Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Yet, US was systematically disenfranchising people for centuries
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
The US came close to losing its democracy status with FDR, which is why after he died, the 22nd Amendment was quickly created - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
The court system simply isn't built for it, nor the detainment facilities to house them while the courts take months to process each person. The housing market is already under too much stress and low cost housing and free housing has gone to them instead of citizens who were already here and in need. To say nothing of the billions being spent out of local budgets to sustain it.
A problem was created that can't be solved by our courts in a timely manner, probably on purpose, because Wall Street wanted cheap exploitable labor that have no worker's rights or OSHA protections and could always be deported if they caused problems. To say nothing of businesses who have to compete against those that do follow legal standards for hiring and can't abuse their employees because they're documented and have full legal protections are now at a competitive disadvantage to those that don't care about following legal practices. I feel like the other administration getting back into the game of importing slave labor to the harm of poor, low income and working class Americans is probably far worse of a crime or at least that was the start of the decay. This was not their stance on this 10-20 years ago. They don't want to pay fair or market wages, so they import those that can be exploited.
An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage, eliminating the benefits of bringing in illegal labor and maintaining a humane society. Furthermore, we should probably only trade with countries which have equal labor protections as our own, so as to ensure that jobs aren't offshored to save money, at least at the expense of human rights.
I'm sorry, I just can't buy that "treat a bunch of people like animals" is the humanist, labor friendly, perspective.
Do you think that the law has a cut-out to allow for paying illegal immigrants less than minimum wage? This is like solving the murder rate by making murder illegal -- it's already illegal to employ these people and pay them below minimum wage.
Like these people are victims of a system which is exploiting them. Treating them even more like shit isn't going to make the world a better place. Target the exploiters.
That theoretically could have happened at any point in US history. It hasn't, and when it does, I will oppose it and it def would get time in courts, they'd sue, etc. So stop with the emotional hyperbole, if an American citizen ends up in those jails, that'd be a problem, VZ won't take their own gang members back and imprison them, maybe blame them? The worse thing that is likely to happen is someone who isn't a US citizen ends up in the prison.
I have empathy, but it has its limits, and I chose to place. it towards those that have done nothing wrong and are facing way worse. The consequences of what you're proposing (doing nothing or taking a long time doing it) does way more harm than the risk of the current situation. Maybe they should have thought of this before letting all this happen. Extreme policies result in extreme backlash effects.
How do you exercise due process on the 10 million people imported into the country over the last 4-5 years?
The court system simply isn't built for it, nor the detainment facilities to house them while the courts take months to process each person. The housing market is already under too much stress and low cost housing and free housing has gone to them instead of citizens who were already here and in need.
The same way you exercise it for 320 million other people. The same way it has been exercised for every person who immigrated to American soil. Including your ancestors.
Let's be clear about what you're actually saying and you're advocating for, you are advocating for the suspension of due process and fundamental rights to an entire class of human beings you see as the other.
If history has taught us anything, the definition of who and what is other changes over time. One day, you too shall be the other. And that day you will beg for the due process and fundamental rights you wish to deprive these people.
When the Benjamin Franklin said, "... if you can keep it." This type of thought process is precisely what he meant.
I can easily say you're advocating for cheap exploitable labor because you as an educated affluent person (since you're on here), want someone cheap to clean your home or make your food and don't deal with the direct consequences since you don't compete for housing, resources, etc.
Don't create extreme situations and then act shocked when it gets an extreme reaction and the majority populace has an appetite to allow it to happen.
totally a ton of illegal immigrants running across the trading room floor yelling put orders and putting the real, American stock brokers out of jobs they deserve!
Wtf you talking about bro? Cmon buddy.
You saturate the labor market with workers, it depresses wages, plain and simple. It's in the interests of shareholders to saturate the labor market to increase profits.
The fact that you are okay with the defacto slavery/trafficking because "its always happened" says a lot, and why I generally dismiss these arguments, because at the end of the day, you just want to pay less for things, while you live in the nice part of town.
And the current administration is flagrantly violating and ignoring the laws and the courts of our country. What is the point of laws if they're not followed? What is the point of your argument saying we have laws in place if laws no longer matter?
Immigration and border security were maybe the #1 policy front for Trump in 2016 -- am I missing something here?
Because it's a relatively new phenomenon that the ruling administration enables and advocates for the import of 10 million illegal immigrant laborers.
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.