A Question for Immigration Restrictionists
The current refugee surge into Europe has caused a lot of my friends who are immigration restrictionists to say this proves that I am naive.
During the Cold War, we (including most Conservatives) considered it immoral that Communist countries would not let their people leave (Berlin Wall, etc.). Now, however, it is argued by many of these same folks that it is imperative that the Western democracies build walls to keep people out.
So here is a question -- not of practical consequences, but of pure morality. Consider this picture of people being prevented from crossing the border.
Explain to me why this scene is immoral if the wall and police forces were put there by the country at the right (the leaving country) but suddenly moral if the same wall with the same police force were put there by the country on the left (the receiving country). Don't they have exactly the same effect? Same wall -- How are they different?
Doesn't this mean that you can ban anything other people do based on the projected cost to you? Smoking, travel, food, drink, religion, sports, travel, dangerous occupations, etc.? Because that sounds like sacrificing freedom for the sake of other lost freedoms.
Of course, I assume you'd support open borders for anybody who can prove they have assets or income sufficient to avoid welfare. Many immigrants here today already post bonds to this effect. So you'd want more tax-paying immigrants and fewer welfare-eligible immigrants. Of course, most immigrants are mostly ineligible for welfare, particularly unauthorized immigrants.
Not letting people into my home is not initiation of force. Not letting people into my country follows the same principle
If this were not a fence, but your front door to your kids birthday party?
There is no infinite cake and juicebox supply. The jumpy castle only has a limited amount of capacity at a time. If the door (fence) were left wide open, the party could not sustain the inflow of additional guests. Specifically since they won't be bringing a lot to the party other than an empty stomach. More jumpy castles could be brought in, sure. But who pays for that? the immediate answer is you. it's your party, you have to supply the jumpy castles and juice boxes. perhaps a generation later, these kids will all grow up and supply their own jumpy castles and host the party, but today, you are.
On the other hand, if you were to bolt the door and force all those kids to stay and enjoy your party...listen to I love barney for an hour, feeding them last Christmas's fruit cake...well that might how they do things in other places, but we call that kidnapping and torture. That's the moral difference in the dilemma posed. It's wrong to kidnap. It's not wrong to lock your door and protect your property.
The underlying issue here is property. Government steals/taxes our property and redistributes it. We see another 10% jump in population (hungary is around 9 million) that doesn't yet and won't in the near future pay taxes, but will start getting our property redistributed...then we yearn for fences. If we had a stronger respect for private property and more protection from it being redistributed by our government, then it's not such a big deal. If our party were at the beach, and If we weren't serving up cake and juice boxes, then it wouldn't matter if 10% more people showed up uninvited to our party.
You own your home. That's your private property and thus an extension of your liberty. Who owns the country in this scenario? Do we all own property in common, so no private property? Or does the government own our property?
You have the right to set the rules of your home because it's yours, but unless the government or the collective own our property and the spaces in between, then these are not analogous.
And, of course, if the government/collective do truly own everything, then that has terrible implications for Americans and legal residents, too, not just immigrants.
But what if the new guests brought their own cake and bouncy castles? They are willing to work and earn their keep, running the party and cleaning up afterward.
Also, what if the party had 3.5 million square miles of land and at least ten times that many different property holders, some of whom are having their own parties and want to invite more guests?
The US is not the host of a big party. We are each hosts of our own party and reserve the right to control our own guest lists. That's what private property means. I don't know why you are in such a rush to give our private property over to the government to dictate who enters and who leaves.
Might as well read the Bible while you are at it. Plenty of crap in there that is 180 degrees from American values...
It's not absolute. The country owns some property, and we own some property individually.
One of the few things I think the government does (and should) have responsibility for (or ownership of) is the border. And since "we" are the government, "we" as a group decide what the policies are for letting non-citizens across the border.
Right, except immigration laws also tell people that they can't invite immigrants to stay on their own property. They can't hire immigrants. They can't sell to immigrants. They can't rent to immigrants. So, the government isn't just asserting property control over government holdings, but also private property.
So, I ask again: do individual property rights exist in this system where we - through our government - can exclude people from each others' property?
And if "we" truly own the country through government, then why is this limited in application to non-citizens only? After all, if you're saying the government - and thus we - have a right to restrict the free movement of people, even people who aren't hurting us, then what rights do citizens have in this regard, either? Is this freedom of movement just statutorily granted, a citizens-only privilege, not something individuals have a right to do? So, you and I are only allowed to move within the United States because we narrowly give each other this permission? If we decide to revoke this permission, there's no rights violation because there never was a right to travel, anyway? This would be the natural implication of your argument.
For what it's worth, the government does not make an ownership/property rights justification for excluding immigrants. The claim is much more banal: sovereignty/right to exclude.
The problem with this whole response, is that the questions asked and
answered are not the same. The question is why is it considered morally
ok to have a fence to keep people out, and wrong to keep people in.
(presuming the typical conservative American view)
honestly, I can't fathom how anything you pose gets to the root of the moral debate of fences to keep people in or to keep people out. So I see your are huge advocate or open borders. Good for you. Additionally, I am at a loss to figure out how you believe that I advocate giving anything to the government.
I guess if I were to fall into the lets argue for the sake of arguing trap, Then I would say that the people of most western societies have ceded a lot of property (property is not just land) to the government. So much so, that now that they have taken it, we squabble over the best ways to spend and manage the stolen loot. in your question about the lone individual party thrower should be the sole determiner of who does or does not go to their party. Well that is great. I concur.
But the problem with our make believe scenario is that they don't get to your party by magic carpet. They get there by highly subsidized light rail that I had to pay for. They brought cake bought by food stamps, that I paid for. They didn't know how to find your party, since they didn't speak Syrian in Hungary, so they went to school that I paid for to learn Hungarian so they could read the map and invite to your party you wrote in Hungarian.
More or less, the majority of liberal (democrat and republican alike) government services are highly subsidized. The subsidies come from the taxpaying portion of the public in the form of more taxes (confiscated/stolen Private Property) Immigrants use a high volume of those services, have more children that use those services, and generally, lets be honest, they really aren't there to clean up, unless you pay them in cash under the table due to varying reasons, which won't be taxed. ( another good reason that if there are taxes, a shift towards less property and income taxes, and more sales (user) taxes )
So if you have a system in place where you and your guests have provided for transport to, from, and all services inbetween for your party, jumpy castles, and cake, to be paid for by you and your guests, then hail all gods that be. I am on your side.
Current immigration laws are more restrictive than I would like w.r.t selling/hiring/etc. That does not mean that all aspects of immigration law are wrong. And it still has nothing to do with "initiation of force".
And I will answer again - yes, individual property rights exist, even though the government controls access to the borders, and various military bases, etc. Government limits on travel in certain ways and in certain places is not unreasonable, and it does not make broader claims about individual rights.
Citizens have rights, as described in the Constitution. One of those rights is the right to enter and leave the country. It would require a constitutional amendment to remove that right.
Non-citizens do not have the right to enter and leave the country. For those people, entering the country is a privilege.
They happen to be from a different sect or subset. By now you don't need me to tell you that Sunni kill shia, and vice versa, and they both kill Christians and Jews. They all support Islam and are of course Moslems. Take a gander at the concept of taqiyya. When they come to Europe, they don't want to ditch their absurd and noxious religion. They want to infect Europe with it. Put another way, you may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Say what you will about that monster (whose theological belief system makes Mormonism look like serious theology) who ran Syria, he protected the Christians. How's it working out for them these days?
Point taken, in a sense. But Christianity has been defanged, as has Judaism. Islam is now and always has been an aggressive, militarily aggressive, medieval religion. On a good day, these guys (Moslems) are from the Bronze Age. Bush made the mistake of thinking they were just like us. Obama appears to be in love with what he takes to be Persians (mullahs). They're not, in both cases.
100% yes, it does.
If another human being isn't violating your rights, and yet you use force against this person, you are initiating force. Unlike self-defense, you are the aggressor.
You can start from the position that everything should be legal and the government needs to prove why it should be illegal and why force is justified OR you can start from the position that everything should be illegal and people need to prove why they should get to do something.
If you start from a presumption of liberty, one in which people have a right to do whatever they want so long as they're not violating anyone's rights, then morally you do need to justify force. I haven't yet found a way to justify force being used against peaceful people. That's clearly an initiation of force because moving and working are not intrinsically violations of anyone's rights.
Yes, so a constitutionally and/or statutorily granted right to travel, a special privilege we extend to citizens via our laws, not something you believe individuals have a right to do.
This a statement of facts, but not a statement of ethics or rights. Yes, the government controls borders, military bases, government property holdings, like parks. We don't disagree.
The ethical implications on individual rights are clear. Immigration laws necessarily exclude foreign people from the private property of Americans,.
Your moral justification was that you get to personally exclude whoever you want from your private property. The only way the government would have the same power to exclude (in your analogy) would be if it exerted some sort of higher claim onto private property, thereby undermining private property rights of individuals.
The analogy just doesn't hold up. Your analogy depends on the principle of private property, but immigration laws weaken and even do away with the most important aspects of private property rights.
Oh I agree completely. Like I said the melting pot is slow but very strong. It has, like you said, worked every time so far and to America's advantage.
Note, that I think assimilation is what has been and is happening with Mexican and South American immigrants for a long time. However, I am disheartened by movements in that community to refuse to assimilate, but think its just a given there.
Muslims have a belief system that is fairly inflexible and many muslim neighborhoods have trouble with assimilation in my opinion. But again the hope is that as history is proven they will change and fold into (and contribute to) the larger culture. But that will require them to make religious changes too in addition to cultural ones, ones their religion is set up to push back against.
> If another human being isn't violating your rights, and yet you use force against this person
The immigrant is initiating an action. The border prevents the immigrant from completely that action. That is not the initiation of force, any more than a wall is initiating force against a ball that bounces against it.
> You can start from the position
This may offend your absolutest model, but there are not only two positions. You can also start from the position: almost everything should be legal and in most cases the government needs to prove why it should be illegal AND also some things should be illegal and people need to prove why they should get to do that small subset of things.
I start from a presumption of mostly liberty. There are a relatively small, enumerated set of things that they are not allowed to do. One of those is crossing national borders without consent.
> Yes, so a constitutionally and/or statutorily granted right to travel, a special privilege we extend to citizens via our laws, not something you believe individuals have a right to do
It is not a privilege, because the government can't take it away.
I get that you're trying to make arguments about all individuals galaxy-wide having inalienable rights, and that I'm artificially restricting them. Yes, I am. I'm stating that crossing borders freely is not an inalienable right.
> The only way the government would have the same power to exclude (in your analogy) would be if it exerted some sort of higher claim onto private property, thereby undermining private property rights of individuals
This does not follow at all. The government having control of the borders has no bearing on my private property rights. It doesn't mean they have a higher claim, and I frankly don't see how you can come to that conclusion.
> Your analogy depends on the principle of private property, but immigration laws weaken and even do away with the most important aspects of private property rights
Only if I accept your definition of what are the most important aspects of private property rights. Which I do not.
This doesn't mean anything. If I blink, I initiate an action. If I scratch my butt, I initiate an action. Neither of those violates your rights. To use force against me to stop me from doing either one, you'd need to show that my actions are violating your rights, though. Anything less would be an initiation of force.
I acknowledge an immigrant is breaking a law, but we're discussing why that law is justified.
Regarding the first sentence: do you mean as a matter of law or as a matter of morals?
Because you acknowledged that we could amend the Constitution. So, the government could take it away. But if you mean that we should not take it away, morally speaking:
If the government cannot take it away, then it's a right to intrinsic to human beings. If it's a right intrinsic to all human beings, then it does not matter whether that human being is American or non-American - the government would still be morally bound to respect it.
I think you're also contradicting yourself. You're saying it's not an inalienable right, but you are admitting you are artificially limiting these rights. These don't square. Either they're universal or they're not; whether you choose to respect them is different, but wouldn't change what rights humans have.
Actually, it does have bearing on private property rights. I can't invite certain people onto my property. I can't hire certain people. I can't sell to certain people. Immigration laws restrict the people with whom I may have a personal or economic relationship. In essence, the government is interfering between two people seeking to enter a relationship and asserting a higher claim to control the property of one party to justify doing so.
To use an analogy: imagine the government passed a law tomorrow that you could not hire, rent to or sell to someone from your neighboring state. Would you say that you have meaningful property rights just because you're still allowed to do all of those things with people in your state or from other states? Or would you say your economic freedom and private property rights were being violated to a certain extent?
If I can't engage in mutually beneficial and private economic arrangements with peaceful people, then I don't know what good private property rights are.
More to the point: this whole discussion started because of an analogy you made.
You claimed that the principle that allows you to exclude people from your personal property is the principle in play with immigration laws.
My response is simple: you have the right to exclude because it's your private property. In order for that principle to apply to the government's dealings, we would need to accept that the government (or the citizens through the government) has ownership over the country, including everyone's private property, and therefore has a right to exclude foreigners even if an individual private property owner disagrees. In other words, government property rights > individual property rights.
That's just the first problem with the analogy. If you don't like this principle, feel free to adopt another one.
The second problem is that the whole analogy depends on there being private property rights at all, yet the conclusion of the analogy requires us to dismiss the notion that individuals have the very autonomy over property that makes private property a thing. You don't need to accept my definition of the meaningful aspects, for the reality is that you are nothing more than a leaseholder in a system where the government's property rights over the country and the power to exclude exceed your own rights for your individual property holdings.
My ranch fence keeps cattle in and wolves out. I exploit the cattle. I don't want wolves to exploit me.
People fenced IN are cattle. People fenced OUT are wolves.
The moral difference should be clear to anyone capable of logical thought.
No, this is a false equivalence. People fleeing communist countries led to a net improvement in the world. People immigrating without limit will reduce the good places they enter to the same hellholes that they are fleeing from.
In some libertopia, people would be free to go wherever they want. In the real world, migration has consequences, and when those consequences are negative for a nation, it is not immoral for that nation to prevent it. Nations exist as distinct entities to protect the people who live there - not for anyone else, anywhere in the world, with any random set of ideas to move to.
Charity is a moral response. Charity to the point of self destruction is a dumb and immoral response.
I'm broadly in favor of liberal immigration policies, but that's a silly argument. As an analogy, if I shoot someone and he dies, does it matter whether he was trying to kill other people or not? The net outcome is that the person is dead.
Just to prevent a possible misunderstanding, we don't only judge actions by their immediate effect, we also judge them by their intent and by their secondary effects. A lock on a door saying "keep out" is qualitatively different from a prison, which has a lock on the door saying "keep in."
In a nutshell? Because people come here from other countries, and instantly, they or their kids qualify for affirmative action, minority set-asides, preferential college admission, SBA loans and a whole slew of goodies that my kids don't qualify for. Let's see you come up with some libertarian bs about free movement of goods and services to convince me that's fair, and I'll gladly sign a petition to allow a couple of incipient ISIS operatives to take your kid's slot at Harvard.
"They happen to be from a different sect or subset."
So instead of Isis supporters fleeing into the arms of Isis, and Assad supporters fleeing into the arms of Assad, and Shia supporters fleeing into the arms of Iran, and Sunni supporters fleeing into the arms of Jordan or Saudi Arabia, etc.--all those warring people instead are instead joining hands and fleeing together into Hungary?
"Say what you will about that monster..."
Then you must really hate George W. Bush for what he did to the regime of Saddam Hussein.
This is how you conclude that Muslims "gave us the TSA"? Your argument seems to instead conclude that Bush, by at least signing it, had more to do with it than Muslims.
But whatever tiny cabal imposed the TSA upon hundreds of millions of us (and GWB not only did not veto it, he gave it high praise when he signed it, and counts it as one of his accomplishments), it was yet another example of government and politicians making an unfortunate situation worse. It should be obvious to people by now that imposing government monopoly protections never made any institution better. A rational reaction to the 2001 attacks was NOT to nationalize airport security. So it wasn't Muslims that gave us the TSA, it was bad ideas.
If the security forces are on the right, a la the Berlin Wall, it's imprisonment without a crime. If they're on the left, they're excluding people from entering a limited area and protecting the rights of those who are already citizens.
The effects are only the same if you posit a system with two countries or country like entities such as the EU. If there are more than two countries, in case A they still have to remain, but in case B they can go anywhere they want, except for where it's forbidden. Furthermore, even if you accept that the end result is the same, intentions matter in most moral frameworks, and in this case the difference in motivations is huge.
When you build a fence to keep people out, it *is* a different thing from building it to keep them in. And Europe needs to regulate immigration if europeans want to keep their generous welfare states.
Welfare states are not compatible with large scale immigration of low-skilled people from third world contries. In Sweden, immigrants comprise 17 percent of the population, yet 57 percent of welfare payments go to immigrant households.
I could go on and on about all the bad numbers, but if you'd like to know a bit more this article is a good introduction:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/swedens-ugly-immigration-problem/article26338254/
}}} During the Cold War, we (including most Conservatives) considered it immoral that Communist countries would not let their people leave (Berlin Wall, etc.). Now, however, it is argued by many of these same folks that it is imperative that the Western democracies build walls to keep people out. Explain to me why this scene is immoral if the wall and police forces were put there by the country at the right (the leaving country) but suddenly moral if the same wall with the same police force were put there by the country on the left (the receiving country). Don't they have exactly the same effect?
YOU'VE GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME, WARREN....
Well, I suppose if you lock your doors to keep me OUT of your house, that's no different from me padlocking the doors to keep you IN the house?
Not exactly the same, but damned sure close enough.
How about this?
You lock your doors to keep your 20yo mentally competent daughter at home, and keep her from leaving.
The store down the street locks THEIR doors to keep people from coming in when the place can't serve any more customers at the moment, because it's crowded to the limit of the fire codes -- or perhaps the manager just doesn't feel he has enough people on staff today to handle more than the ones that are inside the doors...
Clearly, they're exactly the same behaviors, and morally identical, by your argument. If one is ok, then the other is?
Where do you get this bonehead retarded SHIT sometimes? Do you deliberately TROLL your visitors?
.
Also -- I've made this point before, and I'm going to make it again -- YES, THERE IS A QUANTITATIVE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE HISPANIC INFLUX SUCH THAT IT IS CERTAINLY ***possible** FOR IT TO BE A QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE AS WELL.
Here, a copy of a previous post to demonstrate this point with CENSUS DATA.
This NYT census-based infographic (note it does not include 2010 census data, but there's no reason to presume it would not follow suit):
================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?_r=0
================================================================================
Click on the link.
Run the Slider back to 1880
In the pulldown at left, select a country -- say, "Italy"
Now advance the slider decade by decade, noting the manner of the bubbles that appear -- which are proportional to the local, intrinsic population vs the size of the immigration.
Run the Slider back to 1880 again
In the pulldown at left, select a country -- say, "Poland"
Now, again, advance the slider decade by decade, noting the manner of the bubbles that appear
Run the Slider back to 1880 again
In the pulldown at left, select a country -- say, "Sweden" (I've picked demos with a large, over-time influx of people to this nation)
Now, again, advance the slider decade by decade, noting the manner of the bubbles that appear
Note the overall size of the bubbles, and see how they compare to the local population, showing the comparative influx of people to the areas into which they have gone over time.
Run the Slider back to 1880 again
In the pulldown at left, THIS time, let's select "Mexico"
Now, again, advance the slider decade by decade, noting the manner of the bubbles that appear -- through 1960, it's pretty much identical to the previous "invasions" by other countries' peoples.
Since then, it's a whole different ball of wax.
Q.E.D., The stance that this influx is "no different from previous ones" is absolute fucking BULLSHIT. The influx from Mexico is literally an order of magnitude greater than ANY previous influx, and it's getting WORSE every decade.
On which side of your home's front door do you insert your key? Who has keys to your door -- everyone, or just select members of your family? Imprisoning innocent populations is not morally-equivalent to protecting what is ours. Your wall question is hyper-libertarian lunacy.
I made no argument one way or 'other with respect to where one might place "blame" for the existence of the TSA law. It appeared to me that you were putting the onus for the existence of the law solely on President Bush. I was merely trying to more accurately describe the broader approval in the U. S. government that the law enjoyed. And, I dare say, also with broad national public support in the aftermath of 9/11 -- wise or not.
Not everyone is arguing with you, VV.
Because there are more issues involved than just welfare. There is the volume issue, the cultural differences issue, and so on. I recommend decentralizing the issue and establishing a dynamic which controls and mitigates excessive and insufficient immigration in a way which is less political. Yes, welfare would not be available. Yes, communities could still prohibit adoption if they so desire.
I look for systematic, decentralized ways to solve problems. If more classical liberals did the same, we could start having some actual effect.
"Explain to me why this scene is immoral if the wall and police forces were put there by the country at the right (the leaving country) but suddenly moral if the same wall with the same police force were put there by the country on the left (the receiving country). Don't they have exactly the same effect? Same wall -- How are they different?"
Well, I'll try (from the UK). [And apologies to the many commenters above, if they have made similar points.]
Firstly, consider this was a house. Keeping the people in is kidnap and imprisonment: a couple of crimes in both of our countries. Keeping the people out is protection of private property: a major function of law enforcement in our both of our countries.
Secondly, consider various UN and other international agreements on refugee law. The UN 1951 Convention (to which, by the way and if I understand correctly, the USA is one of the few countries in the world not to accept) requires refugees to be: "A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, ..." On this, there are two matters. (i) A reasonable requirement on the those claiming refugee status to demonstrate at status (including nationality and their well-founded fears). Many of the refugees do not meet the requirements and purposefully obscure their origins, strangely enough by lying and by destroying their passports and other documents. (ii) A reasonable requirement on claiming refugees to follow due process, once they are away from the country or countries against which they have well-founded fears of persecution. This include, in the most obvious cases, their being already in the relatively safe countries of: Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. In particular, there is surely no more than a modest need to consider their desire for a specific destination country - rather than slavish observance that they can have whatever they want - and are acting reasonably in avoiding due process to get it.
Best regards
No, not even two countries. My locking you out of MY house is not the same as you locking me IN your house. And that is Warren's imbecilic equivalence here. There are times I think he deliberately trolls us, because I don't believe he's so stupid as to make that equivalence, it's worthy of a true Obama loving liberal.
Why? Justify this ridiculous statement. Why should immigration EVER be "easy"? Particularly when the country is not sparsely populated any more. We aren't Europe, but we're hardly 1 person per 100 sq. mi. The only people we should be welcoming are people who will NOT be a social burden. And that's pretty much the opposite of what streams across our borders.
In essence, this is the system we pretty much had for the most part until 50 years ago. While people did come here, most of the time they knew people here first.
No, they were responsible for the fate of Syrians trying to enter THEIR country. Being an "easy crossing point" to somewhere else is not being responsible. Serbia can kiss Hungary's ass for
tryingallowing that shit.And for the Syrians, well, even a shithole like Serbia is better than a hellhole like Syria. If they don't like it, they can go back to Syria and take the damned place back from #$%#$$# ISIS.
We the people own the doors. And our law that governs the doors says all may enter temporarily, but no one may work nor stay permanently without permission. If you don't agree to those terms, you are not allowed to enter.
If we changed our laws to say "anyone may enter and work", that would be the law. It is not.
If you are a tenant in an office building, you don't get to decide the rules of the landlord. Similarly, you as a private citizen do not get to override the laws of the body politic.
You may not like the law, but you are subject to it.
You've constructed an excellent argument to be delivered from the mouth Elizabeth Warren: "if publicly funded programs touch on your behavior, then it becomes the public's right to regulate you in any way it sees fit." Which is a blank check that basically just says "the government wins." The government pays for a Coast Guard and a military that it can be argued keep the country safe and clear of invaders, so by that argument everybody in the country is a peon benefiting from the Treasury.
If I take your argument at face value, then an immigrant who saves up to fully pay the cost of government subsidies used to get into the US should be allowed in. So you're open borders for people with, say, a few thousand dollars to pay an entry fee.
I don't accept that immigrants do cost all that much in welfare, since they are ineligible for many welfare programs. But even if I did, that'd be an even better argument against the border wall and the border patrol, since they cost tons of money just to keep out potential taxpayers. And if we're going to target people sucking away welfare money, we should be focused on senior citizens, who have the highest average wealth (as a demographic) yet cost the largest part of the federal budget.
Maybe we should let in more immigrants to work and pay taxes to support unemployed senior citizens.
So it's not about welfare, it's about culture. Under what theory was it appropriate to allow in previous waves of immigrants but not allow in current immigrants?
I agree that the issue should be decentralized. Specifically, decentralized down to the individual level. Each person decides where to live to work, and each person decides whom to hire and to whom to rent housing. I don't accept that local communities can make that decision any more than local communities can decide to ban religion or establish segregation codes.
Refugees in prior times, like Russian Jews, potato famine Irish, Armenians, were not typically trying to be re-settled back home. Most of them that got here stayed. Same for Assyrians (Iraqi Christians), Chinese Christians, Vietnamese anti-Communists, Hmong, Bosnians, Somalis, Ethiopians, post-Soviet Russians, etc. I think you're making assumptions that are incorrect. Did you have any specific examples or statistics?
You may be thinking of refugee camps in other countries, which mostly exist because the host country does not want to absorb the refugees.
I think it's very unrealistic to say that men, women, and children fleeing war in the Middle East should be forced to go back and fight. I don't think you'd say that German Jews should've been sent back to Germany to fight the Nazis, or that Vietnamese refugees should've been sent back to fight communist Vietnam.
Right, so in the analogy where the United States owns all private property, we the populace are just renting all property. If the US government is your landlord, then it gets to control access. Conversely, if you own your private property, then ethically you should be allowed to control access.
You can't simply say "it's the law." By that logic, any law that exists is morally fine. Yet I'm sure we could construct a law you'd oppose, even if it were the law (for example, a law requiring you to kill your mother - it's the law, so how can you object?). We can evaluate that some laws are good and some laws are bad, without denying that the bad laws are being enforced.
You've changed the morally culpability of the victims in a way that presumes the conclusion you seek to prove. What makes it okay to kill in self-defense is the shooting victim was an aggressor, not a peaceful person. You switched the shooting victim from peaceful to aggressive, and that's what makes shooting them okay.
But in the refugee scenario, the people are morally the same - they really just want to cross the border and be safe on the other side. They are not aggressors for wanting to cross the border. So whether they are walled off by the police on one side or the police on the other side, they are being walled off despite being peaceful people seeking safety.
To really change it to parallel the self-defense scenario, you'd have to assume that the border crossers were not peaceful and meant to do harm. Nobody is reasonably arguing that any appreciable proportion of the refugees are potential security threats.
People immigrating without limit will reduce the good places they enter to the same hellholes that they are fleeing from.
You know why argument is good? Because it's so demonstrably true and not at all utterly vapid.
For example, when the Irish fled the potato famine by the millions, they ruined the US and caused a potato famine on the East Coast. And after the Jews left Russian for the US, it caused a Czar to rise up and take over Brooklyn. Plus the millions of Europeans, Asians and Cubans who fled communism during the 20th century, which caused the US to become a communist People's Republic.
Except that none of that happened because people fleeing their previous country aren't trying to recreate the old mistakes. In fact, new arrivals with limited resources and limited language skills tend to be the least able to influence their new country. It's only once they plant roots and have kids and learn English that they tend to have any real influence, and by that time they're used to how things are and don't see a particular need to change it. You've identified the exact opposite of the actual immigration experience.
This is like a policy of excluding French, Dutch and Poles because the Nazis were also Europeans.
Making that argument is tantamount to saying that there can be no doors with "keep out" on them in any peaceful context. Again, I'm in favor of liberal policies, but the right to set policy and the moral high ground are with the person saying "keep out" not "let me in".. If you believe that there is no right to do that (i.e no right to exclude), do you have locks on your doors? There are plenty of people who would just like to get warm for the night...
Private property is pretty much defined as the right to exclude others (with certain exceptions). Do you believe in that right? The burden of proof for an exception to that right (eg an easement) is on the group requesting the easement.
Anecdotally, I've known a lot of Muslims - Bosnian, Pakistani, Black Muslims, a Palestinian - and I didn't find them particularly intolerant or even terribly religious. The most religious I saw any of them was planning a meal to break the Ramadan fast, which is about as religious as Christmas dinner or Passover Seder.
The worst I saw was one guy who was concerned that our district manager was "a gay" but it's not like he tried to honor-kill him, it never went past gossip. Plus, that was 12 years ago, when gay acceptance was less widespread, and I imagine you'd find similar prejudices today among some Christians.
The one Palestinian I really knew liked clubs and drinking and wore a leather jacket. He also had funny anecdotes, like when he was pulled over by Alexandria cops for driving a cargo truck past the Pentagon, while unshaven and wearing all-white cotton clothes. Think he may have been an atheist, but I don't recall him ever saying that.
I also worked with a kid, who was maybe Bosnian or Albanian, and he was named Elvis because his dad loved Elvis. Hardly a future Osama acolyte. His favorite artist (this was also years ago) was 50 Cent.
And I'm a St. Louis native, where there is a thriving Bosnian community dating from the 1990s, and that's considered a safe neighborhood with good food. I helped an old Bosnian guy file for his tax refund once. He shuffled in and spoke no English, and we used a combination of my paltry German skills, Google Translate, and calls to his daughter to figure out his tax filing status. I don't foresee him martyring himself to a new Caliphate under the Gateway Arch anytime soon.
So yeah, I'm not claiming this will hold up statistically, but anecdotally I've met a lot of data points that disprove your bigoted picture of Muslims as hateful terrorists.
If everyone agreed with you and made it a priority, that would be true. But of course, they don't.
FWIW, I concur that immigration (even illegal immigration!) has a net economic benefit. But economic benefit is not the sole issue. There are other issues: cohesion, stability, identity, and so on.
You're conflating private property and public right of way. The right of people to move along public highways and thoroughfares is not the same as the right to exclude people from your own private property. This is distinct from the ability of private property owners to protect access to their home and lands (i.e. to prohibit "breaking the close"). You are conflating the two but I'm not sure you realize they are morally distinct.
If the public highways are subject to the same moral rules as private property, then the government may exercise the absolute right of landowners to exclude anyone for any reason. Would it be legitimate for a local mayor to say that a landowner could not access the city's roads for any length of time, and must only travel by helicopter or by adjoining private parcels (with permission), avoiding all the roads? No, clearly not. That's very different from when the government, acting as property owner, kicks a trespasser out of the city hall bathrooms after hours.
Moreover, if the government can exercise private property rights over the entire country, then you are describing communism. Do you believe in private property or does the government own all property?
Well, no. This whole argument is a poor analogy.
First of all, you're in a country where these broad decisions (borders) are made by majority vote. It's not "no private property" so much as "private property, in a condo association with over-arching rules."
But even with your analogy, it fails. People don't stay on your land. In a situation where you could clearly take people only onto your own property without any effect on other folks (or the government) your argument would have more weight; that obviously doesn't apply here.
If the government can limit migration due to culture and identity, why can't it control religion, speech, belief and partisanship? If the government is so great at controlling culture through immigration laws, shouldn't it also be able to introduce mandatory religious worship and mandatory TV watching? You know, to encourage cohesion and stability.
I think it's noteworthy that your concern about government-mandated cohesion and identity is primarily pointed at migrants, even though most of the country is native or naturalized.
Sure it does. The moral responsibility is one of a club: Look out for the interests of the other club members (citizens of your country) in exchange for an expectation that they will do the same.
You can cogently argue that I have an individual moral obligation to assist a refugee. But you can't cogently argue that the US Government has that obligation, because the whole point of the US Goverment is to benefit citizens of the US.