A crime is a crime I find this "because it is a crime" to be the most insipid and stupid of all the anti immigration arguments. It used to be okay to consume alchohol, then it was a crime, then it wasn't anymore. The same used to be concerning mexican immigration. It used to be ok, then it was crime, then carter said it wasn't, now it is, and maybe tommorrow it won't be crime anymore.
Before WWII, anyone from europe could legally come to the US while no one from china or japan was allowed to legally immigrate to the US.
Here any chinese entering the US would be a criminal, while almost anyone else would not be.
It is the US history of racist immigration law that makes people suspect that immigration laws of the US are designed to criminalize based on race. Further, it seems that immigration laws can be capricous and arbitrary. It is easy to make illegal immigrants legal, and that is open the borders. Then voila, there are no more criminals.
You began your post by claiming that we obeying the LAW is not justification for certain actions. Your argument, I believe, is that "The Law can be broken, when the law is wrong".
Bastiat, the French economic philosopher, wrote in
The Law:
No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
As an individual, I would surely be tempted to break the law over something as important as moving to a country that will provide the means with which I would be able to feed my family. There would be no question of that. Furthermore, I would also be willing to accept most consequences: constant deportation, attacks on my dignity, etc. On the other hand, I would not be willing to accept long-term imprisonment since that would be counter to my purposes.
The question here is not about an individual's choice to break the law, but about the lawmaker's decision to reward the law-breakers at the expense of the law-abiders.
There is no way to safely stem the flow of illegal immigration. Opening the borders would still require the screening of aliens to determine whether or not they will comply with the law of our land.
We would hope to be able to keep out pedophiles, murderers and bandits, but how long would it be before the ACLU rose up to defend those who commit atrocities against their fellow man? (I can hear the pleas already;
They haven't been convicted by the standards of American law and
He was forced into it.)
How long would it be before the ACLU rose up to defend those who do not have employment prospects within our borders? (
How can he find a job, if he is not there for interviews?)
Then how long will it be before the ACLU rose up to defend the homeless, unemployed immigrant? (
We must provide housing for new immigrants until they can get a job and provide housing for themselves. Undoubtedly at the
law-abiding citizens expense.)
Then how long would it be before the ACLU rose up, again, to defend the inadequately housed? (
We must provide adequate housing, schooling and medical care for those who come here legally seeking employment).
In other words, as freeing as it may sound, opening the borders would guarantee a return to the pioneer days of lawlwssness, of train and bank robberies, of rampant prostitution, of plague, of poverty-ridden slums and of the equivalent of slavery. OR, opening the borders would impose such a cost on our society, that it would ensure the collapse of a Free America.
We can certainly set free borders as a goal, but in order to successfully handle the financial burden of such a manuever, we must first dispense with all public service programs that steal from Peter to pay Paul.
Opening the borders to "your tired, your weak, your hungry" is the last step we, as a nation, should take in a program that attempts to fix our very corrupt legislative system.