wonderful post…

Seattle Washington WA DUI lawyer for clients in Western Washington, including the cities and counties of Seat……

MT: “For example, “illegal” is not automatically unethical. It’s illegal to smoke marijuana in many states. Is it unethical? Not if nobody else is harmed.”

Violating the law IS unethical, unless there is a countervailing and surpassing good that results from it. Getting high does not qualify. The social contract involves an agreement to obey the laws of your society, and unilaterally disobeying whatever laws you like undermines that contract; if enough people do it, chaos results. If you drive drunk but manage not to kill anyone, does that make it OK? Besides, purchasing and using illegal goods indeed do harm: there are social and govenmental costs of law enforcement that would be unnecessary if everyone played by the democratically agreed upon rules.
In short, that’s a lame argument, though a popular one.

MT: “And “legal” is not automatically ‘ethical.’”

Correct. I didn’t say it was. Lots of bad things can be done legally. That’s irrelevant to the article.

MT: It’s illegal to hire illegal immigrants. So is it automatically “wrong” to do so? Let’s say that I, as an employer, decide that I’m going to stay on the right side of the law. I won’t hire illegals. But … all of my scofflaw competitors are doing it, and price competition is fierce enough in my market that, if I keep it up, I’ll eventually go out of business. That hurts not only me, but my legal-citizen employees. Is that ethical of me? To ride my business into the ground when I could instead be providing more jobs?

Oh, brother. Michael hereby endorses “Everybody’s doing it,” the Golden rationalization and first refuge of the unethical. Everyone’s cheat, so cheating is unethical? Talk about a recipe for chaos and corruption! The ethical thing is to put pressure on the govrenment to enforce the law, not to break it yourself. “Easy” and “ethical” are not synonyms. Often being ethical requires some effort and scarifice. Sorry!

MT: “Is “unfair” unethical? But life is unfair, therefore life itself is unethical by this reasoning.”

Pure sophistry. “Life” is not a person, and thus is not capable of ethical reasoning or unethical conduct. When a person contributes to unfair treatment, yes, he is being unethical. Fairness is an ethical value: look it up. If you don’t understand that, then ethical reasoning is lost on you.

MT: “Is “dangerous” unethical? Only if you’re endangering other people against their will.”

And permitting illegal immigration endangers the country against its will. Your point is what, exactly?

MT: “Is “bad social policy” unethical? Not per se. The megascale Great Society housing projects were bad social policy, and dangerous, and (it turned out) unfair. But they weren’t unethical. They were just a bad idea. Besides, what we are grappling with here isn’t a policy, but the lack of policy.”

Fine: stupid isn’t unethical; but incompetence in positions of power is. Willful bad policy is unethical. Let’s say the Right’s approach is unethical, and the Left’s approach is just stupid. Fell better now?

MT: “It’s a lofty notion: basing all political opinions on “good versus bad”. The problem is, what do you do when the choice is one between bad and worse? Perhaps all of the really hard political problems are of this nature.”

Not all, many. I didn’t say that the option was good versus bad…if you read the article, it endorsed bad (letting criminal illegal immigrants stay, but enforcing the laws vigorously now) over worse (what’s happening now.) Don’t put words into my mouth…its unethical.

MT: “We need a better immigration policy. That’s going to hurt somebody, somewhere, while not making very many friends. As with our addiction to oil imported from despotic petrostates, it’s a problem that would have been easier to solve if we’d gotten around to it sooner.”

Duh.

MT: “If we’re going to get our house in order and attack the backlog of issues where “right and wrong are clear-cut,” let’s start there. THEN move on to thornier issues like illegal immigration, where the starting point for debate should be that you are capable of reasoning better than your average high school dropout.”

Harsh words for someone whose comprehension of ethics is about on par with a junior college drop-out, if you ask me. By the way, flinging personal insults rather than well-reasoned arguments is also unethical: a violation of respect and civility. I apologize for stooping to it.
Your turn!

International law acknowledges that a nation has boundaries and has the right to govern who crosses its borders. Illegal immigrants have openly challenged that international law, and in effect have challenged this nation’s national identity. Does a country called the United States of America still exist, and do the citizens still have the right to maintain the sanctity of their country’s borders? Millions of Americans like me are hopeful that people like you don’t have your way.

Okay, I snuck a peek and what do I find? You’ve confused me with Michael Turner. Like I said, you don’t really read things, even what you post yourself. But something tells me that Michael Turner knows much more about civics and civilization than you do.

How do you derive your conclusion from what’s been said previously? On the contrary, I’m appalled by the cost of the war, but I also appalled by your dismissal of the average citizen’s economic concerns for the cost of illegal immigration. Your apparent lack of ethics concerning law enforcement is also very disturbing. Have you ever take a civics course?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/07/parishilton/index.html

These conclusions are not wrong, but none of them are “ethical verdicts” either.

For example, “illegal” is not automatically unethical. It’s illegal to smoke marijuana in many states. Is it unethical? Not if nobody else is harmed.

And “legal” is not automatically “ethical.” If you’re within the legal limits for driving after alcohol consumption, but can’t drive very well even at those levels because your tolerance is low, you might not be looking at a DUI, but you are behaving unethically.

It’s illegal to hire illegal immigrants. So is it automatically “wrong” to do so? Let’s say that I, as an employer, decide that I’m going to stay on the right side of the law. I won’t hire illegals. But … all of my scofflaw competitors are doing it, and price competition is fierce enough in my market that, if I keep it up, I’ll eventually go out of business. That hurts not only me, but my legal-citizen employees. Is that ethical of me? To ride my business into the ground when I could instead be providing more jobs?

Is “unfair” unethical? But life is unfair, therefore life itself is unethical by this reasoning.

Is “dangerous” unethical? Only if you’re endangering other people against their will.

Is “bad social policy” unethical? Not per se. The megascale Great Society housing projects were bad social policy, and dangerous, and (it turned out) unfair. But they weren’t unethical. They were just a bad idea. Besides, what we are grappling with here isn’t a policy, but the lack of policy.

It’s a lofty notion: basing all political opinions on “good versus bad”. The problem is, what do you do when the choice is one between bad and worse? Perhaps all of the really hard political problems are of this nature.

We need a better immigration policy. That’s going to hurt somebody, somewhere, while not making very many friends. As with our addiction to oil imported from despotic petrostates, it’s a problem that would have been easier to solve if we’d gotten around to it sooner.

But let’s also attack issues where ethics truly are a guide. You want “unethical”? I say it’s unethical to call a car a “sport-utility vehicle” in order to exempt it from fuel economy requirements (imposed for arguably very ethical reasons indeed) when you know that the target market is characterized by a lot of sport but vanishingly little utility. Unethical, AND illegal (or should be), AND dangerous, AND unfair, AND bad social policy. If we’re going to get our house in order and attack the backlog of issues where “right and wrong are clear-cut,” let’s start there. THEN move on to thornier issues like illegal immigration, where the starting point for debate should be that you are capable of reasoning better than your average high school dropout.

Wrong, I make the charge of racism because your characterizations of the immigrants are racist, your statements above are Exhibit A.

To Jim R, who says “Was George making too good an argument against your open borders for the USA”, my answer is that Williams provided us with two links which he had either not read or deliberately misrepresented, as I and Michael Turner pointed out. As for what my personal experiences with poor people have been, you would have no way to know that, would you, other than simply blowing such a statement out your ass and seeing how it smells.

I’m sorry, not all, but a lot, of the anti-immigration sentiment is based on racism, and when I think that’s what I am seeing I will say so, now in the future. Racism does exist, Williams is proof of it as is Woody and others here.

The Ethics of Illegal Immigration
(12/4/2005)
There are certain issues that breed rationalizations, as citizens of good heart and sound mind nonetheless twist their ethical judgement into grotesque shapes to avoid confronting unpleasant certitudes of right and wrong. One of these is the matter of illegal immigration. The ethical verdict could not be more clear-cut or unambiguous. Illegal immigration is illegal. It is unfair. It is dangerous. It is bad social policy. It is, in short, wrong. And yet editorial pages and talking heads and interest group advocates will defend illegal immigration, or more accurately, argue against any meaningful measures to control it without appearing to notice that their arguments are ethically absurd.

Take the venerable Washington Post. In a recent editorial attacking local chapters of the Minutemen, the citizens group that has set out to patrol U.S. borders, the Post alleged that “undocumented workers” (a shamelessly misleading cover-word for “illegal immigrants,” the term that focuses attention on the real issue rather than away from it) are necessary to do essential low-paying jobs that citizens in the Washington, D.C. area will not do. Though hardly original, a more intellectually dishonest argument would be difficult to imagine. If companies can’t get citizens to do “essential” jobs at the wages they pay, then the solution is to pay enough so the jobs become attractive, not to exploit illegal immigrants to keep the costs artificially low. What a fine bargain the Post is endorsing: we let you break our laws, and you let us pay you at an unfair level that our own people won’t tolerate. Ethical? Two wrongs may not make a right, but they sure can keep the economy humming, right guys?

Then there’s this classic policy rationalization, which the Ethics Scoreboard hereupon dubs “The Policy Shrug”: “If you can’t stop something, you might as well decide that’s it’s right.” From premarital sex, childbirth out of wedlock, recreational drugs, gambling, prostitution and abortion, to using foul language in public, driving ten miles an hour over the speed limit on the Interstate and dressing like a slob in the office, any arguably wrong or destructive or socially undesirable behavior that is difficult to control will generate defenders who argue that since it’s going to happen anyway, we might as well give our ethical instincts a quick realignment and decide it’s a good thing. Good comes from futility: what a concept! And what a crock. A culture cannot abandon its values to mob ethics, and the culture that does is on a fast track to oblivion.

The application of the “Policy Shrug” to illegal immigration was eloquently demonstrated in an op-ed piece by one of the nation’s experts on immigration, Princeton sociology professor Douglas Massey. Massey chides the U.S. for beefing up its Border Patrol at the most popular and easiest points of entry for illegal immigrants, because it forced the flow of “migrants” (his word: heaven forbid that people who break U.S. laws should have a pejorative description attached to them) to more remote and dangerous areas, resulting in more deaths and more illegal immigration. Moreover, Massey says, where once many “seasonal workers” (translation: illegal immigrants ) would return to Mexico, now they tend to stay in the U.S. because repeat trips are too risky. Concludes Massey: “Instead of attempting to stop the cross border movement of workers through unilateral police actions, we should bring these flows of people above board, legalize them and manage them in ways that minimize the costs and maximize the benefits for all concerned.” In other words, it’s too difficult to stop the crime of entering our country illegally, so we should make it legal. The fact that a scholar like Massey can’t do any better than this is telling. He actually argues that the U.S. is at fault for the deaths of illegal immigrants attempting risky entry because the Border Patrol has made it more difficult to break the law at safe, convenient illegal entry points! He absolves Mexico from all responsibility for the illegal acts of its citizens, much to the detriment of its northern ally, when in fact that government has encouraged outlaw migrants rather than address its own social and economic problems. And his policy “solution,” essentially an open border between the U.S. and Mexico, is no solution at all.

The Ethics Scoreboard is not a policy website. It is not the Scoreboard’s function to weigh in on immigration policy, except to say this: any policy must begin by being clear about right and wrong. The United States has a right and an obligation to control its borders and decide the conditions under which people entering the country can stay here. Those entering the country illegally are breaking the law. That is wrong. Such individuals, no matter how one rationalizes their motives or how much one sympathizes with their plight, are taking U.S. resources from its public, jumping in line in front of legal immigrants, artificially keeping U.S. wages low, and creating social problems. The U.S. should not be hesitant to enforce the laws of the land, mete out serious punishment, including imprisonment of its officers and employees, to businesses that hire illegals, insist on cooperation from Mexico, and change inconsistent policies that have the effect of rewarding law-breakers. These could include changing the law so that children born of parents here illegally are NOT automatically citizens; making illegal immigrants ineligible for citizenship; counting realistic estimates of illegal immigrants from a foreign country against its allotment of legal entrants; denying social welfare, school and other public services to illegal immigrants; and empowering local law enforcement to devise reasonable procedures for detecting and apprehending them. None of those measures would be wrong. What would be wrong is to do nothing about citizens of other countries who willfully break American laws, while punishing Americans who break laws that are far less vital to the nation’s welfare.

Finally, a word about the last refuge of a failed advocate, the charge of racism. Incredibly, advocates for illegal immigrants continue to hurl the accusation of racism, based on the specious reasoning that because the vast majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic, those who want to enforce the U.S. laws against their crime are prejudiced against “people of color,” as if a similar flood of illegal Germans or Swedes would be welcomed with open arms. A related argument is much in vogue among some civil rights advocates, who purport to believe that imprisoning a disproportionate number of black males because a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black males (this stat courtesy of Bill Bennett…just kidding!) is racist. Neither argument deserves the respect or publicity they have received.

Nobody should pretend that solving the illegal immigration problem will be easy or painless, which means that a solution will require a resource in short supply these days, political courage. But a wrong that is difficult to address does not become right. Illegal immigration is wrong. Stopping it cannot be; neither is calling it what it is.

No you’re not Michael. I’m surprised it took so long this time. Was George making too good an argument against your open borders for the USA, or I think it’s no border internationalist sillyness in you’re case.

And what to hell would a white upper-class man-without-a-country know or care about borders, the poor, the colored, and the laborer. You’ve never had any first hand contact with any of them and exibite all the characteristic of upper-class white guilt.

I’m not suppressing frank discussion, we are having a frank discusion. And frankly, I think your views are largely based on racism. If your character is questionable, that is your fault not mine.

The middle class also subsidizes the middle class. What do you think the public education system is?

It’s not just about what goes in–it’s about what comes out too. If I pay less at a store because the “working poor” are somewhat subsidized, and can thus get by on lower wages, that leaves me more money left over to spend on other things.

Actually, when the middle class subsidizes the middle class it’s called paying one’s way, something that illegal immigrants cannot hope to do unless some miracle comes their way.

You’re paying less at the stores because unscrupulous employers are exploiting illegal immigrants by paying them less wages than a U.S. citizen. I suppose that you condone that?

Mexicans may not be doomed to stay poor forever, but it will take generations because it’s difficult to find time to improve one’s lot in life while working at a subsistence level wage. You people are unreal with you expectations. Many of our poor spend generations in poverty, yet you somewhow think that the poor Mexican farm worker will be different.

Speaking of poor, you never addressed the issue of adding new competitors for scarce resources available to low income familie, the poor. The pie will likely stay the same but you would cavalierly add to the number consuming it by putting the welfare of Mexican nationals before that of citizens.

Your reference to inferior is somethiing that’s been in the back of your base mind Balter, not mine. Character assassination is the resort of those who would surpress frank discussion. Despite your cynical assumptions, this is not about race but about economics and putting the welfare of Americans before that of foreign nationals.

The Ethics of Illegal Immigration
(12/4/2005)
There are certain issues that breed rationalizations, as citizens of good heart and sound mind nonetheless twist their ethical judgement into grotesque shapes to avoid confronting unpleasant certitudes of right and wrong. One of these is the matter of illegal immigration. The ethical verdict could not be more clear-cut or unambiguous. Illegal immigration is illegal. It is unfair. It is dangerous. It is bad social policy. It is, in short, wrong. And yet editorial pages and talking heads and interest group advocates will defend illegal immigration, or more accurately, argue against any meaningful measures to control it without appearing to notice that their arguments are ethically absurd.

Take the venerable Washington Post. In a recent editorial attacking local chapters of the Minutemen, the citizens group that has set out to patrol U.S. borders, the Post alleged that “undocumented workers” (a shamelessly misleading cover-word for “illegal immigrants,” the term that focuses attention on the real issue rather than away from it) are necessary to do essential low-paying jobs that citizens in the Washington, D.C. area will not do. Though hardly original, a more intellectually dishonest argument would be difficult to imagine. If companies can’t get citizens to do “essential” jobs at the wages they pay, then the solution is to pay enough so the jobs become attractive, not to exploit illegal immigrants to keep the costs artificially low. What a fine bargain the Post is endorsing: we let you break our laws, and you let us pay you at an unfair level that our own people won’t tolerate. Ethical? Two wrongs may not make a right, but they sure can keep the economy humming, right guys?

Then there’s this classic policy rationalization, which the Ethics Scoreboard hereupon dubs “The Policy Shrug”: “If you can’t stop something, you might as well decide that’s it’s right.” From premarital sex, childbirth out of wedlock, recreational drugs, gambling, prostitution and abortion, to using foul language in public, driving ten miles an hour over the speed limit on the Interstate and dressing like a slob in the office, any arguably wrong or destructive or socially undesirable behavior that is difficult to control will generate defenders who argue that since it’s going to happen anyway, we might as well give our ethical instincts a quick realignment and decide it’s a good thing. Good comes from futility: what a concept! And what a crock. A culture cannot abandon its values to mob ethics, and the culture that does is on a fast track to oblivion.

The application of the “Policy Shrug” to illegal immigration was eloquently demonstrated in an op-ed piece by one of the nation’s experts on immigration, Princeton sociology professor Douglas Massey. Massey chides the U.S. for beefing up its Border Patrol at the most popular and easiest points of entry for illegal immigrants, because it forced the flow of “migrants” (his word: heaven forbid that people who break U.S. laws should have a pejorative description attached to them) to more remote and dangerous areas, resulting in more deaths and more illegal immigration. Moreover, Massey says, where once many “seasonal workers” (translation: illegal immigrants ) would return to Mexico, now they tend to stay in the U.S. because repeat trips are too risky. Concludes Massey: “Instead of attempting to stop the cross border movement of workers through unilateral police actions, we should bring these flows of people above board, legalize them and manage them in ways that minimize the costs and maximize the benefits for all concerned.” In other words, it’s too difficult to stop the crime of entering our country illegally, so we should make it legal. The fact that a scholar like Massey can’t do any better than this is telling. He actually argues that the U.S. is at fault for the deaths of illegal immigrants attempting risky entry because the Border Patrol has made it more difficult to break the law at safe, convenient illegal entry points! He absolves Mexico from all responsibility for the illegal acts of its citizens, much to the detriment of its northern ally, when in fact that government has encouraged outlaw migrants rather than address its own social and economic problems. And his policy “solution,” essentially an open border between the U.S. and Mexico, is no solution at all.

The Ethics Scoreboard is not a policy website. It is not the Scoreboard’s function to weigh in on immigration policy, except to say this: any policy must begin by being clear about right and wrong. The United States has a right and an obligation to control its borders and decide the conditions under which people entering the country can stay here. Those entering the country illegally are breaking the law. That is wrong. Such individuals, no matter how one rationalizes their motives or how much one sympathizes with their plight, are taking U.S. resources from its public, jumping in line in front of legal immigrants, artificially keeping U.S. wages low, and creating social problems. The U.S. should not be hesitant to enforce the laws of the land, mete out serious punishment, including imprisonment of its officers and employees, to businesses that hire illegals, insist on cooperation from Mexico, and change inconsistent policies that have the effect of rewarding law-breakers. These could include changing the law so that children born of parents here illegally are NOT automatically citizens; making illegal immigrants ineligible for citizenship; counting realistic estimates of illegal immigrants from a foreign country against its allotment of legal entrants; denying social welfare, school and other public services to illegal immigrants; and empowering local law enforcement to devise reasonable procedures for detecting and apprehending them. None of those measures would be wrong. What would be wrong is to do nothing about citizens of other countries who willfully break American laws, while punishing Americans who break laws that are far less vital to the nation’s welfare.

Finally, a word about the last refuge of a failed advocate, the charge of racism. Incredibly, advocates for illegal immigrants continue to hurl the accusation of racism, based on the specious reasoning that because the vast majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic, those who want to enforce the U.S. laws against their crime are prejudiced against “people of color,” as if a similar flood of illegal Germans or Swedes would be welcomed with open arms. A related argument is much in vogue among some civil rights advocates, who purport to believe that imprisoning a disproportionate number of black males because a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black males (this stat courtesy of Bill Bennett…just kidding!) is racist. Neither argument deserves the respect or publicity they have received.

Nobody should pretend that solving the illegal immigration problem will be easy or painless, which means that a solution will require a resource in short supply these days, political courage. But a wrong that is difficult to address does not become right. Illegal immigration is wrong. Stopping it cannot be; neither is calling it what it is.