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That's a fair point. But there is a difference between being "anti-murder" and being "anti-immigration", because "murder" is obviously violating the bodily integration of a person, whereas it's more difficult to argue that "immigration" is harmful on a personal level — that's what I wanted to hone in on by using the word "personally", though missed the mark by being too specific on the interlocutor.
It's not more difficult if you don't insist on semantic gerrymandering. It does not matter if it is harmful on a 'personal' level- it matter if it harms, period, because all harms are personal on some level.
Indirect economic harms are still economic harms. Harms to social trust by unilateral disregard of legitimate laws is still harm to social trust. Criminal harms by criminals who partisans protected from deportation because they wanted to spite or defy their outgroup are still harms. Self-righteous support for human trafficking that corresponds with the significant smuggling of addictive and harmful substances that fund violent criminal groups domestically and abroad even as the smuggled migrants compete with citizens for public goods and services while disrupting local social equilibriums is a whole host of harms to be encountered by various people in various ways at various times.
If you want to argue that immigration doesn't harm anyone, then just say immigration doesn't harm anyone. But if you can't do that because it wouldn't be believable, don't try to introduce a qualifier that only serves to disqualify all the types of harm that might be relevant to others.
No. Indirect economic "harms" are trade-offs. For example, if the price of chocolate rises, then some people cannot afford the amount of chocolate they used to buy. That's not a harm — yes, the chocolate buyer is worse off, but there is a chocolate producer on the other end, who would in turn be worse off if the price were lower.
I'm after a precise definition of "harm" here, because that's relevant to my core values, Humanism. Do not harm human beings. One primary source of harm is loss of integrity of your own body (being subject to violence, …). Higher chocolate prices are ok, a threat to your existence is not. Let me call it "bodily harm" for the sake of discussion. (At some point, economic
I would agree that these are either bodily harms or do border on bodily harms, yes. But the point is: Are these caused by immigration — or are these caused by how immigration is handled?
Much of what you are attributing to "immigration" is actually "consequence of current handling of immigration". This is a policy question. The thinking that you can stop people who are very desperate does not work out.
This is not about outgroups, this is about core value, humanism: Do not inflict bodily harm on other people, regardless of whom.
Many economic trade-offs are harmful. You are aware of this, hence why your economic example is of someone not getting a luxury confectionary, as opposed to someone losing their job, losing access to affordable housing, having to live in less-safe / more dangerous neighborhoods, enduring significant stresses and related health and social consequences due to economic consequences that benefit other people.
And this is without further accounting for the not 'just' economic changes that can accompany macroeconomic changes, such as changes to culture, crime rates, and various other things that come with the macroeconomic trends and hurt people.
No, you may not, because the discussion is that you do not get to waive aside harms on the basis of semantic gerrymandering just because you do not want to acknowledge that your policy preferences hurt people, but you don't want outright admit you find that acceptable. You especially don't get to on the basis of a 'core value' that is routinely violated by both any action or inaction at a policy level.
Don't dodge the discussion, make your stand: does mass migration cause no harm, or does it cause harms but you are okay with that?
This is not a bodily harm — but the consequence of not being able to buy food is a bodily harm. The point is that under different policy choices, losing your job does not imply that you can't feed yourself anymore, the two can be decoupled.
Agreed. Losing access to housing is a bodily harm. Violence in the neighborhood is a bodily harm.
What I'm saying is that different policy choices that are unrelated to migration will do more to prevent the above bodily harms. The claim "immigration is harm" is different from the combination of effects "immigration does X", and "X does bodily harm" — a policy choice can affect X instead.
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