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Resolved: Stricter enforcement of federal immigration laws is in the best interest of United States

Debate Information

Position: For
February 2018 Tournament | Semifinals - Debate 1

This Debate will be about the following topic - 
Resolved: Stricter enforcement of federal immigration laws is in the best interest of United States national security.
aarongagsrnatbaronsnorthsouthkorea
  1. Live Poll

    ?

    8 votes
    1. Yes
      75.00%
    2. No
      25.00%



Debra AI Prediction

Tie
Predicted
50%
Likely
50%
Unlikely

Details +


For:

48% (40 Points)


Against:

52% (43 Points)



Votes: 7


Debate Type: Traditional Debate



Voting Format: Casual Voting

Opponent: someone234

Rounds: 1

Time Per Round: 24 Hours Per Round


Voting Period: 24 Hours


Round 1

Voting



Post Argument Now Debate Details +



    Arguments


  • Affirmative Constructive | Position: For
    islander507islander507 194 Pts   -  
    Thank you for having this debate in the semifinals of the DebateIsland tournament.
    I will argue for Pro position - Stricter enforcement of federal immigration laws is in the best interest of United States national security.

    I thank my opponent @someone234 for accepting this debate.

    Lets please start with the following proposed definitions:
    "Stricter Enforcement" - is any improvement in enforcement of current immigration policies in the US.

    "Best interest of United States national security" - refers to both physical and economic security - meaning benefits don't need to be limited to just physical security issues.

    Below are 2 top arguments to support my position:
    1 - Illegal immigration hasn't been consistently enforced in the US, and results in encroachment of our south borders, crimes from illegal immigrants,  terrorist acts from immigrants that should've been vetted more thoroughly before entering the country (legally or illegally).
    2 - illegal immigration is causing economic hardship to our economy, exposing us to financial risk.

    This topic is timely, as Immigration debate is currently going on in Congress.

    The Senate’s immigration debate, starting next week, is really at least 7 different debates

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/8/16986544/daca-immigration-congress-senate

    Who should be legalized and how? 
    Parents of DREAMers?
    How much money does the wall get?
    Can closing “loopholes” stop gang members from entering the US without hurting children fleeing persecution?
    Does the Senate care about abolishing the “visa lottery”? And if it does, what does it want instead? 
    Should legal immigration be cut, shifted, or neither? 
    What about interior enforcement? 

    Dear DebateIslander judges - if you support increased measures for any of the above then you support my position for increased enforcement of immigration laws.
  • Cross Examination - Affirmative | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -   edited February 2018
    This is a Lincoln-Douglas style debate.

    In such debates, it's not the Negative side's affirmative in this round but only the role of the Negative to attack what has been proposed by the Affirmative thus far. This includes the resolution itself.

    I stand here, today, as the Opposition/Negative to the motion of stricter enforcement of federal immigration laws being in the best interest of United States national security. For clarity to the reader, (it's very obvious that the Proposition/Affirmative agrees) the United States shall be defined as the United States of America (USA) for this debate. No other nations or 'States' are involved in the debate at hand other than to explain how other nations who may be enemies, neutrals or allies of USA may be affected by said laws.

    I will be presenting 2 Kritiks of the resolution before proceeding to address the flawed resolution and to debate against what it wrongly suggests.

    The Kritik is not a misspelling of 'critic' because a critic is a person who criticises and is instead a debate-specific spelling of 'critique'. A Kritik is instead as follows:

    I shall quote a source here: http://webpages.charter.net/johnprager/IPD/Chapter14.htm

    Kritiks are philosophically-based arguments which question fundamental assumptions underlying the arguments, positions, or presentation of one side in the debate. Since the kritik asks for the judge to evaluate the round based on the evaluation of the kritik, we can consider these arguments to be varieties of (formal) decision-rules. Generally, the kritik is a tool for the Negative team against the Affirmative but there are instances where Affirmatives can apply the kritik, too. Authorities suggest that successful kritiks have five characteristics:
    1. The kritik questions the fundamental assumptions of the round. It looks at issues lurking within the presentation of one side of the debate, rather than taking the presentation at its face value. The result of this is that the debate shifts away from policy discussion, often toward discussing questions of fact or value.
    2. The kritik is generally presented as an absolute argument. It demands a yes-or-no response from the judge, rather than an impact which is weighed against other arguments.
    3. The kritik may be non-unique. The side presenting a kritik may indulge in the same "hidden assumptions" for which it is kritiking the opposing team. They will argue, however, that a decision on the kritik can mean a lost debate only for the opposing team.
    4. Kritiks are non-comparative. The kritiks only questions and objects. It does not seek to present an alternative. At most, a kritik can suggest a vague realm of alternatives but not specify which one should be selected. A "kritik of capitalism," for instance, may urge that capitalism be rejected, and the Affirmative plan's capitalistic underpinnings would be rejected as well. But the Negative presenting the argument would not have to urge for a specific replacement for capitalism, such as fascism or socialism.
    5. Kritiks are a priori (Latin: "from the beginning") voting issues. Since they represent fundamental considerations on which presentations are built, they demand to be evaluated before substantive issues such as inherency, topicality, or disadvantages are considered. If the bedrock of those arguments is faulty, as the kritik suggests, then we can discard the arguments without looking at them in detail.
    I shall give a name to the Kritiks I am presenting, the first is the objectivity Kritik that shall focus on how we analyse what a best interest is as opposed to a worse one and the second Kritik is the Interest Kritik that shall explore how impossible it is to prove that something is really in the interest of something else unless you are the interested party speaking for themselves.

    The Objectivity Kritik

    The word 'best' has many definitions of different specific wordings but in the context of this debate needs a defintion since the Affirmative/Proposition didn't define it yet. I shall suggest the following definition:

    of the highest quality, or being the most suitable, pleasing, or effective type of thing or person
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/best

    To begin with, it is objectively impossible to conclude quality of an interest because interests are not physical in any manner. Therefore, to say something is in the 'best interests' of something else is to create an unfalsifiable resolution. The term unfalsifiable means not only that it can't be proven wrong but also that it can't be proven to begin with.

    Unfalsifiability is also known as untestability.

    Description: Confidently asserting that a theory or hypothesis is true or false even though the theory or hypothesis cannot possibly be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of any physical experiment, usually without strong evidence or good reasons.

    Making unfalsifiable claims is a way to leave the realm of rational discourse, since unfalsifiable claims are often faith-based, and not founded on evidence and reason.

    https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/178/Unfalsifiability

    Since interests have no objective means of measuring quality, then it becomes objectively impossible to conclude that something is in the best interests of something else. It is entirely subjective and feelings-based and debate must be rooted in reason or else there becomes no means for the judges to judge by.


    The Interest Kritik

    The term 'interest' in this debate has not yet been defined by the Affirmative side. Definitions such as 'the feeling of wanting to know or learn about something or someone' or 'money paid regularly at a particular rate for the use of money lent, or for delaying the repayment of a debt' are most certainly not the ones we want to apply to this resolution because they make the resolution make no sense.

    The definition that I propose is the idiomatic definition:

    to the advantage or advancement of; on behalf of.
    http://www.dictionary.com/browse/interest

    The issue with the term 'interest' in a policy debate is that you can't truly prove that something advances or has an advantage unless it's all relative to a specific scenario. For instance, being taller is an advantage in a fight or in being seen in a crowd but is a disadvantage when walking through a low-handing doorway or physically dodging something when compared with being short. This is all relative to the scenario in which the said adjective is being applied. So, even if stricter enforcement of immigration laws is in USA's national security interests in some scenarios, it is almost definitely going to contradict this by being completely against the interests of USA national security in other scenarios.

    In summary, for something to be in the interests of something else, a specific scenario must be provided in which the said change is being considered to be advantageous or inhibiting. Since the resolution is not explaining in what context the stricter enforcement is being considered to be in the interests of USA it is impossible to discuss in the first place.


    Challenging the Definition of Stricter Enforcement

    The definition of 'stricter enforcement' has been wrongly defined by the Affirmative side and is extremely biased on top of being wrong. Strictness is not in any way the same thing as improvement.

    You cannot define stricter enforcement as any improvement to enforcement because some improvements can even be loosening up enforcement if it was felt that the current enforcement was too strict.

    Instead of that definition, 'stricter enforcement' in the context of this debate should be defined as:

    To make people obey a law in a way that is closer to being inflexibly maintained or adhered to.
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/enforce
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strict

    The reason that I consider this a fair definition is because the flexibility in the maintenance of (and adherence to) immigration laws is in its extreme anarchy and in its inverse tyranny. Therefore we have created a discussion wherein the poles of the resolution are the extremes that actually each side is closer to representing (Prop is closer to tyranny whereas Opp is closer to anarchy).

    Agreeing with the dual nature of Security Issues
    National security is to do with securing both the economic and physical safety of the nation in a long-term sense. This is agreed on by both sides.


    The Rhetorical Questions are not Relevant or Even Meant to be Rhetorical

    1. Who should be legalized and how? 
    2. Parents of DREAMers?
    3. How much money does the wall get?
    4. Can closing “loopholes” stop gang members from entering the US without hurting children fleeing persecution?
    5. Does the Senate care about abolishing the “visa lottery”? And if it does, what does it want instead? 
    6. Should legal immigration be cut, shifted, or neither? 
    7. What about interior enforcement? 

    The first question is so important to this debate and is in no way whatsoever a question to just say the reader should 'agree' to or not. Answering that question is essential to this debate.

    The second question is not even a question and is actually contradicting the Affirmative side. it refers to Trump's inhumane decision to rescind the Daca program. Daca is/was a federal government program created in 2012 under Barack Obama to allow people brought to the US illegally as children the temporary right to live, study and work in America. Those applying are vetted for any criminal history or threat to national security and must be students or have completed school or military service. If they pass vetting, action to deport them is deferred for two years, with a chance to renew, and they become eligible for basics like a driving license, college enrolment or a work permit.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/04/donald-trump-what-is-daca-dreamers

    The third question is again a point against the Affirmative because that wall is a complete waste of money unless proven otherwise.

    The fourth question is to do with emigration and the enforcement of it, not immigration.

    The fifth question has its most important part at the end; what does it want instead. Until the Proposition can answer this, they have in no way whatsoever got a case in regard to it.

    The last 2 questions are again so important to this debate and need to be answered by the Proposition, not presented as obvious 'yes' questions.
  • Negative Constructive | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -   edited February 2018
    Now is time for the Negative side to make its case.

    C = Contention.

    C1: Stricter Immigration-Law enforcement consistently hurts genuine immigrants and tourists more than terrorists.
    C2: Allies like USA less and enemies hate USA more, the stricter its immigration law enforcement gets.
    C3: Increasing the strictness of enforcement encourages increasing crime-rate of said laws.

    Stricter Enforcement of Immigration Laws are not in the best interests of USA's national security. Instead, they make everything harder for good people to enter the country while, in exchange, giving small setbacks to potential terrorists or welfare system entering USA.

    Stricter Immigration-Law enforcement consistently hurts genuine immigrants and tourists more than terrorists.
    To begin with, let's analyse who gets most affected by the stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

    It's safe to say that when the enforcement of immigration laws gets more severe and regimented, tourists planning to go on a holiday are going to be ranking USA much lower than when it's more lax. From the ability to bring a laptop into USA  to the degree of profiling that goes into goes into visas such as Trump's H1-B Visa attack which has affected Indian tech workers more than any other type of people by a huge degree, stricter enforcement of immigration laws consistently hurts people who would contribute to the economic security of USA (Affirmative agreed that economic security is equally part of national security as much as physical militaristic security)  [1][2] There is a truth that Affirmative may bring up that when a country is plagued with terrorism, much less tourists want to go there for holiday and much less workers want to move there but this debate is about stricter enforcement of immigration laws, not stricter immigration laws in and of themselves and on top of that, the 'stricter' side of it is going to be when people are being deterred to enter. If people can easily go on holiday to a nation and gain work permits, then clearly the nation is on the more lenient side of immigration law enforcement.

    If you are a terrorist organisation, you are hardly going to send your most easy-to-profile members to do the dirty deed. In fact, the top two categories of terrorist attack committers attacks in USA are USA-born citizens and naturalised citizens.[3][4]


    The stricter enforcement of immigration laws is not the same thing as stricter immigration laws. In other words, only the bottom four categories are going to be affected whereas the natualized citizens and permanent resident categories are to do with stricter immigration laws rather than stricter enforcement of said laws.

    Now that I have explained why the 'bad guys' are barely affected by the stricter immigration laws, I will explain why the 'good guys' are affected far more severely.

    Just for a little irony, I will use a couple stats from Trump's businesses and properties but then I will move on to USA as a whole, note that these charts are from the same website domain as Affirmative used so if they attack this source's credibility then they hurt their own:[5]


    Now let's look at USA as a whole and see what proportion of people are going to be hurt by stricter enforcement of immigration laws and how much they contribute to the economic security of USA. Additionally, to be clear about this, nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.[6] The same source stating that, points out that Six Iranians, six Sudanese, two Somalis, two Iraqis, and one Yemeni have been convicted of attempting or executing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during that time period (which was Obama's administration that leaned on the lenient side of immigration law enforcement), according to Nowrasteh’s research. The article just mentioned, [7], states that proportionally the law is doing nothing to stop the 16% of natural born terrorists from recent attacks, puts huge effort on stopping the 6.9% who were planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and points out that the stricter Trump  policies have put what are labelled 'threats' behind bars, 42% of which are in no way whatsoever terrorist-related and were if anything helping the US economy (albeit illegally so).

    So who really is Trump attacking with his policies and what has ever helped USA's economic security with stricter enforcement of immigration laws? That's right, he is putting a huge amount of effort to stop 6.9% of the group of people he is labelling as 'major threat' and is putting very little effort into ensuring that the non-significant-threats or even the non-threats who are simply put through stringent vetting processes against their will are not significantly affected to such a level they'd want to emigrate from USA to work and live elsewhere.


    Allies like USA less and enemies hate USA more, the stricter its immigration law enforcement gets.

    On balance, you will find that the physical security (as opposed to economic security) of USA is at bigger threat when people like Trump and Bush end up in power than when people like Bill Clinton and Obama are in power. 

    Kim Jong-Un is a drop in the ocean of threats but worth mentioning first as he's the most recent, prominent one.[8] It's easy for Affirmative to say that we are misleading the audience here since Kim Jong-Un's threat to USA is not based on stricter enforcement of immigration policies but it is actually consistently part and parcel with Trump being in power.

    To understand the case I'm going to make here, you need first to concede that 100% correlation cannot be simply disregarded as coincidence. On top of that, even thought correlation is not causation, the butterfly-effect is indeed rooted in causation and not correlation.[9] Any investment banker understand this, it is part of game theory if you understand it at the high level. When policies begin to hurt immigration, other nations begin to like USA less. The most obvious ones that like USA less are going to be those where the nationals are affected by the stricter enforcement but what follows is that they begin to make their own allies like USA less and a chain reaction of hating USA begins.

    George W. Bush had this issue begin with his campaign against the Middle East, the result being that even his closest ally (UK) ended up painting him and their own prime minister Blair as evil.[10] The issue then leads to more inherently violent or aggressive nations and people in them to begin to want to hurt USA much worse and citizens of allied nations to USA want to help it much less both economically and militaristically.[11][12]

    Do you honestly think Kim Jong-Un is threatening Trump for being arrogant and loud-spoken? It's more than just that. Japan and China are beginning to like USA much less due to a variety of things Trump has done and the catalyst for the hatred of USA is that Trump has made the Middle East and south Asia hate him due to his immigration stance. Therefore, since more nations are hating USA, nations that may not hate USA think 'why not?' since they know they'd have allies if USA dared to mess with them that would not previously have hated or fought with USA.

    A good example of a nation that has completely flipped from friendly to brutally hostile is Iran. Iran, for those who don't know, has a huge say in who Hezbollah attack and don't attack which has a huge ripple effect in nations like Lebanon and Syria.[13] Even though Obama's administration began the war in Syria, terrorist threats were all relatively low because Iran was taming Hezbollah and Obama had good relations with Iran. Trump and his immigration stance completely angered Iran along with many neighbouring nations that he directly or indirectly had hurt due to his policies affecting businesses operating between Middle East and USA since executives can't easily travel between the two nations by plane anymore especially if they want to bring laptops with them.

    There is, in other words, next to zero gain in international relations when regimenting the enforcement of immigration laws and in place of gains are tons of ripple effects resulting in many nations hating USA more or liking it far less occur as a result.


    Increasing the strictness of enforcement encourages increasing crime-rate of said laws.

    This will seem very silly at first but bear with me. I am saying that when you increase the enforcement of the laws in terms of strictness, you begin to encourage larger scale illegal immigrant cover-ups in response.

    For instance:[14]
    The most high-profile case of H-1B visa abuse concerned Walt Disney Company in Florida, where American tech workers claimed they were forced to train foreign replacements on the H-1B visa program before being laid off.[15] In October, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by two workers accusing Disney of conspiring with IT outsourcing companies to circumvent visa regulations.

    What begins to happen as you persecute illegal immigration much harsher, is that everything becomes harder to track as people who are intentionally having large portions of their workforce formed from illegal immigrants turned legal are going to either fire them and outsource to circumvent the investigation or are going to alter documentation to cover it up. Then, you end up encouraging much more covering up of illegal immigration than you encourage people not to illegally immigrate.

    On top of that, let's understand that illegal immigrants are not by default a national security threat but simply are criminals. The difference being that they are helping USA's economic security by working for very cheap wages relative to what they do and are more likely to do what they do well as they have prison to fear if they make their bosses less happy.

    The harsh truth I am addressing here is that not all crime hurts national security and so by putting the guard up for people to work harder to cover up illegal immigration, you are going to find it a lot harder to then snoop in and find potential threats out of the pool of illegal immigrants since they are much more carefully covered up due to the stricter enforcement.

    This is about what matters more, illegal immigration or the finding of threats out of those immigrants. I argue that the latter matters more and so by putting people's guard up to hide and mask the hiring of illegal immigrants much better, you end up decreasing your capacity for ensuring national security.


    Summary
    The three contentions that the Negative side shall be basing their case on are as follows:
    1. The helpful immigrants are hurt far more severely and at a much larger scale than the 'evil' immigrants.
    2.  The urge of other nations to help USA decreases massively due to butterfly effect.
    3. Tracking illegal immigrants becomes much harder when you significantly make the enforcement of immigration laws stricter.

    Sources:
    [1] https://www.wired.com/2017/06/bad-math-trump-laptop-ban/
    [2] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Trump-administration-announces-more-H-1B-visa-12705411.php
    [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/01/31/most-terrorists-in-the-u-s-since-911-have-been-american-citizens-or-legal-residents-infographic/#38bba9173d89
    [4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/convicted-terrorists-citizens
    [5] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/13/16466542/trump-h-2b-guest-workers
    [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-immigration-ban-terrorism/514361/
    [7] https://www.cato.org/blog/little-national-security-benefit-trumps-executive-order-immigration
    [8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/launch-of-new-missile-increases-pressure-on-us-policymakers-to-confront-north-korean-threat/2017/11/29/3dfc4ce2-d514-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?utm_term=.9c0a94b4d1d9
    [9] https://www.fs.blog/2017/08/the-butterfly-effect/
    [10] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/06/iraq-war-inquiry-chilcot-tony-blair-prosecute
    [11] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/11/03/commentary/world-commentary/americas-asian-allies-age-donald-trump/#.WpH9cai5thE
    [12] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-donald-trump-trade-war-us-tariffs-european-union-protectionism-policy-a8183156.html
    [13] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/haggai-carmon/hezbollah-and-iran-the-ne_b_777733.html
    [14] http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/18/trump-seeks-to-limit-foreign-workers-with-new-executive-order-h1b-visa-trade-deal/
    [15] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html
    islander507
  • Cross Examination - Negative | Position: For
    islander507islander507 194 Pts   -  
    Thank you @someone234 for posting prior 2 rounds.

    In this round I will cross examine your position.
    My opponent offered 3 contentions.

    C1: Stricter Immigration-Law enforcement consistently hurts genuine immigrants and tourists more than terrorists.

    My counter is that we have about 11 million  illegal immigrants in this country that expose us to physical security and economic security issues.  That is measured in violent crimes against Americans, massive tax evasion, and encroachment of our land on southern border.

    The U.S. civilian workforce includes 8 million unauthorized immigrants - lets calculate how much tax evasion that is since most of that is paid in cash.  Lets estimate $20k on average annually times 8 million.
    This website shows examples of series crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

    In general, in 2011, GAO conducted a study on criminal aliens incarcerated in state jails and prisons. According to GAO, in FY 2009 295,959 SCAAP criminal aliens, of whom approximately 227,600 are illegal aliens, were incarcerated in state jails and prisons.
    GAO examined five states that had large SCAAP illegal alien populations in 2008 – Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Texas. Arizona was the only state where traffic offenses were a substantial percentage of SCAAP illegal-alien convictions. Setting aside traffic offenses, 41 percent of the SCAAP illegal-alien convictions in Arizona were for drug offenses and assault. In California, “about 50 percent of California’s primary convictions related to SCAAP illegal aliens were for drugs, assault, and sex offenses.” Texas had a similar breakdown of SCAAP illegal-alien offenses. In Florida, “about 50 percent of all Florida state convictions of SCAAP illegal alien inmates were for drugs, sex offenses, burglary, and robbery.” And, shockingly, in New York, 27 percent of SCAAP illegal-alien primary convictions were for homicide – more than the 23 percent convicted for drug-related offenses. Below, homicide-related offenses are disaggregated by state.

    Given such a high level of crimes by illegal immigrants I will argue that it's a physical security issue.

    The encroachment concern it's that the illegals coming over the border aren't assimilating into our culture.  Instead, most of them are settling near the border creating a borderland, like Gaza and the West Bank, or Bosnia, or Kashmir.  They're creating a large area of divided loyalty.  When other immigrants came to this country, they left their old culture behind and became Americans.  By-and-large, the Mexicans in particular don't need to do that.  They can settle right near the border of their home country and usurp the culture that's already there. 
    They are essentially taking over our land, creating a physical security concern. [credit to @cydharta march 2017]

    Sources:


    If we have to inconvenience tourists and legitimate immigrants to actually enforce immigration laws that are blatantly ignored then it's a small price to pay.

    C2: Allies like USA less and enemies hate USA more, the stricter its immigration law enforcement gets.

    My counter is that it is a secondary issue, and pails in comparison to my counter argument to C1. It's highly debatable if this residual effect will actually have any real negative impact on national security.

    C3: Increasing the strictness of enforcement encourages increasing crime-rate of said laws.

    That is really a strange argument.  The outsourcing angle is taking this debate off tangent from the point of this debate.   If we take an extreme position and just open up borders then our laws will be easy to enforce as there will not be any laws. We already essentially don't enforce the law by turning a blind eye to incoming illegal immigrants and refusing to kick out those who are here illegally.

  • First Affirmative Rebuttal | Position: For
    islander507islander507 194 Pts   -  
    I will now defend my position from my opponents initial cross examination.

    I agree with the definitions, except:

    To make people obey a law in a way that is closer to being inflexibly maintained or adhered to.
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/enforce
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strict

    The reason that I consider this a fair definition is because the flexibility in the maintenance of (and adherence to) immigration laws is in its extreme anarchy and in its inverse tyranny. Therefore we have created a discussion wherein the poles of the resolution are the extremes that actually each side is closer to representing (Prop is closer to tyranny whereas Opp is closer to anarchy).

    I suggest to adhere to the original definition of stricter enforcement.  The debate is about actually enforcing the laws, and not relaxing the laws so the law is easier to enforce.  

    I offered 7 questions from the senate debate and will now expand on the most relevant questions to make my point.

    These points are:

    3 - we should build a wall.
    7. Interior immigration enforcement (e-verify, defund sanctuary cities).

    Build a wall
    3. Building a wall is a key measure to ensure stricter enforcement.  There should be no argument that a wall will help with enforcement since it will make it more difficult to get into the country from the South.  It may not solve all the issues, but will make a big difference in controlling the inflow of illegal immigrants.

    Department of Homeland Security report estimated that 170,000 people successfully entered the U.S. illegally from the southern border in 2015. That number is significantly less than the 1.7 million people estimated to have entered in 2005.

    There were approximately 5.6 million "unauthorized immigrants" from Mexico by 2016, according to data from the Pew Research Center

    This photo show a concept illustration of a US-Mexico border enforcement zone during a news conference where US Customs and Border Protection Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello announced Thursday Aug 31 2017 in Washington the selected vendors for construction of the concrete wall prototypes for the border wall AP PhotoManuel Balce Ceneta

    This photo shows a concept illustration of a U.S.-Mexico border enforcement zone during a news conference where U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello announced the selected vendors for construction concrete prototypes of the border wall.  (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/13/trumps-border-wall-look-at-numbers.html



    7. including everything from defunding “sanctuary cities” to expanding mandatory use of the E-Verify system to check the legal status of employees.
    These measures will help with stricter enforcement.  

    E-verify
    E-verify system will enforce our tax laws and will make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work for cash without paying taxes.

    The system also reduces the threat of discrimination against applicants, since the employer no longer has to decide whether the person’s eligible.

    But like any law, a federal E-Verify mandate is good only to the extent it’s enforced.

    Currently, it is illegal for employers to “knowingly hire” an illegal alien — a prohibition set out in 1986’s Immigration Reform Control Act (IRCA) and intended as a compromise to that law’s mass amnesty reprieve. But charges brought against the likely hundreds of thousands of illegal-alien employers are indeed rare.

    drywall company in Washington state recently became the first such defendant sentenced in the entire history of that state’s western district court. The attorney for the company pleaded with the judge that IRCA after all was a law “broken daily” and that his client’s “employment practices have been indistinguishable from thousands of other employers nationwide who have ignored IRCA at no peril.”

    Returning the country to a nation of laws will require an amped up vigilance on the part of its citizenry. They’ll have to show the political elite that if they continue to ignore the American people, it will be at their peril, not America’s. 

    Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/302936-forget-the-fence-e-verify-will-really-shut-down-the

    Sanctuary cities
    Defunding "sanctuary cities" will help with enforcement in illegal immigration.

    San Francisco, for example, passed an ordinance in 1989 that prohibits city employees, funds or resources from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in enforcing federal immigration law unless it’s required by state or federal law.

    It also passed an ordinance that limits when law enforcement officials can give ICE notice that an immigrant has been released from a local jail and prohibits law enforcement officials from cooperating with detainer requests from ICE.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/02/sanctuary-cities-what-are.html


  • The Negative Rebuttal | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -   edited February 2018
    To say I'm disappointed with the Cross-Examination Round by Affirmative to me would be an understatement... I am sorry to see such little effort being put into the debate by my opponent.

    At least in their Rebuttal Round they'd try, right?


    I guess they 'tried' so to speak. They clearly thought they could ignore the Kritiks and just reassert their biased and flawed definition of 'stricter enforcement' by saying 'I suggest to adhere to the original definition of stricter enforcement.' He suggests it or he concludes it? He already suggested it in Round 1 and I gave a much fairer and more accurate definition that was well-sourced with regards to both what 'strict' is and 'enforcement' is. He even tries to rebuke the definition by (rightfully) claiming that this debate is about stricter enforcement more than stricter laws but what does that have to do with the definition that I provided?

    The definition that I provided was:
    To make people obey a law in a way that is closer to being inflexibly maintained or adhered to.

    The 'making people obey' is enforcement of the laws... The definition of stricter enforcement is so on point that I don't even think I could write a better definition in this debate's context if my life depended on it! 

    Just... How can Affirmative define stricter as 'improving'? That would not only make it impossible to deny but also would ignore that there exist efficient lenient enforcement methods. He even mentioned the 'visa lottery' as well as me mentioning the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by Obama. DACA is one of many examples of lenient, less strict enforcement of laws that avoids the setback of encouraging people to hide better as well as incentivising them to 'give back' to USA in a long-term sense by being legal citizens for the remainder of their lives. So no, you can't define stricter as improved because there is such a thing as improved enforcement of the opposite end of the spectrum.

    Just to be clear the Kritiks weren't a joke and the resolution is impossible for Affirmative to uphold until they address them:

    K1: There exists no objective means to ascertain the best interests of something since interests have no objectively verifiable quality.
    K2: It can be in the interests of USA's National Security in one or two ways but undoubtedly against its best interests in others making this resolution a tail-biting snake since it gives no context in which the interests are being applied.

    I stated these very clearly in the cross-examination round and Affirmative chose to ignore it.

    Since my Kritiks stand and my definition has been irrefutably upheld now, I shall proceed to defend against the Cross-Examination Round of Affirmative.

    Since they put a lot more effort into rebuking my first contention, I'll handle the two easier ones first.

    C2: Allies like USA less and enemies hate USA more, the stricter its immigration law enforcement gets.

    Affirmative ends their rebuttal by stating that this is highly debatable... So why didn't they debate the highly debatable thing? They say that it's highly debatable (as opposed to undeniably false) and yet they don't debate why it's wrong at all.
    To say that this is a pale issue in comparison with Contention 1 is to concede that it's true in the first place.

    This is not some joke I brought up, this is a literal world-war-three at stakes. 9/11 happened under Bush who had very strict right-wing immigration enforcement. So what was the issue? No, it wasn't the immigration law enforcement it was the actual airport security procedures (meaning that the issue wasn't how easily the terrorists got their Visas but instead was screening and technical matters of security that are not enforcing immigration laws but are enforcing Airport security procedure. So why didn't a 9/11 happen under Obama? The closest thing was the Boston Marathon Bomb which had two brothers, who were there legally. One was on a student Vwho had legally naturalised into American Citizenship and the other an aspiring boxer or athlete of some kind who had done the same.[1][2]

    Obama strolls into office, and while he doesn't 'loosen' the immigration laws per se he definitely puts huge emphasis on ensuring it's the bad guys who get deported while the productive immigrants are given ways to naturalise themselves and their children to contribute long-term to USA and its economy.[3] By having an extremely outspoken immigrant-happy stance he helped many nations who previously loathed USA to help it out and keep threats at bay and allies loving USA (Asian threats and European allies especially).[4][5]

    Do you think Kim Jong-Un would dare wage war with Obama? China would leap to his defence as would many nations as the ripple effect of being well-liked is you end up well-feared since people know you have many on your side if they dare pick a fight with you. Trump has the complete inverse ripple effect because his entire campaign and policies have been about stricter enforcement of immigration laws and about making life much more brutal for foreigners in USA who were so desperate for a better life that they got there on either delicate visas that have long expired or involved somewhat forged paperwork as well as the completely illegal ones. Either way, he has threats from all sides. Do you think hating Latinos and saying Mexicans are rapists helped anything? He said those things to lead to stricter enforcement of laws regarding their immigration to USA. He has made many Latino nations hate him on top of Europe and Asia (I linked Europe and Asia sources in an earlier round) not to mention that uncoincidentally Trump has no Latinos in his Cabinet, the first case since 1989.[6][7]

    Stricter Immigration Law enforcement sends a message to other nations. It says 'we're the kingpins of the world, we are U-S of A but no, we won't naturalise your people if they come begging and are caught red handed, instead we will brutally persecute them and make your people out to be disgusting threats'. This mental image of USA means that everyone knows, more than any time in history since USA's origin is USA this weak internationally. Obama said 'jump' and the UN said 'how high, sir?' Trump says 'Jump' and they laugh and say 'you and what army, only USA's?'

    USA is weaker than ever before internationally, any president before had more lenient immigration laws and thus a softer image worldwide meaning more allies and more clout with which to say 'mess with me and you mess with my friends too' but Trump has alienated himself by making his 'America First' ideals a bit too literal for any other nation's liking.

    C3: The Evasion of Immigration Law Enforcement increases when it gets Stricter and thus the Tracking of Illegal Immigrants becomes Harder
    C1: 
    Stricter Immigration-Law enforcement consistently hurts genuine immigrants and tourists more than terrorists.

    I am slightly rewording my third contention but it definitely is exactly what I was conveying before. I explained that when you are more lenient on catching illegal immigrants, it's easier to track them en masse and filter out the bad guys from the good in terms of national security threats.

    The C3 is an inherent fact, I'm not even sure you can disprove it with any degree of evidence and I already provided a big case of Disney covering up mass illegal immigration the minute Trump said he'd persecute it. As soon as you begin harsh punishment for illegal immigration, every powerful corporation is going to do their level best to make untraceable paperwork and auditing blindness so that you never can trace a single one. On the other hand, if they know they can negotiate a law suit and that you will be very lenient about it, they are more likely to keep hiring illegal immigrants and at least put them to use for USA's economic national security. They don't usually pay cash in hand like Affirmative suggested but sure, some low-level jobs like a bartender or dishwasher may end up being paid cash in hand but this happens far more with locals of USA and not to mention the extent of tax evasion that Trump and his associates have done (although Trump has such good lawyers, they made it end up being legal).[11][13] By letting places like Disney keep their guard down, you then can snoop in as you please and have National Security Agency (NSA), who specialise in finding the real threats, to filter out the national security threats from the benign illegal immigrants.[12]

    I think something that is important here is to understand the difference between an illegal immigrant and a national security threat.

    Affirmative decided to only include economic and physical safety as elements of National Security when in reality there is more to it such as cultural and ecological threat, in fact it even extends to external peace which was a major element of my C2.[8] The reason I am bringing this up is because the rebuttal to C1 and C3 revolved around the fusion of illegal immigrants with national security threats and since part of what Affirmative said was cultural threat and socio-political threat and it would be wrong of me to dismiss these only because Affirmative had wrongly defined national security to only include terrorist threats and economic threats.

    Instead, I am going to explain that a small minority of illegal immigrants are national security threats even with this broader spectrum in play and that the ability to filter between the threats among them from the benign among them is significantly inhibited when you begin to witch-hunt them with stricter enforcement of the laws against them.

    The study provided and linked to by affirmative has these images in it:[9]
      

    The first graph (termed Figure 1) shows how much more effort, funding and focus should be put on citizen-threats to national security as opposed to 'alien' ones. The point being that even though this data is extremely outdated with the most recent stats being from 2010 (which Affirmative seemed to avoid mentioning), the need for 'stricter' or 'more focused' persecution of aliens is hardly a good investment of police time and resources when such a minority are doing crimes. Now, let's look at the third graph, (termed Figure 9) Oh, what a surprise, 65% of the big bad number that Affirmative mentioned were arrested for being illegal immigrants. This is not a national security threat crime. Being illegal immigrant is not in any way making you the equivalent of a terrorist or a cause for community destablising and it's actually quite jingoistic in a discriminatory sense to say that being from a different culture alone makes you a 'threat to a community and its culture' if anything it can add something to the culture and community. Not only are 65% there for being illegal immigrants but 39% have traffic violations getting them labelled as 'criminal immigrant'... Oh please, you can't be serious right now about labelling that as a national security threat.

    The point here is that not only are immigrants such a minority amongst crime offenders but such a minority among them are threats to national security in the first place. I provided a plethora of proof earlier that ended up explaining that only 6.9% of effort put into catching terrorists ever ended up coming to fruition with illegal immigrants. The rest of the effort and caught threats to physical national security of USA were not illegal immigrants of any sort. Furthermore, if you look at the second graph from Affirmative's study, you will see how much wasted effort there is put into the persecution of these illegal immigrants. The white areas of the graph are people who were put in jails but never ended up convicted to an extent that would end them up in prison and it's safe to say that a national security threat almost certainly would end up convicted.

    This is a debate about the efforts put in versus the rewards pulled out.

    This is why when you look at the points of the wall and the de-funding of sanctuary cities, you need to analyse the benefit in national security of USA versus the cost and loss of the implementation of the decisions being made.

    The wall is in fact so vague about the cost that the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell believes it could be built for $12 billion to $15 billion. Other estimates predict the cost as high as $25 billion.[10] On top of that, Trump was actually not joking when he said he would make Mexico pay for it, he actually wanted and still wants Mexico to pay for it. He ended up accepting and agreeing to an adjustment to the Border Adjustment Tax (that favours Mexico less now) instead of the wall that Affirmative is so fervently telling you is going to help USA's national security (even though illegal immigrants are in the vast majority not national security threats to begin with).[14]

    As for E-verify, the main motive behind E-verify is to stop all places from paying cash in hand. Parents regularly do this when having their children working for them, it's much more common to pay cash in hand for the sake of ease and to keep one's low-level business afloat than to maliciously be a national security threat economically.

    Closing Phrase:

    What is illegal is not at all necessarily a national security threat.

    Thanks for reading, it was a pleasure to write.
    Have a good morning, afternoon and an even better night.

    [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323809304578432501435232278
    [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dzhokhar-and-tamerlan-a-profile-of-the-tsarnaev-brothers/2/
    [3] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
    [4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/15/obama-us-is-born-of-immigrants-speech-naturalisation-ceremony
    [5] http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/29/as-obama-years-draw-to-close-president-and-u-s-seen-favorably-in-europe-and-asia/
    [6] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/12/16882840/donald-trump-shithole-daca
    [7] http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-donald-trump-s-cabinet-is-complete-no-1484846802-htmlstory.html
    [8] http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/offices/sps/rotc/pdf/ms1/threat-NatlSecurity.pdf
    [9] https://www.gao.gov/assets/320/316959.pdf
    [10] https://themilreview.com/fiscal/2017/8/27/is-the-wall-worth-it
    [11] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/07/donald-trump-tax-avoidance-businesses
    [12] https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/understanding-the-threat/
    [13] http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/19/news/economy/undocumented-immigrant-taxes/index.html
    [14] http://www.salesfactor.org/2017/01/wall-not-worth-price/
  • The Second Affirmative Rebuttal | Position: For
    islander507islander507 194 Pts   -  
    Thank you @someone234 for your final round and for debating with me.

    There is lots to refute, and I'll do it point by point in this round.

    My opponent accuses me of spending little effort on this debate, and not fully addressing his arguments.  In reality, my opponent is trying to use some convoluted "legalese" to shift the core of this debate instead of defending real points.

    In my prior rounds I partially agreed with the offered Kritiks, except the "stricter enforcement" and "best interests".

    My opponent proposed a completely different resolution, which I declined to accept:
    " To make people obey a law in a way that is closer to being inflexibly maintained or adhered to."
    The alternative resolution essentially says, how do we change immigration law so people can actually obey it.   Therefore I reject the premise of my opponent's contention 3
    "C3: The Evasion of Immigration Law Enforcement increases when it gets Stricter and thus the Tracking of Illegal Immigrants becomes Harder"
    That's not the goal. Neither is the goal for other countries to like us, also proposed by my opponent.  The goal is to represent our best interests.

    My opponent argued that we can't use "best interests" as part of the resolution because there ate conflicting implications and we can't measure what's best.  That is the whole point of this debate to showcase implications and to demonstrate how certain implications are more important for our country.  The judges can choose between the two sides (to make stricter or not to make stricter) , which one represents the best scenario (better of the two) for the US.

    My opponent wasn't satisfied with my counter argument for his C2.  He essentially claims that because Obama is nicer to other nations than Trump or Bush, we had less severe terrorist attacks and security threats.  
    C2: Allies like USA less and enemies hate USA more, the stricter its immigration law enforcement gets.

    "Obama strolls into office, and while he doesn't 'loosen' the immigration laws per se he definitely puts huge emphasis on ensuring it's the bad guys who get deported while the productive immigrants are given ways to naturalise themselves and their children to contribute long-term to USA and its economy"

    I disagree that not confronting an issue of 12 million illegal immigrants qualifies as Obama doing  the right thing to represent US best interests. I already provided un-rebutted arguments why illegal immigrants isn't in best interests of the US.

    Then my opponent tries to argue that because Obama was so nice to other nations, Kim Jong-Un wouldn't dare to wage a war against the US.  That is an unfounded and speculative argument without any backup. The broader question of Trump's America First policy is off tangent from this debate.

    My opponent correctly pointed out that impacts of immigration policy enforcement are not limited to economic and physical safety as elements of National Security.  In reality there is more to it such as cultural and ecological threat.  I focused primarily on the top 2 key elements in my debate and no counter-arguments were provided by my opponent that the other elements would have positive impacts if we don't increase policy enforcement.

    My opponent challenged result of the study regarding stats for crimes committed by illegal aliens.  I was transparent in my prior round that not all of the crimes were violent.  While I agree to dismiss the immigration and traffic crimes from the stats, there is still a very significant number of crimes stated for assault, drugs, etc that were performed by illegal immigrants.

    My opponent failed to rebut my arguments regarding benefits of reduced illegal immigration with building the wall and defunding sanctuary cities.  His only counter was "when you look at the points of the wall and the de-funding of sanctuary cities, you need to analyse the benefit in national security of USA versus the cost and loss of the implementation of the decisions being made."

    My opponent incorrectly stated facts behind e-verify program.
    "As for E-verify, the main motive behind E-verify is to stop all places from paying cash in hand. Parents regularly do this when having their children working for them, it's much more common to pay cash in hand for the sake of ease and to keep one's low-level business afloat than to maliciously be a national security threat economically."
    E-verify program isn't limited to stop paying cash in hand.
    E-verify system will enforce our tax laws and will make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work for cash without paying taxes.

    The system also reduces the threat of discrimination against applicants, since the employer no longer has to decide whether the person’s eligible.

    But like any law, a federal E-Verify mandate is good only to the extent it’s enforced.

    Currently, it is illegal for employers to “knowingly hire” an illegal alien — a prohibition set out in 1986’s Immigration Reform Control Act (IRCA) and intended as a compromise to that law’s mass amnesty reprieve. But charges brought against the likely hundreds of thousands of illegal-alien employers are indeed rare.

    drywall company in Washington state recently became the first such defendant sentenced in the entire history of that state’s western district court. The attorney for the company pleaded with the judge that IRCA after all was a law “broken daily” and that his client’s “employment practices have been indistinguishable from thousands of other employers nationwide who have ignored IRCA at no peril.”

    Returning the country to a nation of laws will require an amped up vigilance on the part of its citizenry. They’ll have to show the political elite that if they continue to ignore the American people, it will be at their peril, not America’s. 


    In summary,
    My opponent unsuccessfully tried to change the meaning of the debate that would focus on ease of enforcement and how we are perceived by other nations.

    My opponent failed to rebut real issues such as 12 million illegal immigrants that cause economic and physical security risk to our country, with current  illegal immigration policies are only loosely enforced.

    I enjoyed the debate and look forward to the voting.
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