Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
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The foregoing is the title of the following January 26, 2024 Politico article: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01.... The article discusses the current status of the Republican-Democratic fight in the United States over illegal immigration.
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The foregoing is the title of the following February 29, 2024 fact check: https://wapo.st/42Xb8Tu. (In accordance with my Washington Post subscription, the foregoing link provides access to this article for fourteen days without charge, notwithstanding the usual Washington Post paywall.)
This is a NYT article (which you [Alan] may wish to post a better link to). I found it 'outside' the paywall at an aggregator site called 'pressreader'.Title: 'Wealthy Donors Pull Back from New York's Escalating Problems'
It talks about how the immigration problems lately --above all --are so complex that some of Gotham's most longtime donors are possibly withdrawing. Almost like they're tacitly, "writing off a city ...saddled with so many foreigners".
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/pitts...
I can't remember where I found this article even though I know it must only have been recently. But, I don't see it listed in the group yet; so I'll tentatively provide this link.
The implications seem (to me) to go far beyond the migrant crisis. It sounds like an oncoming of intervention ethics perhaps headed our way in future. I didn't know donors could "pick and choose" like this.
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Title: 'Wealthy donors pull back from New Y..."
The article first appeared on New York Times online on January 8, 2024. See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/ny.... (As a result of my New York Times subscription, the foregoing link can be accessed without charge for thirty days, notwithstanding the usual New York Times paywall.)
It would be great if rich people always voluntarily stepped up to help solve public problems. Unfortunately, as this article indicates, they don’t always do so, and, when they do, they often have ulterior motives that are not necessarily consistent with good public policy.
If you watched last evening’s State of the Union Address, you will have been reminded that a bipartisan conservative immigration plan proposed by, among others, Republican Senator Lankford (who has impeccable conservative credentials) failed enactment in Congress after former President Trump publicly stated that no immigration bill should be passed until after he becomes president. This allows the Republicans to take the hypocritical stance of blaming President Biden for the migration crisis while themselves refusing to do anything about it.
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See this March 27, 2024 AP article titled “Texas’ migrant arrest law will remain on hold under new court ruling”: https://apnews.com/article/texas-migr....
I realize there are a lot of news articles about the 'immigration crisis'. It's a hot topic which people get obsessed with. I don't wish to stoke such a hue and cry. However, this piece in the NYTimes caught my eye, in that it examines the practical side of physical space and price.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/ny...
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See this April 18, 2025 AP article titled “US intelligence contradicts Trump claims linking gang to Venezuelan government to speed deportations”: https://apnews.com/article/trump-alie....
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On Saturday, April 19, 2025, at 1:00 a.m. US Eastern Daylight Time, the US Supreme Court issued the following order (https://www.documentcloud.org/documen...
ORDER IN PENDING CASEI am not surprised at this development. Although the Supreme Court is dominated, 6–3, by Republican appointees, the Trump administration is challenging bedrock principles of US constitutional law—principles with which most conservative as well as liberal justices agree. One of those principles is that no “person” (not just citizens) shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law (notice and an opportunity to be heard). Both the Fifth Amendment (applicable to the federal government) and the Fourteenth Amendment (applicable to state and local governments) incorporate this principle, which has been a fundamental doctrine of Anglo-American law since Magna Carta (1215 CE). Nothing could be more un-American than the attempt by the Trump administration to return to a doctrine of absolute monarchy/dictatorship that has been explicitly rejected for almost 800 years.
24A1007 A.A.R.P., ET AL. V. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF U.S., ET AL.
There is before the Court an application on behalf of a putative class of detainees seeking an injunction against their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The matter is currently pending before the Fifth Circuit. Upon action by the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to the application before this Court as soon as possible. The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court. See 28 U. S. C. §1651(a).
Justice Thomas and Justice Alito dissent from the Court’s order. Statement from Justice Alito to follow.
For background information, see https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04....
I am posting the present comment in both the “Immigration” and “United States Constitution and Government” topics of this Goodreads group.
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In a June 29, 2025 Austin American Stateman guest essay titled “Our broken immigration system is subverting the rule of law. Here’s how to fix it” (https://www.academia.edu/130303598/Ou...), Professor Lorraine Smith Pangle states, among other things, the following:
This conspiracy against our own immigration laws and now a lawless effort to counter it are tearing our country apart. The borders are closed but the struggle has moved into the American heartland and into cities like Los Angeles that harbor concentrations of illegal immigrants and a hostility to ICE enforcement. When immigrants are arrested leaving courthouses where they have dutifully appeared for hearings, when students with visas are targeted for deportation based on their views, and when legal residents are sent to foreign prisons without hearings, the rule of law begins tearing more visibly. When citizens protest these actions and troops are mustered against them over the objections of mayors and governors, democracy’s guardrails take a direct hit. A majority of Americans were tired of out-of-control immigration, but they did not vote for this. . . .We live in a world of nation states with different constitutional arrangements. Many are authoritarian regimes with little or no protections for individual rights and with policies that lead directly to the persecution or impoverishment of individuals, many of whom then attempt to escape, usually on foot, to more decent political orders. But the massive influx of undocumented migrants then results in backlash within the more democratic countries against the migrants, which then increases the authoritarian forces within those countries themselves. It is like a death spiral, which has played out in some European countries and is currently being reenacted in real time in the United States.
The border must be guarded and new violators caught and returned. Employers must accept responsibility for verifying their employees’ status, in exchange for a promise that current workers will not be swept up en masse. Those already in the country must be given a short window to register and become “documented non-citizens,” with a temporary right to work and a date for a hearing. As long as they then can prove that they were present in the country before the law went into effect and they are not found to have committed serious crimes, they should be given permanent resident status. This need not include a pathway to citizenship, at least not now; we can call the new status a “blue card” and save the citizenship discussion for another day. After tempers have cooled and trust is restored, we can better make the case for generosity to these men and women who have become our neighbors and fellow workers, just as we can more constructively discuss how to resume legal immigration, as we should. But first we need laws that work, laws that have a chance of bringing us back together.
One can imagine a scenario in some future century in which all the world consists of just, temperate political orders. This utopian dream will not occur in our lifetimes—or, indeed, in the present century. It may never happen. In the meantime, Professor Smith Pangle’s proposed legal remedy is worth serious consideration.
I keep thinking how unbiblical this all is: as in, to take the first verse to come to mind,* Exodus 22:21, “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (KJV).And frequently elsewhere, e.g. 23:10, “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
It would be easy to do a sermon on the subject: I have heard a few.
I suppose there are some out there who will explain that this only applies to Jews ….
*Because the numbering makes it easy to remember.
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Thanks for that list. There are also plenty of such statements in the Christian New Testament, including the Sermon on the Mount.
Contemporary religion focuses on dogma, not on ethics. I could write a book about that. Oh, that's right, I actually did write such a book: Alan E. Johnson, Reason and Human Ethics (a PDF replica of which is online at https://www.academia.edu/107899091/Re... also available in Kindle [$2.99 USD]) and paperback on Amazon.com).
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The foregoing is the title of this July 12, 2025 AP article: https://apnews.com/article/california....
Excerpt:
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.Because these are emergency orders, the Government can take an immediate interlocutory appeal. Recently, the US Supreme Court has been reversing lower court orders on such procedural issues. We will see what happens this time.
Immigrant advocacy groups filed the lawsuit last week accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California during its ongoing immigration crackdown. The plaintiffs include three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification.
The filing in U.S. District Court asked a judge to block the administration from using what they call unconstitutional tactics in immigration raids. Immigrant advocates accuse immigration officials of detaining someone based on their race, carrying out warrantless arrests, and denying detainees access to legal counsel at a holding facility in downtown LA.
Judge Maame E. Frimpong also issued a separate order barring the federal government from restricting attorney access at a Los Angeles immigration detention facility.
Frimpong issued the emergency orders, which are a temporary measure while the lawsuit proceeds, the day after a hearing during which advocacy groups argued that the government was violating the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution.
I am cross-filing this post in the “United States Constitution and Government” and “Immigration” topics of this Goodreads group.
I think the immigration issue is very difficult to solve. First, nobody wants to leave their hometown unless it is due to personal ambitions or because the situation has become completely unsustainable. The fact that thousands—if not millions—of people are willing to risk their lives to reach the USA or Europe shows that it is mostly the second reason that drives people to abandon their homes. Nobody throws themselves into the sea (as is especially common among migrants trying to reach Europe) simply because they want to improve their conditions. They are escaping from something at least as dangerous as the journey itself. In this context, it is an unstoppable phenomenon.The only way to solve this issue is to address the problems that make these people leave their homes. The “solutions” proposed by the far right in Europe and by Trump in the USA are very concerning. Even after a plan of mass deportations (which sounds disturbingly similar to the Madagaskarplan designed by the Nazis), migrants would still try to return to these countries. What will be the next step when mass deportations predictably don’t work? I can only imagine the most dehumanizing scenarios.
Finally, I would like to quote Benoît Bréville, director of Le Monde Diplomatique, who also opens the debate about the impact of mass deportations in European countries by discussing a hypothetical referendum on migration in Portugal, in the latest edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (August 2025):
“[...] if Portugal had to organize a referendum on migrants, what would the question be? Would it be: ‘Do you want to expel foreign labor, which is exploited and poorly paid, yet has become indispensable to the economy of a country in demographic decline?’”
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Thank you for your thoughts, Josu.
For previous discussions in this group on immigration, do a search for “immigration” in the “search discussion posts” box at the top right of each webpage in this group.