Alex Epstein: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy, and Green Deceptions
Alex Epstein explains how fossil fuels make the world better, and how banning them ruins lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R00TO3D3f5AVergara Cid & Ghate: The Debate Over the Right to Immigrate
Onkar Ghate and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss the immigration debate from a philosophical perspective. They address questions such as whether foreigners have a right to immigrate to America, whether immigration or its curtailment violates the rights of American citizens, and what role government has in relation to immigration.Topics covered:- Whether immigrants have a right to move to America;
- The argument that immigration violates American citizens’ rights;
- What is motivating the objection that immigrants allegedly take jobs from Americans or lower their standard of living;
- What is the proper role of government in relation to immigration policy;
- Whether failure to enforce immigration laws undermines the rule of law;
- Illegal immigration as a response to unjust laws;
- Why immigrants seeking a better life shouldn’t be smeared as “illegals”;
- Why the objection that immigration is destroying American culture is invalid;
- Ideological screening as a major threat to intellectual freedom;
- Ayn Rand’s views on immigration as flowing from her view of self-interest;
- What immigration would look like in a free society.
The Dishonest Debate on Immigration and National Security
Agustina Vergara Cid and Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute analyze the impact of immigrants on national security and evaluate the argument that America’s national security requires strict limits on immigration.Topics covered:- How the argument that immigration is a threat to national security is biased against immigrants;
- Why limiting immigration to prevent terrorism is dishonest;
- How immigrants make us safer by serving in the military;
- How restrictions on immigration have contributed to a shortage of skilled workers in areas of the economy the military depends on;
- Why we need a targeted response to actual national security threats, not blanket prohibitions on immigration;
- How those who oppose immigration, like environmentalists arguing against fossil fuels, selectively look for evidence to support their ideology;
- Why mainstream thinkers fail to consider the benefits of immigration to national security.
Agustina Vergara Cid: U.S. Immigration System vs. America
Powerful reframing of the immigration issue by Agustina Vegara Cid:"...the U.S. immigration system is designed to keep productive would-be immigrants like Ana out. Ana would have had to try to get a loan to pay thousands of dollars in fees and other visa requirements, wait out the process in her cartel-infested country and wander for years through a multilevel bureaucratic maze. And then she’d be a citizen, right? No, that’s just to gain authorization to study and work in the U.S. temporarily. And that’s only if she manages to qualify for one of a narrow list of visas in the first place. When I tell Americans about my own legal immigration story and what I had to go through, their jaws drop. The process is not feasible for a vast majority of productive people who want to live and work here, so it’s unsurprising that ambitious individuals like Ana end up immigrating illegally."A lot of peaceful, courageous people are eager to immigrate to the U.S. in order to work to make their lives better, but the immigration system locks them out. Those who dare to come anyway are made to live their life in the shadows and in fear, because their actions are illegal.We should abandon the euphemisms like “undocumented immigrants” and “unauthorized workers.” Those euphemisms imply that people like Ana have in fact done something wrong and only help mask the real problem: that these individuals are being criminalized by unjust laws for a moral decision that they made.“Illegal immigrant” works as a smear because what it actually means is rarely put out in the open — that the presence of peaceful, hard-working people is illegal in America.Read "Reappropriate ‘illegal immigrant’ to shine a spotlight on injustice of U.S. immigration restrictions" (OC Register).