Short answer yes with an if. The long answer is no with a but.
I’d say it’s racist if someone is complaining about illegal immigrants alongside a general contempt of ‘foreigners’ and not paying attention to the details of why it’s illegal for them to migrate the way they did and what options are available for legal migration.
It’s not racist to be opposed to those who are in violation of the law, as that is not a racial or ethnic classification. But it is important to be inquisitive as to why the law is the way that it is, and be willing to consider the possibility that just because something is against the law does not mean that it should be. Law has long been used as a tool of systemic oppression and racism, as well as many other horrific abuses inflicted on people.
Not really, but the racist part is opposing measures making it achievable and even simple to do so legally. Then all the terrible treatment along the way.
It’s not racist to take issur with illegal immigration.
It’s just not right to oppose the immigrants as people, or say that their situation is the result of some moral failing. These people make the best decisions for themselves and their families.
It becomes racist when you start attributing characteristics or behaviors to their race as fundamental attributes.
yes. the ones complaining about “immigrants” at all are the ones who made their lives shit in the first place.
let them in and fucking take care of them.
There could be many reasons to be opposed to it, not necessarily racist ones.
You can support the rule of law - that’s not racist. You may want to support legal immigration, while closing illegal ways that commonly lead to abuse of migrants - this is straight up progressive. You may consider illegal immigrants more dangerous as they didn’t go through screening procedures - that’s up for debate, but not necessarily racist, etc. And generally, if you consider that same rules should apply to everyone, this is not racist.
However, it’s worth considering the laws of your area and the way they can affect legal migration. Going against illegal immigration and at the same time voting to complicate legal one, especially in relation to certain nationals, likely signals of racism (or, rather, ultranationalism). It is one thing to want to make the process transparent and legal and the other - to build more barriers.
No,
because it doesn’t even fit the definition of racism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
Illegal immigrants are of absolutely all sorts, so there is no single human trait that is uniquely only found in illegal migrants. Also, people don’t oppose illegal migrants, they oppose illegal migration as a general thing. Illegal migrants are not the problem, they are simply the cause, and people hate the problems that arise in a society after to much illegal migration.
People need to stop calling everyone they disagree with racists, its so watered down that it completely lost any meaning and weight behind it. Didn’t get up to a granny on the bus? Racist. Driving a white car? Racist. Using an iPhone? Racist.
There is a version of illegal migration that I would support and truly leave an open door for everyone: You must adopt the culture, you must learn the language, you must find a job, you won’t get any welfare or housing and you can’t ask for anything in our society to be “like it was at your home”. And voila! Everyone welcome.
The term is a little racist. It is like defining someone as an excon, or ex convict, rather than someone who has spent time in prison. Or as disabled rather than a person with a disability. You define people as a simple thing rather than as a whole person with a feature. It flattens people into less than they are and makes them less than human.
So opposing people who flaunt the rules is a separate question to opposing illegal immigrants. You don’t dismiss their humanity, you don’t discard them, you say “You breeched the rules and here are the consequences.”
The second layer is whether you believe in the rules. Do you believe people from other countries are fundamentally different to you? Are they less because of where they come from? If so, yes, racist. If not, then probably not.
I wouldn’t say it’s racist to oppose illegal immigration, but it makes me suspect you might be and also makes me think you have very little empathy.
Considering the high proportion of the population with ancestors who were illegal immigrants, there’s also a question of what you consider as acceptable.
If illegal immigrants in the US are all white Christian beautiful women filling jobs that locals don’t want to do in healthcare, is it different than Pedro from Honduras who works in construction but looks like he could be a drug mule.
OP did not mention the US.
I feel like “illegal” immigration as a concept is inherently racist and being upset and anyone for not coming over the “right” way is also racist.
Without a one world government that could police people cross border, wouldn’t it be all to easy walk in to a country, do a bit crime, and then walk to the next one? Not to mention human trafficking problems if no one was tracked how they travel across countries.
Knowing that the system as it is now is wrong does not make me an expert on how we could prevent issues. But some people being able to “do a bit of crime” easier is probably better than the human rights violations that are occurring now. And even otherwise, open borders doesn’t inherently mean nothing with no one checking people. Just means you can freely travel. But also, Europe doesn’t seem to have an issue of people popping cross the border to “do a bit of crime” and go home to get off scott free. Because that’s not how borders and laws work.
And human trafficking is a problem with the world as it is currently. So that’s not stopping anything. And hell, it makes “illegal” immigrants easier targets of this kind of exploitation. Can’t really get much help if you’re in the country illegally and your family member is kidnapped.
So you think every person on the planet should be tracked every time they cross any border anywhere?
I don’t. I would obviously like a world where border control wasn’t necessary for travel. And it’s obviously not an impossibility considering the schengen area exists. But I don’t see tracking influx of immigrants to be a bad thing, if anything so you know how many resources to budget for their care (in the case of refugees) and making sure people don’t go missing.
Even if the law bars say only pedodiles from entry? Just hung up on the word anyone here. I’m guessing there are some number of people we can all agree should be kept outside of a given sect of people. Even back in the day there would be exile’s.
Then if we say some number of people should be bared there would be a “right” way.
I’m not saying immigration policy is good now. Far from it.
Who decides if someone’s a pedophile or not? How are you going to track that? Force people to take a test or something? Hell, currently we’re in a world where queer people, especially trans people, are called “groomers” and “pedophiles” for the sheer act of being trans. So you call people you don’t want to come in pedophiles and then they can’t come in. Nope, no trans people allowed because we’re all “pedophiles” according to the government.
Okay what, you’re going to limit it to people who’ve been convicted of child sex crimes. Well, then they make the existence of people who they don’t like count as sex crimes. Again, as is happening to trans people. Existing in public as yourself is a crime so you’re charged and treated the same as a pedophile.
So we’ve already covered why your logic is completely broken and this idea is stupid. But let’s push all of that aside. For the sake of argument, best case scenario, we are only talking about actual genuine pedophiles. Have they committed a crime? Are they in prison? Then they’re not crossing any borders since they’re incarcerated.
What if they haven’t committed a crime yet? Well then we’d have no way of knowing they’re a pedophile unless they admitted it themselves. And no these people shouldn’t be punished just for having those sexual desires. For one, most people are able to control themselves despite sexual urges. Cases of rapes and sexual assault are the result of power dynamics, not random uncontrollable urges. And two, these people should be given help given this could cause genuine mental distress.
What if they’ve committed a crime but served their time? Well, what justification is there to stop them? What if they harm another child? Well what if they do it in their own country? That’s not going to make a difference. And this also goes into the complex issue that is the prison system and how it’s largely useless at doing anything other than containing people as a punishment rather than actually attempting to help reform people.
Anyway no, I don’t think there’s any justification for restricting any kind of “undesirable” from entering a country. Beyond anything else, it just ends up a loophole to punish any group of people you don’t like by branding them as that undesirable. Same for every human right. If it doesn’t apply to everyone then it applies to no one.
And if you’re a special kind of dumbass who’d say “well what about nazis/the kkk/etc”, the answer is that ideologies that are inherently intolerant of other people just for existing do not get the benefit of tolerance themselves.
Why do you oppose them?
- The crime they don’t bring?
- Economic losses they don’t cause to citizen workers?
- Economic gains to domestic businesses?
- The contributions to social security & medicare they don’t get back?
- Because they’re not white?
- Because outsiders are convenient scapegoats for politicians to blame & flex power?
It’s important to pin down clear, substantiated reasons.
From The Business of Migrant Detention covering the history of anti-immigration policies & its disparate treatment of white & brown immigrants
ARABLOUEI: OK. If federal government’s spending all this money to detain and then deport people and a lot of times they’re coming back in the country, and it’s not actually achieving anything economically in terms of supporting American workers and it’s actually hurting American companies, why? Like, why are they doing this if there’s no material benefit to the economy or to protecting workers?
NOFIL: To me, it is a core question of sort of who is an American. Immigration detention’s roots are in this moment that is so blatantly racist, that sort of - you know, the Chinese Exclusion Act pulls no punches about what it is doing. It is targeted to a specific group of people. But that is where we get the legal precedents that undergird this entire system today. It is a system that has only really ever, to my opinion, receded. Immigration detention is only really ever rolled back when it is seen as threatening whiteness. And it is a system that has, you know, continually expanded and gained public support by, you know, targeting racialized people, by targeting people who Americans are encouraged to imagine as maybe kind of criminal anyway, right? It is doing political work, and it is doing work that I think is, like, really revealing about how the nation sees itself.
look at canada
Define illegal immigrant
Someone who immigrated illegally?
I guess nobody ever taught you that rule about not using the word(s) you’re trying to define, in the definition itself?
And “nobody taught you” to attack the argument instead of the person
Are we seriously gonna play the “but what do these words actually mean” card for “illegal” and “immigrant?” Kinda stupid ass takes that give credibility to online age verification. My comment wasn’t a serious definition, it was deliberately drawing attention to the absurdity of asking to define a phrase with a total of two words both of which are highly specific, unambiguous and descriptive of the very thing they mean. At the point where phrases like this need to be rigorously explained and defined, we’re in a “learning the language for the first time and doesn’t actually know what words mean” scenario
I didn’t ask the initial question
I’m replying to you and what you said
“Stupid Ass Takes” is Lemmy’s catchphrase. I swear this place makes reddit look tame sometimes.
Usually the free market place of ideas ensures that the ideas, values and knowledge of all people are refined and weighed against each other. This naturally elevates and expands collective knowledge.
On Lemmy however there are only bad ideas so it works to ensure that everyone is on an equal playing field of truly intellectually deficient opinions. And I’m here for it. Can’t have fun on Reddit like you can on Lemmy.
It really depends on why you oppose them. There is no real answer to that question.
Why do you oppose illegal immigration
Because it’s illegal, duh. Once you enshrine your prejudices in law, they’re no longer racism, they’re just moral purity.
The conditions that western powers put their countries in is also illegal :)
If we talk about settler colonial countries found on terorrism like the United States of America, the majority are descendants of illegal immigrants (and the european north americans are not only descendants of illegal immigrants but terrorists, genocidal people who owned slaves)
Sarcsam aside, personally, I think the fact that our law reflects our prejudices is more racist than the actual means that we use to enforce them, which is a pretty high bar to clear.
No human is illegal
being a nazi should be illegal
deport musk
