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Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is, some people see free movement across border

Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is, some people see free movement across borders as a human right, while others view a country as their home, and so should have the right to decide who to let in.

maxerickson 10y ago
As a practice it is about 100 years old (border enforcement went bigly with WWI). Maybe the whole idea of national borders is the strange thing.
Domenic_S 10y ago
I am surprised by the same thing. We have a legal process for crossing those borders, and if you circumvent that process you are a criminal. How is that controversial? Separately, if you believe the process is bad, or borders should be open, or whatever -- by all means, fight for that using the frameworks we have.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  “If you [break the law] you are a criminal. How is that controversial?” What is legal is not necessarily moral or ethical.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Sure, but a situation in which every individual picks and chooses the laws they agree with doesn't scale.
    - turar 10y ago
      I wonder what America would have been like if slavery abolitionists, women's suffrage leaders, and Civil Rights leaders took your advice.
      - gaius 10y ago
        All of those people campaigned for a change in the law, so my point stands.
        turar 10y ago
        All those people participated in breaking the laws they saw as unjust. From Underground Railroad in the 19th century to sitting in white-only sections in the 20th. People hiding Jews from Nazis were actively breaking the law. The founders of the United States broke the British law. Edward Snowden broke the law. Nelson Mandela broke the law. Mahatma Ghandi broke the law. The list goes on and on.
- jhpriestley 10y ago
  So your viewpoint is that, if the law on the books criminalizes an enormous number of people who are not really harming anyone, then one should nonetheless support rounding those people up using whatever means necessary? I mean, I guess your view is consistent and makes some kind of sense. Selective enforcement of the law is a bad thing in many ways, and in an ideal world there would perhaps be no difference between "technically illegal" and an actually enforced crime. Perhaps disastrous policies like rounding up medical marijuana users, longtime undocumented residents, jaywalkers, "sodomites" before Lawrence v. Texas, miscegenators before Loving v Virginia, etc., etc., would "heighten the contradictions" and force civil society to legislate what it actually wanted to punish. I'm confused how you could be confused by the opposite viewpoint though. The opposite viewpoint is informed by millenia of the reality of law, which is that laws are often not enforced because they don't make sense, and a zealous enforcement of an existing law can be a radical, destructive break with an informal rule. For those of us who see this as simply part of reality, a given proposal to increase or decrease the enforcement of existing laws must be weighed against its practical effects. The proposal to enforce the immigration laws is controversial because it will cause an enormous amount of suffering, it solves no real problems, it will weaken the US economy, and it is motivated by racial animus and xenophobia.
- geezer 10y ago
  Did you ever violate speed limit and not pay a fine? I am guessing you did many times. If you had paid the fine, you'll be too broke to own a device to post this comment. It also means you circumvented the process and you are a criminal. It takes one to know one.
apayan 10y ago
From an economics point of view, we should allow the free movement of labor (people) because we already allow the free movement of capital (money) across borders. If my understanding is correct, this is one of the pillars of the European Union. However, I think looking at it as a basic human right is more appropriate. Restricting people crossing borders is simply institutional racism. Countries are granting permission to enter/not enter based on the person's race. If this were any other context, people would be screaming racism. But because it's become so typical over the past 150 years, nobody calls it for what it is anymore.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  > nobody calls it for what it is anymore. Because it isn't. What about the DMZ between the Koreas, the Berlin wall, the Taiwan strait? If a country leaves the Schengen area, does their citizens' race change? And which race can stroll into the US without a visa? Some countries make it easier for people of the right ancestry to apply for citizenship, but it's more complicated than plain racism.
MaulingMonkey 10y ago
The tragedy is when some people view a country as their home, and so should have the right to kick out other people who also view a country as their home. "Illegal alien" encompasses everyone from the murderous narcotic kingpin, whom I think we can all generally agree should have little more than a jail cell for a home, to grown adults who immigrated as a toddler, and have only found out when they were much older that it was done without their parents having the right paperwork. It encompasses the queue cutting asshole, and it encompasses the panicked refuge fleeing certain death. As our application of 'justice' is not perfect, I imagine mass deportation has ended up prosecuting - and even deporting - a few perfectly upstanding, legal citizens. Mistaken identity, misleading evidence, a little racism preventing people from digging a bit deeper... shit happens, and our institutions are made up of fallible people. We're already deporting millions a year - can you tell me with a straight face that not a single mistake will be made? That not a single mistake has been made? I would be very surprised if you could. Then: just how strange is it, really?
geezer 10y ago
There are illegal aliens in this country because this country let them come in. We let them in so they can pick fruits, landscape our lawns, babysit our children, all at a huge discount. So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely. If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.
vkou 10y ago
A hundred years ago, border enforcement was extremely controversial. In most places, customs cared about two things - goods, and keeping criminals and people of the wrong skin colour out of their country. Passport-based travel was introduced in most of Europe as a 'temporary' measure, for the purposes of fighting WW I.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial It would be strange, but that never really happened in substantial way. Most of what gets framed that way by one side of the debate is not controversy over the idea of "enforcing borders", but rather: 1. Controversy over whether the particular preferences, limitations, and exclusions of current immigration policy are desirable, and 2. Controversy over whether current and proposed mechanisms for enforcing the current preferences, limitations, and exclusions in immigration policy (which, in the case of proposed mechanisms, often involve creating additional limitations and exclusions, and more rarely additional preferences) are desirable. This gets generalized into claims that "enforcing borders" has become controversial as a means of avoiding debate over the specific details that are actually controversial.

maxerickson 10y ago

As a practice it is about 100 years old (border enforcement went bigly with WWI). Maybe the whole idea of national borders is the strange thing.

Domenic_S 10y ago

I am surprised by the same thing. We have a legal process for crossing those borders, and if you circumvent that process you are a criminal. How is that controversial? Separately, if you believe the process is bad, or borders should be open, or whatever -- by all means, fight for that using the frameworks we have.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
“If you [break the law] you are a criminal. How is that controversial?” What is legal is not necessarily moral or ethical.
- gaius 10y ago
  Sure, but a situation in which every individual picks and chooses the laws they agree with doesn't scale.
  - turar 10y ago
    I wonder what America would have been like if slavery abolitionists, women's suffrage leaders, and Civil Rights leaders took your advice.
    - gaius 10y ago
      All of those people campaigned for a change in the law, so my point stands.
      - turar 10y ago
        All those people participated in breaking the laws they saw as unjust. From Underground Railroad in the 19th century to sitting in white-only sections in the 20th. People hiding Jews from Nazis were actively breaking the law. The founders of the United States broke the British law. Edward Snowden broke the law. Nelson Mandela broke the law. Mahatma Ghandi broke the law. The list goes on and on.
jhpriestley 10y ago
So your viewpoint is that, if the law on the books criminalizes an enormous number of people who are not really harming anyone, then one should nonetheless support rounding those people up using whatever means necessary? I mean, I guess your view is consistent and makes some kind of sense. Selective enforcement of the law is a bad thing in many ways, and in an ideal world there would perhaps be no difference between "technically illegal" and an actually enforced crime. Perhaps disastrous policies like rounding up medical marijuana users, longtime undocumented residents, jaywalkers, "sodomites" before Lawrence v. Texas, miscegenators before Loving v Virginia, etc., etc., would "heighten the contradictions" and force civil society to legislate what it actually wanted to punish. I'm confused how you could be confused by the opposite viewpoint though. The opposite viewpoint is informed by millenia of the reality of law, which is that laws are often not enforced because they don't make sense, and a zealous enforcement of an existing law can be a radical, destructive break with an informal rule. For those of us who see this as simply part of reality, a given proposal to increase or decrease the enforcement of existing laws must be weighed against its practical effects. The proposal to enforce the immigration laws is controversial because it will cause an enormous amount of suffering, it solves no real problems, it will weaken the US economy, and it is motivated by racial animus and xenophobia.
geezer 10y ago
Did you ever violate speed limit and not pay a fine? I am guessing you did many times. If you had paid the fine, you'll be too broke to own a device to post this comment. It also means you circumvented the process and you are a criminal. It takes one to know one.

apayan 10y ago

From an economics point of view, we should allow the free movement of labor (people) because we already allow the free movement of capital (money) across borders. If my understanding is correct, this is one of the pillars of the European Union. However, I think looking at it as a basic human right is more appropriate. Restricting people crossing borders is simply institutional racism. Countries are granting permission to enter/not enter based on the person's race. If this were any other context, people would be screaming racism. But because it's become so typical over the past 150 years, nobody calls it for what it is anymore.

gurkendoktor 10y ago
> nobody calls it for what it is anymore. Because it isn't. What about the DMZ between the Koreas, the Berlin wall, the Taiwan strait? If a country leaves the Schengen area, does their citizens' race change? And which race can stroll into the US without a visa? Some countries make it easier for people of the right ancestry to apply for citizenship, but it's more complicated than plain racism.

MaulingMonkey 10y ago

The tragedy is when some people view a country as their home, and so should have the right to kick out other people who also view a country as their home. "Illegal alien" encompasses everyone from the murderous narcotic kingpin, whom I think we can all generally agree should have little more than a jail cell for a home, to grown adults who immigrated as a toddler, and have only found out when they were much older that it was done without their parents having the right paperwork. It encompasses the queue cutting asshole, and it encompasses the panicked refuge fleeing certain death. As our application of 'justice' is not perfect, I imagine mass deportation has ended up prosecuting - and even deporting - a few perfectly upstanding, legal citizens. Mistaken identity, misleading evidence, a little racism preventing people from digging a bit deeper... shit happens, and our institutions are made up of fallible people. We're already deporting millions a year - can you tell me with a straight face that not a single mistake will be made? That not a single mistake has been made? I would be very surprised if you could. Then: just how strange is it, really?

geezer 10y ago

There are illegal aliens in this country because this country let them come in. We let them in so they can pick fruits, landscape our lawns, babysit our children, all at a huge discount. So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely. If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.

vkou 10y ago

A hundred years ago, border enforcement was extremely controversial. In most places, customs cared about two things - goods, and keeping criminals and people of the wrong skin colour out of their country. Passport-based travel was introduced in most of Europe as a 'temporary' measure, for the purposes of fighting WW I.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial It would be strange, but that never really happened in substantial way. Most of what gets framed that way by one side of the debate is not controversy over the idea of "enforcing borders", but rather: 1. Controversy over whether the particular preferences, limitations, and exclusions of current immigration policy are desirable, and 2. Controversy over whether current and proposed mechanisms for enforcing the current preferences, limitations, and exclusions in immigration policy (which, in the case of proposed mechanisms, often involve creating additional limitations and exclusions, and more rarely additional preferences) are desirable. This gets generalized into claims that "enforcing borders" has become controversial as a means of avoiding debate over the specific details that are actually controversial.