Reply from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver concerning Orphan WorksActof 2008

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Wed, 8/20/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 1:10 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Of course its a valid comparison.  Illegal immigrants
> > don't want to have to obey the law like everyone else.
> > They want *what they want*, *when they want it* and 
> > don't want to have to *obey the law* like everyone else.
> >
> > In many ways illegal immigrants are poor versions of
> > Paris Hilton: they're *snooty people* who think *the 
> > law shouldn't have to apply to them* just because 
> > they're *poor* and want to live somewhere else.
> 
> Your line of reasoning is totally absurd.  Sorry to 
> belabor the point from my earlier reply but if you 
> think comparing an illegal immigrant coming to
> America to get a job and support his family with Paris
> Hilton driving drunk then you sir are putting too much 
> Crazy Sauce on your hot dogs.

So comparing one person who commits a crime because they want something and won't follow the law, to another person who commits a crime because they want something and won't follow the law is "absurd"?

Incidentally, there's no real proof that they aren't drinking their paychecks every Friday, in much the same way that there's no proof they aren't bringing in communicable diseases.  Records and studies aren't kept on illegal immigrants because they are criminals operating outside normal society.  You're making assumptions based on inadequate information, which   does not speak towards accuracy in your assumptions.

> > Immigration carries very real threats with it, 
> > among them communicable diseases and violent 
> > criminal records.  Immigration laws require that
> > incoming immigrants prove they aren't a threat to
> > existing U.S. citizens, and unlike the racism 
> > about blacks and the homophobia about homosexuals, 
> > the threats are real and not imagined.
> 
> If immigration law were reformed and labor laws 
> enforced, most immigration would become legal and 
> these scaremongering "issues" wouldn't be issues.

Legal immigrants are tested for diseases.  Illegal immigrants aren't.  The very real issue of communicable diseases coming in undetected in illegal immigrants won't go away just because you let in more legal immigrants.

> The reality is that the vast majority of illegal immigrants
> aren't criminals and aren't plague carriers.

They're all criminals because they have illegally immigrated.  The word *illegal* should have tipped you off.  It's not like they're being shoved across the border at gunpoint, they are making an active choice to break a well-known U.S. law.  If you make the active choice to break a law, you are a criminal, and furthermore you have shown that your ethics allow you to break laws if you find them inconvenient to your desires.

As for making claims about "the majority of illegal immigrants", the problem with statements like that is that you are GUESSING when you make that statement, because illegal immigrants aren't tested for communicable diseases when they arrive here.  You have no idea how good or bad the problem with communicable diseases is, because there is no accurate information allowing an accurate determination of the problem.

There are many factors which make an illegal immigrant more likely to arrive with a communicable disease.  The bad public health policies of their home countries are a big factor, as are the debilitating hardships experienced on the trip, but an even more important factor is that sewage tunnels are a common choice for illegal immigrants to use when sneaking into the U.S.A.  The illegal immigrant may arrive perfectly healthy at the U.S.-Mexico border, but gain lots of communicable diseases on his or her way under the border.

> > Incidentally, here in the U.S.A. a man is breaking 
> > and entering, and trespassing, if he enters my home 
> > without my permission, **even if my door is unlocked**.
> > With your attitude about trespassing requiring 
> > "breaking into a house through a locked door", you may 
> > want to not let anyone know where *you* live, just in 
> > case one night you accidentally leave your door
> > unlocked...
> 
> Again, I see your example, but it's not cogent to this
> argument.  Breaking and entering into a private residence 
> and illegally immigrating are two different things.  

Illegal immigrants cannot work here legally.  This means that any money they earn here is earned illegally.  Earning money from breaking, entering, and stealing is also illegal income.

Illegal trespassing is illegal trespassing, be it over a country's border or into a house through an unlocked door.  Simply declaring that an analogy is invalid is inadequate to refute it.

> Or better yet, stop trying to reduce a complex issue into
> catchphrases and goofy comparisons.

Only when you stop making authoritative statements about illegal immigration based on nothing more than your own shot-in-the-dark *guesses*.  Statements which you then use to paint me as some kind of racist, or, even worse, as someone who gets his news from FOX Noise.