Jill: This will surely be an unpopular argument with some people here, but completely open borders would wreak havoc on both our economy and our national security, …

Why?

Jill: And like I said in the post, we really need to loosen up our asylum policies. When I said “anyone and everyone,” I was referring to immigrants in general, not just asylum-seekers.

Part of the problem with this is that not everyone agrees on legitimate reasons for granting asylum, and if you allow the politicians to pick and choose who to let in, then the kinds of people they recognize as “real” refugees are going to be limited by the political blinders that mainstream politicians or immigration bureaucrats happen to have on when they approach the issue. To take a real world example, it’s been like pulling teeth getting the immigration bureaucracy to recognize the threat of almost certain death as cause for granting asylum, if the threat comes from your abusive ex-husband — because wife beating is not considered a “political” issue by the immigration inquisitors or their political bosses, and so doesn’t really come into their worldview when they ask themselves who counts as a political refugee. People written off as “economic” refugees are routinely turned away, as if starvation were somehow less of a crisis for the refugee than near-certain murder. Generally speaking, political agencies respond to political incentives, and frankly I don’t trust politicians to pick and choose who counts as a “real” refugee, especially not when most of the candidates already come from marginalized groups that are routinely misunderstood and ill-served by politicians here as well as abroad.

“Now, I’m not arguing that we have to let in anyone and everyone…”

Well, why not?

It is criminal that there’s a single refugee in this world who cannot immediately find asylum and a new life for herself in another country. It is inexcusable that this system of international apartheid is maintaining the

• feministe

Randy:

This is no longer a debate about right and wrong. It is a debate about the will of the people, and the will of the people is to stop illegal immigration.

If political debate is not debate about right and wrong, then political debate must be changed. There’s no sense talking strategy until you’ve first settled on the right goal, and thus no sense talking practical politics except in light of principled convictions about how people ought to be treated. And while I’m a lot more dubious than you are that there are easy and reliable ways to determine what “the will of the people” is, I do know that if the will of the people demands immorality, in the form of an injustice against innocent people, the will of the people must be ignored, evaded, or resisted.

The best the illegals who are here can hope for is a legal path to citizenship through a guest worker program. Every other option involves their being forced to leave. Only the form of the force used differs from option to option. Deny them jobs and benefits or arrest them – its all the same. They have to go.

Don’t talk bosh. There is a perfectly valid third option:

Stop attacking peaceful immigrants.

ariadne:

I can’t believe how much we’ve all been duped into thinking it’s more important than, say, health care, securing nuclear materials, capturing OBL……

I think it’s pretty important to the immigrants.

PJGoober:

For all the libertarian commenters, you need to recognize the negative externalities imposed by tons of poor immigrants due to the welfare state, and then realize that the welfare state is probably never ever going away. I’m choosing my battles wisely, and ending massive unskilled immigration seems more doable.

The existence of the welfare state is not immigrants’ fault, and in point of fact they are able to take considerably less advantage of it (especially if they don’t have their papers) than any new brat born to upstanding U.S. citizens. So why are you willing to take it out on immigrants but not on elderly citizens drawing Social Security checks, suburban kids getting a government-funded education, American citizens drawing TANF, WIC, food stamps, SSI? American farmers drawing agriculural subsidies or American business owners taking grants and loans from the Feds?

All of these people are imposing “negative externalities” on their neighbors by means of government programs, yet I see no proposals for rounding up the urban poor, deporting the disabled, putting the elderly into “detention centers,” or building guarded barricades to block surburban kids from getting to the government schools. It is only immigrants that you’re willing to forcibly restrain, beat, shoot, confine, and exile from their current homes (all at further taxpayer expense, mind you; “enforcement” is not any more free than welfare benefits are), in order to make some inroads on the negative externalities being imposed by a welfare state that they played no role in creating. Why? Because, apparently, they are politically vulnerable and you have no trouble using government force against innocent third parties when you feel it’s more politically expedient to do so than working to change or resist the system that robs you in the first place.

That is, frankly, despicable.

… and that’s why I’ve given up on electoral politics as a serious means to social change.

If I spend 30 years’ worth of time and money that I’m never going to get back on organizing, and all I can expect to get at the end of it is a bunch of hang-wringing quasi-liberal Democrat politicos sitting in the existing institutions of power, then I may as well save myself the trouble and just bang my head into a brick wall for the same length of time. At least the brick wall won’t fill my mailbox with fundraising junk mail, too.

I don’t think that’s true. Can’t the border patrol arrest and restrain people crossing the border illegally?

That depends on what you mean by “can.”

They certainly have the power to do so. But they haven’t got any legitimate right to. Neither they nor anyone else has the right to harass or forcibly restrain peaceful people, who are, after all, simply trying to move into a new town to find work, and aren’t interfering with anyone else’s rights to person or property. Moving should not be treated as a crime.

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.

Dr. Althouse:

“I haven’t been reading PoliPundit or, really, any of the debate about immigration in the blogosphere. If I had been, I probably would only write about ‘tone and tenor of the debate.’ I consider immigration a complex policy problem, and I steer clear of ideologues spouting on the topic. I hear the President gave a speech on the subject last night and that he sounded moderate. Good. He’s fending off the ideologues — I hope.”

Dr. King:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

“… You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist. … But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist for love — ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice — ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ — ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ Was not Martin Luther an extremist — ‘Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.’ Was not John Bunyan an extremist — ‘I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.’ Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist — ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist — ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

—“Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Dr. King wins.

More to come later when I have a bit more time. For now:

Paul,

Yes, I know that our methodological differences spring from the fact of you (and Roderick) being followers of Wittgenstein in this matter and my being a follower of Popperian critical rationalism and his view that “nothing of substance depends on words”.

Doesn’t Wittgenstein rather famously also suggest that “nothing of substance depends on words”? (Cf. for example TLP 4.003, TLP 6.53, etc.)

Maybe the differences that you (and Popper) have with Wittgenstein — and with me and Roderick — actually have to do with something other than this methodological dictum?

I would suggest that our intellect is more fruitfully employed in criticizing and refuting their erroneous theories rather than in designing a more consistent scheme of words with which they can continue to articulate their errors.

The aim of the linguistic criticism isn’t to furnish them with new language for articulating their errors, but rather to furnish us with new language for criticizing and refuting their erroneous theories. You might think that we could save time by just doing so with the old language we already had at hand, but if Roderick’s right about the conceptual misdirections embedded in that old language, then it simply is not useful as a means to that end.

You could say, “common usage can go hang; stipulate meanings for your own terms to get any questions of meaning out of the way as quickly as possible, and then devote your energy to making your case, rather than punching at the tarbaby of other people’s conceptual confusions.” But as a practical matter, common usage really is harder to divorce yourself from than this suggests: even when you make explicit stipulative definitions it can be hard to divorce yourself from the conventional paradigm cases and the connotations you’re familiar with (I think this often actually happens when many libertarians start talking about “market processes,” but that’s another long discussion for another time). And, perhaps more importantly, what Roderick’s doing in the passages you cite is part of a different intellectual task than formulating your own theory: the task that he’s engaged in is in fact criticizing someone else’s false theory (statist political economy), so part of what he needs to do is to engage with what they are actually claiming and how they are supporting it. Otherwise, he is just punching at a strawman. So engaging with the way in which package-dealing language is commonly in framing the theory he’s criticizing, and the way in which that language insulates the theory from criticism (by concealing where, and with whom, the dispute actually lies) is part and parcel of the task you are trying to urge him to devote himself to. Specifically, it involves knocking out one of the supports used to hold up the false theory — e.g. by taking away the state socialist’s ability to rely on the admitted evils of neomercantilism in order to make a case against free enterprise. And by making clearer where the dispute lies, it also makes clearer the sorts of evidence that need to be adduced in order to criticize whatever supports remain.

On the other hand, you could always argue that Roderick’s just saying something false about how the already existing language in the debate is commonly used, and that it is (as Frank claims) really much less ambiguous or incoherent than Roderick is claiming. But then you’re punching at that tarbaby no less than Roderick is, since determining that that’s the case just does involve doing linguistic analysis.

agm:

You can’t implement good laws if you ignore a large chunk of the population, and this includes people who have the jitters about brown-skinned immigrants.

Whether this is true or not, the point I was making had nothing in particular to do with whether or not you should implement new, better laws, or if so, when. It had to do with whether or not you’re obliged in conscience to try to enforce already existing laws that are unjust. (You’re not, because an unjust law has no legitimate authority, and because you’re never obliged in conscience to do an injustice—even if every single person in the country besides you were demanding that you do it.) Admittedly ridiculous laws should not be enforced, and real people’s lives and livelihoods are a hell of a lot more important than making your point about “national sovereignty.”