Free Immigration

Aff CaseAt the top of the aff framework, I offered two reasons that we need to have a standard in this debate: education, and a drive to make the debate more meaningful. Con did not attack this at all, so extend this through. Since we need a standard for this round, and he never offers one, you still have to adopt Justice because there is literally no alternative. Note that since my opponent dropped this justification and offered no alternative in the previous round, so he may not do so in the next round-that would be considered cheating. At this point, you can automatically extend Justice, but let’s examine his attacks on it. He also that Justice varies from country to country. Please note that in the first round, he said that this debate is about the United States, so that obviously means we are discussing the United State’s conception of Justice. John Rawls is the preeminent American philosopher and the idea of the primacy of the individual is derived from our founding documents, so there is no reason to not adopt this standard in the debate. Second, I would posit that he has an unwarranted assumption. He seems to think that just because people disagree about things that both are wrong. This is nonsense. If a toddler says that 1+1 is 3, that doesn’t mean that 1+1 does not equal 2; it means that the toddler is wrong. Similarly, just because some people have false beliefs about justice does not mean justice is subjective. It means that some people are wrong. He also claims that the US should not be protecting other citizens. I never made this claim. I simply said that they should not violate the property and autonomy rights of other citizens. He says that we have to protect our rights, but the very reason that we have to do this is that citizens have inalienable rights outside of society. If they didn’t, the social contract wouldn’t matter in the first place; there would be nothing wrong with breaking agreements. Since he says that the state has to uphold agreements, his assumption is that inalienable rights exist outside of society, and since these rights exist, we have an obligation to respect them. The state cannot kill random people in India, for example; it has to respect their right to life. You can thus extend Rawls and the primacy of individual rights. Individual rights can only be curtailed if rights are being violated, not just if there is a net negative harm that results from not violating them. In response to the claim that borders are morally arbitrary, he says that the right to self-government does not apply if borders are open. This actually is not the case-we can still restrict voting rights to citizens and make a path to citizenship based on merit instead of accidental birth. In addition to this, even if we do not do this, there is no reason that we cannot hold elections if borders are open. The elections would simply consist of the people who are currently living in the society at the time. It’s not impossible.Immigration exists right now, and we still have elections. He also says that people contributed and worked hard to be citizens. That is not the case. My opponent and I did not work to be US citizens-we were born here. We never chose our parents; we won a lottery of births.The homeless citizens who contribute little to society were born here by accident. In addition to this, just because some people work to contribute to society does not mean that they have the right to prevent others from working and making contributions. He never gives any warrant for this assertion. In response to autonomy, he insists that this harms others. First, he hasn’t given any proof at all that it will harm others, and second, it doesn’t matter if it harms others as long as it does not violate their rights. Harming someone and violating her rights are not necessarily the same thing. If I buy Toys R Us and fire all of the workers, I have harmed all of them, but I have not violated their rights. He is falsely conflating harms with rights violations. There is no justification for restricting autonomy on the grounds that it harms another. His point about freedom of movement is false. It is actually considered a human right according to the Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, this debate is about whether or not it should be a right, and not about whether it is. He cannot claim that it should not be a right because it is not one right now. That is the is/ought logical fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean it ought to be that way, and my claim is that freedom of movement is a part of the right to liberty, a negative right that precedes any sort of society (and the US gov. was founded on the principle of negative, inalienable rights for all people according to the Declaration of Independence).In response to my property point, he says that he agrees that people should be able to come if they purchase land. Ok, that’s great. This flows to me. It doesn’t make sense that he thinks we should stop people with no education to come, however, if they can purchase land or if someone is willing to share her property with those people, since the right to property allows anybody to sell property to any person at any price and also to allow people to share property to anyone. In addition to this, if uneducated people cannot purchase any property, they would automatically be screened out even in a society with open immigration because there would be no place for them to stay. Neg CaseI agree that brain drain exists. He again brings up the point that it is harmful to other people and thus you don’t have a right to do it. This is nonsense. The people in those countries have no obligations to the other people in their countries. It may harm them, but it does not violate their rights, so there is no justification for restricting their autonomy. You don’t have obligations to help other people. If someone needs gasoline, I don’t have any obligation to give it to them even if they are being harmed by my inaction. Similarly, the educated people who want to leave have no obligation to help the other people even if the brain drain harms them. He claims that people in the US will have to compete for jobs. First of all, there are plenty of vacancies in areas that need talent, like healthcare and computer systems, and having people willing to take these jobs would be beneficial. Also, you do not have a right to not face competition for jobs. If someone wants to spend her money hiring someone in another country, that’s your problem. Your rights are not being violated because neither the property nor the jobs belong to you. This was very clear in the hypothetical Ashford example I gave with the diamond mine that was cold dropped, so extend that. He also says that this will spark racial hatred. Just because someone will be degrading to someone who succeeds does not mean that we should stop that person from succeeding. This is like saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to work because some men don’t like that they can work. Turn this whole jobs thing because this will force US citizens to actually take their college education seriously and become more competitive in order to out compete foreigners. That competition is good for the US economy. He says that Mexico would have no incentive to improve because everyone would want to leave. Um, no, that’s exactly why they would have an incentive to improve-to make sure that people want to stay. If they want to retain people, they have to improve the job opportunities for people living in their country. He also says that the focus on Mexico is not part of the debate. Good. Turn this against him, because that means his whole case is irrelevant because it was only about Mexico. I agree that it was wrong of him to focus on one country. My refutation is not irrelevant becuase that’s what his case was about. He can’t restrict his case and say my rebuttal to his restricted case is irrelevant.