>Let's say you have a law that all people entering a country must be scrutinized to ensure no serial killers get in. You find a guy who hasn't been scrutinized, but he's not a serial killer. Does it make sense to confiscate the guy? What purpose would that serve?

To ensure that people go through the checkpoint in the first place? For instance, the point of airport security checkpoints is to make sure that no terrorists get on planes, but if there's no penalty for you jumping the fence, why would people even bother going through the checkpoint?

And all of this is ignoring the other purposes of immigration policy, eg. preserving jobs or whatever.

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direwolf20 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Is the goal making sure everyone goes through the serial killer checkpoint, or is the goal stopping serial killers?

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gruez 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So the is implication is that we should get rid of airport checkpoints, because our actual goal is to catch terrorists? What about speed enforcement cameras? The law might be that you drive 20 in a school zone, but isn't our goal to actually stop dangerous drivers? Actually, why even bother stopping dangerous drivers? The actual thing we care about is stopping accidents. If you're doing street racing at 4am, who's going to get hit?

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direwolf20 an hour ago | parent [-]

No, that is not the implication. Very obvious (thus failed) deflection going on here.

	▲	gruez an hour ago \| parent [-]
		So what are you trying to imply then? As we seen with airport checkpoints and speeding cameras, it's clearly okay to punish behaviors that aren't directly harmful, so why is it so baffling for you that Americans want enforcement actions against people who entered the country illegally?