Continuing my thought re: immigration: In my opinion, we have laws for a reason, and we should make use of them and enforce them. We should not overlook people breaking immigration laws because they’re in a bad spot or because they do jobs we don’t want to do; and we should not have lax gun laws because “criminals don’t obey them anyway.”
Well, IMO there’s a problem with that. Not in the abstract, but in practice, because our laws in this area don’t align with what we actually want in a practical OR ethical sense.
We have what I’d call a “nod-and-wink” economy regarding undocumented workers, basically meaning we have two labor markets. We have one above-board market where workers have protections, safety regulations, legal recourse, and so on. And we have another market where workers have none of those things. The benefit of having that second market is we get cheap labor-intensive products, such as food, construction, etc. The point of the laws, in my opinion, is not to prevent certain people from entering the country. In my view, the point of the laws is to prevent those people from getting decent wages and working conditions once they’re here. So I agree we have laws for a reason, but sometimes that reason isn’t straightforward.
This is a trade-off: we give up a little ethical high ground and in return we get cheap stuff. Now, if we didn’t have this secondary labor market, either via booting people out (R) or path to citizenship (D), the result would be the same: higher prices. I’m not saying some people wouldn’t be willing to choose this path, but I don’t think most are. And sure, the two-tier labor market is deeply unethical. I’m not arguing against that point at all.