So you don't love your family enough to break an arbitrary law of a foreign country? Sounds wrong to me, but then, I don't pretend to know God's will in such matters.
We see people stacked like wood frequently
- Thread starter TheLonelySquire
- Start date
No, you were obviously taught blind obedience to the law without any consideration of the ethics involved. That's not morality, it's dogma, and it requires no more personal thought or involvement than a dog obeying its master because its been trained to do so.
What's the greater crime; letting your family starve, living in unsafe/unclean conditions, not having decent job prospects, and going without proper medical care or education, or violating a law of a country where the punishment is usually simply being shipped back to the situation you were in before and where the economic impact of your crime on the citizens of that country is generally minor and often offset by your own economic contribution?
If your family was in such a situation (Don't just excuse it with platitudes like "I wouldn't allow that to happen," actually consider it), wouldn't you do everything in your power to provide for them so long as it didn't hurt anyone else in any significant way? That's the question. Can you show that the damage caused by illegal immigration on the citizens of this country outweighs the damage to the people trying to look for a better life and to provide for their families if they choose to not violate the law?
Not an argument or a rebuttal. Not appropriate for a discussion Thread.
Building a wall is not the answer to illegal immigration.
As long as what attracts these people here remains, such a wall will be tunneled under, climbed over or gone around. It will be a waste of time and effort. As long as they can cross our border and find some employer willing to exploit them, they will keep coming.
We need to mandate the Social Security E-Verify system as a condition of employment. That is the system that matches up people's names to their social security number and detects if someone is using a number that is not theirs, as illegal immigrants are commonly known to do. The program is stated to be ~98% effective. Take away the chance at an easy job by randomly picking nine digits out of thin air, you make it that much harder for the illegals, and then you will stop the influx of illegal aliens and maybe start to reverse the flow.
As long as what attracts these people here remains, such a wall will be tunneled under, climbed over or gone around. It will be a waste of time and effort. As long as they can cross our border and find some employer willing to exploit them, they will keep coming.
We need to mandate the Social Security E-Verify system as a condition of employment. That is the system that matches up people's names to their social security number and detects if someone is using a number that is not theirs, as illegal immigrants are commonly known to do. The program is stated to be ~98% effective. Take away the chance at an easy job by randomly picking nine digits out of thin air, you make it that much harder for the illegals, and then you will stop the influx of illegal aliens and maybe start to reverse the flow.
Yeah, but when you go and say that you were taught right and wrong, insinuating that the rest of us weren't, that kind of shoots discussion down. Personally, I have little to no problem with illegal immigration. Health care reform, education reform and me not dying are a little higher on my list of things that I want the government to accomplish. Illegal immigration seems like a bullshit issue that politicians cooked up to distract us from the real issues that they aren't concentrating on.
TheLonelySquire
Vice Admiral
Not an argument or a rebuttal. Not appropriate for a discussion Thread.
But it was actually pretty funny! I just wish the dialogue had been reversed!
So, then...
... God is not always right or moral? Interesting. And apparently, God is pro-choice.
TheLonelySquire
Vice Admiral
Nice observation, but if you read the Bible you will see that when the law of the land contradicts the law of God, go with God's law. In Acts for example.
Also, I wasn't trying to turn this into a Christian based subject. Someone else did that.
There were also several questions raised and comments made that had nothing to do with religion. You could address some of those.
TheLonelySquire
Vice Admiral
No Locutus, I was not raised that way. I was raised to respect authority because it has been put in place for a reason. But I do not blindly follow it.
And with all due respect, I would indeed find some way to prevent my family from being completely destitute. Believe it or not some people are drivien to provide for their loved ones without breaking into a foreign country and taking valuable social services from those they were designed for.
I also do not need to weigh the damage caused by known criminals against presumably innocent citizens of another country. I can certainly show that it costs billions and billions of dollars annually. That's a given.
Now, I am more than sympathetic to the plight of all poor people. I believe immigrants are what make this the greatest country in the world (in my opinion). However, we need to provide for the people that are already here and the ones that come here need to do so the right way.
Then perhaps you should create threads about how immigrants make this country great instead of following the old pattern of creating threads about immigrants who meet horrible deaths and sprinkling those threads with your perception of cause and effect.
TheLonelySquire
Vice Admiral
What a waste of a good topic this attack pack mentality creates.
To be fair there have also been some people who've made good points. I just try and weed through the other stuff.
Wait until we tackle the abortion debate...
There have been some pretty atrocious acts committed by those in authority throughout history. I'm glad to hear you won't blindly follow them, but at the same time it's a little alarming that they earn your respect simply by being in authority instead of by the quality of their words and deeds.
You can say that with such certainty because you've had the good fortune to be born in a country that afforded you a lot of opportunities to succeed. And you had that good fortune because at one time this country allowed in immigrants like your ancestors in far greater numbers.
Those same opportunities don't always exist in less fortunate countries, and there are fewer opportunities to be had and often a greater number of people competing for them.
Then it's fortunate that this country has a multi-trillion dollar economy and that illegal immigrants contribute billions of dollars worth of low-cost labor annually; labor that might otherwise be outsourced because native workers wouldn't take those jobs. They also contribute significantly more to the federal government in taxes than they use.
What a waste of a good topic this attack pack mentality creates.
What contribution to the topic does this comment make? If there's a specific issue you'd like to address or if you'd like to defend his position, by all means do so.
Yeah, your avatar and signature just SCREAM "civil debate" and "mutual respect."
Emphasis mine.
I'm sure the Native Americans wished Europeans thought that way. Those pesky Pilgrims...why didn't they just stay in England and make their country better.
Link?
What a waste of a good topic this attack pack mentality creates.
What contribution to the topic does this comment make? If there's a specific issue you'd like to address or if you'd like to defend his position, by all means do so.[/QUOTE]
It's a huge contribution, if people would realize we can have productive conversations here.
What was illegal about Europeans coming to the new continent?
TheLonelySquire
Vice Admiral
There have been some pretty atrocious acts committed by those in authority throughout history. I'm glad to hear you won't blindly follow them, but at the same time it's a little alarming that they earn your respect simply by being in authority instead of by the quality of their words and deeds.
You can say that with such certainty because you've had the good fortune to be born in a country that afforded you a lot of opportunities to succeed. And you had that good fortune because at one time this country allowed in immigrants like your ancestors in far greater numbers.
Those same opportunities don't always exist in less fortunate countries, and there are fewer opportunities to be had and often a greater number of people competing for them.
Then it's fortunate that this country has a multi-trillion dollar economy and that illegal immigrants contribute billions of dollars worth of low-cost labor annually; labor that might otherwise be outsourced because native workers wouldn't take those jobs. They also contribute significantly more to the federal government in taxes than they use.
What a waste of a good topic this attack pack mentality creates.
What contribution to the topic does this comment make? If there's a specific issue you'd like to address or if you'd like to defend his position, by all means do so.
I grant those in authority positions the respect the position calls for. Until they foul it up, that is.
My wife is an immigrant and comes from a less than affluent upbringing. Know what I've found? Money does not make someone happy. Being born an American is not a guarantee of anything. You can be the poorest person in the world and be among the happiest.
That Americans wouldn't take labor jobs is preposterous. And most illegal aliens I've known are sending their money home instead of investing it here. I've known plenty. Please provide your evidence that IA's pay more in taxes than the cost in services. And they've stolen any legitimate social security #'s they do submit.