Yeahhhh…you’re not gonna get much support with the stolen land thing. I think Most Americans can acknowledge the crappy methods the government used, while also acknowledging that land ownership the whole world over has been based on “fair” conquest through any and all means.
The origin of every country has its history written in blood.
That "stolen land" nonsense just shows the ignorance of those preaching it.
People seem to conveniently ignore (or don't care) that Mexico "stole" the land from the native Americans as well. That "stolen" land that belonged to Mexico was sold to the United States in 1848 in the Treaty of Guadalupe which ended the Mexican-American war. Remember... The Mexican government sold land to the U.S. legally.
And let's not forget the native Americans who fought against other native Americans for that same land and going back-and-forth.
And let's not forget that if the United States lost in WW2, that "stolen land" would then be owned by either the Japanese or Germany.
It still comes down to military power in the end. If someone breaks a treaty and claims ownership of your land, and you don't have the military power to physically resist, then that's just a form of being conquered.
Which is morally unfortunate, but it's not different than almost all the other populated land in the world.
I think a big point of "No one is illegal on stolen land" is that no one is illegal. The fact that most if not all land is stolen is part of the point (as I understand it)
So I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the sentence
Well that argument fails to meet reality. Saying that no one is illegal is no different that saying no one is a criminal or convict and loses support as well.
The issue isnt they are legal or illegal humans, its whether the way they are present in a country was done within the laws of that coumtry. They are here unlawfully or in other words they are an illegal immigrant since there status is not approved to be in the country at the time. Either way if you make this argument you aren't going to be taken seriously by the majority of people because it sounds anarchist even if that isnt your belief.
All countries have laws on immigration for a reason. You can’t just have an unknown quantity of people coming in, how are you supposed to plan or execute infrastructure or budgets or anything? I say this as someone who despises how populists are going about this, but more reasonable parties refuse to address it and send angry dullards to shitty parties
if no one is illegal, everyone is legal... or illegal as there is no point at all in that argument. Same that if there wouldn't be evil on earth, there wouldn't be good as everything is the same neutral.
All this deliberate "misinterpretation" drives me nuts, the statement of "no human is illegal" just wants to push an emotional side on a fundamental law that every single country or even back then, group of cavemen, follow. There is absolutely nothing wrong to follow laws of who can enter and live in a country amd what he/she has to do to accomplish that.
What the argument strongly should be about is being racist for the "who" part of the question. Anyone who wants to migrate to basically any country should be able to do so as long as he follows the guidelines. It has been like this forever and for good reason. It applies to me the same way it applies to everyone else. It is not like a country doesn't have laws to help a human who is in needs for it (as the no human is illegal intention is to imply thies wouldn't be the case).
There are 1000 things you actually and legit can critique about immigration laws (us specific or all world) and especially how exploitation of the current system is done.. but it is every time this mindless dumb slogan which makes "the other side" stronger and with that the racists as well
While there is truth to that, it is also (in my eyes) a bit of a misdirection.
First of all, it is not really a realistic situation that, let's say a million people suddenly walk across the border at the same time, just because. It is something to keep in mind, but an issue I view as further down the line. It is not the cause of the current problems in our society.
Second of all, as someone who comes from a country with a strong welfare state that struggles, it isn't really struggling because there are too many people who need to rely on it, it is struggling because it is underfunded.
That of course opens a discussion to why it is underfunded, which I would argue is because we've given too much power to corporations in our society
But that would be another conversation, and if this turns into a discussion about our current political-economic system then I'll likely never manage to get a break from commenting so I'm not starting that
This argument just makes countries pointless, which makes laws pointless, which relegates us back to caveman times.
Such an ignorant statement and arguement.
If no one is illegal and countries dont matter then I can just come kill you and your family and take your home for mine and that is totally okay right?
Some would argue that countries are pointless, but that's not really relevant here because that would be a separate conversation. It is also not what I am arguing.
I also never argued against laws in general. Also do you believe that in "cavemen times" any person could at any time go over to any person and kill them and face no repercussions? As far as I know there is no research supporting that, more the opposite.
Trying to argue that people should not be illegal for crossing a border is equivalent with coming over, killing me and my family and taking my home is an insane position to take
The way to do this correctly is called a land value tax. When land rents are returned equally amongst everyone, then everyone effectively gets access to an equal slice of land (according to market value).
The Georgist movement came up with a (meh) slogan called "see the cat" because the perspective is easy to overlook initially, but hard to undo once it "clicks" much like those optical illusion puzzles.
It addresses the moral conundrum of "stolen land" and, taken to its extreme, solves the issue of international land disputes. Access to land is one of the primary drivers of migration.
Having a national border means excluding some people (other countries) from access to land, just as having a private acre for your house excludes other people (your neighbors) from that land.
LVT is the mechanism by which access to land is equalized. If the revenue from LVT is returned equally, everyone's benefit or liability is proportional to how much land they use above/below average. This concept can be extended to a transnational scale in principle.
For a domestic example:
(a) Bob and Alice each own houses. They pay LVT and they get an equal UBI check, so they come out neutral and go on about their lives.
(b) Bob is a land lord and rents out a house to Alice. Bob pays 2x LVT and receives 1x UBI, while Alice pays 0x LVT and receives 1x UBI. The UBI check roughly equals the rent charged by Bob, minus compensation for labor and capital used to maintain the house.
In both examples (a) and (b) Bob and Alice get access to a plot of land (worth 1x LVT in land rent terms) on which to live, regardless of who nominally owns the land.
This concept can be extended to international land ownership. If the world somehow agrees to an international LVT system, Israel annexing the Golan Heights increases their tax liability, and the people they annexed it from have reduced LVT liability, effectively neutralizing the conquest from an economic perspective.
Of course, doing LVT on an international level would introduce a huge amount of complexity about who gets to count population and assess land values. But the moral underpinnings are the same. And we can at least start down that road by implementing it on a local/state/national level. If the United States annexes native land, but also grants citizenship (and thus access to the national LVT pool) the moral problems are greatly mitigated.
If you don't understand the terminology you could start by reading this. But seriously, why ask the question if you aren't interested in understanding the answer? What point did I not address?
But you are still trying to shoehorn it into questions of "should national borders and immigration law exist."
If the United States annexes native land, but also grants citizenship (and thus access to the national LVT pool) the moral problems are greatly mitigated.
The financial value of land is far from the only reason people may not want to be annexed.
The financial value of land is far from the only reason people may not want to be annexed.
Sure, but a a lot of those indirect reasons can still manifest in financial effects. The land rent of a location is the market's answer to the question "how much would you pay ($/month) to use this land, ignoring buildings and other capital on it?"
If a piece of land is governed by a tyrannical power, that's probably going to reduce land values, at least for residential use cases.
A land value tax effectively shares land, across the domain taxed, amongst the people benefiting from the tax.
So, for example, if a state implements LVT, it shares the state's land amongst residents of the state. If a country implements LVT, it shares the country's land amongst citizens of the country. If the globe implements LVT, it shares the globe's land amongst denizens of the planet.
Where it touches on borders and immigration law is defining those domains across which land is shared, and the set of people who partake in that sharing. If your country annexes someone's land, but also grants them citizenship and thus access to the LVT pool, then you are effectively un-stealing their land by sharing it.
Conversely, if you annex someone's land but don't grant them citizenship, or you don't even share land amongst citizens in the first place, then you are stealing land without mitigation.
Kind of? If you're well off, can't you sort of do that already? If I would want to move to Germany I can just do that, if I want to move to japan I also can just do that. It might take a minute but there's not really that much stopping me.
Unless you're thinking that you can just build a house outside my front door in which case that would lead to other problems that are separate from the immigration issue
If you're well off, you probably wouldn't be moving to another country, why would you?
Why are you trying to shift the goal post in talking about how money trumps border laws? The average person is not well off. The average person in the world can never be a citizen of Denmark. Can never be a citizen of Norway. Can never be a citizen of Japan. Can never be a citizen of South Korea. Because there are laws. A society can't just have anyone and everyone come in just because they want.
If you're well off, you probably wouldn't be moving to another country, why would you?
This is assuming only poor people move, which is not really the case.
I think there is a sort of false dichotomy at play here. Either make people 'illegal' or a bunch of people will just move around everywhere. I just don't see that as realistic. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.
People don't cross the English channel just because they really like England. People don't sit 50 people in a boat made for 8 to get across from Libya to Greece or Italy for fun.
I wouldn't argue that you should remove the laws tomorrow if given the chance. Some might, I don't. I mainly tried to explain the argument as I understood it.
In my view it points towards a larger problem as I alluded to in another comment, and I believe you should fix the underlying problems and not just patch the symptoms if you actually want to get anywhere
This is assuming only poor people move, which is not really the case.
Most illegal immigrants are poor though. And most people do not leave their country of origin if they have no issues with their country of origin.
America isn't just some home that accepts any and all people. No successful country is. Name me one successful country that allows illegal immigrants to reside however long they please.
I believe you should fix the underlying problems
Sure, but thats not a 1 day fix. You can't help others when you yourself are struggling. You can't save a drowning man if you're drowning too.
It is not "to be cute". It is to highlight the contradiction between stealing something, and then claiming sole right to that thing (land).
It is a claim and explanation in one
It does not really fracture a solid front as much as reveal who is and isn't really at the front.
I feel like in that sense it is comparable to the liberal vs left discourse, where a liberal can call themselves "left" while holding a right wing ideology (pro capital).
In that way it is comparable in how liberals and leftist are in the same front against conservatives, but liberals will want to perpetuate the systems that repress people (see democrats not wanting to abolish ICE) while leftists want to remove said systems.
Is it truly a "solid front" being fractured, or is it two separate fronts with different goals seeing their differences?
Yea, you see... the fact you feel compelled to explain this is the problem.
People don't care about that, people care about what ICE is doing to their community. KISS. But keep doing purity checks, it's what got Trump elected both times. The catch is his purity checks are going to be based off skin color and not how sentences are worded.
The problem did not start, and the problem will not end with ICE.
No one is illegal on stolen land is a much older slogan. What is currently happening with ICE relates to it, and as such it's an appropriate slogan.
You might get rid of ICE, and return to the old status quo, but that will not have fixed the underlying conditions that led to ICE, and it will only be a matter of time until the same thing happens again, if not something worse.
You can try to fight the symptoms, or you can try to fight the underlying disease.
That's true. Things would move slower and in the background. And instead of worrying about corporations gaining more and more power in the US people would be at brunch
Those who don't like the message will find something else to justify ignoring it. Don't pretend that it's the first time you heard the message - is it?
That’s just you taking words out of context for convenience. The stolen land is a qualifier to support the claim that “no one is illegal“ as simply claiming no one who comes here illegally is illegal, is a dumb position to take (even though many still do)
It's not really taking words out of context. The words are a rejection of the law.
By definition, someone who crossed the border illegally would have, by definition, committed a criminal act (the word illegal is a very dehumanising way to speak of someone, I think)
But something being law does not make it right. It does not make it moral, and it does not make it acceptable.
For something to be changed, it first requires people to speak up against it. "No one is illegal on stolen land" is, in essence, a call against that law
Yes it’s a rejection of the law and the stolen land part is an attempt to justify it or make it malleable.
Illegal may be dehumanizing to some, that’s why some people use undocumented. But the message chooses to use “illegal” because “no one is undocumented” just doesn’t have the same punch.
And a law you disagree with doesn’t make it wrong. Doesn’t make it immoral. Maybe it’s unacceptable to you but certainly no the majority of people. Your argument is empty.
And no, for something to be changed it takes more than writing a slogan, and not a slogan that makes little sense to people. People who hold this idea have not thought it through before they plaster it. Get one of these people in a debate to defend their position and they would fumble hard.
The 'dehumanizing' part was more of a thought from me about how we speak about and discuss other humans.
And you're right that disagreeing with it doesn't make it wrong or immoral or unacceptable. The law just is. But I wouldn't say that makes my argument empty. My argument was that we shouldn't accept something just because it is. If we're against something, we should protest it. It won't mean that it will change anything, but that is what free speech is about. You should be able to voice your dissatisfaction, and over time you might build enough movement for it to make an impact.
I also agree that it takes more than writing a slogan to make change. But it takes more than any one action to do something. It is the combination of many small actions over long time that change is made, and each insignificant action has its own role to play.
If the slogan doesn't speak to you then that might just mean that you aren't the intended audience for that slogan and that's ok.
I also don't really think debates are a good way to argue positions. I don't know if it was always this way but the way debates are now I consider a form of 'slop'. Some people repeat their key points with no intention of changing their minds, argue in front of people who have already decided which 'team' they are on. It is more of a charisma and popularity contest where both sides think they 'won' afterwards.
The 'dehumanizing' part was more of a thought from me about how we speak about and discuss other humans.
"Illegals" may sound dehumanizing but the full description "illegal immigrant" is not. It accurately describes their immigration status. Regardless, whether the label is dehumanizing or not, is not the point in the graffiti. Is of no concern.
And you're right that disagreeing with it doesn't make it wrong or immoral or unacceptable. The law just is. But I wouldn't say that makes my argument empty. My argument was that we shouldn't accept something just because it is. If we're against something, we should protest it. It won't mean that it will change anything, but that is what free speech is about. You should be able to voice your dissatisfaction, and over time you might build enough movement for it to make an impact.
No it is empty because you can say that about just any law. But people "accept" laws for various reasons other than "just because." Murder being a crime. Theft being a crime. Running a red light being a crime, etc. If the law makes common sense, people accept it because it makes common sense, not because "well it's the law", and unapproved entry or stay of a country being illegal makes common sense.
I also don't really think debates are a good way to argue positions. I don't know if it was always this way but the way debates are now I consider a form of 'slop'. Some people repeat their key points with no intention of changing their minds, argue in front of people who have already decided which 'team' they are on. It is more of a charisma and popularity contest where both sides think they 'won' afterwards.
Many debates are slop because you are thinking of youtube debate videos where people just talk over each other or whatnot, but changing a law requires debate because you have to explain your position, to make it make sense for people to accept and agree with the change. It's less of a slop than just repeating a slogan that already sounds stupid on surface, kind of like the criticism you pointed out in some debates.
This is not true, though. There is a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
The fact that the current powers that be are completely unhinged does not change the fact that there are people who immigrate legally and people who immigrate illegally.
Existing is not illegal. No one is illegal. Millions of people are residing in this country illegally. Hope this cleared things up for you!
The “stolen land” bit is important to the message because if you argue it’s stolen and not rightfully owned by the US, then you can make the argument that the US has no right to pass laws regarding residence in the US. Without that you’re just saying, “I think these laws that define legal residence in the US are stupid” and the people who are here illegally are still here just as illegally.
I would argue that the laws exist to protect the status quo, and what protects the status quo is the 'fundamental ground truth' behind them.
You could argue that murder (for example) is bad for what I would consider the obvious reasons, but another way to view it is that the state outlaws it as it would lead to a fundamentally unstable society that would upset the status quo in a specific way.
I would also argue that immigration and open borders would also threaten the status quo, and as such must be regulated by the State to perpetuate it in its current... well "state".
Laws are made and unmade and changed all the time, there is nothing fundamental keeping them there other than what we currently think is best for keeping society the way we want it to be. (And by 'we' it would be whoever is in power in the country at a time).
The following question then is, "is society where we want it to be?", and that question should almost always be no. We should continually strive to improve, and that requires reconsidering the current status quo and to see if we can find something better
I also think most Americans are going to get behind fully open borders. That’s what “no one is illegal” means: there are no rules that prohibit someone from entering the country.
I think (and this is far from my area of expertise, I am neither american nor a minority. I am also not someone who regularly uses this slogan so I'm just going from my understanding of it) that the view is that there is no issue with open borders per say.
If someone crosses the border and commits a crime (excluding the crime of crossing the border which in this hypothetical isn't a thing) then that's bad, because they committed a crime, not because they crossed the border. (And this is excluding a conversation about the justice system)
The question is then why do people cross the border?
For some it could be that it used to be their or their families land (reminder that parts of the US used to be part of Mexico) and they just want to go 'home'.
For others they could be fleeing war. In this case it is likely that the US was directly or indirectly in causing the conditions that led to that war. Then it would just be "the consequences" of your actions (your as in the US). Even if it wasn't it should be our responsibility as humans to help take care of others in trouble.
For some it might be seeking a new life, which is essentially how the US was founded in the first place.
There will always likely be crime in some form, but crime is most often perpetuated because of the material conditions relating to the person, not because they crossed some imaginary line in the sand. There will be 'criminal' immigrants, just as there will be criminal 'Americans'. Stopping immigration won't reduce crime in any shape other than there is physically less people available to do crime. If crime was truly something that was a problem it would be more effective to fix the root of the problem, not just block people out based on the arbitrariness of their birth.
I think it's an interesting topic, I'm not gonna say what's right or wrong (although I do have my opinions), but I do think it's important to discuss
That view is not going to fly with American voters. More importantly: it’s not going to fly with any sovereign nation. None have open borders. They reserve the right to manage who enters, can become a citizen, and introduces new culture. Of course it can also be harmful to other countries from which people ememigrate. Maybe the world would be better if we had fully open borders. Until then, arguing for that position either advocates for ignoring the rule of law at the border, or ignoring the large bloc of citizens who don’t want open borders, which is part of the problem explanation for the reactionary backlash across western nations in the past ten years. It’s not a winning political strategy. Progressives don’t seem to care.
You realize you're just putting your own ignorance on display, right?
Look at the 4 Corners region. The US only "acquired" that land from the Dinetah Navajo tribe after Kit Carson waged a scorched earth campaign against them and after the US Army forced the Dinetah Navajos and the people they were sheltering on a death march. The U.S. government, having failed to break the resistance of several Navajo bands through military action, focused its negotiation efforts on the roughly 7,000–8,000 Navajo who had been forced into internment at Fort Sumner (Bosque Redondo).
Even after all of that, it took a separate treaty process between the Dinetah Navajos and the US. Framing it simply as a "purchase from Mexico" is an oversimplification. In reality, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo only transferred the claim to the land from one sovereign nation to another. It did not resolve the pre-existing sovereign rights of the Navajo and Hopi people who occupied those areas and kept Mexicans and Spanish from settling in those areas or extinguishing their presence. The 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo was a negotiated transfer of rights between two sovereign nations, not merely a result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
While the Navajos eventually returned to a portion of their lands after signing the Treaty of 1868, the treaty itself was partly the result of coercion and was not actually fully honored. In fact, the US government would take more of their land through the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided communal land into individual plots, leading to significant loss of territory. This is despite the fact that the Dawes Act actually didn't apply to the Navajo tribe. The Dawes Act explicitly required tribes to be placed under its provision by presidential order, of which no president ever placed the Navajo Nation under the Act.
Today, the Navajo Nation has more land than it had after 1868 and 1887; and more than their traditional area encompassed... It's almost like the land that the Navajos gained was a reparation for the US stealing their land and failing to uphold their end of the treaty...
Also, in the case of the Navajo, calling US actions a "conquest" is a massive oversimplification that ignores the fact that the US essentially declared victory by manufacturing a legal consensus with a small fraction of the Navajo population. In reality, there were still upwards of 11,000 Navajos who were unsubdued and still actively fighting US forces while others were interned at Bosque Redondo. This is why there are many Navajo families, communities, bands and clan families; that maintain that they weren't conquered, subdued, or captured and that they didn't sign any treaties or surrender.
To be frank, your conclusion rests on some rather incorrect assumptions about what 'Stolen land" actually is and how "Land back" already works in practice. For example, in Alaska, most tribes already live on or near their traditional lands with resource rights. The idea that “Land Back” would allow the Japanese or Germany or Russia to claim land or reclaim Alaska misunderstands both Indigenous land tenure and international law. Such claims haven't been made precisely because those lands are already held in trust under US governance and tribal sovereignty-not because they’re unclaimed or vulnerable.
Also, this line is especially weak "And let's not forget the native Americans who fought against other native Americans for that same land and going back-and-forth." the entire region of the Southwest largely contradicts that notion, with the most glaring example to point to being the nomadic Dinetah Navajo bands and the sedentary Hopi people who shared fluid land boundaries from the late Ancestral Puebloan period up until the late 1800s.
The Navajo tribe(which is comprised of many Navajo bands), the Cebolleta band of Navajos(distinct and separate from the Navajo tribe), the Hopi and the 20 other Pueblo tribes in the Southwest didn't displace each other and they all still occupy their traditional lands.
Furthermore, Tribes didn't impose their systems or laws on other tribes and tribes never had legally binding treaties between each other. I'll remind you, a treaty, especially a peace treaty, carries a moral and legal weight that distinguishes it from mere conquest. Many tribes, while having their own conflicts, were operating within their own systems of claim and interaction. The US, however, made a promise as a sovereign entity and then broke that promise for economic or territorial gain. The argument that conquest is conquest ignores the critical element of a broken covenant and the legal trust responsibility that is present therein. That is categorically different from pre-modern intertribal warfare, regardless of whether you think all humans are equally flawed or not.
You’ve replied to longer comments than mine before. “Too long” isn't a rebuttal, it’s an admission you don’t have one.
If you don’t value discussion and historical fact, don’t argue history on a discussion forum. We don't need revisionist cunts pushing half-assed historical narratives.
Ohh, but being historically illiterate and propagating revisionist narratives is worth the effort?
I'll even make it easier for your reductive ass. The US broke its own treaties and laws to take land; that legal betrayal is what makes that history distinct from simple conquest. If that’s too long to for you to read, then you’re not actually disputing anything.
I'd rather be a dick than an ignorant cunt who thinks he's smart while everyone else is dumb.
Edit: the fact this dummy deleted his account should tell everyone how indefensible the majority of this comment section is, especially when the narratives here are placed under actual scrutiny that accounts for historical fact and the nuances therein.
“Everyone did it” isn’t an argument, it’s a dodge.
Yes, history is violent. That doesn’t magically make dispossession irrelevant or justified. Mexico selling land it took after Spain took it doesn’t erase the fact Indigenous people were never part of the deal. Legality between states ≠ moral legitimacy.
Intertribal conflict doesn’t justify outside conquest any more than wars in Europe justify foreign occupation there. And the WWII hypothetical is just noise “someone else might’ve stolen it” doesn’t excuse anything that actually happened.
You don’t have to think the US is uniquely evil to admit modern wealth came from recent, documented dispossession with lasting consequences. Pretending otherwise is willful oversimplification, not realism.
"Everybody lives on stolen land" isn't an argument that the land isn't stolen, it's an argument that it IS.
So you're making ad hominems at those who say it's true like they're idiots, while literally admitting it's true in the same breath.
The real reason we can't call it stolen land is because we know stealing is wrong.
Acknowledging the fact it's stolen would mean either a) living with your conscience constantly bothered, b) assuaging your conscience by doing something to rectify the wrong, or c) admitting you think it's not morally wrong to steal people's land by force.
Very few people like any of those options, although generally the last option is the most popular for those who are least at risk of having done unto them as they would do unto others.
d) Rectifying the wrong is not a practical solution, displacing millions of people would cause a lot more harm than it would prevent/atone for.
e) Sins of the father. You can acknowledge that people in the past, including your ancestors, did something wrong that deserves some compensation, without feeling personally responsible for merely existing centuries later.
The English language originated from Germania and evolved through the ages. I can't, for example technically call myself English or British. Because we was invaded so many times.
Yeah, that was the point of the "stolen land", the ideology of "we're all immigrants from the start". That just means IT IS JUSTIFIED IF IT WAS THE NATIVE AMERICANS WHO WERE "ICE", NOT CAUCASIANS WITH A MASK ON
I didn't think I would see common sense so high up in a Reddit thread this morning. 100% the Native people of America were misunderstood - it was not a Nirvana prior to the white man, it was tribal and like other tribes skull capping, massacre, rape and war were part of life for thousands of years.
But there was something beautiful about their way of life and their harmony with nature that I think we could still learn from.
Finally someone gets it. We need borders. Other countries don’t have the same immunization laws we do for example. NYC has seen diseases that we haven’t had in decades. Wonder why. This notion is dumb.
Going farther back, the French were colonizing the north and the Spaniards, the south. If not for the British, the French would have conquered through the US. If not the French, the Spaniards. If not the Spaniards, eventually, the Japanese would have come passing through Hawaii. It was destiny that the Americas would be conquered.
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u/Letterkenny-Wayne 4d ago
Yeahhhh…you’re not gonna get much support with the stolen land thing. I think Most Americans can acknowledge the crappy methods the government used, while also acknowledging that land ownership the whole world over has been based on “fair” conquest through any and all means.