No game.  I merely don't agree withh your outrage even one bit.  The term is concise and accurate and is used by newspapers and other sources.  If at some point it becomes a pejorative term in culture (you stupid illegal immigrant!) then I could see it being time to adjust the phrase (such as what happened with mental retardation).

Calling hakootoko an illegal driver would be completely accurate and justified if he was someone who was driving wiith an expired license.

In reply to Doulos (msg # 16):

Please remove me from this community

I was very clear on this.

I have no problem avoiding use of the term for the sake of keeping things civil.

I must admit I am thoroughly confused as to the stance being taken.  There is 0 negative connotation involved in the use of it on my end, and I have never seen anyone else use the term as an insult etc.

Labels are often times used for clarity of understanding and for no other purpose than that. I honestly see this as politcal correctness for the sake of political correctness (which to me is quite silly), but I'll find some other way to discuss the topic just as easily.  No big deal here.

If I was writing for a major newspaper or something similar then I would probably take more of a stand on this, but as a normal individual at a freaking internet message board I won't bother with it.

Hopefully this doesn't become a pattern of random phrases and labels becoming "outlawed" just because it's the new "in" thing to become offended about.

Whoakay folks, everyone calm down a bit.  The other mods can ring in if they disagree with me on this, but my view is that we can't really have a discussion of religion and politics if no one is allowed to say anything that anyone anywhere feels is offensive.  Our rules are that we should try to stick to the facts, talk about the issues, not each other, and don't go out of your way to offend people.  I think the term illegal immigrants is fine by those rules: it's factually correct, it refers to the topic under discussion rather than being aimed specifically at anyone here, and it's not intended to be offensive.

If you really want to be removed from the forum, Revolutionary, send me a PM and I'll do it, but I'd really encourage you to take a deep breath first, and ask yourself if you've really been following your own demands on this.  Can you honestly say that you make a point of not saying things here that people might take offense to?  From what I've seen, you tend to have a bit of an 'in your face' discussion style, and seem to enjoy pushing people out of their comfort zones.  It would seem rather odd to me if you ended up being the one with such thin skin that you have to leave in a huff if you hear a word you don't like.  Remember, you told christians that the KKK are "their guys," right?  You haven't exactly been tiptoeing around, carefully avoiding causing offense here, no? I wouldn't have guessed you'd actually want the mods to enforce a strictly PC, nothing-that-offends-anyone word list here, and you need to realize that cuts both ways.

In reply to Tycho (msg # 19):

No, I wouldn't stay in a group that said to me "not using the N word" is just PC nonsense.

This hyper almost libertarian approach to "what is true" is not something I care to even seem to abide.

And, I completely resent the suggestion that this is "thin skinnedness" this is principled objection.

In reply to katisara (msg # 1):

As to the original topic, I tend to come down on the side of helping immigrants out.  If we had an open immigration policy, so anyone who followed the rules would be allowed in, things would be different, but we don't.  And that means that there's no guarantee that people who play by the rules will be allowed in (though it'll still cost them a good chunk of money to apply each time).  People who've done everything correct and by the book still don't get let in, just because of dumb luck and limits on that politicians have arbitrarily set on the number we let in.  The law places a good deal of importance on which particular place a person was born, but that's not something you have any control over, so it doesn't seem like it should be that important to me.  The fact that I was born in the US doesn't, in my mind, make me any more deserving of the benefits of being a US citizen than someone who was born elsewhere.  I didn't choose where I was born, and it wasn't something I worked hard at and earned.  It was just dumb luck.

I also have the perspective of being an immigrant right now (albeit a legal one) where I live.  When the tories took over in the last election here, the changed a lot of the immigration laws, which setback my plans for becoming a permanent resident a few years (and a few thousand pounds as well).  I know how difficult it can be, even for someone "doing everything right" to qualify just for the right to live and work somewhere like any average schmoe.

The reason people migrate to the US, legally and illegally, is because they think they'll have better opportunities than they would back home.  One way to get less immigrants to come here would be to make less opportunities in the US, but that seems completely backwards to me.  The US has always been a nation of immigrants, and has always benefited from the fact.  Today I feel too many people are taking a more nativist, old-europe style view of the US, whereby how long your family has lived somewhere is viewed as more important that you yourself actually do.  Anything that tries to reverse that trend is a good thing, in my book.  Immigrants who overcome hardships, make enough money to send their kids to college, and make a better life for themselves and their kids are the kinds of people we should be happy and eager to have in the US.  People who think and say "sorry kid, back of the line, I was BORN here!" are not the kind of people who going to drive this country forward, in my view.

Huh. This thread took a turn for the weird.

re: Tycho, yeah, I think that's sort of what I'm leaning towards. Frankly, the US needs an influx of young people to keep us running. Europe, which doesn't have that, is suffering because of it.

I think though it still doesn't acknowledge the costs that are coming back. We aren't requiring them to stay in the country and pay back what we spent on them. We're also pushing out other kids who are here legally (since we aren't expanding the number of slots in schools). If anything, colleges right now are getting bloated, with costs running amok, in part due to too many customers.

I was also especially interested in this from a religious perspective. I've seen religious groups fall on either side of this, but I feel like the 'charity' argument is obvious.

(For the record, I submitted my absentee ballot yesterday, so my vote is already locked in.)

Illegal Immigration is generally a political codeword for All Hispanics, much like "Urban Youth" was a political codeword for black people.  Before Hispanics, however, it was also used to refer to the Chinese, the Irish, etc.

In reality "Illegal Immigrants" as legally defined is not a solid group, much less one which discrimination can be considered racist.

To say that I shouldn't call somebody something that offends them is ludicrous; if, for example, somebody is a racist, I don't care if that name offends them; the shoe fits.
-----

This really goes beyond charity and goes toward Ethics, and also the Constitution; do our morals and rights only apply to citizens?  I don't think so, and although the law may say otherwise in some cases, I believe everybody has a right to come to this country and gain all the rights of a citizen so long as they assume all the responsibilities (paying taxes).

And I mean by saying that the law may differ is that the law can be changed, and morally should be changed, to encourage permanent immigration.

The Immigrant is the Soul of America.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:17, Thu 25 Oct 2012.

I'd disagree with you there. I don't think just everyone should be permitted to come participate in our country (although it's only weak disagreement, so I'm sure you could convince me otherwise).

I disagree that non-US citizens don't share the same rights as US citizens. The US founds itself on recognizing that rights are natural; they don't exist just because someone chooses to recognize them. Therefore foreign visitors (whether legal or not) absolutely have a right to vote (in THEIR country), a right to trial by jury, a right to protections from government abuse, etc.

However, 'the state subsidizing your education' is not a right; it's a privilege.

I think you may be mistaken in your understanding of the philosophy of Natural Rights; none of those rights that you mentioned are natural rights; those are legal rights.

The bill of rights is a list of legal rights, enforced by the government, to protect your natural rights to Liberty and Property.

Although I disagree with the idea of Natural Rights, because if they have to be protected, they aren't really Natural.

But that's besides the point.

I'm not going to necessarily disagree with you, but I think the difference between 'this is your natural right' and 'this is a legal right necessary to protect your natural rights' is minor enough to be negligible to this argument.

I will say though that a right may be ignored, and that doesn't mean it's not a right. I have a right not to be murdered, but murder still happens.

It's entirely important.  For a right to be "natural" it has to be inalienable.

Murder is a legal term, defined by the law.  If the law doesn't consider it murder, then it isn't murder.

If you can be murdered, then you don't have a natural right to not be murdered.  As soon as somebody murders you, they are taking that "right" away, and so your right is de-facto alienable.

Besides, the right to not be murdered is neither a legal nor natural right.  Its considered a privilege.

I don't think the privilege of having legal protections against murder invalidates the natural right an individual has to life.

Natural rights are inalienable, even if they are violated. Perhaps we need to go back to defining our terms?

Inalienable means:
incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inalienable

(Alienate means:
 : to make unfriendly, hostile, or indifferent especially where attachment formerly existed
2
: to convey or transfer (as property or a right) usually by a specific act rather than the due course of law
3
: to cause to be withdrawn or diverted
http://www.merriam-webster.com...w=0&t=1351367523
)

So my right to life (more specifically, my right to live, and perhaps we could debate about my right to not live) can't be transferred to someone else; it can't be removed from me. The bank can seize my house, the government can revoke my marriage certificate and my driver's license, but nothing can revoke the right I have to live. It is inherent due to my being a living, self-aware person.

Someone can violate that right, just like people violate my right to property or anything else, but that's a violation of right.

Another way to consider it, natural rights are those things that would be wrong, even without a government to tell you so. Even in an anarchist society, killing people is wrong.

I can demonstrate the alienability of the right by asking these two questions:

1. Can you relinquish your life?
2. Can you have your life taken from you against your will?

Both of these are demonstrably "Yes".

The Argument that its "Natural Rights can be Violated, but not Alienated" is simply not valid; you can't violate a right without alienating it.

I can further show that Life is not even a legal right, but a privilege with this question:

Can the state revoke your right to life under certain conditions?

I'm pretty sure anyone with a cursory understanding of state and federal law knows the answer to this question.
--------

Objective Morality and Rights are also different things (and, many of those who invented the concept of Natural Rights would argue, complete opposites - see Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan).

To say that something is a Natural Right is an "Is" statement, not an "Ought".

Take for example, the Right to Property.  A person will "own" things no matter how much you try to infringe upon their ability.  It is inherent in our mentality and our language.

The "right to life" as understood by the philosophy of natural rights, is that man will seek to do whatever he can to live.  It does not mean that "taking life is inherently bad".  A man will take a life to preserve his own life.

But anyways, what is or isn't a natural right or not isn't really the issue that we were supposed to be discussing; I've inadvertently pulled a red herring.  Sorry about that.

Wasn't the question whether or not we should provide tuition to the children of illegal immigrants?

It's a complicated subject; are the children here illegally, and not their parents?  They're filing income tax, so if they're here illegally how are they not getting deported?

I'm not really sure how this works.

Where did you get that from? I don't see that in any document I've read. In fact, quite the contrary. The ideas of Locke and Thoreau are founded on the ideas that these rights ARE violated -- but still exist. That was the whole call for the revolution! It wasn't 'we are denied life and liberty, and this makes us feel sad and we're having an awful time here'. It's 'we are denied life and liberty, and this is a crime against our beings; therefore we reject your authority as invalid, and will establish our own'.

It is the specific recognition that rights which do exist are being violated that is the whole call to arms for so many things.

Do you think it's now okay for the Chinese government to kill citizens, or force them to have abortions? Do you think it's okay for the de facto government of Rwanda to authorize genocide and forced relocations on ethnic groups? If not, why not?



This is an issue of conflicts of separate rights. I have a right to free speech, but not to shout fire in a theater. A person sentenced to death is so because he has violated some gross right of another person, and is likely to do so again. And almost always the right he has violated is that of life, which we see to be one of the most highly valued and critical rights there are.





You're going to have to give me a quote there, because it's been a while since I read it, but I don't recall anything like that.



Again, either I'm missing part of your argument, or you're quoting someone else and just not providing the quote. My understanding is that, yes, denying people's natural rights IS inherently bad. Again, if that isn't the case, why doesn't the Constitution say, "men have rights to life and liberty, but we're okay with ignoring that"?

The ideas of Locke and Thoreau are founded upon the ideas of Hobbes.  What documents have you been reading?  The declaration of independence, meant to motivate people towards a certain course of action rather than argue the nature of a concept?

It's a very important distinction; if you want to know about Marxist Ideals, for example, you would reference Das Kapital, not The Communist Manifesto.



This is what is meant by inalienable; you can only impede a natural right, you cannot fully take it away.



If your point is that my views on these things somehow prove an objective morality, or prove that my morality is somehow better than somebody else's (that's called Ethnocentrism, by the way), you'd be mistaken.

What I think about the above situations doesn't mean anything. If I think something's wrong, even if I show you my reasoning, in the end it's based on assumptions that somebody else might not necessarily share.

I don't even have to go to another country; I just need to mention something I find horrible in the Bible and watch the apologetics begin.









----------

The following quotes can be found in Leviathan Chapter XIV.

The ideas of Natural Rights and the nature of man were proposed in the basis of explaining Government's reason to exist (Social Contract Theory), which is not to protect one's natural rights, but to restrict those natural rights in order to provide safety.

Here are some quick concepts to just brush over, when speaking of Natural Rights.

It helps to keep them in mind when declaring something is a Natural Right, or that a Natural Right is objectively good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

You have schooled me! I'm going to need some time to read over all of this.

And note I'm not trying to say what should or shouldn't be right or wrong.  This is simply a matter of the meaning of terms and concepts. Understanding does not equate to acceptance or support.

I don't think what somebody thinks is or isn't a natural right, or whether something is objectively moral or not, should determine how we conduct ourselves.

In practice, I think we can formulate solutions to moral problems by finding common ground in personal experience, or failing that, a compromise that satisfies the impasse.

This isn't without exceptions, but I doubt my exceptions will always be the same as somebody else's.

Regardless, to enforce a behavior I deem to be moral, I need a consensus, and I think that trying to draw a consensus based on an authority (Ethos) that not everybody will necessarily accept or interpret the same way as I have is going to be less effective than a Pathos or Logos approach.

I've looked over your links to wiki, and (assuming they haven't changed) I'm not sure if they apply exactly to this situation.

It seems to me katisara is using the distinction between natural law and positive law, and Sciencemile is using this at times as well.

Positive Law is that which we create as societies, by codifying rules. Natural Law is that which we derive from the emotions in our conscience; it isn't codified, and when we derive codified rules from it, those rules sometimes fail to conform to what we think is right by natural law.

This isn't the same as saying "what is natural is good", because what is natural is often cruel and evil. Selfishness is natural, but isn't considered good. Natural law doesn't promote what is, but what should be.

Natural Law vs Positive Law is a concept older than Hobbes. I know it's in Aquinas (iirc, Aquinas had four "Laws": Divine, Natural, Positive, and one other that escapes me). Aquinas' definition of natural law is taken from Aristotle, but Aristotle used it to mean something slightly different. I don't recall the distinction, but I know Aristotle's definition doesn't fit with modern usage.

You're free to believe that natural law is the empty set, that there are no intrinsic morals, and that positive law is the only basis for ethics. But we all appeal to what we feel should be, contrasting it with the established positive law.

The following from Sciencemile is such a natural law appeal to overturn a positive law:

I wasn't referring to Natural Laws, I was talking about Natural Rights.

Of course, if you know this then I apologize for pointing it out and will agree to the subject change...lemme just examine the statements.

I'm not really seeing anything I could comment on other than a nod of the head until this part.



I can't say that there is no "natural law", in that I know most people have the same basic set of emotions I do, and they underlie the positive laws as you've defined it.

But I can't say that everyone who supports a positive law is doing so from the same emotions or motivations as my own.



Well, I appealed to the concept of Natural Rights, and given that I don't believe in the validity of Natural Rights as something existing outside of a Social Construct, I must admit I can no longer defend that position based on what I said after I made that statement.

So I'm going to have to retract that position, and apologize.

But I can't really see that I made an appeal to Natural Law; I didn't make an argument of emotion, or an appeal to pragmatism.  I sadly used an argument from my interpretation of an authority.

It doesn't shine a good light on me, from my perspective, to be sophistic.  I shouldn't put forth rhetoric on a false foundation. I apologize again for that.

---------

I hereby modify my argument as such:

I consider education to be a good thing, and I value any opportunity to increase the education of others. If a law provides the opportunity for more people to receive education, I'm probably going to be in favor of it.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:16, Tue 30 Oct 2012.

I'm sorry that I've confused Natural Law and Natural Rights in your arguments, and even in katisara's original mention (#24). I thought they were the same concept, but re-reading your posts, it seems I was incorrect.

I tried to read your quote from Leviathan, and just as when I tried to read Leviathan several years ago, I found it hard to parse Hobbes' sentences for meaning. Perhaps the English is just a bit too out of date for me.

This Hobbes' quote, though, makes sense to me. It seems to imply that there is only one natural right, and it is the right to self-preservation.


Which you used here, consistently with Hobbes.


It seems a very different concept than what is commonly referred to as Human Rights, and one of limited utility in ethical discourse.

Perhaps we should get back on topic :)

I, too, would like to see the quotas for legal immigration raised. I would prefer this to be done primarily by making more work visas available and easier to get, and I would like employers to be able to apply for a work visa for an employee who is currently living illegally in the USA.

What I am wary of is an sort of amnesty, not because of lack of charity, but because of the negative side effects this will have. It isn't fair to those who have been trying to enter the country legally to give precedence to those who violated the immigration laws, and doing so will encourage more illegal immigration in the future. We need policies that will encourage people to become legal while discouraging future illegal immigration.

The biggest problem we currently face is the intimidation of illegal immigrants. When they are abused, they are afraid to go to the law for fear of being deported whether the abuse is substantiated or not. Is there are solution to this dilemma?