immigration past and present

[Bomb#20]

No he isn't. He's offering slavery as a counterexample to the inference rule implicitly relied on in the "We have to allow immigration now because historically that's where our nation came from." argument, in order to refute that argument by showing that its inference rule is invalid. Thinking a counterexample is a claim that things are equal seems to be a remarkably common logical fallacy on this forum.

I really wasn't trying to attack his post. I understand why people are against illegal immigration. For me, it's a personal issue. If I lived in Mexico and had a family, I would do anything that I could do to get to the US. My main point that I clumsily attempted to say is that slavery is morally wrong under all circumstances. Immigration is not.

I expect BH would agree with you about that. He wasn't arguing that immigration is always wrong; he was only arguing that the ever-popular "We're a nation of immigrants" argument for why it's always right is nonsense. Identifying the inference rule somebody is using, and testing the rule by applying it to different questions to see whether it gives stupid answers such as "we should still have slavery today because we had it in the past", is a perfectly sensible way to evaluate arguments. Then we discard the inference rules that flunk the test.

You're offering a completely different argument for immigration -- you're using the "What would I do if I were in their shoes?" inference rule. So there's no conflict between BH's argument and yours. I would hope we can all agree that "If I lived in Mexico and had a family, I would do anything that I could do to get to the US." is a much better argument than "We are historically speaking a nation of immigrants."

 

[BH]

Yeah, if you are going to starve to death because you can't find work or what you earn will be stolen by corrupt alcaldes or caudillos then I can understand on a personal level you coming here illegally. If you are coming to simply survive then the law be damned, provided you obey other laws like don't steal, don't drive drunk, and so forth while you are here.

On one hand I do understand and empathize for the migrants here illegally that other than breaking the law by being here would otherwise be regarded as good upstanding people. On the other hand, I know how narcissistic and self absorbed a lot of business people can be and if you let it slide they are hiring illegals they will try to break the law in other ways to see what they will get away with.

"I had to hire illegals to stay in business" can easily turn into "I had to cheat on what I owed in taxes and lied about my earnings because I had to use the money to get something to help me stay in business..." or whatever. The rationalizations will go on and on and never end about anything and everything.

I was raised that you have to play by the rules and if you can't or don't know how to play by the rules (laws) then you get out of the game or never get in the game to begin with.

Personally, I do not see why the problem cannot be fixed where the illegals can be allowed to come in in a legal way, and for the sake of respecting law and order perhaps have them pay some sort of small fine and admitting they came illegally. But I think the problem isn't solved because people like exploiting them despite any claims to the contrary.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I've been following some of the arguments about immigration.

One argument that stands out is that we can't stop immigrants from coming here in the here an now because we are historically speaking a nation of immigrants.

Why should this be so? Just because our ancestors may have all been immigrants at some point in the past does not mean we are not able to stop or cull immigration today if for some reason it is in our interests today.

We had slavery in the past too. According to the logic above we should still have slavery today because we had it in the past.

I am not trying to argue the immigration we see today is good or bad or neutral. I just do not see the logic of the argument above in defending it.

We did start curtailing immigration at the turn of the 20th century. Quotas were set up to deny immigration to "undesirables". This due to people like Madison Grant, whose racist writings like "The Passing of the Great Race" was widely read. Grant was very anti-semitic.
Another spur to this was Lothrop Stoddard, another widely read racist. One early enthusiast of Grant's writings when translated into German was Adolf Hitler, who wrote Grant, "Your book has become my bible!". Especially targeted were Jews. Quotas for Jews were only 500 a year.

Google for these clowns to understand a mostly forgotten and sordid part of American history. Grant was also a main mover of the American Eugenics movement, and inspired miscegenation laws of the South. This all is a bad part of history not taught in US schools. Grant and Stoddard's books are on the net. Their influence only waned with the end of WW2, after Hitler's holocaust was unveiled to the world.

Grant's influence and effectiveness was based on the same Nordicism that was believed many Nazi theorists. White supremicism.

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https://archive.org/stream/passingofgreatra00granuoft/passingofgreatra00granuoft_djvu.txt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race