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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Good. ICE officers have, in my mind, about as much legitimacy as federal officials enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act and it is every red-blooded Americans moral duty to resist them.
What was illegitimate about the Fugitive Slave Act other than the flagrant and duplicitous disregard for the law by free states?
It was morally abhorrent to enslave people and to return them into slavery. Legitimacy does not consist in "whatever the state says is legitimate."
Iis morally abhorrent to cross border without permission and to overstay a visa. To impose yourself in a place you don't belong and doesn't want you.
If we are talking about well-behaved gainfully-employed illegals in blue cities like Chicago (which is where the ICE raids causing the fuss are focused), then nobody is imposing. The illegals are in a place where their landlords, bosses, butchers, bakers etc. as well as a super-majority of the community are perfectly comfortable to have them there. The people who don't want them are the people (almost entirely from outside said blue cities) who voted for Trump.
Now as a matter of positive law, this particular group of intermeddling non-Chicagoans and the federal government they elected do in fact have the legal right to send goons into Chicago to round up and remove the illegals. But that only affects the morality of the immigrants' behaviour if you think there is a moral obligation to obey permissibly-dumb-but-not-evil laws in a democracy. I do, but my impression is that most Motteposters subscribe to the libertarian view that there there is no such obligation. Even if breaking laws is immoral, peacefully breaking immigration laws is immoral on the level of filesharing or handling salmon suspiciously*, not on the level of victimful crimes like burglary, so "abhorrent" seems excessive.
* "Handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances" is, somewhat notoriously, a crime in the UK. The purpose of the law is to make it easier to prosecute blatantly guilty poachers like this guy without needing to litigate the provenance of a specific salmon.
This is, of course, the load-bearing item of contention. To me, and to many, peacefully breaking immigration laws is some combination of trespass, home invasion and squatting. If I come to your house, and I eat your food and I tell you I'm never leaving, and the police back me up, it's not really your house any more. If 100 people like me do they same, it's definitely not your house any more. You are vestigial. Maybe there are photos of your family on the dresser - what do those people mean to me and mine? My children's photos will look much better there. Your furniture is ugly and doesn't represent my culture - let's throw it out, sell it, burn it for warmth.* It doesn't matter how peaceful illegal immigrants are, or if they do odd jobs around 'your' (for now) house. Demographic change is demographic change.
That's ignoring the face that lots of illegal immigrants actually turn out to be neither nice, peaceful or helpful, of course. But is it any wonder that voters react badly to breaking immigration law, or helping others break immigration law, when seen from this perspective?
*You might feel that this is catastrophising, or at least very pessimistic. I think that anyone pro-immigration must feel that way, but post-woke I can't agree. The outbreak of statue-vandalism, proposed name changes to get rid of all the old English names on parks and streets (most of which didn't get pushed through because there was no yet enough support), the direct import of specifically American racial grievances post-Floyd, the constant drumbeat of 'X is no longer appropriate for Modern (Multicultural) Britain' moved me heavily on these issues.
If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way. If you are a Reform UK voter in Lower Snoring, I insist that my house in London is not "your house" in any morally relevant way, and politely suggest that you show some gratitude to the people whose taxes fund your lifestyle rather than insinuating that our friends, neighbours, colleagues and servants are somehow "eating your food". That it is your country is legally relevant, but the only moral claim that gives rise to is the one that upholding the law is generally good. My claim that illegal immigration is morally trivial is restricted to the situations where the community the immigrants are moving to does not, in fact, object to their presence.
Yes - there is supermajority support essentially everywhere for curtailing abuse of the humanitarian and family-based routes to immigrate to first-world countries, based on the accurate belief that the people who get in that way are, on average, bad neighbours. We should do so. But public opinion on this point is downstream of immigrant behaviour - people who have experience of well-behaved immigrants don't want to kick them out.
I remember the pictures of the pro-Floyd march in London. I haven't seen a London crowd that close to all-white since before Blair opened the immigration floodgates, and I doubt I will ever see another one. I think it was whiter than the recent Tommy Robinson rally. Wokism isn't being pushed by immigrants or their descendants - unless you count the Milibands.
For the obvious reasons:
Are you proposing allowing individual US states / UK counties to have their own legally-enforced borders and government?
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And yet, it doesn't happen. Curious!
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A lot of the failure comes from the fact that European countries could not really fathom a guest worker program with NO route to permanent residency. There was a need for guest workers, but we should just have used the Kafala system. No family members. No route to citizenship. Mandatory return home for a 6 month period every 5 years.
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CDL holders issued in California killing people in Florida says otherwise.
Look, I'd love for there to be a larger argument for States Rights(for my own safety's sake, if nothing else), but it's clear by this point that it's been well done and buried, and we have to live with the consequences.
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Okay, whose house is it then?
Open borders proponents always say "well, it isn't yours, so you have no right to exclude anyone". It's someone's. Who does have the right to exclude? It may be an individual, it may be a government, but that right didn't just go away because you don't personally own the country. Where did it go and who has it right now?
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So now existing in Mexico is equivalent to slavery? Are we going to liberate Mexico and rescue them all, then? Can we put them where you live?
No, more precisely, having no access to the benefits of US welfare state is equivalent to slavery.
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Wut
Federal officials enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act were returning people to slavery. ICE agents are returning people to Mexico. If you're going to have such a precious little time making the comparison, it would help if the two were comparable in some way.
They are comparable in that the state's actions are equivalent in their lack of moral legitimacy. I thought I was pretty clear about that.
No, that's not clear at all.
"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.".
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It's unfortunate that it seems like you have chosen to flame out, but taking your argument at face value - are you arguing for something to the effect of "A (enforcing the FSA) is immoral, and B (preventing federal agents from enforcing it) was an appropriate reaction to it; therefore if C (enforcing immigration restrictions) is immoral, then B is likewise an appropriate reaction to it"? In that case, setting A=9/11, B=the commando raid on Osama's compound, C=illegal immigration, under the reasonable assumption that the majority of US citizens agree that A and C are immoral and B was an appropriate reaction to A, are you arguing for commando raids to kill all illegal immigrants (and/or even those involved in planning their immigration)?
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Yeah except you completely left out the part where you explain why they're, you know, comparable. You just walked out on stage and said "Slavery. There, now that I have moral legitimacy, I don't like ICE."
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And why are those actions morally illegitimate? What is the source of moral illegitimacy in those two cases?
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...and your stated reason slave officers were immoral is because they were doing their jobs, and their jobs are bad. Drawing the parallel that you believe ICE officers are immoral because they are doing their jobs, and their jobs are bad is the most obvious reading IMO.
I can't see how you could miss that. In fact, I can't see what else it could possibly be, so I'll ask directly: What is the connection between ICE officers and Fugitive Slave Act enforcers, that it's appropriate to compare their moral legitimacy?
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Is it morally abhorrent for Mexicans to live in Mexico instead of becoming illegal aliens? Do you believe that every illegal alien has a right to your personal property in the same way that slaves have a right to their freedom? Do you believe that the law saying that have property and rights and not stripping them away from you to give them to illegal aliens is also illegitimate?
You are comparing two wildly different things; if your only response to this being pointed out is blank confusion, you should perhaps consider the properties of slaves and illegal aliens in more detail.
I do not think all actions of the state which lack moral legitimacy are factually equivalent. Hope this clarifies things!
You are aggressively ignoring every poster asking you to clarify why enforcing immigration law is equivalent to enforcing laws on slavery. This is just trolling.
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Do they lack moral legitimacy because you don't believe borders should exist? Should the hypothetical Slave Catchers have instead of returning the escaped slaves to slavery, elected to take them back to Africa or to Mexico, wouldn't that have been less immoral than if they returned them to bondage?
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