Comment by didgetmaster
1 day ago
The whole immigration argument basically boils down to two schools of thought.
1) Those who believe that every human born on this planet has a basic right to move to and live in, any country that they want.
2) Those who believe that the people who are currently citizens of countries around the world, have the right to set strict restrictions on who is allowed to move there.
These two schools are fundamentally at odds with each other. Some members of both camps will go to the extreme to enforce their position and demonize anyone in the other camp.
That's a huge oversimplification though. Group 1 would mostly consist of some of the most ardent social progressives and some hippies, and the Group 2 is most everyone else and basically the policy in every country currently in existence.
In reality most people are somewhere in the spectrum of group 2:
* There are those who believe everyone economically net positive should be allowed.
* There are those who believe everyone who are a good cultural fit (for their personal criteria and biases) should be allowed.
* There are those who believe only exceptional people with rare talents should be allowed.
* There are those who believe people should only be allowed if they meet some definition of greater good.
* There are those who believe partner visas should be allowed/disallowed.
* There are those who believe only the wealthy people who'll spend or invest their wealth in the country should be allowed. (=various kinds of golden visas)
* There are those who believe no one except for certain race(s), nationality(es) or religion(s) should be allowed.
* There are those who believe no one should be allowed.
* ..Different combinations of above options..
* ?? (Many other possibilities)
> 1) Those who believe that every human born on this planet has a basic right to move to and live in, any country that they want.
This is an extremely small group of people.
Most of them pretend to be in the group to virtue-signal.
Same with homeless problem. We must not move/clear homeless camps (as long as those camps aren't next to my house, of course).
I don't see why someone should have say what happens on others land. If I want to allow someone in my land or kick someone out of my land it should be, within some restrictions completely my own decision. Do you have legal ownership deeds over all the land in your entire country? I just think it's very strange.
The tricky part is that these are public lands owned by the city/government e.g. homeless camping close to my house on a public street.
But yeah people who don't live close to that specific spot should have 0 say.
Everybody who has a different moral opinion than yours holds that opinion for the sole reason that they believe it will make them look better to their peers.
This simplification is very small. #2 is almost literally self evidently true.
Most of the disagreement is where a given country should be on the spectrum of zero immigration and fully open immigration.
You can know we have the right to set strict regulations, and also object to driving smart hardworking people away from your country for no reason.
>You can know we have the right to set strict regulations, and also object to driving smart hardworking people away from your country for no reason.
But the crux of the problem is this - many of the immigrants we've been sold on as being "smart hardworking people" have not been that and often been the opposite. Your side seems incapable of grappling with the fact that it has fundamentally lost the trust of the electorate on this issue and seems entirely uninterested in doing anything to regain this trust by overhauling the way we filter prospective immigrants.
I would say that #1 is almost self evidently true (I mean, obviously it's not because so many people disagree).
It seems obvious to me that there is no moral reason that some people should only be allowed to live in certain places.
It’s not about morality. It’s about human nature and economy. It’s like saying everybody should have the same amount of money. The result of such thinking would destroy the coin, and alternate forms of money would be created by the people.
Having all countries open the borders to anyone (ignoring security risks for the sake of the argument) would mean all poor people would emigrate to rich countries and strain the economy, while their home country would collapse from lack of workforce.
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Regardless if you find all bad luck immoral it just isn’t practical for every country to support every person. It’s immoral to have borders in the same way it’s immoral everyone doesn’t have a private driver, a personal chef, and a mansion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
the reality is that there a very wide spectrum of opinions about what immigration policy should like, and really not so many people in the (1) category
There are apparently 20+ million of them who entered the U.S. illegally, along with millions more who think it is a crime to deport them (even the criminals).
I am genuenly curious what do you think would happen if every country were to apply 1.
I've written several replies and deleted them all. I really can't speculate. its never really occurred to me that that would be a good idea, and everything I wrote was just the kind of unsubstantiated bullshit that I hate reading here.
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Accepting your dichotomy for the sake of argument, I'm in camp 1, but camp 2 could still be humane and comprehensible. Many countries have strict immigration rules, and while I disagree with that philosophy, it's not necessarily objectionable in the same way.
The Trump administration is not in camp 2.
The Trump administration, as this rule clearly illustrates, is in camp 3: Those who believe that the people who are not currently citizens of your country should never be able to become so, and should be punished for even trying.
The problem is not that the system is "strict" in the sense of holding an incredibly high bar. The problem is that the system is arbitrary - there is no process you can follow that will give you a high degree of confidence that you'll be allowed to enter, or even that a decision _will be made at all_ in a fair manner, no matter who you are (unless you're a personal friend of the administration) - as opposed to you being randomly arrested by ICE halfway through waiting for a decision. And even if there were such a process, you would have no confidence that it wouldn't change retroactively in another week.
It is laughably naive to believe that they are doing this in good faith out of any sense of strictly filtering immigrants. There's exactly one explanation that isn't transparently pretextual, and you and I both know what it is.
> Those who believe that the people who are not currently citizens of your country should never be able to become so.
This is basically the longtime practice of countries like UAE, and historically it is categorized under camp 2; no need to create a third camp here. It’s not as if no foreigners ever in such countries become citizens – while most immigrants are meant to be guestworkers who eventually return to their own countries, there are still laws to confer citizenship on exemplary foreigners.
Non-western immigrants in the UAE are essentially enslaved. It is clearly in a camp which is separate from mere "strict immigration laws."
The UAE and the US (as of the last year and a half) don't (just) have strict immigration laws. Instead, they have corrupt and abusive immigration systems which operate outside of national and international laws.
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