Musings on Immigration, Legitimacy, and the Social Contract
If you haven't been reading misia, then why not?
Today, she explains, smokingly, why she believes there are no illegitimate children and no illegal people:
No child is "illegitimate." Human beings are not "illegitimate." Or rather, if one of us is, then all of us are, because frankly, we're all the same kind of animal with the same basic needs.
A similar principle applies to the concept of "illegal alien."
What is an "alien"? Someone who is not from "here."
What is "here"? An arbitrary place defined by whoever manages to exert the greatest amount of power and influence over territory.
I believe that, however wrongly, a bunch of Europeans set up a society here in Canada that, whatever its faults, I derive a great deal of benefit from. I don't know if there is a just way to acknowledge that some Europeans set up this society by declaring that some land was theirs, and through superior might forcing the people who had lived here before they got here to move away from it.*
I believe that society is a complex system of agreements, and negotiations. That by living in this country, I'm agreeing to abide by its laws, to fight the laws that I see as unjust through the established channels, to participate in its electoral system, and to pay my taxes in order to fund the services that keep things happening. I benefit from public health care, public education (even though I went to a private school, it's to my benefit to live in a society in which everyone receives a good education, not only in basic skills, but also in the kind of information one needs in order to make sensible decisions, and in the critical thinking skills one needs in order to evaluate that information), and other institutions that come from having a more or less functional society. And I derive these benefits through an accident of birth and adoption. This society is "mine" only insofar as it accepts me, and I, for my part, do my job to uphold its institutions, or to change those with which I disagree.
Now, I'd like to know that everyone who wants to live here and have access to all these benefits is interested in maintaining the society. But the only way to test that, really, is to invite people to participate in this society and make it possible for them to do so. This means providing government services in a variety of languages, so that people can fill out their tax forms, register their children in schools, vote, and otherwise participate in civic life. I think that if you're going to live here, you should participate. And so the government should keep track of who is here, and paying taxes, and has access to services, and needs protection from crime and all that. And people who want to live here should fill out papers or have someone fill out papers on their behalf. Immigration services shouldn't be about sending people home for not filling out papers, and it certainly shouldn't be about collecting fees. It should be about making sure that the relevant authorities know who is here, so that we can all participate equally in the societies in which we choose to live.
This is simplistic, I know. And I haven't figured out what to do about people who refuse to fill in forms-I guess they're declaring that they don't want to live by the laws this society has set up, and they should be asked politely to leave. Not because they're from away, but because they're refusing to play by the rules, and if you don't want to play by the rules this society has set up, why, precisely, do you want to be here?**
*I mean, we can't simply say to the First Nations peoples "o.k., we're sorry, it was your land, and we're giving it back to you now." To reduce a complicated political argument to the simplistic and personal, where would someone like me go? It's not like I have a homeland I can return to-I was born here, my parents were born here, we can't claim citizenship anywhere else, no matter how wonderful we are. At the same time, it's not like our prosperity is entirely fairly gotten. Which is my point (and misia's)-if I can claim the "right" to live here and participate, based only on the accident of my folks' having been in favour with those who decided they were the bosses of everyone else.
**Yes, I understand that people from repressive or scary cultures might not be inclined to trust any government representatives. For this reason, policies need to be clearly explained in the immigrant or refugee's language, and processes need to be transparent and friendly. And most refugees I've met, while they had good reason to be nervous about authority, were more than happy to comply with whatever procedures demanded of them. Finally, if people are so traumatized that they or their representatives (by which I mean the amazingly canny and committed volunteers who work at refugee organizations) can't handle these hypothetical simple, friendly, transparent procedures, I don't quite know what to do with them.
Today, she explains, smokingly, why she believes there are no illegitimate children and no illegal people:
No child is "illegitimate." Human beings are not "illegitimate." Or rather, if one of us is, then all of us are, because frankly, we're all the same kind of animal with the same basic needs.
A similar principle applies to the concept of "illegal alien."
What is an "alien"? Someone who is not from "here."
What is "here"? An arbitrary place defined by whoever manages to exert the greatest amount of power and influence over territory.
I believe that, however wrongly, a bunch of Europeans set up a society here in Canada that, whatever its faults, I derive a great deal of benefit from. I don't know if there is a just way to acknowledge that some Europeans set up this society by declaring that some land was theirs, and through superior might forcing the people who had lived here before they got here to move away from it.*
I believe that society is a complex system of agreements, and negotiations. That by living in this country, I'm agreeing to abide by its laws, to fight the laws that I see as unjust through the established channels, to participate in its electoral system, and to pay my taxes in order to fund the services that keep things happening. I benefit from public health care, public education (even though I went to a private school, it's to my benefit to live in a society in which everyone receives a good education, not only in basic skills, but also in the kind of information one needs in order to make sensible decisions, and in the critical thinking skills one needs in order to evaluate that information), and other institutions that come from having a more or less functional society. And I derive these benefits through an accident of birth and adoption. This society is "mine" only insofar as it accepts me, and I, for my part, do my job to uphold its institutions, or to change those with which I disagree.
Now, I'd like to know that everyone who wants to live here and have access to all these benefits is interested in maintaining the society. But the only way to test that, really, is to invite people to participate in this society and make it possible for them to do so. This means providing government services in a variety of languages, so that people can fill out their tax forms, register their children in schools, vote, and otherwise participate in civic life. I think that if you're going to live here, you should participate. And so the government should keep track of who is here, and paying taxes, and has access to services, and needs protection from crime and all that. And people who want to live here should fill out papers or have someone fill out papers on their behalf. Immigration services shouldn't be about sending people home for not filling out papers, and it certainly shouldn't be about collecting fees. It should be about making sure that the relevant authorities know who is here, so that we can all participate equally in the societies in which we choose to live.
This is simplistic, I know. And I haven't figured out what to do about people who refuse to fill in forms-I guess they're declaring that they don't want to live by the laws this society has set up, and they should be asked politely to leave. Not because they're from away, but because they're refusing to play by the rules, and if you don't want to play by the rules this society has set up, why, precisely, do you want to be here?**
*I mean, we can't simply say to the First Nations peoples "o.k., we're sorry, it was your land, and we're giving it back to you now." To reduce a complicated political argument to the simplistic and personal, where would someone like me go? It's not like I have a homeland I can return to-I was born here, my parents were born here, we can't claim citizenship anywhere else, no matter how wonderful we are. At the same time, it's not like our prosperity is entirely fairly gotten. Which is my point (and misia's)-if I can claim the "right" to live here and participate, based only on the accident of my folks' having been in favour with those who decided they were the bosses of everyone else.
**Yes, I understand that people from repressive or scary cultures might not be inclined to trust any government representatives. For this reason, policies need to be clearly explained in the immigrant or refugee's language, and processes need to be transparent and friendly. And most refugees I've met, while they had good reason to be nervous about authority, were more than happy to comply with whatever procedures demanded of them. Finally, if people are so traumatized that they or their representatives (by which I mean the amazingly canny and committed volunteers who work at refugee organizations) can't handle these hypothetical simple, friendly, transparent procedures, I don't quite know what to do with them.