Saturday, April 28th 2007
Aliens coming to a city near you
Ignacio De la Fuente has reaffirmed Oakland as a “city of refuge”, meaning they accept and welcome illegal immigrants and will “discourage” federal immigration raids. Law-breaking? check. Obstructing the government’s job? check. Stupid economic move? Check. Here’s what I mean.
First, it’s illegal. The immigrants are here illegally or have stayed longer than legally allowed, and the companies that hire them (occasionally) get punished, meaning it’s not ok to hire them. (Caveat: companies that hire illegals need to be punished much more severely and consistently or else no message is sent and bad behavior is condoned. Fines won’t hurt big companies too much, but enough to actually get them to comply). So it seems to me that all the folks who support this are accessories to a crime, or crimes. You can spin it however you want, but it is STILL ILLEGAL. Yes, they are people, yes they are looking for a better life, yes we need to change the system, but it’s still illegal.
Also, preventing (although the media uses the much more vague term “discourage” or “not co-operate) the federal agents from conducting raids is an obstruction of justice. If you are preventing justice from being served by refusing to co-operate with those searching for illegals, it is no different than destroying or withholding evidence in a murder case. How can these things be different? They aren’t. The difference is that these leftist areas don’t like to obey laws that don’t suit them.
I will of course recognize the economic benefit of those who will work for less than native born Americans. (Although I also take issue with it, see the Swift meat-packing plant example in Chicago, can’t find the link at the moment, but the story went: after the raid, there were lines around the block of the area’s low income blacks and whites looking for jobs that supposedly Americans “won’t do”). So, we gain cheap labor, but we also gain higher health care costs from emergency room visits, etc.
How will this affect Oakland? And how will it affect Berkeley, considering the proximity?
Hmm. Time for intra-blog warfare. =P
“So it seems to me that all the folks who support this are accessories to a crime, or crimes. You can spin it however you want, but it is STILL ILLEGAL.”
By that logic, would you have opposed the Underground Railroad? Now, I’m not at all equating our immigration policy to slavery - incorrect as that policy may be, a country does have a right to regulate who can come into its borders. But the point is, just because something is illegal doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do.
“If you are preventing justice from being served by refusing to co-operate with those searching for illegals, it is no different than destroying or withholding evidence in a murder case.”
It is different, and here’s why. There are two types of “illegal” activities. Those that are illegal because they are inherently immoral (ie murder) and those that are illegal because while the act itself isn’t harmful, the aggregate effect of many of those acts is. Illegal immigration is illegal because if 200 million people came here tomorrow, our infrastructure would collapse - not because the actual act of crossing the Rio Grande and coming here is in any way immoral (or linked to drunk driving, Bill O’Reilly’s arguments to the contrary notwithstanding).
Comment by jfullmer — 4/28/2007 @ 1:06 pm
And, to answer the final question, if it means Oakland police have more time to worry about problems that actually affect people, like, say, the rising homicide rate, then I think the outcome is pretty positive.
Comment by jfullmer — 4/28/2007 @ 4:51 pm
“By that logic, would you have opposed the Underground Railroad?”
While the Underground Railroad was illeal, there was an overriding moral reason for its existence. Slavery was an immoral institution that treated people as if they were objects. Helping people escape slavery and live a life where they are free to make there own choices was the morally right thing to do. James, are you saying that deporting illegal immigrants is immoral? Are you claiming that there is an overriding moral reason to foster illegal immigrants? You say that a country has the right to regulate who crosses its borders. How then would you argue that by doing so it is acting immorally?
“the actual act of crossing the Rio Grande and coming here is in any way immoral (or linked to drunk driving, Bill O’Reilly’s arguments to the contrary notwithstanding).”
Just because it’s not immoral doesn’t make it moral. As for O’Reilly, he wasn’t saying that illegal immigrants are all drunk drivers. Ramos (the illegal alien that killed the two girls) had had three previous alcohol related convictions, but hadn’t been sentenced to prison because he committed them in a “sanctuary city”. Had he been convicted the first time, and then been subsequentially deported, he never would have killed those two girls that he killed.
This brings me to Megan’s point about obstruction of justice. By refusing to cooperate with federal agents you are stopping the government from enforcing its own laws. This is obstruction of justice, and obstruction of justice is obstruction of justice. There is no difference between this and obstructing a murder investigation. You claim the illegal immigration isn’t immoral, but that doesn’t make harboring illegal immigrants the right thing to do.
“And, to answer the final question, if it means Oakland police have more time to worry about problems that actually affect people, like, say, the rising homicide rate, then I think the outcome is pretty positive.”
James, don’t kid yourself into believing that all of a sudden Oakland police are going to have a lot more free time to combat homicide. The Oakland police don’t combat illegal immigration as it is, so this really won’t effect their job.
Comment by Anonymous Mexican — 4/28/2007 @ 5:32 pm
Read my points again, son. I specifically said deporting illegal immigrants is neither similar to slavery nor immoral. My point was that a whole bunch of people argue against illegal immigration because, well, it’s illegal, when I think you have to have a stronger argument than that, especially given other things that have been illegal in the past.
I agree with what you say about Ramos, but that’s not what Bill O’Reilly said. He specifically said that drunk driving was related to being an illegal immigrant, because they both correlate with being “irresponsible.”
“GERALDO: There’s no cause and effect between his illegality and his drunkenness.
O’REILLY: Sure there is. He’s irresponsible.”
As far as obstruction of justice goes, it really depends on if Megan is correct in her interpretation of “refusing to co-operate” as actually meaning “preventing.”
Comment by jfullmer — 4/28/2007 @ 7:04 pm
This is an SF Moral Stand (TM). The way they work is that SF will stand up for its moral cause up to but not including the point where there are consequences. So if there was a loss of funding or some such associated regulation, SF will cooperate. Otherwise, they won’t. I’m pretty sure they can’t actually interfere.
They had a similar approach to a “no recruiters in schools” referendum which was actually a “no recruiters in schools, if only we wouldn’t lose funding.”
Comment by Beetle — 4/28/2007 @ 7:22 pm
James, father dearest, you said that you didn’t want to compare illegal immigration to slavery, but you end that paragraph with “But the point is, just because something is illegal doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do.” Well, you haven’t proved that this move is the right thing to do. My arguement was simply that you’re argument was disingeniuos if it did not realize the difference between the two situations. Unless you feel that there is an overwhelming moral reason to disobey the law, then you shouldn’t. But you don’t want to say that the deportation of illegal immigrants is immoral. “I specifically said deporting illegal immigrants is neither similar to slavery nor immoral.” Therefore, I don’t see the point to your arguement.
“I agree with what you say about Ramos, but that’s not what Bill O’Reilly said.”
Actually, I took all of the stuff I said about Ramos is exactly what O’Reilly said. But, then again, I actually watched the entire segment. I don’t want to say you are intellectually lazy, but if not, then I will have to call you just plain stupid and I don’t want to do that either.
As for the quote you use, had you quoted the next two lines, O’Reilly explicitly says that his statement was directed to Ramos alone, and not a generalization to Latinos or illegal immigrants in general. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said it in the first place, however, it was in the middle of a heated debate, and the point he was trying to make was not that illegal immigrants are drunkards, but that this man with previous alchol related convictions should have been deported because he was an illegal immigrant and had alcohol related convictions.
To the obstruction of justice thing, hiding evidence counts as obstruction of justice. If the city knows that someone is an illegal immigrant, and they don’t cooperate when a federal agent conducting an investigation, then i feel that that sould count as obstruction of justice. But, I will conceed that there is some question as to whether this measure counts as obstruction of justice.
Lastly, don’t call me “son”. I am not your child, don’t treat me like one.
Comment by Anonymous Mexican — 4/29/2007 @ 12:35 am
In a totally random order:
1) I sincerely apologize if I offended you by calling you “son.” If you knew me personally, you’d know that I use the term as a friendly nickname and not to in any way imply my superiority over its recipient.
2) I did in fact watch the entire segment, and let’s talk about those two lines you cite. Geraldo tried to paint O’Reilly as racist by saying O’Reilly was saying there’s a link between being Latino and being drunk (which O’Reilly clearly was not saying). O’Reilly replied that he wasn’t generalizing toward Latinos (which he wasn’t) and says it’s about Ramos. But in the very previous line, which I quoted, he says there’s a link between illegality and drunkenness. So if you take everything he’s saying together, it seems like the best summary would be this: “There’s a link between being here illegally and being irresponsible, and a link between being irresponsible and being a drunkard. Being a Latino has nothing to do with either of those.” Given the context of the whole debate, there’s no way you can honestly argue that O’Reilly was completely making it about Ramos. He was using it to make a point about immigration policy. I understand what you’re saying about if the policy had been enforced, Ramos wouldn’t have been here in the first place, but honestly, the real problem here is drunk driving, not illegal immigration. O’Reilly seemed to lose sight of that.
3) The point to my argument is very limited in scope. All I’m saying is that I think simply saying “it’s a crime, and thus you are an accessory” doesn’t make a very strong argument. Now, I’ll concede that you’re right when you say “Unless you feel that there is an overwhelming moral reason to disobey the law, then you shouldn’t.” But I also think that there are a lot of other crimes that people in general are accessories to that are far more harmful than not telling the federal government that the dude in the meat-packing plant is an illegal alien. So if we’re going to pick our battles, why this one?
Comment by jfullmer — 4/29/2007 @ 1:14 am
1. James, I do know you personally, but I feel that in the context of your post, your use of “son” was very belittling.
2. I don’t want to continue arging about a ten second clip out of a much longer debate, so here is my final word on it. If I had to summarize what happend, Geraldo was trying to say that the Ramos thing was completely about drunk driving, saying that there was no link between that and his being an illegal alien, while O’Reilly wanted to say that if Ramos had been deported after being convicted previously, the whole fiasco would have been avoided. It was probably a poor choice of words on O’Reilly’s part, but I honestly do not think that O’Reilly intended to make the kind of general link that you ascribed to him when you wrote “not because the actual act of crossing the Rio Grande and coming here is in any way immoral (or linked to drunk driving, Bill O’Reilly’s arguments to the contrary notwithstanding.”
3. You too want to say that the issue in the Ramos case was only drunk driving. But the point still stands that if in these sanctuary cities they report people like Ramos, that have been shown to be irresponsible, and also don’t have a right to be here in the first place, then we would have that many fewer of these types of tragedies to deal with.
4. I agree that there are other crimes that are far more morally reprehensible than not telling on the dude at the meat packing plant, but I find it odd that YOU, a man who I usually see as championing the principle of the thing, to say that we should be picking our battles in this case. I find your “there are more harmful crimes” arguement to be as weak as the “It’s wrong because it’s illegal” argument that you are lambasting.
Comment by Anonymous Mexican — 4/29/2007 @ 3:04 am
1) Okay, well, feel that way no longer. In the context of my post, it was meant to ensure that the debate remained friendly and not get out of hand. Poor word choice on my part, then.
2) Agreed on the leaving this argument for another time.
3) See, I don’t know if we would have a lot fewer of these tragedies. Sure, in this case, the tragedy would have been avoided. And even if I were to endorse the idea of a sanctuary city (which I haven’t, yet) I’d agree that someone who committed a crime other than simply being here illegally should be deported. However, I don’t think you can generalize between illegality (in terms of status) and irresponsibility, and thus I don’t see the utility in deporting illegal immigrants. Personal feeling - based on absolutely no evidence at all - is that someone who would risk their life crossing the desert to get a job and send money back to their family is probably a little more responsible than the average college student.
4) I don’t stick to principles because they’re principles, I stick to them because they’re good principles. You’ll not hear me saying “it’s the principle of the matter” unless I believe that there’s a reason behind the principle. And as far as principles go, I’ll take mercy over “justice” any day.
Like I said earlier, the reason behind laws against illegal immigration is one of aggregation. I see the reason for that, and support controlling our borders for that reason BUT as far as the individual illegal immigrant goes, I see no reason to deport him unless, like Ramos, he presents a danger to society.
Comment by jfullmer — 4/29/2007 @ 10:55 am
“And, to answer the final question, if it means Oakland police have more time to worry about problems that actually affect people, like, say, the rising homicide rate, then I think the outcome is pretty positive.”
California’s most dangerous criminals happen to have been here illegally: http://ag.ca.gov/wanted/info.php. How about we actually enforce laws? Maybe it’s a blunt method that will include punishing some otherwise peaceful people, but it’s worth it to rid our society of the dangerous uber-scum that needs to be eliminated.
Comment by Anonymous — 4/30/2007 @ 9:57 am