrorist, the bearer of a dangerous disease, or anything of the sort, doesn’t want to deal with immigration paperwork and somehow skirts your border patrol. Suppose that she stays at my place while she works for a willing employer who doesn’t care about her immigration status. Should she be arrested and deported if she is found out? Should I be forced to do “screening” for her immigration status before I give her a place to stay? Should her employer be forced to do the same?

3. What kind of crimes do you have in mind when you say that “criminals” should be stopped at the border and/or exiled from the country? Do you think that U.S. citizens who commit similar crimes should also be exiled, or prevented from re-entering the country if they leave it? If not, what makes the difference between the two cases?