[ef4]

I'm not objecting to the existence of geographic boundaries. I'm objecting to the idea that those geographic boundaries say anything meaningful about the people born on either side of said boundaries.

> Is real estate comprised of nothing more than imaginary lines? No, it isn't.

I agree. But I think that a real estate sale is a voluntary contract between two consenting adults, and it's none of your business if I want to sell some of mine to someone who happened to be born slightly too may miles away to end up on the "right" side of some border.

Nativists like to pretend to be defenders of human liberty, when they're just nanny staters with different preferences.

> Even tree roots are constantly fighting and competing for finite resources and territory on time-lapse.

Yes, but why does it matter if the other organism you're competing with was born in El Paso vs half a mile away in Juarez? The nativist position is that one is vigorous, dynamic market competition and the other is a foreign invasion. When really they are exactly the same.

Sure, all living things compete (in addition to cooperating -- all ecosystems and markets feature a network of both). But that does not explain the fetish for treating certain people as OK to compete and others as not.

> What do you think an invasive species is? Are those imaginary?

Obviously we are only discussing human immigrants here, so unless you're making an underhanded comment about the inhumanity of foreigners, where are you going with this analogy?

Realize that's not just snark -- the whole argument rests on the idea that there's a bright line between two sets of people. That line is completely imaginary. I guarantee you couldn't find it in an experiment, if I got to pick 50 American citizens and 50 non-citizens and you had to tell who was who just by talking to them.

[Danihan]

Do you genuinely believe that the mass importation of people with radically different beliefs and customs (such as an adherence to Sharia Law) would have no effect on the native population? That cultural change wouldn't affect scientific freedoms? That it wouldn't affect civil liberties? Technological advancement? Crime rates?

Does it seem impossible to you that cultural differences could spark a civil war? Do you disbelieve that native populations can be essentially wiped out by a competing or hostile culture within a few short generations, similar to the fate of the Native Americans?

Why should someone believe that all cultures are equal when some cultures and nation states are much, much more successful by almost any quantifiable metric?