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pan: i really am surprised that you took my posts as you did--and i apolgize for the aspects of them that tipped over into what you took as a personal attack. no doubt it is my fault, tone-wise.
let me explain a few things...and if this amounts to a threadjack then so be it.
1. your posts do not function in isolation in this thread--i tried to make a distinction between your positions as i understand them and those of folk like xephyrx, but maybe i didnt do an adequate job of it. you write alot about both the position you are coming to and the trouble you seem to be having squaring it with other aspects of your political positions, and i did not mean to disrespect your conflicted metaview (the problem f integration is a metaproblem--the problem concerning the undocumented or illegal is a specific area, and so is a problem)
2. there are multiple ways in which one can find an argument advanced by someone else to be a problem--one general route is internal to the postion itself, that is problems of data or category or combination/logic--another is to find the consequences of the argument repellent regardless of the internal logic of the arguments advanced. in this thread, you have folk who are advocating killing people because they---like the posters themselves---operate in the context of this economic space looking for work or having work and feeling threatened.
there is no argument that will function for me as valid that leads to any such conclusions. period.
3. you complained in an earlier post that your arguments were not being answered. so i answered them and now you complain about my having answered them. i dont really know what to do at this point about any of that.
4. this debate over the status of undocumented workers--i'll stick with this--did not originate all of a sudden in the states--it has been done over and over again in other countries--western european neo-fascist parties make the issue, framed in ways that are point for point those you see in posts by yourself (on this matter) stevo and xephryx, the center of their politics. the direction in which these arguments run has been demonstrably---um--problematic, and this repeatedly since the emergence of this latest wave of neofascist organizations across the 1980s/early 90s. this is a frame of reference that i carry into this discussion. you should look into it for yourself. the organizations are easy enough to find out about. their history and effects are easy enough to find out about as well.
thing is that reasonable folk who find themselves trying to work out responses to threats to their sense of well-being sometimes arrive at these positions by relying on "common sense" reponses--the problem is that "common sense" is usually of a piece with a very truncated view of the context that they operate in. the one advantage the western european context has over the american is that teh greater diversity of political options there means that these various positions are named, are formalized via being named, and so the implication of these positions is more evident publicly at least. in the states, with its narrow, stifling political environment, such positions often go unmarked and with that the consequences of them can be obscured.
5. similar point about naming. in other places, the folk who vilify with caps (an annoying tic--but i am sure that my dislilke for caps is also anoying, so i am in no real position to complain beyond voicing an aesthetic preference)--in france, for example, as a function of the political mobilization around the issue triggered by the actions of the front national on the part of groups like sos racisme, the discourse on the matter has been shifted--the operative category is undocumented workers, not ILLEGAL immigrants. the state has also adopted this kind of terminology as well, in part in order to prevent the kind of---um--problematic mobilizations on the question that you see starting here. these terms matter. much of what i see happening in this thread is held together by the implications of the term ILLEGAL immigrant. i posed a series of objections. they are not taken up.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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