Quote:
Originally Posted by Annie1004
Are you really 20??? Bottom line is someone who comes to the US illegally does not belong here. Period. It is NOT their country. Period. What part of illegal do I need to explain?
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It depends. Have you read Hayek's
Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty? It's fine if you have only read portions. If you haven't been introduced to its concepts though there is little that we can discuss without the common framework.
However I will say this much. This is our country. It certainly is my country. My great-great-grandfather was a US Citizen. He was also a Mexican national. He was born in neither the US or Mexico, but in a German state that no longer exists. Through him I have a branch of family members who have been born here since the turn of the century. They are all US citizens. They've been settled in the Los Angeles region for over a hundred years now. You would think they were newcomers from their mannerisms and culture. Their English is perfect, but they will speak Spanish among themselves with such fluency you have a hard time believing they could be US citizens.
My great-grandfather elected to maintain only Mexican citizenship, as an act of rebellion against his father who cheated on his mother. My grandfather and father respectively were frequent visitors to the USA, and spent several years respectively living on this side of the line during their lifetimes. My father is on his path to become a resident and eventually citizen. All five generations, including myself, have been versed in English and Spanish. With the exception of myself and my father (an atheist) Hebrew is also known and spoken.
We are not invaders. We are businessmen. We have had, and continue to have, businesses in just about everything. My family has created countless jobs on both sides of the border. Some family members are US citizens. Others are Mexican citizens. Some migrated when the migration laws were lax. Others migrated afterward when the current broken system came into place. Some are legal, and some are illegal. All of them consider themselves both American and Mexican because - well we are. We know the Mexican culture, and we know the American culture. We are also, needless to say as a business family, firmly opponents of the damn socialists. My grandfather spent the last election cycle in Mexico trying to discourage votes for the PRD candidate (a damned leftie!). We've never wanted any handouts. We don't want any filthy free food stamps. I've made this very
very clear in the past - I do not support state welfare and would ask no threat of force used on other men in order to fund any welfare. A man owns the fruit of his labour. To take it without his consent is theft, and I could never justify such a thing.
Through an incidence of birth and time I was born in Mexico long after the migration laws of FDR and his cronies was set into stone. I was brought over when I was two. I do not have memories of Mexico, but I know the culture because of my family. I don't care for it much because I consider myself a California before all else. There is no pathway to citizenship for me. Am I to self deport to Mexico? I have family there, to be sure. I don't care for them, but they are there. I speak the language, and grudgingly know the culture. I would be heart broken, but I could survive it. When I was in my middle age I might even have my ban lifted and be allowed to apply to enter 'legally'. When I'm sixty I might even be a citizen!
It isn't home though. I see no reason to pretend it is. I see no reason to think myself a foreigner in California. This is my home. By blood I am descended by a US citizen. I have cousins who descended from a different branch that didn't forfeit their citizenship. Am I less Californian than them by virtue of my birthplace? We share the same ancestry, the same culture, the same language. Is birthplace the determinant?
Even if I had no ancestry in the states I would feel entitled to claim to be Californian. I have made myself a Californian. That is what a man does, he makes himself. He does not allow his birthplace to decide what he will be. No more than he allows being born into poverty to detract him from success by his own right. Have I done wrong to others by the act of living? No. I wasn't accepted into a university because of my descent, I was accepted by virtue of my merit.
My merit. Any job I take is not a job taken away from a US citizen. It is simply a job taken by the better man. If an employer decides that this better man is myself and not another, should the other man cry foul play simply because he is a US Citizen? If a man needs to resort to claiming he owns a job by the virtue of his birth, he ceases to be a man. He is an imp or a dog, but not a man. A man makes himself, and should he fail he fixes himself.
I wait eagerly for the day that I am a citizen. Not so that I may use it to vote handouts to myself, but to allow others to be free of the unneeded obstacles that governments so frequently create. I have done no wrong. Nor have my parents done anything wrong. We have never robbed. We have never killed. We have never harmed another person or their property. To the contrary we have served others continually. We have run a shoe store. We have worked in restaurants. We have owned one or two of our own! This is not thievery. That is business.
Call us illegals. Blame us for all your woes and ills. The only wrong we have done is to ever believe the opinion of lesser men and women means anything.
But I digress. When you have read Hayek we may perhaps have a more fruitful conversation. Read the use of
Knowledge in Society afterward. That should give you some background on why it's silly to say that we need economic controls of migration. I'd advice literature on the effects of prohibition, but that might be too much to ask someone before having a proper discussion on a given topic. (It's a joke you see? Since Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty is 3 volumes by themselves. Seriously though, read up on the economic effects of prohibition. Ignore those who'll say that economics is divorced from reality. They are themselves, ironically, divorced from reality.)
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