Americans born here had it happen to them. Immigrants actively seek it. The same thing applies to anything inherited, religions, food, music, operating systems, editors, etc.
Not many are against immigrants or immigration in general, at least not in regards to the US. The issue is Illegal immigration. You're supposed to come through the front door.
Came here to point this out. Both I and my wife had immigrant parents, and they all integrated beautifully. None of them would have been caught dead so much as speeding. The idea of breaking into the country--obviously a very serious crime--would never have occurred to them.
Could you clarify a few things which come to mind when I read your comment? I have problems reconciling it with my understanding.
1) What guidelines do you have for judging if a group of people have 'integrated beautifully'? As an example, would those guidelines show that the Amish have integrated beautifully? If they have not, is the lack of integration a problem that must be remedied?
My understanding is that the Amish have not 'integrated beautifully' in the sense that they keep their own language and culture, and remain isolated from most of the rest of the country. My understanding is that that's also perfectly fine, because US culture is not homogeneous.
2) What does "breaking into the country" mean? As a specific example, when my US friends canoed in the Boundary Waters and knowingly landed in Canada to pretend to "claim" the land for the US - and did so not at a place of entry, nor did they report that entry - were they breaking into Canada? And was it a very serious crime?
My understanding is that it's illegal, but not serious.
3) For a first time offender, entering or or attempting to enter the United States at any time or place other than one designated by U.S. immigration officers is a misdemeanor, with a punishment of no more than six months of incarceration and up to $250. How can something which is "obviously a very serious crime" have such a mild punishment?
That is, my understanding is that "breaking into a country" is ill-defined, and reasonably interpreted to include things which are well-accepted as not being a serious crime.
My argument is that it's meaningless to describe all cases of illegal border crossing as a "very serious crime", because then there's no way to distinguish between the very serious crime of littering and the very serious crime of murder.
Bear in mind that the term "petty theft" contains the word "petty", which means it's "less important, serious, or great than other" types of theft, quoting https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/petty . The listed synonyms for petty are "minor, lower, junior, secondary".
You are of course free to use "very serious crime" to apply to any crime, but that is not common usage.
I believe most people, most of the time, would limit the term "very serious crimes" to describe felonies.
> Crimes receive different classifications according to their severity. The mildest crimes are known as infractions, more serious crimes are known as misdemeanors, and the most serious crimes are known as felonies.
This would suggest that "serious crimes" might include misdemeanors and felonies, but "very serious crime" should be limited to felonies.
> A felony is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness", while a misdemeanor is not.
I am hammering the point because I believe that describing all illegal entries as a "very serious crime" muddies the water, likely deliberately so. Why describe it using terms more appropriate for murderers than litterers?
1) Most notably, fastidiously obey the law. A close second, learn to speak and write American English really well. Also, work if you can.
2) Pretty sure we know what we're talking about here.
3) My understanding is that being in the US illegally is a misdemeanor, but entering the US illegally as an act is a felony. This is splitting hairs, though. Jumping the citizenship line, putting yourself in front of the thousands of people doing the hard work to get in right, is simply wrong.
That said, it's been politically convenient for both major parties to look the other way on this for decades. Hence the mess we're in. Clearly we need to stop digging ourselves further into the hole. What to do with those already here is a tough topic.
#1, immigrants in the US as a whole have lower incarceration rates than native born Americans. Why must they be more fastidious than native born citizens?
#2, no, I insist that I do not know. There is no legal definition for "breaking into the country", and the best definition I can come up with - entering the country without going through border control - is only a misdemeanor for the first offense, so not "obviously a very serious crime".
That's why I asked what you mean by it.
#3, your understanding is wrong. I linked you to the actual US law. I will now quote it:
> Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers,... shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both
Then https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3559 says that "if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is ... six months or less but more than thirty days" then it's a "Class B misdemeanor".
Hence, entering the US at somewhere other than a designated border crossing is a class B federal misdemeanor, and NOT a felony.
We are not "splitting hairs". You are making statements which are simply incorrect, then justifying your views based on those statements.
1) You asked me what my definition is--that's it. You're welcome to have your own.
2/3) Quoting one regulation does not establish that another does not exist. In any case, you're not going to change anyone's mind on this by quibbling over such details.
People who come in unlawfully cause a long train of problems, which we're having to deal with now. For starters, there's no way to remain here without continuing to break laws on a regular basis. They are at significant risk of violence and exploitation, and there's no way for them to ever fully integrate into society given their illegal status.
On top of that, they displace the people that we are choosing to admit after long and careful consideration--people who worked long and hard for it, who are the ideal future citizens we want. It's difficult to think of any other context in which this would be considered acceptable.
My followup was to point out the unreasonableness of your definition.
You seem to have created a law which doesn't exist "breaking into a country" and a punishment which doesn't exist, on the assumption that your definition must be the right one.
If your view is right, it should be easy to disprove me - it was not hard for me to find the information which showed that your broad definition was wrong. Why hand-wave instead?
You bring up "fully integrated into society" as if that were of fundamental importance. Are the Amish fully integrated into society?
If your definition is only "fastidiously obey the law" then for a long time the Amish were not fully integrated, eg, continuing to speak German at places in violation of laws passed as a result of WWI.
The laws changed, making the Amish once again integrated under that definition.
I'm fine with whatever laws our representatives enact to deal with the situation. I'm completely against those (citizens or not) who decide they'll just break the laws because they don't like them.
Over 1 million people legally immigrate annually. No other country comes close to this and it apparently still isn't open enough. What do you propose to improve things?
I don't know. I was simply refuting the bogus claim that there is some logically justifiable moral boundary between legal and illegal immigration. If you want to oppose legal immigration, at least be honest.
1. That sucks and is bad and should not happen. I would think we agree on that. I don't think this is relevant to the discussion
2. Yes that is how it works. It's an analogy and this is where it breaks, we could push it though - if parents have a baby, that baby doesn't have to pass tests to confirm it is their child and gets to stay in their home. If some random person claims they're your descendant, you'd have them do a paternity test.
3. I'm sure there are people who do that, but I'm not one of them.
This is a canard and actual immigrants aren't falling for it. There are lots of people that dislike immigration as a whole, either for matters of race, religion, or nebulous "culture". The Muslim ban, which then evolved into a travel ban coupled with a refugee ban, is proof of this.
When President Trump asked why people are coming from certain countries and not others, everyone heard what he was saying.
There's a good reason why Asian-Americans, who used to lean Republican, no longer do despite immigrating overwhelmingly through difficult legal channels.
You can claim its a canard, as you can claim the sky is purple. Maybe it is for others, but not for me and a some I know with a similar position. I have immigrant family members, I have no issue with immigration, with new people. There is no issue with someone coming to the door of a place and saying "May I please come in" and complying with whatever standards of admission there are. There is an issue when instead they break a window or sneak in somehow. Even if they aren't causing any harm, it isn't a reasonable precedent to allow to be set.
This doesn't hold water when the current administration stops refugee resettlement and makes applying for asylum more difficult (legal by definition) while simultaneously opposing family unification (also legal by definition) by calling it "chain migration". The RAISE Act would cut legal immigration in half. And that's while ignoring changes to the H4 visa and general animosity towards the H1B visa program.
> Not many are against immigrants or immigration in general, at least not in regards to the US.
Yes, many are, which is why the same people in government that have been most vocal in pushing for the wall have also been the most vocal advocates against a major part of the legal immigration (family unification, which gets the hostile name “chain migration” by it's opponents), have proposed or signalled support for laws slashing legal immigration, have taken executive action to direct border agents to use force to prevent people from legally applying for asylum at ports of entry, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, as infinitum.
> The issue is Illegal immigration
No, it's just immigration.
> You're supposed to come through the front door.
That would be a lot more credible if the people complaining about illegal immigration weren't the ones slamming the front door closed.
What does becoming American even mean? This country is such a mishmash of religion, politics, food, culture, etc. As an average white guy, I'm happy if you just speak English and maybe put up something at Christmas.
I've been thinking about this for a while. While the US is such a huge country, it's obviously hard to pinpoint an obvious "American culture", but even more so maybe the identity is so hard to track down because of its prevalence? During the last 100 years American culture's become so prevalent in the west ("globalism") that a lot of countries are very Americanised where popular culture, art and even businesses originate from the US.
I mean, I live in Eastern Europe and I'm currently watching an American TV series on Netflix while I'm writing this comment on my Apple MacBook with a podcast waiting for a listen later and there's a Sam Harris book on my bed. It's nothing like my heritage of what it means to be Hungarian, living in Transylvania. And yet you're sharing a lot of American identity with me.
It's just a thought I've been playing around with, but maybe that's why Americans have such a hard time finding their identity as Americans?
I think its just white Americans with that problem, other groups seem to have an identity. Why don't white Americans seem to have a culture? I think its an interesting question, I have various ideas, but nothing compelling.
Because white is an amalgamation of many different European cultures (Scottish,Irish,English,German...) that I think all diluted one another to the point that there is no specific culture piece that is universally white-american.
> Assimilation, therefore, is really a process of integration -- many cultures becoming one culture. E pluribus unum
This is 100% correct and it always makes me supremely uncomfortable when people champion "assimilation" as a goal. America isn't a Borg collective, and American exceptionalism would not exist in a monoculture.
I don’t really get the point of restricting immigration at all. I mean, why not build a wall between Texas and Oklahoma? They have a different state government, different tax rates, different state laws, different government benefits. Makes just as much sense as a wall with Mexico. Huge numbers of people move from state to state without any authorization or notification, and nobody cares. The whole debate makes no sense. It should be a nonissue.
> Immigration has lots of economic benefits, and few economic costs. Immigrants pay for native-born Americans’ retirement, start companies, and make the U.S. a desirable destination for investment, while not taking away jobs or depressing wages of the native-born.
That's weird. Economists regularly find that more supply decreases prices, and that this holds true for the labor market as well. But of course, it's an opinion piece with no claim to be based on facts, knowledge of said facts, or anything other than "I feel like this is true".
If you're talking about buying stuff at the grocery store: sure, but it's not a 1:1 offset. You don't need to hire an extra employee to serve an extra customer. Over all, more labor supply = lower wages. That's really not a wild theory, and I personally haven't heard anybody claim that it's not true, but would love to hear your take on it.
What typically is a response to realizing that is to try and regulate the labor market more so supply and demand don't set the price, i.e. minimum wage, fixed wages, or some other way of making the labor market work less like a market.
40 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 79.5 ms ] thread1) What guidelines do you have for judging if a group of people have 'integrated beautifully'? As an example, would those guidelines show that the Amish have integrated beautifully? If they have not, is the lack of integration a problem that must be remedied?
My understanding is that the Amish have not 'integrated beautifully' in the sense that they keep their own language and culture, and remain isolated from most of the rest of the country. My understanding is that that's also perfectly fine, because US culture is not homogeneous.
2) What does "breaking into the country" mean? As a specific example, when my US friends canoed in the Boundary Waters and knowingly landed in Canada to pretend to "claim" the land for the US - and did so not at a place of entry, nor did they report that entry - were they breaking into Canada? And was it a very serious crime?
My understanding is that it's illegal, but not serious.
3) For a first time offender, entering or or attempting to enter the United States at any time or place other than one designated by U.S. immigration officers is a misdemeanor, with a punishment of no more than six months of incarceration and up to $250. How can something which is "obviously a very serious crime" have such a mild punishment?
(The specific law is at https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-8-aliens-and-nationality/... .)
That is, my understanding is that "breaking into a country" is ill-defined, and reasonably interpreted to include things which are well-accepted as not being a serious crime.
How many other 'very serious crimes' have a maximum incarceration of only six months?
How many other 'very serious crimes' are misdemeanors?
My argument is that it's meaningless to describe all cases of illegal border crossing as a "very serious crime", because then there's no way to distinguish between the very serious crime of littering and the very serious crime of murder.
Bear in mind that the term "petty theft" contains the word "petty", which means it's "less important, serious, or great than other" types of theft, quoting https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/petty . The listed synonyms for petty are "minor, lower, junior, secondary".
You are of course free to use "very serious crime" to apply to any crime, but that is not common usage.
I believe most people, most of the time, would limit the term "very serious crimes" to describe felonies.
For example, quoting https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/classificat...
> Crimes receive different classifications according to their severity. The mildest crimes are known as infractions, more serious crimes are known as misdemeanors, and the most serious crimes are known as felonies.
This would suggest that "serious crimes" might include misdemeanors and felonies, but "very serious crime" should be limited to felonies.
Or from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriousness#Measuring_degree_o...
> A felony is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness", while a misdemeanor is not.
I am hammering the point because I believe that describing all illegal entries as a "very serious crime" muddies the water, likely deliberately so. Why describe it using terms more appropriate for murderers than litterers?
2) Pretty sure we know what we're talking about here.
3) My understanding is that being in the US illegally is a misdemeanor, but entering the US illegally as an act is a felony. This is splitting hairs, though. Jumping the citizenship line, putting yourself in front of the thousands of people doing the hard work to get in right, is simply wrong.
That said, it's been politically convenient for both major parties to look the other way on this for decades. Hence the mess we're in. Clearly we need to stop digging ourselves further into the hole. What to do with those already here is a tough topic.
#2, no, I insist that I do not know. There is no legal definition for "breaking into the country", and the best definition I can come up with - entering the country without going through border control - is only a misdemeanor for the first offense, so not "obviously a very serious crime".
That's why I asked what you mean by it.
#3, your understanding is wrong. I linked you to the actual US law. I will now quote it:
> Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers,... shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both
Then https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3559 says that "if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is ... six months or less but more than thirty days" then it's a "Class B misdemeanor".
Hence, entering the US at somewhere other than a designated border crossing is a class B federal misdemeanor, and NOT a felony.
We are not "splitting hairs". You are making statements which are simply incorrect, then justifying your views based on those statements.
2/3) Quoting one regulation does not establish that another does not exist. In any case, you're not going to change anyone's mind on this by quibbling over such details.
People who come in unlawfully cause a long train of problems, which we're having to deal with now. For starters, there's no way to remain here without continuing to break laws on a regular basis. They are at significant risk of violence and exploitation, and there's no way for them to ever fully integrate into society given their illegal status.
On top of that, they displace the people that we are choosing to admit after long and careful consideration--people who worked long and hard for it, who are the ideal future citizens we want. It's difficult to think of any other context in which this would be considered acceptable.
You seem to have created a law which doesn't exist "breaking into a country" and a punishment which doesn't exist, on the assumption that your definition must be the right one.
If your view is right, it should be easy to disprove me - it was not hard for me to find the information which showed that your broad definition was wrong. Why hand-wave instead?
You bring up "fully integrated into society" as if that were of fundamental importance. Are the Amish fully integrated into society?
If your definition is only "fastidiously obey the law" then for a long time the Amish were not fully integrated, eg, continuing to speak German at places in violation of laws passed as a result of WWI.
The laws changed, making the Amish once again integrated under that definition.
Just like the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 shows that it's possible legalize undocumented immigrants - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control... .
US keeps mistakenly deporting its own citizens.
2. Natural born citizens don't come in through the front door.
3. Making immigration illegakt and then claiming to be anti illegal immigration isn't fooling anyone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_(politics)
How about we really punish people who benefit from this? That is, punish people who hire illegal immigrants with prison terms.
The only reason no other country comes close is that our country allows that to happen on purpose by not going after people who benefit from it.
2. Yes that is how it works. It's an analogy and this is where it breaks, we could push it though - if parents have a baby, that baby doesn't have to pass tests to confirm it is their child and gets to stay in their home. If some random person claims they're your descendant, you'd have them do a paternity test.
3. I'm sure there are people who do that, but I'm not one of them.
Edit: but as to your actual point, I agree.
When President Trump asked why people are coming from certain countries and not others, everyone heard what he was saying.
There's a good reason why Asian-Americans, who used to lean Republican, no longer do despite immigrating overwhelmingly through difficult legal channels.
People in favor of reducing or altering legal immigration are quite vocal about it.
Yes, many are, which is why the same people in government that have been most vocal in pushing for the wall have also been the most vocal advocates against a major part of the legal immigration (family unification, which gets the hostile name “chain migration” by it's opponents), have proposed or signalled support for laws slashing legal immigration, have taken executive action to direct border agents to use force to prevent people from legally applying for asylum at ports of entry, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, as infinitum.
> The issue is Illegal immigration
No, it's just immigration.
> You're supposed to come through the front door.
That would be a lot more credible if the people complaining about illegal immigration weren't the ones slamming the front door closed.
I mean, I live in Eastern Europe and I'm currently watching an American TV series on Netflix while I'm writing this comment on my Apple MacBook with a podcast waiting for a listen later and there's a Sam Harris book on my bed. It's nothing like my heritage of what it means to be Hungarian, living in Transylvania. And yet you're sharing a lot of American identity with me.
It's just a thought I've been playing around with, but maybe that's why Americans have such a hard time finding their identity as Americans?
This is 100% correct and it always makes me supremely uncomfortable when people champion "assimilation" as a goal. America isn't a Borg collective, and American exceptionalism would not exist in a monoculture.
That's weird. Economists regularly find that more supply decreases prices, and that this holds true for the labor market as well. But of course, it's an opinion piece with no claim to be based on facts, knowledge of said facts, or anything other than "I feel like this is true".
For more science-based thoughts on the economy and immigration, maybe turn to politico instead of bloomberg: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...
You seem to be suggesting that immigrants aren't also consumers.
What typically is a response to realizing that is to try and regulate the labor market more so supply and demand don't set the price, i.e. minimum wage, fixed wages, or some other way of making the labor market work less like a market.