More harm than good?  

As christ said in matthew, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, unless they're moochers"

(November 15, 2016 at 12:24 am)Minimalist Wrote: Don't be dense, Divi Tiberio.  There are self-styled militia groups - i.e. racists with guns - patrolling the border.  They don't give a shit about the difference between immigrants and refugees.  Frankly, I can't wait for the day when two of these groups start blasting each other.

But it is not just them..... there's this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn...-families/

Play the video.

It's not one of our finer moments.

The whole world's the same, unfortunately. For the last few years in Ireland there's been a huge scare about "fake asylum seekers", even going so far as our then Minister for Justice* stating on national news during a referendum to remove jus soli rights from those born in Ireland that African women were deliberately waiting until they were eight months pregnant before boarding boats and immigrating to Ireland so that they wouldn't be kicked out and swamping our maternity wards (a blatant lie rebutted by the head of the Mater the principle maternity hospital in the state, most births to foreign nationals in Ireland were grandchildren of Irish people or children of other EU nationals, neither group needing status) and people lapped him up. I was volunteering with a group of nuns three years later in 2008 (at the height of immigration into Ireland) and there were 6,000 asylum seekers in the whole country, quite a huge group to be getting worried about in a nation of over 4,000,000 people.

* The same man Goebbels McDowell prior to being made AG and then becoming MoJ in the next Dáil had lamented over the extremely torturous and slow asylum process Ireland puts people through, saying in effect that it was a crime what the state does. Shits will say anything for power.

(November 16, 2016 at 12:52 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 16, 2016 at 12:46 pm)TaraJo Wrote: People who assisted the underground railroad back in the 1800's also broke the law.  Can we agree that "ethical" and "legal" are two different entities?

^FNM, do you agree with this analysis? If we're equating slaves trying to escape slavery, to non refugee foreigners trying to get into the US, then there shouldn't be a regulated border at all.

I don't think TJ's actually drawing an exact equivalence, but rather, using the Underground Railroad as an example to illustrate her point about the difference between legal and ethical.

(November 16, 2016 at 1:39 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(November 16, 2016 at 12:52 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: ^FNM, do you agree with this analysis? If we're equating slaves trying to escape slavery, to non refugee foreigners trying to get into the US, then there shouldn't be a regulated border at all.

I don't think TJ's actually drawing an exact equivalence, but rather, using the Underground Railroad as an example to illustrate her point about the difference between legal and ethical.

What I'm saying is that if it's just as unethical to not allow non refugee foreigners to walk right into a country willy nilly, as it is to turn away people trying to escape slavery, then we shouldn't regulate borders at all. 

And from what I understand, FNM does agree that the border should be regulated.

You do realize that you're the only person talking about people coming in "willy nilly".....right? In a thread where you explicitly acknowledged that there;s nothing "willy nilly" about it, and have consistently refused to consider a mountain of other less-than-willy nilly things, because you think they're irrellevat to -your- position.

You're also arguing from a point of absurdity, since our borders are not there solely to turn immigrants into criminals, stop immigrants, nor -do- they stop immigrants. If we made it a simple issue of "checking in" at a border access point that;s where people would come through, and not doing the shit we're currently doing won't make our border any less useful for all the other shit that it's used for.

(November 16, 2016 at 1:44 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: What I'm saying is that if it's just as unethical to not allow non refugee foreigners to walk right into a country willy nilly, as it is to turn away people trying to escape slavery, then we shouldn't regulate borders at all. 

I think there are more important issues and money better spent than on building walls and fences to keep people out that are net payers into society. They, if they are illigals, don't get anything out. But they are consumers by necessity. As I said the last figures I know of, probably a year old, are illegals paying 11 billions in taxes.

I don't pay for their upkeep, you don't pay for their upkeep, so why the big concern? Show me anyone I am subsidysing with my tax money and I will be concerned at some level. Illegals aren't the problem. Tax money wasted on useless actionism is.

(November 16, 2016 at 1:52 pm)abaris Wrote:

(November 16, 2016 at 1:44 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: What I'm saying is that if it's just as unethical to not allow non refugee foreigners to walk right into a country willy nilly, as it is to turn away people trying to escape slavery, then we shouldn't regulate borders at all. 

I think there are more important issues and money better spent than on building walls and fences to keep people out that are net payers into society. They, if they are illigals, don't get anything out. But they are consumers by necessity. As I said the last figures I know of, probably a year old, are illegals paying 11 billions in taxes.

I don't pay for their upkeep, you don't pay for their upkeep, so why the big concern? Show me anyone I am subsidysing with my tax money and I will be concerned at some level. Illegals aren't the problem. Tax money wasted on useless actionism is.

Abaris, I thought you agreed that when it comes to illegals, we should take a hard look and go by individual cases, rather than letting everyone stay or deporting everyone?

But yes, wall is stupid.

(November 16, 2016 at 1:55 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Abaris, I thought you agreed that when it comes to illegals, we should take a hard look and go by individual cases, rather than letting everyone stay or deporting everyone?

But yes, wall is stupid.

Yeah, well. But in my case, the government built a useless fence for 10 millions because of populous demand. I could name ten million better ways to spend that money. That fence is a laugh.

What I say is, we shouldn't fret over people coming here. If we find them, and somehow they always are found in their vast majority, we should look at them and then decide.

It's pretty easy to find them over here.  They're the brown ones, lol.

INB4 "We have brown citizens". Sure do, and they get deported too...because brown.

(November 16, 2016 at 2:00 pm)abaris Wrote:

(November 16, 2016 at 1:55 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Abaris, I thought you agreed that when it comes to illegals, we should take a hard look and go by individual cases, rather than letting everyone stay or deporting everyone?

But yes, wall is stupid.

Yeah, well. But in my case, the government built a useless fence for 10 millions because of populous demand. I could name ten million better ways to spend that money. That fence is a laugh.

What I say is, we shouldn't fret over people coming here. If we find them, and somehow they always are found in their vast majority, we should look at them and then decide.

I agree.