[RD] the problem with the "human beings are not illegal" argument

[Lexicus]

@MaryKB As a matter of law overstaying a visa is a civil violation and crossing the border illegally is, IIRC, a criminal misdemeanor. Simply being in the US without legal documentation does not violate any actual statute. Someone who illegally crossed the border 11 years ago is guilty of the same offense as someone who illegally crossed the border 11 days ago. If it were illegal simply to be in the country without documentation then that time difference should be reflected in the law the same way there is a difference between murdering one person and murdering three people, but it is not. What the law does recognize is multiple instances of crossing the border illegally; there are escalating penalties for reentry especially if you've been charged with/convicted of other crimes.

Sources:
https://www.politifact.com/new-york...an/being-undocumented-immigrant-us-not-crime/

https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/crime-enter-illegally.html

 

[MaryKB]

I feel you're splitting hairs. Yes it's not a crime punishable by imprisonment or anything, but it's still illegal. Your article even says such a distinction like you seem to be trying to make is purely semantics.

 

[Lexicus]

In the US for things to be illegal they have to violate specific statutes. It's not exactly a semantic point, it's a legalistic one (talk about splitting hairs! lol).

At the end of the day though, you're right that it doesn't matter much. Penalizing people with forced resettlement or indefinite imprisonment for crossing an imaginary line is fascism.

 

[ulyssesSgrant]

The colloquial usage of illegal doesn't typically refer strictly to the criminal code but also to civil violations. If you want to highlight the legal distinction, you can do so without straw manning other people's positions.

Overstaying your visitor visa is illegal, using a common definition of illegal to include violations of civil law. This is actually the case for the majority of undocumented immigrants.

States enforcing immigration law and maintaining their boarders is something that cannot be explained by or reduced to fascism.

 

[Estebonrober]

States enforcing immigration law and maintaining their boarders is something that cannot be explained by or reduced to fascism.

Well idk about fascism in this case but I can say letting 11 million people into your nation to work, live, raise families and then turn around and try to start deporting people who only know this as home is fubar.

It’s completely fubar

 

[Patine]

The colloquial usage of illegal doesn't typically refer strictly to the criminal code but also to civil violations. If you want to highlight the legal distinction, you can do so without straw manning other people's positions.

Overstaying your visitor visa is illegal, using a common definition of illegal to include violations of civil law. This is actually the case for the majority of undocumented immigrants.

States enforcing immigration law and maintaining their boarders is something that cannot be explained by or reduced to fascism.

But the colloquial usage of calling those who have illegally entered the nation, or are illegally resident, as "illegals," (a noun, not applied to any other legal status of human being) is much more in line with comparing the migrants in question with, as an analog, not being akin legally to users of crack cocaine, but being crack cocaine itself.

 

[Lexicus]

you can do so without straw manning other people's positions.

In what way am I strawmanning anyone's positions?

 

[Farm Boy]

I was thinking a bit more about the pricing of peppers and I guess I'm not sure what the profit swing is on those for a grocer. Like I know gas stations and franchise fast food places don't always have a good, or much at all of a margin on some stuff you'd think they would. Like gas, or a hamburger. But they need those to get you there. The profit margin might come from some specific other things once you get there, like a buck fifty for a fountain drink that costs them a nickel to fill once they've sold it to you. There's a reason refills can be unlimited if they want to sell that point. Once you've bought the soda for coming in, you physically can't drink enough of it in one visit to screw the margin. Can't do the same with burgers.

 

[Hrothbern]

I was thinking a bit more about the pricing of peppers and I guess I'm not sure what the profit swing is on those for a grocer. Like I know gas stations and franchise fast food places don't always have a good, or much at all of a margin on some stuff you'd think they would. Like gas, or a hamburger. But they need those to get you there. The profit margin might come from some specific other things once you get there, like a buck fifty for a fountain drink that costs them a nickel to fill once they've sold it to you. There's a reason refills can be unlimited if they want to sell that point. Once you've bought the soda for coming in, you physically can't drink enough of it in one visit to screw the margin. Can't do the same with burgers.

In a grocery everything that is easy to grab has I guess a better profit margin than what is very low or high on the shelves.
But fresh vegetables are always easy to grab...

 

[Farm Boy]

I would suppose they're in the "grab it nao!" category because they're highly perishable but... that's entirely possible.

I don't always understand American retail much less European retail.

 

[Peuri]

We have to work towards this as a goal and not concede to the kleptocratic authoritarians that the world is a dog eat dog @#$%show.

Sure. But questioning crony capitalism is not exactly the same as questioning capitalism itself.

I'm guessing immigration law would not be high on the list of things preventing Russian takeover.

Like my country's president Niinistö said last year, "a cossack will take what is loosely attached". Looking at what is happening again in Georgia at this very moment, I wouldn't be surprised if that tool, if it be granted, was used when it became convenient for the Russian government to use it. Don't get me wrong, I love the Russian language (I even speak it a bit), the Russian people and Russian culture. It's the Russian state that I have a problem with. I would love nothing more than to see the people that live right next door to be free for once in their history.

Well, the Declaration cannot actually grant freedom to leave one's country if every country in the world is able to deny entry to anyone for any reason.

You can leave Mexico if you get a visa, isn't that right? But this is a fair point. I wonder what the original intent of the drafters was. I doubt it was totally open borders.

We have not achieved what I'm talking about in the West. I had to migrate internally in the US to find a job that let me support myself.

Fair enough. I've had to move internally too. But I doubt removing the necessity of internal movement will ever be removed.

So, when should American Imperialist aspirations be curtailed, and all the authoritarian, bloody-handed, human-rights abusing regimes they like to install in other countries, and arm them to protect them from their own people and the threat of "Communist" or "Islamist" or what have you regimes that they are at least as bad as. And France does it too, though mostly in Africa - they're activity in this regard just doesn't get as much publicity as the U.S., for some reason. But France was aiding the genocide militias in Rwanda, and the regime of Habyarana, upon whose death the genocide started, and whose regime built up the genocide mentality in the country.

I'm not American or French. For all I care the Americans and the French can leave their imperialist aspirations on their coat rack, be it military or cultural. But coming from a country that really was in the brink of being succumbed to a very real communist threat about half a century ago, I can appreciate that American anti-communism served my country from time to time. But I can also appreciate that lofty ideals can cause unintended consequences. George W. Bush probably really thought that he could turn Iraq into a working democracy. His campaign, of course, was a spectacular humanitarian failure that resulted in a million+ dead and inadvertently created what can only be described as a Middle Eastern Nazi regime on the border of Iraq and Syria.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

This thread is a perfect illustration of why the push for STEM in the American education system was a mistake. Or maybe it's not even the education system's fault, but we as a society failed to teach young people, particularly young men, critical thinking and social skills. What is a metaphor? How to read between the lines? How to distinguish between a generalization and a particularity? Words, words, words, what do they mean?

We live in a society, I guess.

 

[caketastydelish]

You are a young man yourself. You do find that to be a bit ironic that you seem to be holier than thou to uncle tom your own demographic so hard?

 

[Lexicus]

Like my country's president Niinistö said last year, "a cossack will take what is loosely attached".

Tbh that comes off as kinda racist

I'm not American or French. For all I care the Americans and the French can leave their imperialist aspirations on their coat rack, be it military or cultural. But coming from a country that really was in the brink of being succumbed to a very real communist threat about half a century ago, I can appreciate that American anti-communism served my country from time to time. But I can also appreciate that lofty ideals can cause unintended consequences. George W. Bush probably really thought that he could turn Iraq into a working democracy. His campaign, of course, was a spectacular humanitarian failure that resulted in a million+ dead and inadvertently created what can only be described as a Middle Eastern Nazi regime on the border of Iraq and Syria.

My perspective on anticommunism is quite different. Ruined my country's domestic politics and contributed to some really terrible slaughters in Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and other places.

 

[Peuri]

Tbh that comes off as kinda racist

How surprising. You might be joking, because I get triggered when you call me a racist , but I'll go on a rant anyway just for the fun of it, so you'll have some more evidence for your claim. Let's just say that the people of this country have suffered for about a thousand years from Russian aggression. My home town has been burned to the ground three times by the Russians, in the 16th century they killed everyone living there, and in the 18th century they killed almost all the people from my home province, and sold about 30 000 people (some 10% of the whole contemporary population) into slavery inside Russia and all the way up to the Middle East, where their blue eyes and fair hair was highly marketable for their exoticism. More recently the Soviet union, although in name a multicultural entity, but de facto a Russian assimilationist state, operated massive resettlement of peoples, which left Estonia with a 30% Russian minority, and scattered Estonians everywhere into Siberia. The Karelian people in Tver, Aunus and White Karelia have almost been eradicated, only babushkas and dilapitated villages remain, as have the Ingrians, not to talk about the fate of Finnic and Ugric people more generally whose culture and identity has been and is being decimated in Russia, while being the indigenous peoples of some those areas since probably the stone age. So I am sorry, if I don't trust the Russian state not to punce on us, again, if they have the possibility, especially under the current leadership, which has amply showed that it can operate in a moment's notice in literally imperialist fashion by annexing territory with dubious claims or setting up puppet states if it deems the situation is safe enough for it to operate without too large of a backlash from it's bigger neighbours and trading partners. Because having the world's largest country in landmass is somehow not enough?

And is it not true that cossacks did take what was loosely attached? After the fall of the Mongol successor states in the plains, cossacks literally took all that was loose between the Volga and the Pacific ocean by the fashion of conqistadors. Didn't you yourself berate conqistadors in some thread or the other? Was that racist too?

I harbour no ill will on the Russian people, indeed when we have left each other alone (the Finns have enacted rapacious violence on Russians and Karelians too, and tried to assimilate other Finnic peoples, no denying that), we have been great trading partners, and indeed the birth of Rus was a coalition of Swedes, Russians and Finnic peoples. All I want for Russians is that some day they will be free.

My perspective on anticommunism is quite different. Ruined my country's domestic politics and contributed to some really terrible slaughters in Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and other places.

Valid point.

 

[Lexicus]

Let's just say that the people of this country have suffered for about a thousand years from Russian aggression.

You don't have to explain the long history of Russian aggression against the Baltic peoples. I am not deeply familiar with it but I get the general picture. I am also well aware of the genocidal policies practices against indigenous peoples of the region by the Tsarist and Soviet governments.

Didn't you yourself berate conqistadors in some thread or the other? Was that racist too?

"Conquistador" is not an ethnicity; Cossack is.

You are reading too much into my comment, I think. I didn't mean to suggest that a strong suspicion of the Russian state is not warranted because it is. I don't even disagree with the sentiment behind what he said. I just think saying "the Cossack will steal what isn't nailed down" is kind of a racist way to put it. It is probably simply a different context; here in the US as you can see with the reaction to some of the things Trump says, referring in an unguardedly negative way to entire ethnicities is jarring and offensive.

 

[Peuri]

[...]
"Conquistador" is not an ethnicity; Cossack is.

Now I'm just splitting hairs, but while cossacks can perhaps be said to be a seperate ethnicity, they also were transformed into the czar's most loyal troops, so that was my analogy to conqistadors.

You are reading too much into my comment, I think. I didn't mean to suggest that a strong suspicion of the Russian state is not warranted because it is. I don't even disagree with the sentiment behind what he said. I just think saying "the Cossack will steal what isn't nailed down" is kind of a racist way to put it. It is probably simply a different context; here in the US as you can see with the reaction to some of the things Trump says, referring in an unguardedly negative way to entire ethnicities is jarring and offensive.

Ok, I think the force of it was that Putin is the cossack, or the Russian state, not the descendants of cossacks living in Ukraine or the Don.