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Comment by RubenSandwich | Hacker News Reader

“Because it’s the law” is not a moral argument, it’s an excuse. All manner of immoral deeds can be justified by legal means. In the words of MLK: “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”. You could argue that the law is just, but falling back to “It’s the law” is intellectual laziness.

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GP wasn't falling back to "it's the law", but expressing skepticism that enforcement of immigration controls constitutes one of those unjust laws, which seems to be on firm ground, esp given that every country on earth does it.

Not every country is putting children into cages.

So further increasing tax burden on American citizens by allowing unlawful migration, when they already bring in 1 million plus lawfully and have been for the last decade, is morally just?

Their illegal immigration problem is literally an order of magnitude larger. Think about that for a second: 10 times more unlawful migration occurs in their country.

"It's immoral" is even more intellectually dishonest: you're just calling it bad.

I think a significant issue with this is how ICE has been enforcing the law. It has been argued that human rights offenses have been happening on a large scale, as committed by ICE.

That is to say: It's difficult to say that ICE is upholding the law by committing alleged crimes against humanity.

Unfortunately, ICE also has large-scale immunity to being investigate for these alleged crimes, leaving the public with no other avenues to uncover the truth besides the court of public opinion- their morals.

If they are enforcing harshly it might be difficult for them to find and remove people.

Ideally they need to work with the community. The problem is the community and certain safe cities make their jobs more difficult because they don't agree with the policy.

The smartest route would be to target businesses charging them additional taxes. Use that money to support the legal route by increasing limits and make that path more attractive.

Is it moral for citizens of this country to have their jobs taken away by people coming here illegally? I know several this has happened to, and who can no longer provide for their families. Where is your righteous indignation?

Is it moral for people who are working with the legal processes to immigrate to have others flout the law? Are you going to stand up and protect their rights?

Is it moral for people who are not citizens to come to our country and commit document fraud? To avail themselves of our safety net that we pay for? Our schools that we pay for? Why should citizens have to compete for these services against people who have not paid for them, who have jumped the line?

What moral right does someone have to make a claim on our jobs, our resources?

On the other hand, our government has a moral responsibility to protect the rights of the citizens of this country. To protect our jobs, our way of life.

This is really off-topic. He tought that ICE actions are immoral, therefore helping them is immoral, and decided to remove his FREE (as in freedom) software from his github account.

This has nothing to do with legal or illegal immigration.

Btw i'll stay off-topic with you: the waiting list for legal immigration is more than 20 year if you're from Mexico, up to 60 if its for familly reasons (so a son, a daughter, a wife or parents). This have some interesting effects (if the green card holder of the family die, what happen to those that remains, even if they lived in the US for 20 years?)

And what about the companies that hire illegal immigrants? Why are the fines so small. If you want to prevent illegal immigrant to "take away jobs", simple: higher fines for companies and incentives for illegal immigrants to denounce the company they are working for. This should do the job just fine.

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