Judge Napolitano "Immigration is a right."

[sailingaway]

Im willing to bet most of this debate wouldnt exist if Chin Lee resembled Britney Spears and Rosa the cleaning lady looked like a French maid.

It would for me, if the impacts were the same

 

[dinosaur]

lol. "culture"= code. Please tell me. In your travels, what foreign "culture" is most compatible with "our" culture. In addition, please tell me what "our" culture is, so's i may inform my neighbor to put away his Ganesh statue.

It wasn't code. I was talking about our comparative innocence, and individualism and respect for others. I have no idea what other culture is most compatable.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Right. But how can you own land? What makes it yours? You can own what you produce and build on it.

What do you mean "produce"? What do you mean "build"? All these type of actions -- producing, building, making, manufacturing -- are actually nothing more than shuffling around pre-existing raw material. Pre-existing raw material, also known as: land.

When one makes a ring, he takes some metal that used to be in one place (probably buried in the ground), combines it with metal from another place, and some other metal from yet another place, and perhaps a gemstone from someplace else, and by rearranging the spacial locations of these materials to bring them all together, and then rearranging them yet further to make them form a hollow cylinder shape, he does the thing we call "creating a ring". He really hasn't "created" anything in a metaphysical sense. All the stuff was already there. He just moved material around from certain positions at or near the Earth's surface to slightly different positions at or near the Earth's surface. That's all that the act we call "creation" ever is. Creation is rearrangement.

You say that producing or building something gives one a legitimate property right in what he built or produced. Of what does that "producing" or "building" really consist? Rearrangement of material that was originally land. So how can one get to own land? The same way you get to own everything else: by transforming or rearranging it. We do not usually say "that man has created a furrowed field" or "that man manufactured a lovely garden spot" but he has, just as much as a man may have manufactured a gear or widget.

Everything originally comes from the land, from nature. Then, we remove it from its state of nature. We modify it. We start using it, start incorporating it into our lives and goals and plans. We claim it to be ours. Thus it becomes our property.

Again, it's a crucial point: the origin of every material object is land. If no one can ever truly become the owner of land, then no material object can ever truly be owned. So there has to be a way for us to take pieces of the Earth out of their natural, unowned state, and inaugurate them into a state of human ownership. Otherwise, everything will stay unowned forever. No one will be able to own any rings nor factories nor widgets nor televisions nor books nor any object which was produced from materials gotten from land. And all materials are gotten from land (that is, from nature).

So what is the way? How can we get to be owners of pieces of space and matter? It's the old Lockean formula: we remove them from their natural state. We "mix our labor" with the raw nature. We transform it. We make the wilderness area into a parking lot. Thus it becomes ours.

But you can't just put a fence around however much you want and say, "This is mine. No trespassing." and then go on and act like you have the right to sell it to someone else who can then say the same thing.

No indeed. There is some amount of transformation/use that must occur. What amount and just what it can consist of is determined by convention.

But from whom would he buy it? Some government?

I don't understand at all why this is even a question. There's a thousand people who own plots of land in an area. They all got it from legitimate voluntary sales or gifts, regressed back and back ultimately to homesteaders who got it by removing it from nature. So those thousand are all legitimate owners under libertarian theory. Then a rich guy comes in and buys them all out. No force involved. They each freely choose to sell their plot to him. Now he has a really big plot, so he can build a mega-skyscraper or a gated community like I was talking about or whatever he wants to do. What's the problem? I see no problem. It's freedom, baby. Sounds like he's having a fun project. Best of luck to him.

 

[Deborah K]

Im willing to bet most of this debate wouldnt exist if Chin Lee resembled Britney Spears and Rosa the cleaning lady looked like a French maid.

Would you be projecting, by any chance?

 

[Brian4Liberty]

I am a former immigrant who became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
...
America, the Beautiful. God shed His grace on thee.

+rep

And you have certainly mastered the English language. Did you get that from a public school?

 

[AGRP]

It would for me, if the impacts were the same

Yeah right lol. I personally find mexican women to be very pleasant and attractive. The more the merrier.

 

[otherone]

I haven't read the whole thread. Are you implying there are people competing for jobs (posting on this thread) who are upset with illegals who are Mexican, but wouldn't be upset if they were white Canadians? Because that is my point.

Most of us would agree that the competition for finite resources is the result of the state's interference with markets. At the same time, many of us would argue that the problem cannot be solved by granting more power to the state to solve it, and indeed that those powers would be detrimental to ALL of our Rights.
The major arguments against open borders stated in this thread are:

1) Competition for resources (your objection)
2) Abuse of the welfare state
3) Loss of cultural identity

It is the third objection that many here find contrary to the purpose of Liberty.

 

[sailingaway]

Yeah right lol. I personally find mexican women to be very pleasant and attractive. The more the merrier.

weak, imho.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Im willing to bet most of this debate wouldnt exist if Chin Lee resembled Britney Spears and Rosa the cleaning lady looked like a French maid.

Ah, the hot chick angle. If horny guys are the sole arbiters of who immigrates, race, ethnicity, culture, and planet of origin would not matter in the slightest.

 

[torchbearer]

xenophobia does have a lot to play with people's feeling on immigration.
it can be seen in the very fact that 99% of the debate is focus on "the mexicans" and not so much on the canadians..
'dey tuk ur jubz' is bs too. along with the welfare bit-
I actually know hundreds of these immigrant workers. they work hard in a job no one here will do. they aren't on welfare. they aren't diseased or destroy the community.
They add to our local economy as both producers and consumers. Their children go to school with our children. They learn english.
Why do you fear them?
Because the only thing i hear is the rhetoric of fear from those opposing.

 

[AGRP]

Would you be projecting, by any chance?

Its a fact darling.

 

[otherone]

Compare the American culture with the British culture. Or the Australian culture. And please, don't confuse culture with religion/spirituality. (Ganesh)

Obviously religion is only one part of culture....but you do recognize that there is no one American culture? That those living in Baton Rouge LA differ culturally from those living in Fon du Lac Wisconsin? And even within these areas, different cultures exist?

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Its a fact darling.

Reminds me of a classic movie quote...

Frost (AGRP): Hey, I sure wouldn't mind getting some more of that Arcturian poontang! Remember that time?
Spunkmeyer: Yeah, Frost, but the one that you had was a male!
Frost (AGRP): It doesn't matter when it's Arcturian, baby!

 

[dinosaur]

Most of us would agree that the competition for finite resources is the result of the state's interference with markets. At the same time, many of us would argue that the problem cannot be solved by granting more power to the state to solve it, and indeed that those powers would be detrimental to ALL of our Rights.
The major arguments against open borders stated in this thread are:

1) Competition for resources (your objection)
2) Abuse of the welfare state
3) Loss of cultural identity

It is the third objection that many here find contrary to the purpose of Liberty.

You can't really separate 3 and 2. Our respect for the constitution comes from values and convention. Our battle to save the constitution is a cultural war.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Most of us would agree that the competition for finite resources is the result of the state's interference with markets.

Well, that may be a key difference. I, for one, do not agree with that in the slightest. The government can certainly makes things worse, or create artificial shortages or excesses, but competition for resources is as old as life itself.

 

[dinosaur]

You can't really separate 3 and 2. Our respect for the constitution comes from values and convention. Our battle to save the constitution is a cultural war.

edit: and those of us who want the constitution to be law of the land, are hoping that our will prevails and that other people's will for this country fails.

 

[AGRP]

 

[Deborah K]

Most of us would agree that the competition for finite resources is the result of the state's interference with markets. At the same time, many of us would argue that the problem cannot be solved by granting more power to the state to solve it, and indeed that those powers would be detrimental to ALL of our Rights.
The major arguments against open borders stated in this thread are:

1) Competition for resources (your objection)
2) Abuse of the welfare state
3) Loss of cultural identity

It is the third objection that many here find contrary to the purpose of Liberty.

All three arguments have their legitimacy. Believe it or not, there is collective racism against whitey too. I've witnessed demonstrations in the past that were so vile, hostile, and racist against white America, that we left for fear of our safety. But, of the three arguments, I don't think loss of culteral identity is nearly as serious as the other two.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "open border". I actually wish the green card process was a whole lot easier because then illegals who want to work over here, wouldn't have to sneak over to do it. I'm okay with Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans crossing over each other's borders to shop, visit, and work (with greencards). So, I don't want closed borders, just secured ones, so the drug and human traffikers, violent criminals, and the like, can't get in.

But then, if the 'green card' process was easy like it used to be, and we didn't have a drug war going on, the only thing we'd need to worry about is fugitives from the law in their own countries trying to 'set up shop' here.

 

[otherone]

All three arguments have their legitimacy. Believe it or not, there is collective racism against whitey too.

White people didn't invent ignorance, fear, or hatred. It's common to every race. But this isn't about color.

 

[Deborah K]

xenophobia does have a lot to play with people's feeling on immigration.
it can be seen in the very fact that 99% of the debate is focus on "the mexicans" and not so much on the canadians..
'dey tuk ur jubz' is bs too. along with the welfare bit-
I actually know hundreds of these immigrant workers. they work hard in a job no one here will do. they aren't on welfare. they aren't diseased or destroy the community.
They add to our local economy as both producers and consumers. Their children go to school with our children. They learn english.
Why do you fear them?
Because the only thing i hear is the rhetoric of fear from those opposing.

What stops them from getting green cards? Are you not in favor of a country having immigration laws? Would you be happy if our population swelled to that of India or China? Resources are not limitless.