(cache) "The United States, which is the only system I’m...

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Anonymous asked: "The United States, which is the only system I’m well informed about, already has extremely thorough review of applications to immigrate and particularly of applications for refugee status." Yes, but most immigration concerns in the US center around illegal immigrants who either cross the Mexican border or else overstay their visas, thus skipping the application process filter entirely. What do you think about them?

theunitofcaring:

They do not engage in acts of terrorism and terrorism should not feature in the conversation about them. In general:
I think that when the U.S. government forbids people from working and employers from hiring them because they were born somewhere else, we’re doing something wrong. It might not be possible to straightforwardly improve the situation, and it definitely might not be as simple as ‘stop doing that’, but I think the fundamental perspective should be ‘when the government criminalizes voluntary relationships between people based on criteria outside their control, this is bad’.
I think that, while this is not highly relevant to policy decisions, U.S. drug policy is culpable for lots of the instability and danger which drives immigration from Mexico and Central/South America.
I think that it’s very understandable that people would choose safe stable places to live over dangerous unstable ones, and choose places where they can find jobs and send their kids to school over places where they can’t do that. I think condemnation of those people for breaking the law or disrespecting the process is devoid of empathy and kind of stupid; people don’t owe your process respect, and it is not inherently morally wrong to break the law because the law is not equivalent to morality.
I think that if we actually sent all the illegal immigrants home, several industries would collapse overnight, in particular slaughterhouses, because it’s literally true that natives won’t do that work at any viable price. I oppose sending illegal immigrants home but I’d be super pleased with the collapse of slaughterhouses.
I think that deporting employed people who are providing for children and disabled family members who are U.S. citizens, and who suddenly are plunged into desperate poverty and have to live off welfare, is appalling both morally and pragmatically. I know a lot of cases of this happening and it makes me very angry.