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Immigration Follow-Up

This is a fair warning that you may be the victims of a tortured analogy or two, drawn from geeky pop culture. One objection to a fairly open, porous border as I laid it out was that terrorists and sex traffickers could easily take advantage of an easier system to harm the people that they intend to harm. The problem with this argument as it is made in defense of the current restrictionism is that it is unfair to assume that many or most people that border agents would encounter are actually sex traffickers, or terrorists. I think a reasonable person could take steps to apprehend those engaged in such illegal activities, if they have probable cause to believe such a thing is taking place. It is not however appropriate to make the United States nearly impenetrable for legal immigration, simply for the sake of catching a few sex traffickers or terrorists in disguise. It is not difficult to make a superficially plausible argument for a flagrantly unjust policy position. No one would deny--for example--that Iraq could possibly have harmed the United States with chemical or biological weapons. Nevertheless, the immediacy of that concern is actually what determines whether the action taken in response--preemptive war--was just. In a similar way, no one would deny that police officers face unique threats, such that the use of lethal force is sometimes necessary. What we face today is a necessary debate concerning the real threat level to the lives and safety of police officers, and whether it is proportionate in general to the force that they have used against citizens.

In the season 3 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called, "The Offspring," the android Data creates an artificial life form from his brain. He calls it his "daughter," and for obvious reasons of Data's skill and potential, Starfleet command takes great interest in the new android's development, the daughter Data has named, "Lal". An Admiral comes aboard the Enterprise, ostensibly to oversee her development. Yet it becomes quickly apparent that the admiral actually wants to take Lal away from Data. The admiral claims that Data will make irreversible mistakes in training his daughter in the ways of living. Quite aside from the superficially fascinating arguments about parental rights that may or may not be held by an artificial life form, the admiral makes the claim that one lucky shot by an enemy could cause the loss of both androids. To me, the claim that family separations, or a mostly closed border are justifiable is comparable to the admiral's claim that the small chance of attack by an enemy justifies the separation of Lal and Data. Most people watching this story would agree with Picard and Data that the likelihood (or lack thereof) of an attack is not high enough to justify the denial of individual rights. It is possible that a terrorist or a sex trafficker could be posing as a vulnerable immigrant with a child. What we must decide is whether the remote possibility of this justifies the denial of a relatively easy entry into the United States for most people who wish to do so, via some orderly process.

The security apparatus of a free state is by definition reactive. If we actually believe this, we cannot make the United States impenetrable to any and every threat, without sacrificing a certain liberty which by definition we claim to possess and cherish. No warrant shall issue except on probable cause, and we have claimed to uphold that for nearly 3 centuries. I would hate to see that we carved out a special exception for those who come from elsewhere, and have brown or black skin.

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