Law, order, and fairness in immigration

Why being anti-illegal immigration isn’t a pro-racism standpoint

By Alex Stanton, Staff Writer

One of the most common (lazy) techniques in debating—political or otherwise—is the attempt to question your opponent’s character by simplifying the issue down to a question of right and wrong, and then focusing your entire rebuttal around your morally righteous position by the standards of most people. This also involves shutting down any discourse that is perceived to go against that position, even if there are actually some solid points. This technique is called “taking the moral high ground,” and it appears to be an increasingly common method for those who see things like heavily guarded national borders, long waiting lists, and plenty of legal paperwork as racist.

It’s fair to say most loud-and-proud racists are against illegal immigration. What isn’t at all fair to say, however, is that anyone who supports reasonably strict rules for prospective immigrants is a bigot—no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t try our best to help the less fortunate lead better lives, especially because, living in a privileged society, we’re more than capable of doing so. One of the more obvious, close-to-home examples would be Mexico, a developing country with countless problems in all levels of society, and a focal point for the war on drugs. With the corrupt government in full-scale conflict with drug cartels, each side is causing just as much collateral damage as the other. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it’s no wonder that Mexican citizens will do anything for more opportunities up north.

We’re a society that is always progressing, tweaking our rules and regulations as we find better solutions to our systems currently in place. Though the policies are not perfect, all this being said, there’s more than enough reasons to justify the hoops that prospective immigrants must jump through. I’ve heard people comparing the US-Mexican border fence to the Berlin Wall. Completely putting aside the absurdity of that comparison, consider how many illegal immigrants originate from that precise fence. There’s no possible way to argue that it can’t be a solution (perhaps a temporary one; society is always progressing, after all).

I can’t help but find it unfair that all of these laws are in place to help those coming to developed countries (Canada, America, or the like) for perfectly legitimate reasons, yet there are still those who choose to enter the country illegally for one reason or another. I have all the respect in the world for those who choose to come to Canada to live and work by jumping through the proper hoops, and I don’t really buy into Donald Trumps argument that illegal immigrants are a big problem when it comes to crime… But the immigration process in our country is the way it is to benefit us.

In Canada, it’s only fair for Canadian citizens—whether they are born and raised or naturalized—to get first dibs on all the wonderful opportunities our country offers us.