Quality of Life placements by the UN (HDI)

[Bauglir]

Just out of curiosity, how do you know which ones are illegal immigrants or not? If you've got a valid answer, that's great and I'll totally agree that Count's argument is a poorly constructed one.

On the other hand, if you assume any person who appears to be Mexican to be an illegal immigrant until proven otherwise, even if you thereafter feel a desire to apologize for your assumption and develop a great friendship and a deep respect for one another, Count's got a fairly valid argument. Well, the racism is a bit of a non-sequitur no matter how reprehensible it may be, but an attitude like that is almost certain to give you a lot of false positives unless you devote yourself to investigating every single latino you see (and if so, you should apply for a job at the NSA, you've got a real talent there). And although such investigation would be a sign of tremendous racism on your part, it wouldn't actually invalidate your argument so I'd have to give you that much.

[Johannixx]

The immediate answer is, you don't know.  The best you can do is guess based on evidence at hand.  I'm not a cop, and I don't call the cops whenever I see day laborers.  Running around checking every Latino's papers is not the answer.  Doing a check when you arrest someone, however, is a good call.

I do take offense at the racist charge, though.  If I held a blanket opposition to ANY Latino immigration, legal or otherwise, then that charge would have merit.  But as I've made clear several times, that is not my stance.  Two of the guys on my DBA team are from Mexico, and they are excellent folks, technically proficient and hard-working.  I wish we had more people like them.  But they took the time and effort to come across the border legally, and I commend them for that.  Similarly, when one of the Indian guys on my team got his citizenship, I congratulated him for it heartily.  He's come to love his new country, and we need more people like him.  I enjoy discussing American history, civics and politics with him immensely, and it pains me that the average high school senior doesn't have even half of his knowledge on these subjects. 

Whether someone wants to come and work the fields, or administer databases, I don't care, as long as they do it legally.

[EjoThims]

You can't just ignore laws you don't like.

Yes, you can. And you should. Especially if they are unjust or/or baseless.

You should just also be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so.

Or should we not be following the example of great leaders like Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr, Ghandi, and Jesus Christ???

I do take offense at the racist charge, though.

On this you are right. He has no grounds on which to call you a racist.

A claim that you are a prejudiced bigot on the other hand, is completely founded based on the things you have said in this thread.

[Tshern]

I enjoy discussing American history, civics and politics with him immensely, and it pains me that the average high school senior doesn't have even half of his knowledge on these subjects. 

A few days ago I read that around half of Americans knew how many Senators come from their state, name their representative in Congress and name the majority party in the House or Senate. Less than 10% could name the Chief Justice. I believe this was in Journal of Politics, written at around 1995.

[Johannixx]

You can't just ignore laws you don't like.

Yes, you can. And you should. Especially if they are unjust or/or baseless.

You should just also be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so.

Or should we not be following the example of great leaders like Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr, Ghandi, and Jesus Christ???

If that's the case, then nobody should complain about being deported for being here illegally.  After all, it's nothing more than the consequence of breaking the law, yes?

I do take offense at the racist charge, though.

On this you are right. He has no grounds on which to call you a racist.

A claim that you are a prejudiced bigot on the other hand, is completely founded based on the things you have said in this thread.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 'prejudiced bigot' is the same as 'racist'.  I'll happily accept 'culturalist', but culture does not necessarily indicate race, nor does race definitively determine culture.  One would have to be a racist to believe otherwise.

[Bauglir]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 'prejudiced bigot' is the same as 'racist'.  I'll happily accept 'culturalist', but culture does not necessarily indicate race, nor does race definitively determine culture.  One would have to be a racist to believe otherwise.

You're wrong, a racist is a specific type of prejudiced bigot. If you hate homosexuals, that would also be prejudiced bigotry, for instance.

The immediate answer is, you don't know.  The best you can do is guess based on evidence at hand.  I'm not a cop, and I don't call the cops whenever I see day laborers.  Running around checking every Latino's papers is not the answer.  Doing a check when you arrest someone, however, is a good call.

I do take offense at the racist charge, though.  If I held a blanket opposition to ANY Latino immigration, legal or otherwise, then that charge would have merit.  But as I've made clear several times, that is not my stance.  Two of the guys on my DBA team are from Mexico, and they are excellent folks, technically proficient and hard-working.  I wish we had more people like them.  But they took the time and effort to come across the border legally, and I commend them for that.  Similarly, when one of the Indian guys on my team got his citizenship, I congratulated him for it heartily.  He's come to love his new country, and we need more people like him.  I enjoy discussing American history, civics and politics with him immensely, and it pains me that the average high school senior doesn't have even half of his knowledge on these subjects.

Then yeah, your claims that you see illegal immigrants daily who're living it up is bullshit because all you see is people living it up and you paste the illegal bit onto it to justify your pre-existing beliefs. The fact that you're friends with specific members of the group in question doesn't rule out prejudice against the group as a whole; you justify it by saying, "Oh, but these guys are different."

I'm not saying you're necessarily a racist; it's entirely possible that I'm applying my own pre-existing beliefs on to what you've said. I also agree that whether you are or not is totally unrelated to this argument. I'm just saying your anecdotal evidence is completely worthless, so drop it.

[EjoThims]

If that's the case, then nobody should complain about being deported for being here illegally.  After all, it's nothing more than the consequence of breaking the law, yes?

Correct. And while that law may need to be changed, until that happens, you should exercise your right to break it only if you accept the consequences of doing so.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 'prejudiced bigot' is the same as 'racist'.

You're wrong, but I see Bauglir beat me to correctly you on that.

[Johannixx]

Well, I suppose I'm prejudiced and bigoted towards people who sneak across the border in violation of national sovereignty and law, similar to how I'm prejudiced and bigoted towards fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Christians and politicians of most any stripe.

[Bauglir]

*sigh* You're missing the point. I'm not arguing about whether illegal immigration is justified or not, I'm trying to point out a flaw in your evidence for why illegal immigrants don't have things bad. Could you please address that?

[EjoThims]

Well, I suppose I'm prejudiced and bigoted towards people who I think snuck across the border in violation of national sovereignty and law, similar to how I'm prejudiced and bigoted towards people I think are fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Christians and politicians of most any stripe.

Fixed that for you.

[Johannixx]

*sigh* You're missing the point. I'm not arguing about whether illegal immigration is justified or not, I'm trying to point out a flaw in your evidence for why illegal immigrants don't have things bad. Could you please address that?

I was under the impression that I already had.  See previous points about the continued desirability of coming to the US, the fact that people are deported multiple times and still return, the fact that a significant chunk of Mexico's GDP is in the form of remittances from expatriates (the vast majority of which are in the US), and one comes to the conclusion that it is a reasonably significant improvement in their lot.  They're obviously doing better than they were back home, or they wouldn't repeatedly cross the border in droves.  If coming to the US is so bad, they can certainly choose to stay home and attempt to fix their own country rather than coming here to suffer the slings and arrows of lax US immigration enforcement.

[Banor]

Not to jump at random in the discussion but I think their point is more around the fact that it is very hard to just point at people and say "Hey this guy is an illegal immigrant". So all experiences, first hand or not, are not valid as an argument here unless you can prove they were illegal immigrant (which would require quite an amount of stalking to do). Thus saying that illegal immigrants have it easy based on experience is denote a slightly racist point of view since it implies that you are calling people illegal immigrant based on their ethnic background without having the proof to back it up.

[Johannixx]

Not to jump at random in the discussion but I think their point is more around the fact that it is very hard to just point at people and say "Hey this guy is an illegal immigrant". So all experiences, first hand or not, are not valid as an argument here unless you can prove they were illegal immigrant (which would require quite an amount of stalking to do). Thus saying that illegal immigrants have it easy based on experience is denote a slightly racist point of view since it implies that you are calling people illegal immigrant based on their ethnic background without having the proof to back it up.

1.  I never said they had it 'easy'.
2.  I never claimed to be able to point at random people and say 'He's an illegal!'

So what is this argument really about?

[Banor]

it was mostly around this quote I think

There are illegals who live in larger homes than I have, and drive decent vehicles, mainly because they're thrifty as all hell for the most part.  We could learn a thing or two from that.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, that'd be the thing. I don't deny that circumstances are better for them here than in Mexico in many cases, my point is that I believe you're overestimating the magnitude of that difference based on unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence.

[Johannixx]

I wouldn't call it unsubstantiated or anecdotal.  When the employer sanctions law first went into effect down here, and the illegal jobs market shrank significantly, several news organizations interviewed people leaving the country.  Several of them had sold their houses, packed their things and were moving back to Mexico.  Does that mean that they're all well-off and effectively middle-class?  Of course not.  Most of the ones in that category were blended families, with some illegal and some legal members (some, mostly children, were citizens due to being born here), which gave them the legal wherewithal to purchase real estate.  But in those cases, at least half of the income came from illegal jobs.

So, now that that's out of the way, can we get back to discussing substantive topics again?

[Alastar]

I wouldn't call it unsubstantiated or anecdotal.  When the employer sanctions law first went into effect down here, and the illegal jobs market shrank significantly, several news organizations interviewed people leaving the country.  Several of them had sold their houses, packed their things and were moving back to Mexico.  Does that mean that they're all well-off and effectively middle-class?  Of course not.  Most of the ones in that category were blended families, with some illegal and some legal members (some, mostly children, were citizens due to being born here), which gave them the legal wherewithal to purchase real estate.  But in those cases, at least half of the income came from illegal jobs.

So, now that that's out of the way, can we get back to discussing substantive topics again?

It really isn't out of the way you know.  What you just related is anecdotal (being an anecdote), also, interviews aren't really substantial facts, so this is also insubstancial...

[EjoThims]

It really isn't out of the way you know.  What you just related is anecdotal (being an anecdote), also, interviews aren't really substantial facts, so this is also insubstancial...

This.

You have yet to show that your claims regarding illegal immigration and illegal immigrants working in the country can be backed up in the least.