Show me a 50' fence today and I will show you a 55' ladder tomorrow.
Better yet, can you show me a tunnel?
el_pohl wrote:Better yet, can you show me a tunnel?
Well that certainly will be part of it. Until we have an immigration policy that makes it attractive to apply for legal entrance and extremely unattractive to sneak in uninvited, we will continue to have the problem.
The East Germans had part of that. They knew how to make it "extremely unattractive" for people to break the law.
Try to keep up ebrown. We're not talking about the East Germans or the Berlin wall. It is already established that we're discussing a very different thing.
I have been wondering something... do you all think George Allen is circumsized?
ebrown_p wrote:The East Germans had part of that. They knew how to make it "extremely unattractive" for people to break the law.
The East Germans had a barrier. Therefore, anyone who has a barrier is morally equivalent to the East Germans. Bad logic. The East Germans were trying to keep citizens from fleeing a dictatorship. We're trying to regulate immigration into our country as most countries do, and as we have a perfect right to do.
OmSigDAVID wrote:dyslexia wrote:Show me a 50' fence today and I will show you a 55' ladder tomorrow.
U think we need to station SNIPERS
along the fence, Switchblade ?
David
Dear David, I think we only need to station you along the border, after once one glimpse of your thought process no one would want to cross the border.
Brandon9000 wrote:
The East Germans had a barrier. Therefore, anyone who has a barrier is morally equivalent to the East Germans. Bad logic. The East Germans were trying to keep citizens from fleeing a dictatorship. We're trying to regulate immigration into our country as most countries do, and as we have a perfect right to do.
Well, I wrote that earlier - and there are dozens of (original) sources proving such: the East German government said similar to that. (Only more drastically and from another political point of view: namely to provend an invasion of capitalists and imperialists.)
As said, such doesn't and didn't change their intention.
Yes, the party line was that the wall was to PROTECT the East Germans. However, while I still can't make myself like the idea, our wall will in no way prevent anyone from leaving the United States who is otherwise allowed to leave which is probably 99.9% of the population. For that matter it won't prevent anybody from entering the United States so long as they do so with our knowledge and permission. That is not an unreasonable requirement.
The wall is intended to protect American citizens from invasion by people who would thumb their noses at our laws while they take whatever they can get from the American people. Most intend no harm and do this mostly because they need it and because they can. The odds are in their favor they will not incur any punishment. But some, by some estimates one out of ten, intend no good whatsoever and commit theft, robbery, rape, and murder, etc. And there is always the very good possibility that some of that latter group will be international terrorists.
It is not unreasonable for the USA to protect its borders; in fact for America to remain the country that it is, it must. I remain unconvinced that the wall is the answer to that.
Foxfyre wrote: I remain unconvinced that the wall is the answer to that.
According to what you wrote before this sentence ...
...
The wall is intended to protect American citizens from invasion by people who would thumb their noses at our laws while they take whatever they can get from the American people ...
... you really should favour it.
Since when did picking vegetables constitute an invasion.
Maybe if the troops we sent into Iraq spent more of their time picking vegetables, our invasion of Iraq might have been more successful.
The main issue in the immigration debate is compassion.
ebrown_p wrote:The main issue in the immigration debate is compassion.
For you it is compassion. For the sane people, it is the law.
Only by ignoring the law, the ramifications of not enforcing the law, the hidden and not-so-hidden costs of millions of illegals camping out here, and the very real disproportionate amount of criminal activity from the illegal community plus the even greater danger of undetected terrorist infiltration can you boil the debate down to 'compassion'.
I want the laws to be written and enforced with compassion.
The primary purpose of the law (in my view) is to protect the rights of individuals against the state. This is why in many cases-- Rosa parks for example, or people fleeing East Berlin (which was against the law)-- most of us would agree that compassion for the rights of people is more important in each of these cases.
The irony is that Foxfyre and McGentrix aren't really on the side of law. We all think the law should be changed. The difference between them and me is that I want to make the law more compassionate-- they want to make it less compassionate.
- The law says that anyone born in the United States is a citizen-- equal in every way to any other citizen under the law.
- The law says that public schools must give all children in the United States an education without asking about their nationality or immigration status.
- The law says that the US government agencies can not use torture.
The way that Foxfyre and McGentrix and I look at the law is a reflection of our values. All of us are willing to work to change, or even ignore laws that go against our respective values.
The issue is compassion.
I don't want compassion to be mixed with law. I want a clear, unmistakable law that describes what is legal and what is illegal. If it's illegal, I want a clear, concise punishment for breaking that law.
So then McGentrix, seeing as a clear unmistakable law makes it illegal for public schools to ask a students immigration status before accepting them...
You must have been very happy when school administrators in New Jersey were recently warned (and threatened with a clear concise punishment) for breaking this law.
Are you really sincere about this?
ebrown_p wrote:So then McGentrix, seeing as a clear unmistakable law makes it illegal for public schools to ask a students immigration status before accepting them...
You must have been very happy when school administrators in New Jersey were recently warned (and threatened with a clear concise punishment) for breaking this law.
Are you really sincere about this?
Did you have trouble reading what I wrote?
