The beginning is just semantics. The police *try* to catch all murderers. ICE can *try* to deport all illegal aliens. Saying they have to do this within time, budget and manpower constraints goes without saying.
The rest is more of the same. If it's not plainly obvious at this point that letting the entire world in here - to feed off the welfare state, vote for policies and politicians at odds with current population, and radically change the culture - is bad, especially in light of what we can see happening in western Europe, there's just no common ground on which to debate anymore. Just using standard naive liberal and libertarian language about people being free, government not owning the land, arbitrary lines, or whatever is a waste if you don't address what people can see with their own eyes.
100%. It is a logical fallacy that if we cannot deport everyone, we should deport no one. This sounds like a variation of the so-called “no true Scotsman” fallacy, but it also sounds like the fallacy that we should try communism because “no one has REALLY tried it”. Shame on Bryan.
This what I saw as one fallacy in the argument. ICE etc should deport people who are here illegally. They should prioritize resources to deport criminals and very bad people, and those people should never be allowed to immigrate. Prioritizing is difficult and imperfect but it is not a defense to say you know you are illegal and deserve to be deported but somewhere there is someone worse than you.
I also think immigration should be limited to folks who want to come here and become Americans and part of our culture. No welfare. No extra credit for congressional representatives. Census should identify citizens from noncitizens.
It is not at all clear that unlimited illegal immigration is good, and Bryan’s facile arguments are worth thinking about but need a careful rebuttal.
Fortunately, Bryan did not say that "If we cannot deport everyone, we should deport no one." He responded to the debate resolution, which amounted to "We should deport literally everyone who lacks legal status." He pointed out that this resolution is clearly false even if we should deport many people.
He then gave a separate argument for why we should not deport people who have only violated immigration restrictions.
If the debare resolution as worded is a "straw man," then Bryan's opponent should not have agreed to defend that resolution. He should have instead asked to defend a more plausible claim. I don't think criticizing the specific claim that is the subject of the debate is criticizing a straw man.
Because he is arguing against a position that almost nobody is taking. I see the comment from Nathan below, so maybe there's a reason why it came up in context, but out of that context as a general essay for a blog I find it pointless.
you have inserted the word "try" which does not exist in the resolution being debated. saying the police should try to catch all murderers is uncontroversial. saying they actually should catch all murderers is far more extreme.
Again, semantics and word parsing. Do you not actually understand the plain intention? In daily conversation, to not "try" implies turning a blind eye to murders you could reasonable arrest someone for, or perhaps in a certain contexts giving up due to low staffing or lack of resources. Go ahead and parse that if you like and we can repeat the process by adding more unenlightening caveats.
I am surprised that you do not discuss the political aspect of mass legal immigration. The immigrants, or at least their children, will acquire socio-political power over us natives, which there is some reason to expect them to use to our detriment. The social and political culture of the United States, which is what allows us to prosper, is based on the personal characteristics of the people living here and, especially, of the voters. The evidence that this culture would be degraded by mass immigration is worth examining and evaluating.
There is no help for the fact that each of us is subject to the collective will of his fellow citizens. While our circumstances could be better, we Americans are relatively lucky regarding the group that wields power over us. (I wish I could persuade certain of them to emigrate; but, still, they constitute a relatively beneficent collection.) We would do well to add to that group in a way that makes it even better.
Yes, any person who understands the plain meaning of words should have voted for your position, period.
The moderator made a bad ruling and basically said people could go with “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”
Your opponent did an absolutely terrible job of negotiating what the resolution was.
So if your only goal was to win the debate, you did an excellent job of negotiating the resolution, and you were in fact bogusly robbed of your victory by a bad moderator and a bad voting audience.
However, if a part of your goal was to have the most interesting, informative debate possible, then imo you failed at the resolution negotiation as well.
IMO the debate would have been far, far more interesting had it been about ICE deporting *most* of the illegal aliens in the country.
Another obvious problem with your argument is that enforcement makes additional enforcement easier. While non-enforcement makes future enforcement harder.
The more murderers I put away, the fewer people committed murder, because they know they are going to get caught. That's why crime fell like 99% in El Salvador and why there is no crime to begin with in Singapore.
We have a lot of illegal immigration because the illegal immigrants calculate that the odds of being caught and the punishment exceed the benefits of immigration.
Enforcing the law gets easier, not harder, as you successfully enforce the law because it changes the incentive structure of the criminals.
I can list off the top of my head several countries that manage to exercise essentially 100% control on immigration at minimum cost. See: All of East Asia for instance.
Philosophically, I agree. Immigration should be orderly, but vast. I highly doubt that any serious person cares about somebody filling out a form, paying some cash and getting into the country legally. There is a bigger, political issue here. Given our two party system, the party that supports open borders has also fully support "abolish the police" and to extort money from people to give to others who don't work via welfare systems. One can agree on the migration perspective, but government policy is not philosophy. Voting for the party that will give us enhanced migration, also means voting for the party that seeks to end wealth creation and turns a blind eye to justice.
One critical comment. You write, "I previously debated immigration at LibertyCon right after the release of Ross Ulbricht. The attendees were overjoyed that the founder of the Silk Road was out on the street. So was I, but I understand the other side. So what? Simple: It’s very odd to support an American’s right to sell narcotics and weapons on the dark web, but not a foreigner’s right to wash dishes and pick vegetables on a U.S. farm."
Your implicit view is that Ross Ulbricht sold narcotics and weapons on the dark web. My understanding is that he didn't.
Bryan ends by comparing the Gulf monarchies to Japan and saying Japan is missing out on innovation due to a lack of low-skilled immigrant workers. Do the Gulf monarchies produce more innovation than Japan?
The beginning would have never convinced me; I do indeed support the police putting all murderers in jail. You could have just said that if ICE tried to complete its mandate then false positives would increase rather than doing the word games.
If you homed in more on the positive economic effects of immigration then you would have convinced more people. The friedmanite angle is really good.
The US has about 350 thousand "laws," and the average person unknowingly breaks them about three times a day. As a result, anyone can be found guilty at court anytime.
As for the libertarian argument, what is "our" country? In the US, even the people are assets of those who own the highjacked government:
The globalist forces have bought up just about everything that matters on the biggest scam in history, the Stock Market, using the money stolen from the people by their private central banks that are present everywhere. The country is the collateral, "with all its residents, their assets, and lives and limbs":
What is "the law"? Do the puppet Trump's executive orders qualify, which retroactively turns the misdemeanor of overstaying into a crime? Many of the newcomers were literally coaxed and shipped into the country, only to provide an excuse for violating everybody's (obviously conditional) "civil rights," and the old ones have legitimate children and have been paying taxes for decades.
Violating people's self-determination went way overboard with the convid edicts. People have been conditioned to get used to being treated like slaves, which they happen to be a fact.
“. . . stricter enforcement means more false positives,” and it also means more false semi- positives, more cases where an innocent person is harassed and inconvenienced before finally being released because no strong case can be made against him. One often sees reports of ICE harassing a U.S. citizen, demanding that he prove his citizenship.
I agree your opponent has an indefensible position. When you’re defending an “always” or a “never”, you are nearly bound to fail as your position succumbs to singular exceptions. I agree that deporting “all actual” illegal immigrants would require draconian measures, unacceptable expense, and/or excessive false positives.
A more realistic goal would be to only address “all identified or confirmed illegal immigrants”. Deport all that you find, without committing to expending unlimited means in order to find all that actually exist.
As usual, my objection to your other arguments is that the host nation’s prime objective is not to raise the output or earning potential of an immigrant compared to their country of origin. The fiduciary duty of a country is to maximize the prosperity and welfare of their own citizens. Immigration should be allowed to the extent that it serves the host nation’s fiduciary responsibilities.
It is also unclear to me whether your form of “immigration” involves the right of permanent residency or not. I see no reason why your vision could not be served simply with “work visas”, which allows the exchange of labor which you value greatly, without any of the inherent costs that accrue to the host nation with “citizens”.
The beginning is just semantics. The police *try* to catch all murderers. ICE can *try* to deport all illegal aliens. Saying they have to do this within time, budget and manpower constraints goes without saying.
The rest is more of the same. If it's not plainly obvious at this point that letting the entire world in here - to feed off the welfare state, vote for policies and politicians at odds with current population, and radically change the culture - is bad, especially in light of what we can see happening in western Europe, there's just no common ground on which to debate anymore. Just using standard naive liberal and libertarian language about people being free, government not owning the land, arbitrary lines, or whatever is a waste if you don't address what people can see with their own eyes.
100%. It is a logical fallacy that if we cannot deport everyone, we should deport no one. This sounds like a variation of the so-called “no true Scotsman” fallacy, but it also sounds like the fallacy that we should try communism because “no one has REALLY tried it”. Shame on Bryan.
This what I saw as one fallacy in the argument. ICE etc should deport people who are here illegally. They should prioritize resources to deport criminals and very bad people, and those people should never be allowed to immigrate. Prioritizing is difficult and imperfect but it is not a defense to say you know you are illegal and deserve to be deported but somewhere there is someone worse than you.
I also think immigration should be limited to folks who want to come here and become Americans and part of our culture. No welfare. No extra credit for congressional representatives. Census should identify citizens from noncitizens.
It is not at all clear that unlimited illegal immigration is good, and Bryan’s facile arguments are worth thinking about but need a careful rebuttal.
Fortunately, Bryan did not say that "If we cannot deport everyone, we should deport no one." He responded to the debate resolution, which amounted to "We should deport literally everyone who lacks legal status." He pointed out that this resolution is clearly false even if we should deport many people.
He then gave a separate argument for why we should not deport people who have only violated immigration restrictions.
He wasted time on a semantic strawman before getting to his actual position which is that we shouldn't deport anyone anyway.
If the debare resolution as worded is a "straw man," then Bryan's opponent should not have agreed to defend that resolution. He should have instead asked to defend a more plausible claim. I don't think criticizing the specific claim that is the subject of the debate is criticizing a straw man.
why do you think it's a strawman?
Because he is arguing against a position that almost nobody is taking. I see the comment from Nathan below, so maybe there's a reason why it came up in context, but out of that context as a general essay for a blog I find it pointless.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Latest-HarvardHarris-Poll-Shows-Increasing-Support-Mass-Deportations
in this poll 56% of respondents, including 37% of democrats(!) said they suppory "Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally"
given the source i wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were inflated but it's not almost nobody.
you have inserted the word "try" which does not exist in the resolution being debated. saying the police should try to catch all murderers is uncontroversial. saying they actually should catch all murderers is far more extreme.
Ok, no welfare and no votes for immigrants, but let them come and live and work. What's wrong with that?
The police should not *try* to catch all murderers. You’d be unhappy with the result if they did. This is precisely his point.
Again, semantics and word parsing. Do you not actually understand the plain intention? In daily conversation, to not "try" implies turning a blind eye to murders you could reasonable arrest someone for, or perhaps in a certain contexts giving up due to low staffing or lack of resources. Go ahead and parse that if you like and we can repeat the process by adding more unenlightening caveats.
this is ambiguous. it could also mean there shouldn't be any murder they don't make some attempt to investigate, which i think sounds reasonable
I am surprised that you do not discuss the political aspect of mass legal immigration. The immigrants, or at least their children, will acquire socio-political power over us natives, which there is some reason to expect them to use to our detriment. The social and political culture of the United States, which is what allows us to prosper, is based on the personal characteristics of the people living here and, especially, of the voters. The evidence that this culture would be degraded by mass immigration is worth examining and evaluating.
There is no help for the fact that each of us is subject to the collective will of his fellow citizens. While our circumstances could be better, we Americans are relatively lucky regarding the group that wields power over us. (I wish I could persuade certain of them to emigrate; but, still, they constitute a relatively beneficent collection.) We would do well to add to that group in a way that makes it even better.
I'm on your side, but you're attacking a strawman.
Police don't try to imprison every murderer.
But they do try to imprison every *convicted* murderer who has been sentenced to prison by a court.
There's a vast difference. I don't think your opponent was opposing due process.
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence” - Vince Lombardi
Yes.
But a) that is not what the debate resolution was, and b) Bryan’s opponent didn’t merely argue that, he argued for the totality of the resolution.
I was at the debate.
Yes, any person who understands the plain meaning of words should have voted for your position, period.
The moderator made a bad ruling and basically said people could go with “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”
Your opponent did an absolutely terrible job of negotiating what the resolution was.
So if your only goal was to win the debate, you did an excellent job of negotiating the resolution, and you were in fact bogusly robbed of your victory by a bad moderator and a bad voting audience.
However, if a part of your goal was to have the most interesting, informative debate possible, then imo you failed at the resolution negotiation as well.
IMO the debate would have been far, far more interesting had it been about ICE deporting *most* of the illegal aliens in the country.
Another obvious problem with your argument is that enforcement makes additional enforcement easier. While non-enforcement makes future enforcement harder.
The more murderers I put away, the fewer people committed murder, because they know they are going to get caught. That's why crime fell like 99% in El Salvador and why there is no crime to begin with in Singapore.
We have a lot of illegal immigration because the illegal immigrants calculate that the odds of being caught and the punishment exceed the benefits of immigration.
Enforcing the law gets easier, not harder, as you successfully enforce the law because it changes the incentive structure of the criminals.
I can list off the top of my head several countries that manage to exercise essentially 100% control on immigration at minimum cost. See: All of East Asia for instance.
Philosophically, I agree. Immigration should be orderly, but vast. I highly doubt that any serious person cares about somebody filling out a form, paying some cash and getting into the country legally. There is a bigger, political issue here. Given our two party system, the party that supports open borders has also fully support "abolish the police" and to extort money from people to give to others who don't work via welfare systems. One can agree on the migration perspective, but government policy is not philosophy. Voting for the party that will give us enhanced migration, also means voting for the party that seeks to end wealth creation and turns a blind eye to justice.
Excellent post!
One critical comment. You write, "I previously debated immigration at LibertyCon right after the release of Ross Ulbricht. The attendees were overjoyed that the founder of the Silk Road was out on the street. So was I, but I understand the other side. So what? Simple: It’s very odd to support an American’s right to sell narcotics and weapons on the dark web, but not a foreigner’s right to wash dishes and pick vegetables on a U.S. farm."
Your implicit view is that Ross Ulbricht sold narcotics and weapons on the dark web. My understanding is that he didn't.
He ran Silk Road, which facilitated such transactions.
Exactly.
I watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dN5xTrfECY
Bryan ends by comparing the Gulf monarchies to Japan and saying Japan is missing out on innovation due to a lack of low-skilled immigrant workers. Do the Gulf monarchies produce more innovation than Japan?
Ok let's just deport 90% then.
The beginning would have never convinced me; I do indeed support the police putting all murderers in jail. You could have just said that if ICE tried to complete its mandate then false positives would increase rather than doing the word games.
If you homed in more on the positive economic effects of immigration then you would have convinced more people. The friedmanite angle is really good.
The US has about 350 thousand "laws," and the average person unknowingly breaks them about three times a day. As a result, anyone can be found guilty at court anytime.
As for the libertarian argument, what is "our" country? In the US, even the people are assets of those who own the highjacked government:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/whose-assets-are-the-people
The globalist forces have bought up just about everything that matters on the biggest scam in history, the Stock Market, using the money stolen from the people by their private central banks that are present everywhere. The country is the collateral, "with all its residents, their assets, and lives and limbs":
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/you-will-own-nothing-because-you
What is "the law"? Do the puppet Trump's executive orders qualify, which retroactively turns the misdemeanor of overstaying into a crime? Many of the newcomers were literally coaxed and shipped into the country, only to provide an excuse for violating everybody's (obviously conditional) "civil rights," and the old ones have legitimate children and have been paying taxes for decades.
Violating people's self-determination went way overboard with the convid edicts. People have been conditioned to get used to being treated like slaves, which they happen to be a fact.
No law is made to be broken, but many are made to be changed. Be surprised you not aware of Lincoln's Lyceum speech .
“. . . stricter enforcement means more false positives,” and it also means more false semi- positives, more cases where an innocent person is harassed and inconvenienced before finally being released because no strong case can be made against him. One often sees reports of ICE harassing a U.S. citizen, demanding that he prove his citizenship.
I agree your opponent has an indefensible position. When you’re defending an “always” or a “never”, you are nearly bound to fail as your position succumbs to singular exceptions. I agree that deporting “all actual” illegal immigrants would require draconian measures, unacceptable expense, and/or excessive false positives.
A more realistic goal would be to only address “all identified or confirmed illegal immigrants”. Deport all that you find, without committing to expending unlimited means in order to find all that actually exist.
As usual, my objection to your other arguments is that the host nation’s prime objective is not to raise the output or earning potential of an immigrant compared to their country of origin. The fiduciary duty of a country is to maximize the prosperity and welfare of their own citizens. Immigration should be allowed to the extent that it serves the host nation’s fiduciary responsibilities.
It is also unclear to me whether your form of “immigration” involves the right of permanent residency or not. I see no reason why your vision could not be served simply with “work visas”, which allows the exchange of labor which you value greatly, without any of the inherent costs that accrue to the host nation with “citizens”.