March 29, 2006
Since when do non-voters get to protest?
Aren't non-citizens political non-entities in any form of representative government? Last week, several hundred thousand illegal aliens (let's cut the "undocumented worker" garbage, shall we? It insults the intelligence of everyone involved) protested - largely peacefully, to their credit - against upcoming legislative crackdowns pending in the United States Senate.
Who gives a damn?
These people can't vote. They aren't American citizens. They have precisely zero say in what happens. Don't give me this "human rights" nonsense. The right to partake in the political process of any given country is a legal one, and is specifically, explicitly, and solely reserved for citizens of said country. As far as civil rights, they don't really have many of those either. I'm not even sure standard constitutional rights are applicable (though I haven't done research here and would be interested to see if anyone else has). The only thing an illegal alien can expect at the hands of the United States government is to not be executed or tortured before being deported.
This has nothing to do with whether or not I support or oppose cracking down: it's simply a Constitutional observation. The most rational response of an elected official to 500,000 rioting non-voters is to make them go away and stop bothering his constituents.
On the issue of whether or not we should crack down on illegals, I'm significantly less clear. On one hand, leniant immigration policies have played no small part in America's strength, and nativist sentiments strike me as counterproductive and immature. Still, the rule and enforcement of laws is essential to any society, and 12 million people who violate the law by their very presence is not a good thing.
I say we do two things: first, make the penalties for illegal immigration draconian. Build the wall, deport border-crossers without trial, and impose massive penalties for hiring illegals. Second, make getting legal residence so easy that no one wants to cross illegally. Lower the bar for citizenship, do away with quotas, etc. I don't think terrorism has anything to do with this issue. All of the 9/11 hijackers were well-educated members of the middle-class, not migrant farmers.
Oh, it should also probably be a lot harder to be a migrant worker. If you want to come into the US to work in the fields, fine, just fine. Move here. None of this jumping-the-fence-to-pick-strawberries-for-two-months nonsense. You want a job, get a house and stay put.
what would you think if slaves had staged peaceful protests? I think the idea is that they are citizens in a natural law sense, or in a "how it should be" sense, and are protesting to be citizens in complete sense. I'm not sure that I agree, but sometimes you have to protest bad laws, even if you're not in a postition to do so (~~ copyright reform even for works for which I am not the copyright holder). That's two "~" to indicate that it's only a teensy bit like.
Posted by: Lang at March 29, 2006 05:50 PMThe analogy between illegal aliens and slaves is not of a kind. Slaves are permenant residents of the US - voluntary or not - who claim no external residence nor citizenship with a foreign state. Illegals do. They are entirely capable of wielding their franchise in a different state.
Furthermore, no one is forcing anyone to move to this country. If anything, the government is officially trying to keep people out. Illegal immigration is an entirely voluntary activity, so you can't argue that they're here against their will and are being forcibly abused. If they don't want to deal with the problems in America, they can stay home.
Posted by: ryan at March 29, 2006 07:44 PM