Public Forum topic for September '09

1) Pro's first rebuttal regarding our ancestors immigrating to this country and immigrants today are that the immigrants today are committing crimes once they get here. This is an entirely frustrating argument since I have already addressed this in my previous round. You'll note that I have pointed out several problems with this argument including: (a) Pro conveniently forgot to report that these crimes were committed by highly impoverished individuals from poor neighborhoods; a group that always tends to commit the most crimes regardless of their origins. (b) Because these people cannot gain citizenship, they often resort to crime as what they conceive to be a final resort. (c) You cannot punish an entire group for the crimes of certain people! I provided an analogy in R1 that Pro has ignored, which questioned - If 80% of those who committed crimes have brown eyes, should all people with brown eyes be punished? Perhaps a more realistic example is noting that most violent crime (by a drastic majority) is committed by men instead of women. Does that mean that we should punish all men? Or how about the statistic that 1 out of every 3 black men at some point goes through some phase of the correctional system? Should we punish all black men? [1] (d) Immigrants (as in our ancestors) committed crimes as well. In fact, the original settlers in the United States were technically immigrants who all committed a plethora of crimes. (e) Finally on this point, I'd like for Pro to please provide sources for her cited information :) 2) You'll note that Pro has completely ignored my 2nd argument from the last round, which detailed what amnesty actually entails. My point was that amnesty was not something "free" or easy. Pro has not responded as to why there is not a fair trade off between amnesty and citizenship, or why she has any more right to be a citizen than an immigrant despite the conditions imposed upon them in order to gain citizenship. Instead, she has asked, "This is amnesty?" Yes, that is amnesty. Look it up. Additionally, her next point was that amnesty has failed seven times. First of all, I would once again like to please request cited information and sources. Second of all, since the conditions of amnesty have been reformed, this point has no weight since Pro has not and cannot prove that the new conditions of amnesty would not work, be mutually beneficial, or even preferable over her option of attrition through enforcement. 3) Again, Pro has ignored my 3rd argument during which I detailed that without amnesty, there is no incentive for illegal immigrants to try and enter this country legally. Pro merely selected to respond to my point that there is already a border control which is inefficient, ineffective and corrupt. Pro claims that through her attrition policy, border patrol would be strengthened, therefore my point is irrelevant. However, the problem with this claim is that Pro is very unspecific about which border she is referring to. Indeed there are immigrants who enter this country illegally from more countries than just Mexico. As such, successful attrition through enforcement would actually necessitate the securing of ALL of the United States borders, which I posit is unfeasible given the amount of personnel that you would need, the interference with NAFTA that this would cause, the fact that this does not deal with corrupt officials, and quite simply the cost of this futile endeavor. 4) Next Pro questions "How so" to my argument that it is the fault of EMPLOYERS that many immigrants continue to work in this country illegally. I'm not quite sure how she missed that giant chunk of a paragraph explaining exactly what I meant. As I have already said, there are already laws that require employers to have all of their employees on legitimate, legal pay rolls. If you're going to complain that immigrants are taking citizen's jobs, then you have to blame the people whose responsibility it is to ensure that all of their employees are legal citizens. The reality is that employers choose to hire immigrants because they will work for cheaper wages. However, the employer is actually the one breaking the law here in giving a job to an immigrant who does not pay income tax (and as such, the employer is committing tax fraud as well). 5) My 5th point was about the attrition policy being rooted in racism and xenophobia. You'll note that my opponent did not even make one minor attempt to try and counter this argument. 6) Similarly, Pro has completely ignored my 6th point which noted that the U.S. can ultimately BENEFIT from incorporating immigrants into our workforce if we revamped the economy and expected these immigrants to actually start paying taxes. A population as large as the U.S.'s -- which is largely in part thanks to immigrants -- could actually benefit from such a big market and workforce if we can somehow stimulate new growth and jobs. 7) Once again, Pro has ignored my 7th point which explained how immigrants are already exploiting the system. Providing them with amnesty and holding them accountable for utilizing our tax dollars - and expecting them to do the same - would actually help our economy and be a more fair way of trading off goods and services through taxes. 8) Nor surprisingly, Pro has only responded to part of my final point. I stated that law enforcement is concentrating more on who's living here illegally in certain areas than on trying to fight real, dangerous crime (such as gang activity, violence, etc.). She writes that if immigrants came over here legally instead of illegally, that there would be less disease here. First of all, once again, please cite this source of information or at least explain it. Second, the way I see it, the diseases my opponent has described affect only the individuals who carry it or those they have unprotected sexual relations with. Therefore this argument is irrelevant. Also, let's note the flawed logic in Pro's idea that by kicking the immigrants out of the country, they will therefore enter legally (wishful thinking) which would lower the rate of disease. This does not make any sense. If I have a disease and you deport me, and then I come back, I will still have the disease. Whether I enter the country legally or not would have no bearing on whether or not I carry the disease. Therefore, again, this point is negated. CONCLUSION: Pro has failed to respond to numerous arguments that I have made throughout this debate thus far. She has also not provided any new substantial contentions, or even effectively argued the ones she has already made. Instead, she ignored various aspects of my round which provided key arguments to my firm negation of the resolution. Back to Pro, for now. Sources: [1] http://www.emich.edu...