[bobbyz]

The Japanese were interned during WWII, illegals are in camps now, and the Chinese will likely be soon. Puerto Ricans STILL can't vote.

Its important to build your argument from sturdy facts, so that big bad reality can't huff and puff and blow it all down!

[jjcon]

‘Illegals’ are not in forced labor camps and that sort of equivalence is just gross. Immigrants to Europe and the US need a place to stay while their cases are processed, with the increases in immigration (especially in Europe) it is difficult to keep up with. Does the west need to do better? Absolutely but stating that these immigrant camps are like forced labor camps is deliberately misleading and just flat out wrong.

Additionally - it hasn’t been until recently that Puerto Rico has favored statehood (over free association).

[bobbyz]

What is the difference in real terms between the border camps and forced labour camps? The labour? Taking bets that these camps introduce forced labour like the Nazi camps did. Odds stop at the decade.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...

[jjcon]

One is the result of excess immigration - where immigrants fleeing their countries come to hope for a better life in the EU or US. Immigrants are eventually granted asylum or are turned away.

Forced labor camps are created through force or threat of force and can detain people for decades with no recourse.

[golergka]

The difference is the reason to be in the camps. Breaking country's laws is generally viewed as legitimate reason to send someone to prison or camp, while being of a certain ethnicity is not.

Of course, there's an issue of laws that are by themselves are morally reprehensible, like the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany. However, immigration laws are clearly moral and expected to exist in some form or another in any modern country.

I have to say, this distinction is so obvious I'm very surprised that somebody asks this kind of question at all.

[ceejayoz]

> However, immigration laws are clearly moral...

This is not, in fact, universally agreed upon.

[jariel]

It's a question of civics - entering the country is illegal, migrants do that knowingly. FYI they can leave anytime they want, there is a 72 hour clearing process. They are detained due to a transgression of the law, much like anything else. Where we can disagree mostly is the nature of the incarceration etc. - but this is besides the point - China's detention of citizens, arbitrarily, due to their ethnicity or because they simply want to 'move them into another job' is not remotely comparable to the detention of citizens who have broken very clear and stated laws, and of course can leave said detention as they chose.

It's reasonable that some degree of moral relativism can be made WRT China, but on these threads, there is no such thing.

China's arbitrary incarceration of citizens based on their ethnicity is beyond pale, the President should be bringing it up at every occasion, and it should be a pillar of our relations with China, including trade.

[bobbyz]

You're not addressing the point about immigration laws not being universally recognized as moral and just.

What about child migrants? You're meaning to tell me that its morally just to intern preteens because they broke your immigration law? To force children to appear before a judge that are so young that they have to draw a cross as their signature? What's grosser here?

[ceejayoz]

> It's a question of civics - entering the country is illegal, migrants do that knowingly.

So was rescuing Jews from the Holocaust, and China's acts against Tibetans and Uighurs. Let's not mistake what's moral with what's legal; they often overlap in a decent society, but that's by no means guaranteed. You can make a case for "immigration laws are moral", but "they're moral because they're the law" isn't that case.