Comments Elsewhere

Jim: Illegal immigrants violate the property rights of all Americans when they cross into our country without our permission.

No, they do not.

Illegal immigrants travel on roads open to everyone, live in places where they have been welcomed by a landlord or by their family, and work for employers who willingly hired them. Or, if they are not, then there is already a law for dealing with trespassers, regardless of nationality.

If an illegal immigrant is barging onto your private property without your permission, then I’ll gladly defend your right to have the trespasser removed from your own property. What I object to is the claim that you have a right to throw immigrants off other people’s property, even if those other people are perfectly happy to let the immigrants stay for love or money. Each American has every right to decide who does or does not stay on her own property. Only belligerent busybodies, on the other hand, think that they ought to have a say in who can or cannot stay on their neighbors’ property.

Jim: Is it considered “assault” to deport illegal immigrants back to their home countries?

Yes. Deportation doesn’t involve a nice man from La Migra walking immigrants back home. It involves using force, or the threat of force, to throw people out of homes that they have been welcomed onto, against their will and against the will of the property owner. Using physical force against people, when you are not defending yourself, is assault. Using assault or the threat of assault to take someone away from their home by force is abduction. The fact that the assaulters and abductors have badges on does not legitimize the attack.

Randy: 1850? Good point. And remember what happened in 1861 when the compromise fell apart.

The compromise actually fell apart in 1854. Not that the aftermath of that was any more pleasant.

Pleasant or unpleasant, though, the compromise fell apart because the terms of compromise were absolutely unacceptable. If your model for desirable political compromise is the god damned Fugitive Slave Act, then I think you need to think a lot harder about what it is you desire and why.

Randy: Peaceful people? That’s an interesting interpretation, but it entirely rejects the arguments of those who are opposed to uncontrolled immigration. The problem for you is that there are a great many such people.

The fact that many people have deluded themselves into thinking that they are being attacked by an Evil Alien Invasion is not my problem. It is theirs.

Randy: At this point in time, the only real alternatives are controlled immigration or mass deportation.

Why in the world do you think that these are the only alternatives? I’m not interested in either form of ethnic cleansing, thank you.