Is Illegal Immigration Moral?

[Sukerkin]

Well posited, Bill.

My straight, unadorned, answer to your question is "No". I would not break the law under the circumstances described. I am from a very poor background myself and have been in situations where a little law-breaking would have improved my position greatly - I chose not to take the easy path then and I like to think that I would choose the same way again if the need arose.

By the way, I am (un-antagonistically) curious to know if the claims, that Mexicans are breaking American immigration laws because they cannot feed their families, are literal truth? Or are they just poor and cannot get work that pays so well in Mexico?

 

[granfire]

Well posited, Bill.

My straight, unadorned, answer to your question is "No". I would not break the law under the circumstances described. I am from a very poor background myself and have been in situations where a little law-breaking would have improved my position greatly - I chose not to take the easy path then and I like to think that I would choose the same way again if the need arose.

By the way, I am (un-antagonistically) curious to know if the claims, that Mexicans are breaking American immigration laws because they cannot feed their families, are literal truth? Or are they just poor and cannot get work that pays so well in Mexico?

I don't have the data at hand and I am too lazy ATM to look it up.
But yes, the income (among other things) in central American nations is very low. I mean, illegals are known to accept positions that pay as low as 3 dollars an hour where the national minimum is somewhere around 5,50$ and that puts you well below the poverty level. (by pooling resources with others they manage to save a great deal of money and wire it home) I think the national average of some areas is somewhere around 1 dollar a day...

However, some countries still do have other issues. some areas od Mexico make the OK coral shoot out look like a fire cracker display!


many of these folks are honest and hard working. Minus the paper issue. Keeping their heads low and work their fingers to a nub.
There is a need for these people to come to the states and fill the jobs, because frankly, nobody wants to do dirty work anymore.
And lets face it, being dirt poor in Europe or the US isn't nearly as bad as being dirt poor in most other countries in the world.

 

[Empty Hands]

My straight, unadorned, answer to your question is "No". I would not break the law under the circumstances described.

So just to be clear, you place the law as a higher good than the lives of your family?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

By the way, I am (un-antagonistically) curious to know if the claims, that Mexicans are breaking American immigration laws because they cannot feed their families, are literal truth? Or are they just poor and cannot get work that pays so well in Mexico?

I cannot answer the question. I wonder if anyone can, in an objective manner. Are people literally starving to death in Mexico? I don't hear of it; but that doesn't mean it never happens. Nor are all people who choose to come to the USA to find work in the same economic straits; some are no doubt higher or lower relative to the 'poverty' level both in the US and in Mexico (and other nations south of the US border). And what one person sees as desperate and grinding poverty might be quite acceptable to another.

Poverty is a word. What it does to people varies. What it means to a person is based on many things. Nearly anything can be tolerated; people lived through the death camps in Germany during WWII. But what is an acceptable level of poverty, a livable level of hunger? I think that depends very much on circumstances.

One thing I know from personal experience; poverty outside the capital of Mexico and the US border areas is rampant and people live in squalor. I was taken by an assistant US ambassador to a small town two hours drive from Mexico City. There was no 'there' there. No paved roads are one thing; heck, I grew up in towns of 400 that had no paved roads. I'm talking no NOTHING. No proper road leading to the town; just an animal path. No plumbing, no electricity. No phones, no radio, no TV. Animals and broken carts and dirt and dust everywhere. Every person was filthy, they made the beggars I used to see on the US border seem clean by comparison. The smell was not to be believed. There was only one color; brown.

We went there to visit a person who would become world famous in his own right in several years time; I shan't name him. We drove to the edge of town; there was a row of vertical logs forming an impenetrable fence. Men with machine guns manned the gate, which was high in the air. We honked, they appeared. The gate opened, we drove through. Inside, it could have been Kentucky. Green grass and pastures as far as the eye could see; no trace of the village outside could be seen or heard or smelled from inside. There was a stable of Paso Fino horses, a riding ring, hired hands breaking and training them. There were misters everywhere, spraying water into the air. There was a rustic log cabin; or so it looked from outside. Inside, every modern convenience, all done up to look 'weathered' and old, but the marble was marble, the stone was stone, the stainless steel could not be made to look 'common'. When the peacocks wandered past I knew I was in the presence of real power, real wealth. And no, I am not exaggerating. We ate a peasant's lunch; bread made in the village with goat cheese and fresh tomato slices; some red wine. But it was not a peasant's lunch, all the same.

If I lived in that village, and saw my house, my family, and that wall with those people inside, I would probably want better things for my family. Better food and more of it. A floor, electricity. A chance for an education for my children. To get that, there are many of my morals I would violate. I would sell my soul to hell for a better chance for my children. Seeing both, knowing that I could have at least some semblance of that better life by climbing a fence, running across a desert, and picking tobacco all day in the hot sun? Sign me up.

 

[Cryozombie]

If I lived in that village, and saw my house, my family, and that wall with those people inside, I would probably want better things for my family. Better food and more of it. A floor, electricity. A chance for an education for my children. To get that, there are many of my morals I would violate. I would sell my soul to hell for a better chance for my children. Seeing both, knowing that I could have at least some semblance of that better life by climbing a fence, running across a desert, and picking tobacco all day in the hot sun? Sign me up.

I hear you Bill. I struggle by often living on peanut butter and ramen, while I see the street gangs and drug dealers in my neighborhood driving Escalades, and Porches and wearing more gold than Fort Knox and I say "Gee, I should poison and shoot people too so I can have nice things"

 

[WC_lun]

Guys, there is a hell of a difference between entering a country illegally to work your backside off to send money home for your family and dealing drug and such. If you can't see the difference it says a lot.

 

[Big Don]

Guys, there is a hell of a difference between entering a country illegally to work your backside off to send money home for your family and dealing drug and such. If you can't see the difference it says a lot.

Yeah, because, as we all know, it is only possible to work your backside off in designated areas.

 

[Cryozombie]

Guys, there is a hell of a difference between entering a country illegally to work your backside off to send money home for your family and dealing drug and such. If you can't see the difference it says a lot.

It is different, but it's also the same. Look at the root of what both My and Bills examples are saying without the specifics:

I have less, I see someone with more, I want that and I feel the only way to achieve that is to break the law to get it.

Admittedly, Circumstances in Mexico, Poland, Russia, or any of the other places a majority of the illegal immigrants who come into the country are different and therefore may be difficult for many of us here to fully comprehend. I get that. But by the same token, if I were dirt poor living in conditions of squalor as Bill exampled, I don't know that I'd necessarily go "Gosh, since Canada is so great, I should, at great risk, sneak into their country and take advantage of what they have to offer to try and make a better life" knowing the risks of getting there, trying to integrate into their way of life, possibly being hated for being American, etc... rather, I think if I was willing to bust my *** to make a few dollars in Canada after taking all that risk, and dealing with the hardships of just getting there and staying there... I could probably find a way to use that energy and ability to better my situation where I am. Maybe not in the dilapidated Mexican Village Bill described, or some Polish Slum, but you cannot convince me that all of Mexico is like that village and that if they could take the time to sneak here, they could go someplace there with less effort and risk and find work, or that there are not places that someone could go and live... better... off the land, gardening and/or farming.

But Maybe it's true. Maybe those places are so *** backwards, dilapidated and the people so uneducated and hopeless that they don't have or can't see a better way, and I just can't fathom that kind of existence...

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

Which is worse morally, crossing a border illegally to find work to feed your family or obeying the law and watching them starve?

This is a false dichotomy. Your question makes the assumption that these are the only two options specifically, and the only two options which people who illegally cross the border consider generally.

There are other options available then those which you posit. The argument over illegal immigrations morality does not fall so neatly in line with the options that you choose to present. For instance, and this one is not so sinister as some that might be posited, perhaps the person can feed his family, but wants a better life for then then they currently have. This one is actually MUCH more likely then the "watching the family starve" theory.

Studies have found that 26% of children between 5 and 11 are overweight, compared to 19% for the same age group in the U.S. 71% of Mexican women and 66% of Mexican men are overweight, compared to fewer then 10% in 1989. 3/4 of Mexico City's 70,000 member police force are overweight.

So people in Mexico aren't starving. They may have other issues, but not eating isn't one of them.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

So just to be clear, you place the law as a higher good than the lives of your family?

That's one way of looking at it, I guess.

I think what Suk is trying to say is that certain of his principles are important to him as a person. If I wanted to take a simplistic version of your question of clarification, I could insert a specific law, such a murder, to substitute for your general provision, such as:

"So just to be clear, you place the law against murder as a higher good than the lives of your family?"

If so, then I'm certain he would say yes. But, I honestly don't think that's what you meant.

What he, I think, is saying, is that he would do every legal thing within his power to support and help his family before ever even considering breaking the law to do so. And that may include options that might risk his own well-being, such as working to change a corrupt government which is keeping him from feeding his family.

His statement doesn't sound so sinister then, does it?

 

[Tez3]

Illegal immigration is not immoral because it's something decided by a court of law as to whether people are allowed to live in your country or not. If the law can be changed to say anyone can come to your country it then it can't be immoral, it's a point of law not morals.
Perhaps we are slightly different from America in that many of our illegal immigrants come from places like Somalia and Sudan as well as the more well known places. They take huge risks to get here, many die on the way here but the hope of not just a better life but just a life drives them forward. A lot of our illegals are fleeing from Rhodesia, white people as well as black, others fled Afghanistan when it was under the Taliban, once here although they arrived illegally many have applied for asylum.

It's fine having principles but they don't put food in your children's stomachs, there are many places so poor on this planet that parents and families can't afford to have morals, they will flee from country to country looking for a life for their children. People who may be well off in material terms may also flee when their and their families are at risk as they were and still are in many places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

What the situation is in South America I don't know but the OP doesn't indicate any particular country or any particular group of immigrants.

If your children are starving, if your family is facing torture, if you are in the middle of a warzone and your limbs have been macheted off or your womenfolk raped to death, if you face death camps, all these type of things then no it is not immoral to flee and enter any country you can.

I think we need to be clear in our laws about helping the people who need it and not helping those who have little need to be in a country. I believe a country should be open to helping refugees and giving them sanctuary, a humane people can do no less. We don't need to support those however who can support themselves in or have nothing to fear from living in their own country. Many refugees can bring with them a lot to offer a country that takes them in, the refugees from the Taliban for example were mostly doctors, lawyers and others who didn't have the approval of the Taliban to live, female teachers, medics etc especially faced death and torture but they can offer a lot to their new home, they often hope to go back to their original countries too.

Immigration is a subject that need a careful look at it not a blanket of disapproval covering all cases.

 

[Sukerkin]

So just to be clear, you place the law as a higher good than the lives of your family?

Well there's a whole other worthwhile moral discussion there about becoming what you despise to survive ... but that's not what I said, EH.

Bill framed a question, laying out the parameters that bounded the question and requested a Yes/No answer with no elaboration or equivocation. I gave my honest answer to that question based upon my own life experiences and the moral decisions I have made along the way.

Kenpo did a good job of laying out a little more detail of what I had in mind as a background to my answer (thank you, good sir).

As an aside, Gran (I think) made a valid point that being amongst the poor in England is very different than being amongst the poor in somewhere like Somalia. That is very true. But I don't think that Mexico is quite as bad as somewhere like that - I could be wrong, of course, because I don't live there and all reported statistics (upon which I can base an opinion) are ever suspect due to their subjective compilation.

It's a dangerous question to ask as it risks de-railing the thread but why are things so bad in Mexico that a country of that size with the resources it has cannot provide gainful employment for so many of it's citizens?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I hear you Bill. I struggle by often living on peanut butter and ramen, while I see the street gangs and drug dealers in my neighborhood driving Escalades, and Porches and wearing more gold than Fort Knox and I say "Gee, I should poison and shoot people too so I can have nice things"

By that reasoning, then, there can be no distinction made between dealing drugs and cheating on your taxes, or doing a California stop on a stop sign, or exceeding the speed limit. Ever fail to pull over promptly for a fire truck? You might as well be a gangster or a murderer or a rapist, they're the same thing.

I would tend to reject the notion that there are no degrees of gradation to law-breaking.

 

[Tez3]

By that reasoning, then, there can be no distinction made between dealing drugs and cheating on your taxes, or doing a California stop on a stop sign, or exceeding the speed limit. Ever fail to pull over promptly for a fire truck? You might as well be a gangster or a murderer or a rapist, they're the same thing.

I would tend to reject the notion that there are no degrees of gradation to law-breaking.

What's that? it sounds a bit iffy lol! In Italy traffic lights are considered as an idea not a rule so driving is very interesting there.

 

[Empty Hands]

Well there's a whole other worthwhile moral discussion there about becoming what you despise to survive ... but that's not what I said, EH.

Bill framed a question, laying out the parameters that bounded the question and requested a Yes/No answer with no elaboration or equivocation.

Bill stipulated in his question that your family was living in squalor, with very little to eat. I took that to mean that they were starving, or that their lives were in danger more generally. YMMV. That is also why I asked a clarifying question rather than unloading on you.

 

[Cryozombie]

By that reasoning, then, there can be no distinction made between dealing drugs and cheating on your taxes, or doing a California stop on a stop sign, or exceeding the speed limit. Ever fail to pull over promptly for a fire truck? You might as well be a gangster or a murderer or a rapist, they're the same thing.

I would tend to reject the notion that there are no degrees of gradation to law-breaking.

That wasn't my argument. Let me quote my follow up post:

It is different, but it's also the same. Look at the root of what both My and Bills examples are saying without the specifics:

I have less, I see someone with more, I want that and I feel the only way to achieve that is to break the law to get it.

Of course there are degrees. Nothing is absolute or even Black and White.

Also, since we are discussing the severity of the crime, I have to ask, where DO we draw the line?

Ok, we say "Its ok for them to come over illegally, we'll forgive it, its like a parking ticket in severity"

So then they come over, and forge Identity documents. Do we forgive that? What about when they use someone Elses legitimate SSN and **** their credit, is that forgivable or not? Then what about when they drive without a license and insurance? How about when they work under the table for cash and fail to pay federal and state income taxes? Do we say "Well, gosh, all that wouldn't have happened if we just let them come here legally in the first place, so its really not their fault they broke all those additional laws?" or do we hold them accountable and at what point and for which violations?

 

[Empty Hands]

"So just to be clear, you place the law against murder as a higher good than the lives of your family?"

If so, then I'm certain he would say yes. But, I honestly don't think that's what you meant.

Something like it. I might break that law if it meant saving their lives, if I could be sure it would save their lives anyway (can't really say for sure). My greatest responsibility is to the lives of my family, not the laws of the country or anyone else's life. I think you would find that many people believe similarly. Would you sacrifice your child's life to save three strangers? If not, then you believe in the same basic premise.

How much less than my moral responsibility to the law when the law in question is either a misdemeanor or an infraction? How could anyone claim to be a moral or a good person when they wouldn't even commit a misdemeanor to save the lives of their family? I would feel bad for their children.

Laws are meant to serve a higher good, the well being and peace of the citizens underneath it. The law is not a higher good in and of itself. When the law ceases to serve that higher good, it should be disobeyed.

Think of the alternative, if the law is taken as a higher good than human well being. Every law, no matter how unjust or evil, would take moral precedence over human life. Want to shelter the Jews in Poland during Nazi occupation? Illegal and thus immoral. Want to shelter a runaway slave in New England? Illegal and thus immoral. And so forth. I think you will find that placing the law on the highest moral pedestal has very little logical or popular support.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Also, since we are discussing the severity of the crime, I have to ask, where DO we draw the line?

Ok, we say "Its ok for them to come over illegally, we'll forgive it, its like a parking ticket in severity"

You have to define what you mean by 'OK'. It is not legal. That is not OK. I don't care about this type of crime. So to me, it's 'OK'. I believe it is generally immoral to not obey laws, so that makes it 'not OK'. However, I don't care in this case. So it's 'OK'.

Which OK are you referring to?

This is common, and it is used as an argument-ender by supplying false logic.

Q: Do you find it immoral to cross the border illegally?
A: No.
Q: Then you agree that it is OK to break the law.

The truth is that you ask about one kind of "OK" and then use it to reframe the answer given to mean another kind of "OK."

No, I do not think it is OK to break the law. However, although my religion and my upbringing compel me to admit that breaking the law is also morally wrong, I find that I frankly do not care. So to me? OK. I just do not care. My not caring does not make it OK to the world, or to the law, nor does it mean that I want people to break the law or rape buildings or rob children. It means I do not care about THIS particular thing. Trying to paint my answer as meaning something else is a very very old trick. It only works if the person you do it to doesn't notice. I noticed.

If we catch an illegal alien, we should arrest them and deport them. Our laws should be obeyed. Am I going to lose sleep over the millions of illegal aliens that come to the USA to find work? Nope. Not for one minute. That implies nothing except what I just said; that I personally do not care.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Laws are meant to serve a higher good, the well being and peace of the citizens underneath it. The law is not a higher good in and of itself. When the law ceases to serve that higher good, it should be disobeyed.

I am in favor of rule by law. I also accept that the law (as quoted) is an ***; it is a sword that cuts without noticing what it has damaged. However, I accept the notion that laws are meant to be followed, and I support the idea that they should be.

That does not mean I personally care if a given law is enforced or not. With regard to illegal immigrants coming across the US border illegally in order to find work, I simply do not care. Yes, they are illegal. If caught, prosecute and send them back. I do not want my rights infringed in an attempt to catch them, nor do I particularly care to see my tax dollars spent trying to catch them. I do not care. No one can make me care. I won't start caring. And that is my right. Support the law? Yes. In this particular instance, I just do not care if it is enforced or not. It's nothing to do with support of laws in general or the 'morals' of the situation. I'm can't be arsed to care, that's all.

 

[Big Don]

Laws are meant to serve a higher good, the well being and peace of the citizens underneath it. The law is not a higher good in and of itself. When the law ceases to serve that higher good, it should be disobeyed.

Those sneaking across borders are NOT citizens...