Geraint Rees wrote:
>
> 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.
It's only unproductive if you are unwilling to accept the figures. No
amount of persuation works on those unwilling to be persuaded.
> 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?
Yes, however, the 'innocent until proven guilty' only applies maximally,
generally, to those who willingly accept the jurisdiction of the state
and participate voluntarily in the justice system. When one becomes a
fugitive, a suspect is far less likely to be granted bail, etc. as a
non-fugitive would be. Similarly, a person who has violated INS rules
and moves to an unreported location when their visa expires makes
themselves a fugitive, and because of this, are not entitled to the same
sort of trust and respect of 'personal recognizance' that a voluntary
participant in the legal process would enjoy.
Detaining those who have violated the terms of their visa are justly
being detained because they are, at the very least, flight risks, even
if they are not participants in an actual terrorist plot.
The claim that they are being denied access to lawyers is not true. Some
refuse to accept court appointed lawyers but do not have the means to
hire lawyers of their own.
Nor does being held for military tribunals strip one of a right to a
lawyer. Because, though, it is a military court, the lawyers are all
members of the JAG corps (i.e. US military officers), which I would
expect some foreigners would be hesitant to accept as defense counsel.
>
> > 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.
My statement about 'guilty until proven innocent' was not necessarily in
regards to an actual courtroom, more a matter of filtration procedures
by the INS. Immigration laws, as originally structured, have always been
on a 'guilty until proven innocent' basis, because a nation could never
tell who was and was not an enemy agent. Trust was given, though, that a
person who denounced their home country and pledged allegiance to the US
was making an honest and forthright declaration. The problem with this
trust is that, in the case of muslims, the Qur'an literally states that
a believer is not responsible to fulfill any promises made to infidels,
ergo such declarations are on their face worthless, and anyone
professing to be a muslim must be assumed to not regard infidels as
worth respecting promises to.
>
> > 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?
Can you? How exactly do you make such a distinction? How do you verify
that refugee A is or is not a past member of the Taliban? One should
assume from now on that anyone who claims refugee status here from the
present Afghan government MUST be a Taliban, since such are the only
enemies of the present government. Furthermore, all past Afghan refugees
who are not making plans to return to Afghanistan sometime in the next
year or so should similarly be viewed with caution as a possible
infiltrator.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:31 MDT