[koolba]

> Here's an interesting question: are undocumented immigrants actually stopping non-citizens from becoming citizens? These two things are actually quite independent, yes? You're building a very similar argument to "piracy is bad because it takes money out of the hands of the RIAA."

So in your analogy the RIAA are the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that respect immigration laws?

[shadowgovt]

In your analogy, are undocumented immigrants not the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

[koolba]

Of course. But they’re supposed to arrive at ports of entry and follow the process.

While it has no legal significance, that poem is written on base of the Statue of Liberty next to the immigration center at Ellis Island. It’s a pretty wild take to think that it’s means that people should cut down barbed wire fences and sneak into the country under the cover of darkness.

[shadowgovt]

While we were tracking humans coming into America via ship back to the 1820s, the formal data collection approximating the modern system didn't even begin until 1891, seven years after the Statue was gifted to the US.

The "wild take" (which is, honestly, quite mundane) is the barbed wire fences don't even need to be up. We got along for a century and change soft-handling immigration (even longer, if you don't consider the border to be "strictly enfroced" until Operation Wetback in the 1950s). America has been strongest when it didn't care where you came from unless you gave it a reason to care.

Who is actually benefitting from a highly-militarized and exclusive southern border?