Many of the posts on this blog (in fact, probably most) have to do with the topic of illegal immigration. Here are some excerpts(although I would encourage those who have the time to go over there and read the posts in full):
...we are told of the "basic human rights" of the illegal immigrant.
But what rights are these? Do they include the right to invade a sovereign nation and violate its laws? There is no right to be granted citizenship; it is privilege foreign-born persons must apply for. It is true that we are a nation of immigrants. But it is false that we are a nation of illegal immigrants.
There are certain actions, such as crossing the border without permission, that reasonable people deem unacceptable. So these actions are made illegal. These laws are reasonable and just and every country has them. So what do the good bishops propose? They would change the laws so that these very same unacceptable actions are no longer accounted illegal.
(samples quoted from here)
Let me first start by noting that there are a lot of 'easy comebacks' to this man's position which could be offered by those who disagree with him (for example, one might note that in whatever form the previous indigenous inhabitants of North America had a legal system, it would be hard to construe that it provided for large groups of people to attack and kill them and take over their land). However, what is possibly a little more intricate(and also much more valuable) would be to point out the fundamental mistakes that this man is making in his implicit and explicit assumptions.
To begin with I would question this blogger's assertion that "There are certain actions, such as crossing the border without permission, that reasonable people deem unacceptable." In its unclarified form, this statement is entirely untenable. If the blogger himself were to awake one day and find that his home had been neatly cordoned off and made a separate country so that a border existed around it, and that he was not to be permitted under any circumstances to cross it, I am certain that he would question the validity of this assertion in an amount of time less than or equal to the time that his groceries would last.
It is clear, then, that there are some borders which one ought to be able to cross without permission(such as the boundaries of one's home). Thus, this blogger must be inferring that some sort of non-arbitrary reason is in force for certain particular borders as regards his assertion. It would be improper of me to assume outright that I know what that reason is, but a clue might be given in his repeated use of the phrase 'a sovereign nation' throughout his blog. I think it would be fair to suggest that this blogger believes 'sovereign nations' have a degree of validity with regards to enforcement of their borders that arbitrary institutions or authorities do not have, such as if I personally were to define a border around this man's house.
So what is a sovereign nation? Dictionary.com defines sovereign as adj. Self-governing; independent: a sovereign state. So, is the implicit assumption of this blogger that having a community which is self-governing and independent gives it validity in asserting the requirement of permission over its borders? Again, we need only to turn to the possibility of being contained within one's own house to note the untenability of such an assertion. The simple fact of his neighbours organising themselves in a self-governing fashion would surely not be sufficient to allow them to doom this man to a slow death, would it? Perhaps a mere organisation of neighbours has not met the requirements for 'nation'? Let us then extend our little thought-experiment to the case in which this man's state were to organise and implement such a border. Would this then become a situation that the man (who, we assume, is a 'reasonable person') would deem acceptable? Perhaps neither of these situations suffice for our requirement of 'independent'? Then let us make the last and predictable step of extending our hypothetical to the situation in which this man's entire country cordons him off. It seems clear there is no change in our result.
It may be, however(and I think it is likely), that we have incorrectly determined the source of authority intended by the blogger for the establishment and traversal control of a border. I now venture a little further into the ether, but I would suggest there is a subtle implication in some of the bloggers comments that citizenship in his country is sort of like membership in a very special club which citizens have earned, and therefore it is unethical for others who have not earned that membership to take by their own means the benefits offered to those members. This blogger might say that the reason his own country would be unreasonable in cordoning him off from it is that he is a citizen of that country, and thus entitled not to be cut off from it. Lest this become a discussion of the concept of citizenship, let us suppose for the moment that this basis for enforcement of a border holds, since we are near to the definition of a citizen itself.
Finally, we can ask the question that is most pertinent to this discussion: is it fair? By which I mean, is it fair for there to be such a club which allows or denies membership and then enforces that membership strictly? Obviously, there is nothing inherently unfair in the existence of such an institution. However, the manner in which membership is determined may be executed in an unfair manner, i.e. under the influence of prejudice. Also, the actions of the club as an organisation may be unethical, although that is a different order altogether. So, how can we determine if prejudice is a relevant problem in our scenario? Well, a far greater wedge of 'reasonable people' than our good friend presented earlier might be inclined to agree with the assertion that such an institution is fair if any person who satisfies the requirements for membership is allowed to be a member, and if all are given equal opportunity to satisfy those requirements. It is at this point that we come to the essential point at which I personally would deny the 'fairness' of the institution in question: it is not in fact the case with this man's country that all are given equal opportunity to satisfy the requirements of membership. In most cases, what the citizens of this man's country have done to gain membership is simply to have been born into membership. Immediately and without any further forbearance, these people have been accepted for membership, whereas no matter what any person does who was born in another country, they are incapable of 'going back' and changing their selection of which country to be born in. Just as a human being is unable to select his or her skin colour, these people have no opportunity to fulfill the most common requirement of this man's country for citizenship: place of birth. If there were indeed legitimate requirements fairly levied against all would-be citizens of this man's country, including those born within it, such as personal contribution or something similar, which if not met would result in the refussal of acceptance equally in all cases, then we could say that this situation is fair. However, a situation which discriminates between people based on something they cannot choose or control, especially a situation having significant relevance for their health, well-being, and livelihood, cannot be called fair.
