From: Geraint Rees (g.rees@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Dec 25 2001 - 11:57:04 MST
On 12/25/01 4:17 PM, "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@datamann.com> wrote:
> Anti-gunners
OK, no more gun troll feeding! The argument seems to be going nowhere and I
understand has not been particularly productive in the past. Let's go back
to the original issues in the thread:
> What I am saying is that there needs to be a filtration system put in
> place between high trust and low trust societies. Failing to do so will
> only result, as we have seen, in a social equivalent of the old 'bad
> money pushes out good money' phenomenon. Allowing unrestricted access to
> individuals from low trust societies only results in your high trust
> society becoming diluted into a low trust society, at a rate relative to
> the rate of immigration.
No-one has 'unrestricted access' to US society; the INS already has a pretty
aggressive policy towards non-residents, as I myself found out when working
in the US. I suggest that any problem of access should be dealt with by
refining the access (i.e. Visa-granting) procedures; not by suggesting that
anyone who is not a US citizen should be judged guilty of a crime until
proven innocent. The cornerstone of US society appears (to an outsider) to
be the way in which all people living in the US are treated equally. To
throw this away is surely both unwarranted and dangerous?
> We know that al Qaeda was based in the Sudan with the support of the
> Sudanese government, and from there, they recruited and sent terrorists
> to the US to bomb the WTC in 1993. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
But as far as your argument was phrased, you were not suggesting that the
INS treat applicants from (eg) the Sudan) with additional suspicion. Rather,
you were suggesting that all immigrants from the Sudan be treated as guilty
of any crime until proven innocent, and treated differently to any other US
citizen.
> Al Qaeda itself was the security arm of the Taliban government. What
> rock have you been hiding under?
Again, I don't understand your position. Are you suggesting that all Afghan
refugees fleeing from such a regime should be treated as terrorists? We can
surely make a distinction between bona fide refugees from a regime of
terror, and the terrorists (and their supporters) who are running the
country?
G
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