Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade

Are assimilation laws immoral for immigrants?

Probably depends on the law. Which one do you have in mind?

Also, freedom of movement rights and property rights rarely mesh. It's a tradeoff.

And free trade can have severe societal costs; for example, being solely dependent on China for goods and supplies related to national security.

And there are other societal costs the local community bears.

Imagine for a minute that free trade with foreign nations often creates real societal costs even when every individual transaction is voluntary and economically rational. A community is more than just a collection of consumers seeking the lowest possible price. Local commerce dependencies are the incentives that create mutual social dependence, reciprocal obligation, shared institutions, skills, social capital, and, most importantly, value of the neighbor, and by extension, the local neighborhood. It's part of the meta "high-trust" society that America used to have. When people no longer need to support the businesses and workers around them because virtually everything can be purchased more cheaply from halfway around the world, they gradually lose an economic reason or incentive to care about the productive health of their own community. Nobody has to consciously choose China over his neighbor. Millions of individually rational decisions to save $10 can collectively dissolve relationships that nobody individually intended to destroy. It's an unintended consequence of free trade.

I'm not saying free trade is inherently bad, but economic efficiency isn't the only thing a society values. A country can become materially richer while simultaneously becoming less locally self-reliant, less cohesive, and less connected by reciprocal obligations, or a low-trust society. That's a huge societal cost for cheap goods. The "global-citizen" type mistake is treating individual autonomy as though society were merely millions of unrelated individuals across the globe making private transactions. Sovereignty itself depends upon a working network of functioning communities and institutions maintained by people who recognize obligations beyond their immediate self-interest. There are no solutions here, only tradeoffs. Sure, cheaper goods have benefits, but pretending that the social structures and traditional values that bind a community together can be displaced with cheap goods, without that free trade ultimately contributing to that community’s spiritual and cultural malaise, is a myopic take imo. Sometimes people trade their skin for cheap goods so much that they have no skin in the game when it comes to national or even local community existential issues. China learned this the hard way during the Opium Wars, when the people were unable to stop toxic trade that destroyed their communities from within. USA may have to go through that learning loop as well.

freedom of movement rights and property rights rarely mesh

Well, immigration restrictions harm both because they prevent me from inviting immigrants onto my property if I wish to do business with them. If you're implying immigration violates the country's ownership of public roads, I question to what extent the government "rightfully" owns public roads. We wouldn't be happy with the government restricting free speech on public roads, and you can't have free speech somewhere if you don't have freedom of movement there in the first place. Also, if some group claimed the space around my property in order to prevent me from inviting people into and out of my property, I think we would rightfully see this as abusive. Land is a public resource, so I think it's more fairly viewed as more of a way to protect other rights than an innate right in and of itself (also why I support land value taxes). Big difference between saying people can buy homes and have a reasonable expectation of privacy (basic property rights), vs. saying someone isn't allowed to sell their home to anyone from a certain area (immigration restrictions).

free trade can have severe societal costs

I already said I support restrictions for utilitarian ends in some cases, but immigration restrictions right now are a utilitarian loss.

Irrelevant is-should fallacy.

You're correct. Is-should [it's really is-ought, according to its originator, David Hume, and dubbed "Hume's guillotine"] is a fallacy by trying to conclude what ought to be from what is.

But you err because my reference is not what is, but what was, which clearly was a different set of conditions [no immigration statutes, then], whereas there are now.

So one needs only to change the law to allow more migrants in, legally.

Yes, so, change the law, if you can. But as long as the law is what it currently is, Biden had no business defying the law by appointing the salad-kook as the "border czar," since her one visit to the border did nothing to "stem the flow" as Biden declared needed to be done in March 2021, and he erred in not following up and doing nothing about his salad-kook.

No, not quite right. I see nothing about "assimilation" imposed on migrants. What I see is the expectation to be obedient to the U.S. law. When they start their

American experience by breaking the law, that's not a good start, and only gets worse, sucking up taxpayer money to support themselves because many have no skills or education to do so adequately.

if two neighboring countries each refuse to let their citizens enter the other.

Based on an earlier post I made, no sovereign country in the world allows the citizens of another country to simply invade another country, as we did up to just a year and change ago. Order is established, first, by being law-abiding. I don't agree that "natural rights" allow indiscriminate migration to wherever we choose without abiding by that nation's established immigration law.

True, Cymru is an excuse for wasting money...And for sure all roads lead to England, but that's only if you can get past all the tractors...And rarebit is no more or less cheese on toast....So at least three reasons why I withdraw my claim of Welsh supremacy.

Iceland?

no sovereign country in the world allows the citizens of another country to simply invade another country

This is fine if they're making restrictions for the greater good, but most (I think all) of them are doing this excessively. And as SatanLucy said, is does not imply ought.

Order is established, first, by being law-abiding

I'm sure you would agree that not all laws are justified.

I don't agree that "natural rights" allow indiscriminate migration to wherever we choose without abiding by that nation's established immigration law.

Maybe this would be easier if I understood your position better. Do you disagree that these natural rights exist or disagree with them being a justification for breaking immigration laws when said natural rights are violated?

So Fauxlaw: Yeah, we get it, my OP rang the bell, the dog salivates and the MAGA minions give the conditioned response of "Obama and Biden bad, Trump good, ug". But perhaps you could go beyond the bell and actually read and respond to what the bell asked, you haven't said a word about that. Here's what the bell actually asked.

Trump's crusade costs the taxpayer $2,358 on average. What did you really get for your money? Do you think it was worth it?

How did Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade affect you personally?

Try to get beyond the MAGA Pavlovian response, here in the real world, how did you personally benefit from your $2,358 investment?

If it is the law it is enforceable.

Having the law on your side gives you the right to act.

All taxpayers are rich Maggas.

The more we steal and waste, the weaker the Maggas get.

I'm sure you would agree that not all laws are justified.

Yes, however, there is a right and a wrong way to address what may be an unjustified law. It's not by violent, destrructive unlawful behavior by the public in thename of unjustified law. It's in the 1A and in Article I [see election and re-election of Congress]. Why can't that be the guide for even woke whackos? Invitation by DSA to dump the Senate, the President, and stack the Court with biased Justices is not justified.

Saying that "this is the law" isn't saying "this should be the law"

No shit. What is, is. What isn't, isn 't. Are we just figuring that out, now? But, as I said, I'm not talking about is, and isn 't. I'm talking about what was. The past. Yesterday, not today. Or tomorrow.

Saying that ‘this is the law” ends further discussions. It is the law after all.

I'm not advocating for court packing or violence. I'm saying on an individual level, someone without systemic power could be justified in illegally migrating if they do so peacefully, particularly if they're doing so to meet their basic needs. A form of civil disobedience, so to speak.

You are speak about the right to seek asylum. Under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, anyone facing persecution has the right to seek and enjoy asylum in other countries.

The already weak UN is doomed to increasing obscurity because it suffers from a basic contradiction: where nations agree, they rarely need the UN to force agreement; where powerful nations genuinely disagree, the UN usually lacks the power to resolve the dispute. The Security Council's veto allows any permanent member to block substantive action, and recent conflicts have repeatedly exposed that paralysis of inaction, especially in recent conflicts. Meanwhile, declarations and resolutions without meaningful enforcement more resemble statements of platitudes rather than concrete governing authority. The UN cannot provide useful humanitarian coordination, diplomacy, standards, when there exists a forum where virtually every government can talk, but not translate proclaimed universal rules into consistent consequences. An institution that claims global human moral authority while depending on varied and rival sovereign nations to voluntarily supply nearly all of its practical power is simply a very expensive world debating society.

Shoresy wrote:

Are you suggesting the creation of a militarized international organism instead of the UN to enforce world peace?

It's not a bad idea. Trump has proved that there is no better way than the use of force to find peace in the world. If it weren't for Trump, this idiotic braindead moronic dictator in Venezuela would still be fking around.

Trump is doing that to win the Nobel peace prize. At the same time he is starting wars hoping to end it for the same prize.

He won the Trump Prize.

His goal is still the Nobel Peace prize to beat Obama’s win.

Trump is anti immigration because of his wife Melania who is from Slovenia. She won’t let him go.

We don’t know what is in their prenuptial agreement signed after they got married.