Thank you for responding. I wanted your response because I wanted to respond to some of our underlying disagreements but I couldn’t tell what they specifically were unless you answered that question. Since you seemed unwilling to do so, I assumed bad faith.
Dehumanization is not an objective thing that happens to someone and can be observed independently. It’s a shift in the perception of others and their reactions to the person who’s been dehumanized by classification. In other words it’s more an effect on the observer than on the observed.
It’s not so much about the psychological impact on the “illegal immigrants” as it is about the impact on people who mentally classify others as such. By classifying a person as illegal (and in particular when it becomes the noun “illegals” rather than being an adjective) it becomes much harder to empathize with them. Note that I’m not talking about an “I feel your pain” sort of situation, but just an ability to understand the actions of such a person as an expression of the same sort of motivations that the person judging them possesses. I don’t think it’s possible to come up with a good policy solution unless the people doing so can understand the reasons behind immigrating illegally. Furthermore, mentally dehumanizing others makes inhumane actions easier to rationalize (rounding them up into camps and separating families, shooting attempted border crossers) which degrades the character of the people committing those actions. If we can use language that makes those erroneous judgments less likely, I think it’s a good idea to do so.
I think you lost me here. Is there something special about illegal immigration that requires empathy when setting a policy?
For instance, do you agree with the statement, “I don’t think it’s possible to come up with a good policy solution for tax evasion unless the people doing so can understand the reasons behind tax evasion”?
How about, “I don’t think it’s possible to come up with a good policy solution for child abuse unless the people doing so can understand the reasons behind child abuse”?
Note that I’m not equating illegal immigration with child abuse or even tax evasion. But if you really think a law requires “empathy” to enforce, then you’re probably not really interested in enforcing the law.
No, I absolutely do think that you need to understand the motivations of someone performing an activity you wish to discourage in order to craft an effective disincentive. However, this is only really the case in terms of rational behaviors. Immigrating illegally is a rational economic behavior, as is tax evasion. Child abuse is not a rational behavior, but even in this case it’s a good idea to understand the abuser’s motivation, as it makes identification of such situations much easier. And it’s not about enforcement requiring empathy, but the development of the laws that regulate the behavior.
Now that you’ve clarified, I’ve realized that I may not have understood what you meant. Was that last sentence meant for me? Because I explicitly mentioned, in the post you quoted, that that was not what I meant. Or was it addressed to some other perspective (that as far as I know has not been argued in this thread)? I just assumed it was intended as a criticism of my argument.
