Opinion of the DREAM act

[angus]

Somewhat favorable.  The alternatives are:  to deport them to places where they may not speak the language or understand the culture, or to ignore them altogether and add to the already permanent underclass, which would only serve the economic detriment of all Americans. 

As I understand it, there is also the requirement that they be high school grads and willing either to enlist in the military or acquire a university degree.  Seems reasonable.

[angus]

I don't like the idea of conscripting foreigners into the military to make them citizens. Wouldn't they be doing much more good for society if they continued to provide needed services at a reasonable price?

I don't think it's conscription, because you aren't ordered to report anywhere.  You're told that you can get a long-term permanent residency if you do one of several things, among the options is voluntary service in the military.  Those several options, I think, are geared toward both training and indoctrination.  University education provides some economic advantage.  Navy service, which has lots of specific jobs and excellent job training, provides economic advantage.  Even army service, which doesn't have the array of jobs and training that the navy has, but at least you're taught to sneak around, blow stuff up, and kill people, and that is a marketable skill.  Also, service in the US military or university education in the US gives you a certain indoctrination.  That's equally part of it, I think.  Loyalty to a military or to a school usually translates into geographic loyalty as well.  To put it in words the short attention span types might understand:  whether it's ARMY or a University of Alabama on your T-shirt, at least it's not Che Guevara on your T-shirt.

This bill addresses a complex issue.  Parents come from somewhere else, and have a knowledge of a language and a culture other than yankee.  They have at least the minimum set of skills that would allow them to survive in that other place.  (refugees and such excepted, of course)  Whether or not we should deport or amnesty them is a debate we could have, so long as we recognize from the start what the logistics are. 

On the other hand, the fate of someone who has been in the US since childhood, and likely knows little or nothing about any other culture and lacking the economic skills to live well in that culture (but possessing the economic skills not only to do well in this culture but to thrive and to contribute to its economic vitality and its diversity), should be subjected to a different debate.  It's a different set of humanitarian debating points.

[angus]

I see, so you willingly admit that this is an effort to indoctrinate immigrants into an affection for the U.S. government. I still feel that the immigrant gardner who provides labor for much cheaper than the domestic market can provide does more good than the immigrant in the army trained to kill Iraqis and Afghans.

There are two salient points, but I was only addressing one of them:  yes, clearly the plan makes sense from the perspective of cultural indoctrination and skill provision.  Two birds, one stone.  I'm sure that the congress understands and intends this.  I don't think we're arguing about the efficacy, just about whether it qualifies as "conscription."

The other point you made before, and you are making again, is a good one as well, but it is less relevant here.  I, too, oppose federally-mandated minimum wages.  We've had lots of debates about minimum wage laws and examined their effects on the economy in this forum many times.  In the end, no one ever convinces any one.  Generally, you either support the idea or you don't.  Moreover, generally speaking, I have never had the idea that illegal immigration was the huge problem that the popular media is making it out to be.  I'm not for walls and fences, and I'm certainly not for open-ended detentions of illegals, which I find to be both inhumane to the migrants and costly to our society.  waves of migrants who wash dishes and pick oranges cheaper than gringos will?  I do not now, and never have had, a problem with that.  They have an opportunity to better their lot, feed their families, perform needed services, and it costs me nothing.  Walls and fences, on the other hand, are very expensive and wreak havoc with the natural ecology and are generally undesirable.  So I think we're generally in agreement about that sort of thing. 

But this law really doesn't attempt to address those issues directly, does it?  Tangentially it does have some effect, and a good one.  These US-nurtured people risk becoming a permanent underclass unless something is done to fully indoctrinate them, and given that they are likely to be productive members of the community with just a little push (call it by whatever name you wish), then that's probably a good idea since the creation of a permanent underclass of Americans have moral and economic implications for all of us.

Are you old enough to remember when "amnesty" was a good word?  When I was ten or eleven I could probably give you a general definition of that word, and it would have made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  It is, to me, a word like love or friendship.  Hard to imagine that it would have evolved into such an emotionally-charged negative word.  Really, amnesty is a nice concept, and if it weren't for the talking heads distorting the isssue--leftists injecting jobs into the matter, and rightists injecting security concerns--then it would still be a positive sort of word.

In short, I guess I discriminate between a 20-year-old who sneaks across the border to work illegally in the US and a 20-year-old who has been here since he was a baby and knows nothing else.  It would not be inhumane, in my opinion, to deport the former to his country of origin, whereas it is, in my opinion, inhumane to deport the latter to his country of origin.  Not that I'm gung ho about deportation of illegals, but at least the former can get off the bus in Tijuana and be no worse off than they were the day they started digging the hole.  These latter persons are, as a philosophical matter, stateless.  The have technicality in one nation, but practicality in another, and don't quite fit in either in the limbo of their existence.  This bill attempts to resolve that limbo in a strategically beneficial way, with consequences both moral and economic.

[angus]

If American citizens could theoretically be deported if they didn't enlist in the military, would that constitute conscription?

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines conscription as " compulsory enrollment of persons for military service."  If the US government wanted to compel its citizens to serve in the military, it would not use deportation as a threat.  (Cassius Clay and others who left the country to avoid conscription did so willingly, but they were not forcibly deported.)  So the question's material conditional phrase doesn't hold.  Although, technically speaking, a truth table will easily confirm that a logical conditional statement is valid when the first operand is false, no matter the value of the second.  So I guess you could argue syllogistically that the quoted statement holds.  But in what universe would the US government use deportation of its citizens as a threat to any means?  And to what fictitious land would they be deported?  

In any case, none of that bears on the original proposition that the DREAM bill represents conscription since it doesn't compel persons to military service.  It merely asks the question, "Would you like a green card?  And all the privileges thereunto appertaining, including, but not limited to, getting a decent job?  If so, then you need to finish secondary school and then go on to complete a program of higher education and training either through a university or military service."  It's a stretch to call that conscription.  Call it cultural indoctrination, or brainwashing, if you want--and I'm sure that's an intended consequence--but don't call it conscription.