Wouldn’t a deal to improve border security improve Biden’s re-election chances? It’s an issue where Democratic politicians are increasingly to the left of the public (in basically trying to ignore the issue). Trump and the Republicans are so far to the right on the issue that there’s a lot of space for Democrats to occupy a sensible middle. (I would favor stricter enforcement of recent arrivals and a points system for skilled immigrants over our current system.)
Migrants pay thousands to be smuggled through the Arizona desert or the Darien Gap. How about instead the US government collects that money as an admission fee from anyone who wants to come to America?
I live two blocks from a shelter in chicago and it's horrific. These people need jobs. Not tents outside a police station.
More foundationallly: I don't understand why we're even processing these cases individually. Most near me are Venezuelan with some Haitians. Like 1/3 of Venezuelans are malnourished right? People from certain countries should just be allowed in full stop.
We didn't turn away the Irish during the potato famine. But we also didn't try to bear the cost of feeding, housing and caring for them. Chicago can't afford this burden. Let Venezuelans, Haitians, and anyone else from a similar desperate situation work.
I think "this step to help fix the immigration system--which will not fix the whole thing entirely anyway--will also allow Trump to do mass deportations next year if he is elected" is both (A) true of basically *every* proposal to incrementally improve the immigration system (e.g., "more immigration judges?" "that will just expedite mass deportations when Trump is elected!"), and (B) a tidy way to scare Democrats into opposing *any* reforms, thereby making Democrats look unreasonable and helping Republicans (and Trump) in the upcoming elections.
Good article and well written, I think it lays out the case well that "expedited removal" isn't really necessary if the concern is to bend asylum claims in practice away from odd regulatory capacity visa.
All the people in these threads desperately trying not to label illegal immigrants as breaking the law is exactly why Democrats lose on this issue. “Undocumented” isn’t even accurate a lot of the time!
The concept of asylum essentially says anyone who meets certain criteria is automatically admitted, without limit, no matter how they arrive. It worked back in the 1950's when practical difficulties of reaching the United States limited the flow to a mere trickle, but it doesn't work in the modern age, when human smuggling is a booming and well-organized industry. It especially doesn't work given that it doesn't take that many people to overwhelm the court system and, once the court system is overwhelmed, the system is easily abused by simply passing the credible fear interview, disappearing into the woodwork, and not showing up to court.
To fix the current system, I think a distinction needs to be made between asylum and refugees. The concept of asylum should be limited to specific cases where the individual circumstance of the person makes it compelling to the national interest to let them in. For example, defectors from North Korea with information on Kim Jung Un's missile programs might fall into this category. The numbers would be extremely small (~100 per year).
Then, you have a refugee system to allow some number of people fleeing war or gang violence in their home countries to move to the United States. The number you let in should not be zero, like Republicans want, but not unlimited, like progressives want either. Those that are admitted should, of course, be allowed to work, so they are contributors to society, rather than a drain on it.
And, of course, the amount of legal immigration for people with skills needs to increase as well, and not just high tech skills. For instance, my local transit agency is currently reducing service because it can't hire enough bus drivers. There are numerous people driving buses in Latin America that would be very happy to move to the United States and fill a much-needed void. But, they can't be hired because the government's immigration policy won't let them in. The same is true for numerous other jobs. Clean energy, for example, is held back by a shortage of people qualified to install heat pumps and solar panels, a shortage that more legal immigration could help alleviate.
But, whatever details on skilled immigrants and refugees the government ultimately settles on, the fact remains that the current asylum system is a mess.
I would add that America has a shortage of workers to care for the elderly (nursing homes, health aides) and for children, so our immigration policy should prioritize people who are willing and able to do that kind of work.
It kind of does. If you look at the people doing that work, recent immigrants, including illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigrant/non-citizens are way over represented.
Those kind of crappy labor intensive jobs are the reason that I disagree with the notion that we should prioritize hyper-educated vs less educated immigrants.
This entire discussion puts me directly into cringey internet meme territory: I'm taking crazy pills, flames on the side of my face, Fry squints at the camera, you name it.
My day job is at a company that provides data services to manufacturing. And the one thing we hear, with _perfect_ consistency from our customers, is that more than anything else they are constrained by the fact that they cannot hire enough line workers. Not "we can't hire them at our current salary," but "no one applies to any open position at all."
Meanwhile on a regular basis I pass by one of NYC's ad-hoc shelters for asylum seekers, the front of which is eternally surrounded by able-bodied adult men looking for under-the-table day labor jobs, because they are not _allowed_ to work.
Drawing a line from point A to point B here seems really simple, and yet...
There is no question that hiring people today is difficult, but this lament always leaves me puzzled. If I go to McDonalds, Starbucks, or Petco today there are enough people there that I end up leaving with the product I went for. Why can't a manufacturer lure those people away from those employers. Some combination of outreach, pay, benefits, working conditions, training up to skill levels, etc. must be available. Of course all those things are a cost, and go in to "we can't hire at our current salary." I think American employers for so long were used to an excess of labor because of slack in the economy that they've forgotten how to actually go out and find employees rather than just waiting for workers to come to them.
Both of the responses here leave me frustrated. Do we or do we not believe the BLS when it says that unemployment is at an historical low? This is the _least_ puzzling phenomenon in the whole world: factory jobs are physically demanding, factories are often located well away from major population centers, and _most people already have jobs_.
I assure you that "maybe we should offer more money" is an idea that has in fact crossed people's minds. There is no salary that (to pick an example I happen to be familiar with) a plastics extrusion factory can currently offer that both allows them to make a profit and that will magically make an abundance of workers show up at their doorstep in (ibid) Valparaiso Indiana, population 32,500.
Final thoughts - I wonder how many of the open borders people have ever lived abroad (beyond tourism) ? Immigrated here themselves? I’d guess very very few. Too often in these debates I sense a basic ignorance of what immigration is, how the world works , and why.
Regarless of whether this is true or not, Republicans believe that Democrats believe that all immigrants will vote for Democrats in the future, so Republicans see Democratic indifference and inaction on the border as proof that Democrats just want to import more Democratic voters. Republicans believe in "demographics is destiny," but they believe it will negatively affect them. Republican actions with respect to the border and immigration result in part from racial animosity and in part from the fear that immigration will deliver unto Democrats eternal, unchecked political power.
- For reasons of basic common sense and fairness, we don't want to throw people out of the country based on the decision of a single officer or even agency.
- So, in line with our country's liberal values of separation of powers and due process, we set up some courts were people could challenge the government's claims and avail themselves of their legal rights before a neutral third party. So far so good.
- Because mumble mumble mumble logistical reasons, we didn't have these courts be ACTUAL courts run by ACTUALLY neutral third parties, we just made them a separate agency inside the part of the government that makes the claims and throws people out. Not great, but such is life.
- The government still couldn't manage to run this system of arguable kangaroo courts properly, so it carved out a category of people who it could force through an even simpler and less rigorous "expedited removal" process.
- Now even those expedited removals are taking too long, so we want to water down them down even more, and subject even more people to the watered down version.
... and somehow it is the Republicans, supposedly the party of individual liberty and conserving the liberal tradition that wants to do all this? I get that running a government properly costs money, but shouldn't Republicans be lining up to make a deal here? They should obviously be wanting to line up to "fully fund the deportation police" no? And then Dems could make the deal that they get their funding and maybe some procedural reforms unwinding weird jurisprudence if we get assurances that everyone is treated by same rules?
I generally am pretty good at empathizing with my political opponents, but I just honestly don't get this one. I guess this is why Obama struggled to make deals when he gave the Republicans what he thought they should want instead of what they actually want.
This morning’s debate was highly clarifying for me. I went in opposing the “undocumented” label, and I came out far more convinced it was a term invented in bad faith and is extremely counter productive:
1. It doesn’t allow us to distinguish illegal immigrants and refugees entitled to asylum
2. It bets on muddying the waters by the ambiguous associations of “documents/documented” in the English language- is it that these people’s entry is unknown (“undocumented”) - in many cases no, people apprehended and even given a court date can then remain illegally , ditto for people overstaying their visa.
Is it that they lack the required documents (eg a visa)? Again, no. Some overstayed their visa. Some can come with a visa and be denied entry at the airport. Visa isn’t a right to enter, it’s merely a tool in the vetting process of determining whether us wants to let you in, so again- misleading.
The point of the term seems to me to get us to the logical outcome that the solution for “undocumented” immigrants is to give them documents, ie what used to be called, far more correctly, total amnesty. In other words, the “undocumented” terminology seeks to impose the open borders worldview and to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory. That’s very bad. That by so doing it also delegitimizes the rights of refugees makes it worse still.
“...to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory.”
But why does sovereignty automatically imply legitimacy? Why do we assume the legitimacy and territorial integrity of sovereign states, especially when that territory was gained through conquest?
This is a serious question - one of the most basic in political science (the boundary problem).
You're mixing the terms used. The legitimacy stated was the principal that a sovereign can decide who to allow to enter their borders.
Who is the legitimate sovereign is a different question, as is where the borders of a state should be placed. Conquest is really only a concern when determining whether a current order is to be changed or maintained. The fact of conquest is not an inherently qualifying nor disqualifying fact relative to either legitimacy or border position. There is almost no place on earth where the people there today were not at some point the successful conquerors of some people who lived there previously.
There's really no serious question about the need for and existence of state hood/sovereignty unless you're having a hypothetical discussion of either the desirousness of anarchy or the possibility of utopia.
It doesn't imply legitimacy, it enforces it in cooperation with the other 200 or so sovereign nations and the willing cooperation of the vast majority of the world's population.
My gut feeling is most people questioning this are either going down obscure, impractical, ivory tower rabbit holes or just straight up up to no good. Especially the part "especially when that territory was gained through conquest?" raises an eyebrow, because rather than being understood as something that applies to the entire world, it usually seems to be applied selectively to try to undermine whichever government the accuser doesn't like.
The “especially when that territory was gained through conquest” part _explicitly_ applies the standard to the whole world, as there are few if any borders that were not forged through violence at some point.
I’m wondering what is prompting this a priori accusation of bad faith or having my head up my ass. This is one of the most fundamental questions in political philosophy, not idle musing. If you think it’s “ivory tower,” fair enough, but as it turns out a lot of academic activity - in applied sciences as much as humanities - involves wrestling with hard problems.
Sorry if it reads like I was specifically accusing you of nefariousness. I should have been more careful to word it without the reading being possible. I have no idea what your particular motivations are - I just wanted to register that arguments like it are sometimes (often, even) used to delegitimize modern nations, at least when I've heard them.
On the ivory tower / academic part - that's a fair response. And I agree that there's nothing wrong with deeply examining that question philosophically or in academia. Isn't that what Plato did all the way back when? But it struck me as a little too theoretical as a response to "what should the US do about immigration now"? But YMMV
Thanks for your reply. I was probably a little too jumpy in my initial response, so apologies for that. I can see how the question I raised could be seen as bad faith, because you’re correct - it often _is_ employed that way in a “just asking questions” way, and Israel / Palestine is all on our minds at the moment (for the record, I wasn’t specifically thinking of that).
I think where I come from is an impatience with fait accompli or status quo bias thinking, which has been sharpened by living in the UK, which is the most status quo bias-y place I’ve ever experienced, to its quite obvious detriment (everyone: “the NHS is broken!” Also everyone: “how dare you think about changing anything about the NHS!?”).
What I will say is that while I agree that mulling over the boundary problem is unlikely to inform meaningful discussion short term immigration issues, I do think it’s worth challenging unexamined views, and “my status as a ‘native’ inhabitant of this land confers special political privileges on me in this place” is one of the longest-standing unexamined views there is. I am “just asking a question,” but I think my point is that it is a recurring and pressing question with real consequences, not something I cooked up to be a pain in the ass (it’s also while I reject arguments that “indigeneity” is a status whose rectitude is self-evident).
It’s true, I am - precisely to avoid that common meaning. The point is not that conquest invalidates borders; it just goes to show that sovereignty is historically contingent.
On a related note, one thing I am trying to (very carefully) do in my academic life is articulate a critique of the assumed superiority of indigeneity solely on the basis of “we were here first.” If I survive, I’ll let everyone here know.
Right. You see similar moves in the Israel-Palestine discussions, where the formation of Israel 75 years ago must be continuously relitigated when it isn't really much different from how many states formed.
See my reply above. I’m not trying to score a cheap rhetorical win; this is a real question and one that political philosophers actually deal with. It’s pretty rude to invoke some kind of Godwin’s law analogue and assume I’ve got some kind of nefarious agenda going on.
My answer is that we are not having a political philosophy discussion. Foreign policy has close to zero to do with political philosophy. There are all sorts of things that political philosophers would find completely unacceptable but which exist in the real world and we have to deal with.
I'll give you a harmless example: the Vatican/Holy See is not a real country, under any sort of political philosophy. It's a large religious corporation. But in diplomacy and foreign affairs, it is treated as a country, and we have to deal with it as one. Foreign policy deals with the world as it is now, not whether the background assumptions are justifiable.
And with respect, I do think the agenda behind constantly questioning Israel's founding is nefarious. Not that YOU specifically subscribe to the nefarious agenda-- maybe you don't and are just a purist in a certain way-- but the usual reason for relitigating 1948 is to justify all sorts of positions that involve the elimination of the state of Israel and/or the justification for terrorist attacks against it. It's a bad agenda. Which is why people will react very negatively if you insist on arguing about the theoretical justification for Israel.
I’ll start by apologizing; I was a bit defensive. I think I reacted to the mention of Israel/Palestine - which I didn’t have in mind - and thought “what exactly are you accusing me of?” So to be clear, I wasn’t at all thinking of I/P, and I would roundly criticize anyone who tried to delegitimize the existence of Israel or an eventual Palestinian state using my argument (and they would probably get the concepts wrong, anyway).
As a minor point, I would disagree with your Vatican example. I would argue that it fits _precisely_ into the reigning modernist territorial “Westphalian” paradigm (“political philosophy,” if you prefer) by jiving with our conception of what a sovereign state is.
You can see my response to Wigan below for more detail, but basically, I do think it’s important to get people to question unexamined assumptions, and one of the most unexamined of them all is the fait accompli nature of the relationship between borders, sovereignty and citizenship. The goal is not to get anyone to say “you know what, we don’t actually belong here, sorry, our bad”; it’s to encourage people to actually articulate what they mean when they say they have a “right” to reside somewhere with all of the privileges that citizenship confers. I’m a college professor, so encouraging people to be clear about what they mean is sort of what I do. Maybe this isn’t the space to do that in (you all are not my students, though I would prefer most of you to my actual students any day of the week), but you know, force of habit.
I disagree. From illegal to unauthorized might be such a case, as Wigan points out: the idea is to convey the exact same thing in a less offensive way.
“Undocumented” by contrast is a classic case of manipulative terminology invented precisely to change the counters of the discourse, as I tried to argue above. It’s more akin to “pro life” and “right to work” than to “disabled”
I don't mind that one because I think it's just as precise as illegal. Undocumented has the additional problem of just being inaccurate and unclear...if you're illegal / unauthorized to be an immigrant you may or may not have papers and if an amnesty was ever declared it wouldn't immediately change your documentation status.
For the record, I don't think "illegal" is offensive in the slightest when applied to immigration, any more than I think it would be offensive to call someone an illegal driver if they tried to drive without passing a drivers test or had their license revoked. But it's also accurate to say they are an unauthorized driver (but not an undocumented driver in the latter case)
I generally use "unauthroized immigrant" in order to avoid semantic squabbles. However, I do think "undocumented immigrant" is a superior term to "illegal immigrant".
Last night, I walked to the corner store to buy a few things and crossed the street before the signal authorized me to do so. "Unauthorized pedestrian" sounds like a better description of my jaywalking behavior to my ears than "illegal pedestrian".
Wouldn’t a deal to improve border security improve Biden’s re-election chances? It’s an issue where Democratic politicians are increasingly to the left of the public (in basically trying to ignore the issue). Trump and the Republicans are so far to the right on the issue that there’s a lot of space for Democrats to occupy a sensible middle. (I would favor stricter enforcement of recent arrivals and a points system for skilled immigrants over our current system.)
Migrants pay thousands to be smuggled through the Arizona desert or the Darien Gap. How about instead the US government collects that money as an admission fee from anyone who wants to come to America?
I live two blocks from a shelter in chicago and it's horrific. These people need jobs. Not tents outside a police station.
More foundationallly: I don't understand why we're even processing these cases individually. Most near me are Venezuelan with some Haitians. Like 1/3 of Venezuelans are malnourished right? People from certain countries should just be allowed in full stop.
We didn't turn away the Irish during the potato famine. But we also didn't try to bear the cost of feeding, housing and caring for them. Chicago can't afford this burden. Let Venezuelans, Haitians, and anyone else from a similar desperate situation work.
Maybe “expedited removal it not it, but Biden has to come up with something to fix it.
I read this at first and thought it was a Matt post. That's a major compliment - good job Dara!
I think "this step to help fix the immigration system--which will not fix the whole thing entirely anyway--will also allow Trump to do mass deportations next year if he is elected" is both (A) true of basically *every* proposal to incrementally improve the immigration system (e.g., "more immigration judges?" "that will just expedite mass deportations when Trump is elected!"), and (B) a tidy way to scare Democrats into opposing *any* reforms, thereby making Democrats look unreasonable and helping Republicans (and Trump) in the upcoming elections.
Good article and well written, I think it lays out the case well that "expedited removal" isn't really necessary if the concern is to bend asylum claims in practice away from odd regulatory capacity visa.
All the people in these threads desperately trying not to label illegal immigrants as breaking the law is exactly why Democrats lose on this issue. “Undocumented” isn’t even accurate a lot of the time!
I kinda feel like we need mass deportations just so people can get the thing they demand, good and hard.
Then maybe immigration debates can happen without the extreme options existing just as an abstraction people use to signal their loyalties.
The concept of asylum essentially says anyone who meets certain criteria is automatically admitted, without limit, no matter how they arrive. It worked back in the 1950's when practical difficulties of reaching the United States limited the flow to a mere trickle, but it doesn't work in the modern age, when human smuggling is a booming and well-organized industry. It especially doesn't work given that it doesn't take that many people to overwhelm the court system and, once the court system is overwhelmed, the system is easily abused by simply passing the credible fear interview, disappearing into the woodwork, and not showing up to court.
To fix the current system, I think a distinction needs to be made between asylum and refugees. The concept of asylum should be limited to specific cases where the individual circumstance of the person makes it compelling to the national interest to let them in. For example, defectors from North Korea with information on Kim Jung Un's missile programs might fall into this category. The numbers would be extremely small (~100 per year).
Then, you have a refugee system to allow some number of people fleeing war or gang violence in their home countries to move to the United States. The number you let in should not be zero, like Republicans want, but not unlimited, like progressives want either. Those that are admitted should, of course, be allowed to work, so they are contributors to society, rather than a drain on it.
And, of course, the amount of legal immigration for people with skills needs to increase as well, and not just high tech skills. For instance, my local transit agency is currently reducing service because it can't hire enough bus drivers. There are numerous people driving buses in Latin America that would be very happy to move to the United States and fill a much-needed void. But, they can't be hired because the government's immigration policy won't let them in. The same is true for numerous other jobs. Clean energy, for example, is held back by a shortage of people qualified to install heat pumps and solar panels, a shortage that more legal immigration could help alleviate.
But, whatever details on skilled immigrants and refugees the government ultimately settles on, the fact remains that the current asylum system is a mess.
Very well said.
I would add that America has a shortage of workers to care for the elderly (nursing homes, health aides) and for children, so our immigration policy should prioritize people who are willing and able to do that kind of work.
It kind of does. If you look at the people doing that work, recent immigrants, including illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigrant/non-citizens are way over represented.
Those kind of crappy labor intensive jobs are the reason that I disagree with the notion that we should prioritize hyper-educated vs less educated immigrants.
That’s my point, we should streamline letting these people in, not have them come illegally and work under the table or with fake SSN.
This entire discussion puts me directly into cringey internet meme territory: I'm taking crazy pills, flames on the side of my face, Fry squints at the camera, you name it.
My day job is at a company that provides data services to manufacturing. And the one thing we hear, with _perfect_ consistency from our customers, is that more than anything else they are constrained by the fact that they cannot hire enough line workers. Not "we can't hire them at our current salary," but "no one applies to any open position at all."
Meanwhile on a regular basis I pass by one of NYC's ad-hoc shelters for asylum seekers, the front of which is eternally surrounded by able-bodied adult men looking for under-the-table day labor jobs, because they are not _allowed_ to work.
Drawing a line from point A to point B here seems really simple, and yet...
There is no question that hiring people today is difficult, but this lament always leaves me puzzled. If I go to McDonalds, Starbucks, or Petco today there are enough people there that I end up leaving with the product I went for. Why can't a manufacturer lure those people away from those employers. Some combination of outreach, pay, benefits, working conditions, training up to skill levels, etc. must be available. Of course all those things are a cost, and go in to "we can't hire at our current salary." I think American employers for so long were used to an excess of labor because of slack in the economy that they've forgotten how to actually go out and find employees rather than just waiting for workers to come to them.
Both of the responses here leave me frustrated. Do we or do we not believe the BLS when it says that unemployment is at an historical low? This is the _least_ puzzling phenomenon in the whole world: factory jobs are physically demanding, factories are often located well away from major population centers, and _most people already have jobs_.
I assure you that "maybe we should offer more money" is an idea that has in fact crossed people's minds. There is no salary that (to pick an example I happen to be familiar with) a plastics extrusion factory can currently offer that both allows them to make a profit and that will magically make an abundance of workers show up at their doorstep in (ibid) Valparaiso Indiana, population 32,500.
Immigration is an extremely frustrating issue because it seems like regardless of what you think about it, the government can't actually do anything.
Final thoughts - I wonder how many of the open borders people have ever lived abroad (beyond tourism) ? Immigrated here themselves? I’d guess very very few. Too often in these debates I sense a basic ignorance of what immigration is, how the world works , and why.
Regarless of whether this is true or not, Republicans believe that Democrats believe that all immigrants will vote for Democrats in the future, so Republicans see Democratic indifference and inaction on the border as proof that Democrats just want to import more Democratic voters. Republicans believe in "demographics is destiny," but they believe it will negatively affect them. Republican actions with respect to the border and immigration result in part from racial animosity and in part from the fear that immigration will deliver unto Democrats eternal, unchecked political power.
Based on recent trends and 2020 exit polling, the "all immigrants will vote for Democrats in the future" is complete B.S.
It is, but I don't think either party has realized that yet.
Wait, let me see if I have this straight:
- For reasons of basic common sense and fairness, we don't want to throw people out of the country based on the decision of a single officer or even agency.
- So, in line with our country's liberal values of separation of powers and due process, we set up some courts were people could challenge the government's claims and avail themselves of their legal rights before a neutral third party. So far so good.
- Because mumble mumble mumble logistical reasons, we didn't have these courts be ACTUAL courts run by ACTUALLY neutral third parties, we just made them a separate agency inside the part of the government that makes the claims and throws people out. Not great, but such is life.
- The government still couldn't manage to run this system of arguable kangaroo courts properly, so it carved out a category of people who it could force through an even simpler and less rigorous "expedited removal" process.
- Now even those expedited removals are taking too long, so we want to water down them down even more, and subject even more people to the watered down version.
... and somehow it is the Republicans, supposedly the party of individual liberty and conserving the liberal tradition that wants to do all this? I get that running a government properly costs money, but shouldn't Republicans be lining up to make a deal here? They should obviously be wanting to line up to "fully fund the deportation police" no? And then Dems could make the deal that they get their funding and maybe some procedural reforms unwinding weird jurisprudence if we get assurances that everyone is treated by same rules?
I generally am pretty good at empathizing with my political opponents, but I just honestly don't get this one. I guess this is why Obama struggled to make deals when he gave the Republicans what he thought they should want instead of what they actually want.
This morning’s debate was highly clarifying for me. I went in opposing the “undocumented” label, and I came out far more convinced it was a term invented in bad faith and is extremely counter productive:
1. It doesn’t allow us to distinguish illegal immigrants and refugees entitled to asylum
2. It bets on muddying the waters by the ambiguous associations of “documents/documented” in the English language- is it that these people’s entry is unknown (“undocumented”) - in many cases no, people apprehended and even given a court date can then remain illegally , ditto for people overstaying their visa.
Is it that they lack the required documents (eg a visa)? Again, no. Some overstayed their visa. Some can come with a visa and be denied entry at the airport. Visa isn’t a right to enter, it’s merely a tool in the vetting process of determining whether us wants to let you in, so again- misleading.
The point of the term seems to me to get us to the logical outcome that the solution for “undocumented” immigrants is to give them documents, ie what used to be called, far more correctly, total amnesty. In other words, the “undocumented” terminology seeks to impose the open borders worldview and to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory. That’s very bad. That by so doing it also delegitimizes the rights of refugees makes it worse still.
“...to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory.”
But why does sovereignty automatically imply legitimacy? Why do we assume the legitimacy and territorial integrity of sovereign states, especially when that territory was gained through conquest?
This is a serious question - one of the most basic in political science (the boundary problem).
You're mixing the terms used. The legitimacy stated was the principal that a sovereign can decide who to allow to enter their borders.
Who is the legitimate sovereign is a different question, as is where the borders of a state should be placed. Conquest is really only a concern when determining whether a current order is to be changed or maintained. The fact of conquest is not an inherently qualifying nor disqualifying fact relative to either legitimacy or border position. There is almost no place on earth where the people there today were not at some point the successful conquerors of some people who lived there previously.
There's really no serious question about the need for and existence of state hood/sovereignty unless you're having a hypothetical discussion of either the desirousness of anarchy or the possibility of utopia.
It doesn't imply legitimacy, it enforces it in cooperation with the other 200 or so sovereign nations and the willing cooperation of the vast majority of the world's population.
My gut feeling is most people questioning this are either going down obscure, impractical, ivory tower rabbit holes or just straight up up to no good. Especially the part "especially when that territory was gained through conquest?" raises an eyebrow, because rather than being understood as something that applies to the entire world, it usually seems to be applied selectively to try to undermine whichever government the accuser doesn't like.
The “especially when that territory was gained through conquest” part _explicitly_ applies the standard to the whole world, as there are few if any borders that were not forged through violence at some point.
I’m wondering what is prompting this a priori accusation of bad faith or having my head up my ass. This is one of the most fundamental questions in political philosophy, not idle musing. If you think it’s “ivory tower,” fair enough, but as it turns out a lot of academic activity - in applied sciences as much as humanities - involves wrestling with hard problems.
Sorry if it reads like I was specifically accusing you of nefariousness. I should have been more careful to word it without the reading being possible. I have no idea what your particular motivations are - I just wanted to register that arguments like it are sometimes (often, even) used to delegitimize modern nations, at least when I've heard them.
On the ivory tower / academic part - that's a fair response. And I agree that there's nothing wrong with deeply examining that question philosophically or in academia. Isn't that what Plato did all the way back when? But it struck me as a little too theoretical as a response to "what should the US do about immigration now"? But YMMV
Thanks for your reply. I was probably a little too jumpy in my initial response, so apologies for that. I can see how the question I raised could be seen as bad faith, because you’re correct - it often _is_ employed that way in a “just asking questions” way, and Israel / Palestine is all on our minds at the moment (for the record, I wasn’t specifically thinking of that).
I think where I come from is an impatience with fait accompli or status quo bias thinking, which has been sharpened by living in the UK, which is the most status quo bias-y place I’ve ever experienced, to its quite obvious detriment (everyone: “the NHS is broken!” Also everyone: “how dare you think about changing anything about the NHS!?”).
What I will say is that while I agree that mulling over the boundary problem is unlikely to inform meaningful discussion short term immigration issues, I do think it’s worth challenging unexamined views, and “my status as a ‘native’ inhabitant of this land confers special political privileges on me in this place” is one of the longest-standing unexamined views there is. I am “just asking a question,” but I think my point is that it is a recurring and pressing question with real consequences, not something I cooked up to be a pain in the ass (it’s also while I reject arguments that “indigeneity” is a status whose rectitude is self-evident).
It’s true, I am - precisely to avoid that common meaning. The point is not that conquest invalidates borders; it just goes to show that sovereignty is historically contingent.
On a related note, one thing I am trying to (very carefully) do in my academic life is articulate a critique of the assumed superiority of indigeneity solely on the basis of “we were here first.” If I survive, I’ll let everyone here know.
Right. You see similar moves in the Israel-Palestine discussions, where the formation of Israel 75 years ago must be continuously relitigated when it isn't really much different from how many states formed.
See my reply above. I’m not trying to score a cheap rhetorical win; this is a real question and one that political philosophers actually deal with. It’s pretty rude to invoke some kind of Godwin’s law analogue and assume I’ve got some kind of nefarious agenda going on.
My answer is that we are not having a political philosophy discussion. Foreign policy has close to zero to do with political philosophy. There are all sorts of things that political philosophers would find completely unacceptable but which exist in the real world and we have to deal with.
I'll give you a harmless example: the Vatican/Holy See is not a real country, under any sort of political philosophy. It's a large religious corporation. But in diplomacy and foreign affairs, it is treated as a country, and we have to deal with it as one. Foreign policy deals with the world as it is now, not whether the background assumptions are justifiable.
And with respect, I do think the agenda behind constantly questioning Israel's founding is nefarious. Not that YOU specifically subscribe to the nefarious agenda-- maybe you don't and are just a purist in a certain way-- but the usual reason for relitigating 1948 is to justify all sorts of positions that involve the elimination of the state of Israel and/or the justification for terrorist attacks against it. It's a bad agenda. Which is why people will react very negatively if you insist on arguing about the theoretical justification for Israel.
I’ll start by apologizing; I was a bit defensive. I think I reacted to the mention of Israel/Palestine - which I didn’t have in mind - and thought “what exactly are you accusing me of?” So to be clear, I wasn’t at all thinking of I/P, and I would roundly criticize anyone who tried to delegitimize the existence of Israel or an eventual Palestinian state using my argument (and they would probably get the concepts wrong, anyway).
As a minor point, I would disagree with your Vatican example. I would argue that it fits _precisely_ into the reigning modernist territorial “Westphalian” paradigm (“political philosophy,” if you prefer) by jiving with our conception of what a sovereign state is.
You can see my response to Wigan below for more detail, but basically, I do think it’s important to get people to question unexamined assumptions, and one of the most unexamined of them all is the fait accompli nature of the relationship between borders, sovereignty and citizenship. The goal is not to get anyone to say “you know what, we don’t actually belong here, sorry, our bad”; it’s to encourage people to actually articulate what they mean when they say they have a “right” to reside somewhere with all of the privileges that citizenship confers. I’m a college professor, so encouraging people to be clear about what they mean is sort of what I do. Maybe this isn’t the space to do that in (you all are not my students, though I would prefer most of you to my actual students any day of the week), but you know, force of habit.
I disagree. From illegal to unauthorized might be such a case, as Wigan points out: the idea is to convey the exact same thing in a less offensive way.
“Undocumented” by contrast is a classic case of manipulative terminology invented precisely to change the counters of the discourse, as I tried to argue above. It’s more akin to “pro life” and “right to work” than to “disabled”
How about Unauthorized?
I don't mind that one because I think it's just as precise as illegal. Undocumented has the additional problem of just being inaccurate and unclear...if you're illegal / unauthorized to be an immigrant you may or may not have papers and if an amnesty was ever declared it wouldn't immediately change your documentation status.
For the record, I don't think "illegal" is offensive in the slightest when applied to immigration, any more than I think it would be offensive to call someone an illegal driver if they tried to drive without passing a drivers test or had their license revoked. But it's also accurate to say they are an unauthorized driver (but not an undocumented driver in the latter case)
I generally use "unauthroized immigrant" in order to avoid semantic squabbles. However, I do think "undocumented immigrant" is a superior term to "illegal immigrant".
Last night, I walked to the corner store to buy a few things and crossed the street before the signal authorized me to do so. "Unauthorized pedestrian" sounds like a better description of my jaywalking behavior to my ears than "illegal pedestrian".
The most accurate and precise descriptors are "pedestrian violator" or "violating pedestrian" :)