Sanctuary Cities in US are on net balance Beneficial to society
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- Publication date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Two weeks
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
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- One month
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- Multiple criterions
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- Open
This is for whiteflame. Standard definitions apply. Burden of proof shared. No new arguments last round. whiteflame is encouraged, but not required, to post in forum (or even this debate if he desires — voters will ignore advice) after debate is done with tips for me and point out debating mistakes or improvements that he thinks is common or specific.
- "Median household annual income is, on average, $4,353 higher in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
- The poverty rate is 2.3 percent lower, on average, in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
- Unemployment is, on average, 1.1 percent lower in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties." [5]
The Marielitos were disproportionately low-skill; around 60 percent were high school dropouts and only 10 percent were college graduates. At the time, about a quarter of Miami’s pre-existing workers lacked a high school diploma. As a result, even though the Mariel supply shock increased the number of workers in Miami by 8 percent, it increased the number of high school dropouts by almost 20 percent…
… the absolute wage of high school dropouts dropped dramatically, as did their wage relative to that of either high school graduates or college graduates. The drop in the average wage of the least skilled Miamians between 1977-1979 and 1981-1986 was substantial, between 10 and 30 percent. In fact, the examination of wage trends in every other city identified by the CPS shows that the steep post-Mariel wage drop experienced by Miami’s low-skill workforce was a very unusual event.”
Though money is (arguably) less important than your life, I think this is important to tackle. American Progress introduces, with three decent statistics:
- "Median household annual income is, on average, $4,353 higher in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
- The poverty rate is 2.3 percent lower, on average, in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
- Unemployment is, on average, 1.1 percent lower in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties." [5]
The explanation for this? Labor force participation. If you're willing to accept more immigrants and arrest them less, well of course you're going to have more workers boosting the economy. My site further details, "The results of the CEM analysis show that white labor force participation is, on average, 2.5 percent higher in sanctuary counties when statistically matching and then controlling for population characteristics, and this result is highly statistically significant."So in total, we have a generically decent help to the economy due to our help. If we stop supporting the sanctuary cities, then thousands of jobs would be lost in the workforce, and this would detract millions of dollars potentially in the end. One article supports this notion by stating the overwhelming costs of Colorado's anti-sanctuary policy -- "If 10 percent of undocumented immigrants leave Colorado, the state will lose $23.8 million in federal taxes, and $12.4 million in state and local taxes." Not to mention this is only one state, so this loss would multiply many fold for all the sanctuary cities.The immigrants do their work and pay for the federal budget. They're a crucial part of the economy, but also a crucial part of the people. I don't see how the detriments outweigh the benefits.
Argument - in round 1 Pro argues why immigrants are good for the economy, and Con argues why they might be bad for the U.S. citing supposed facts such as the amount with criminal records, increased crime rates. Con then goes on to cite the negative effects regarding employment, and though I am reluctant at this point to decide who is winning, Pro then responds with this. "Not enough time to make proper arguments so will waive this round.". That means no argument and no rebuttal.. In round 3 Pro comes back with a decent argument one round late and his argument that poor people are more prone to crime than those with money is a good one. Pro continues to accuse Con of cherry picking and gives some decent food for thought regarding the lack of background checks being one of the reasons for the problem, and then goes on to even offer his own solution regards to health care.. Con responds with criticisms of his/her own regarding Mother Jones. Con then goes on to produce studies to support his/her case and on it goes, then, for a second time "Sorry, I ran out of time and forgot. Please vote on the arguments given." Pro barely made it in time to write that he ran out of time" and therefore Pro totally failed to rebut anything his opponent wrote in round 3 and did not respond to the critiques regarding the weaknesses in his own argument. I will however accept the argument he presented in an earlier round and the good points he made and leave it at a tie, and instead later punish his bad time keeping with a conduct violation - tie
Sources - Both criticised each others use of sources, but what I note is that Con was always present to counter the criticisms, where-as Pro did not counter the criticism. For example Pro decided to turn up late for the following round and made no rebuttal to Cons arguments nor criticisms of his sources. "The source Pro uses (his [5]) certainly goes through a lot of data analysis but fails to attribute any of these economic boons to sanctuary policies. In fact, his source only controls “for differences in the population, the foreign-born percentage of the population, and the percentage of the population that is Latino”, leaving out the many policy differences between counties that have nothing to do with sanctuary policies. Both Pro and the paper attempt to attribute this to increased labor force participation, though again, neither examines why that increase occurs because of sanctuary policies. It is simply another correlation without any plausible causation. Illegal immigrants have just as much interest in being a part of the labor force in a sanctuary city as they do anywhere else because monetary incentives exist everywhere.". - Con
S & G - There was a couple of occasions when Pros keys stuck, but nothing drastic - tie
Conduct - As I have explained, I will punish Pros time keeping and failure to rebute the argument, rather than treat it as an argument loss. - Con
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>Reported Vote: Nevets // Mod action: Not Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 3 to con.
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The vote was found to be sufficient per the site voting policy standards.
The one hesitation is that it gave conduct for what could be called an argument failure (wherein pro effectively missed half the debate). This would have likely caused the vote to be rejected if giving both (the policy specifies that lazy arguments don't need conduct as well), but just giving less points to something isn't inflicting any harm (and yes, the reason arguments were left a tie is explained, which is very important).
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Appreciate your taking the time to vote!
Sad to see an interesting topic snuffed out like that.
My argument isn't so much becoming more complex as I'm finding ways to emphasize and better demonstrate it. They're the same points I was making before, I'm just using studies (both yours and mine) to establish stronger links between specific outcomes and a purported cause. I'm also doing more this round to push individual examples and tilt analysis of these results in my favor. There are lots of ways to address all that, but given that we only have one round left, your goal should be to push hard on aspects of your case that make it strong and to expose holes in my analysis. Getting too deep into pure rebuttal and trying to go tit-for-tat on data analysis will probably detract too much from the overall points you're trying to make, so try to limit your responses to the key points I'm trying to make, and focus on rebuilding your case.
Lots of options.
I think a lot of my arguments are reductive, i.e. if you don’t solve for everything, why are you even bothering? It’s a valid argument, but it also dismisses the value of partial successes via progressive change. My suggestion is to find ways to look at the longer term and how communities can establish a relationship with minority populations.
As for economics, I’d say your point still has validity, but I might emphasize the bigger picture and why these beneficial effects exist. What changes for Latino families when they’re not concerned that their parents may be deported at any time? How does it affect their willingness to push for things like a college education when there’s a concern that they could be turned in and deported after racking up debt?
your refutation is getting quite complex. Any hints/remarks for the final round?
It can be somewhat difficult to be incisive about. There's a lot of data, but turning it into something solid can be frustrating.
I see, that makes quite some sense. I knew Und's argument for racism didn't 100% cut the work for sanctuary cities. It looks powerful on surface, but even with my added analysis, the sanctuary city benefit is difficult to see 100%.
I’ll where I’m going with my thoughts now that I’ve read through the round.
When it comes to this innocent v. guilty argument, it’s not a bad place to go, but it should be better connected to the split between our positions. The argument could be based on the notion that deportation and/or other federal punishments for immigration are particularly harmful, and that the standard for proof should therefore be higher. However, that’s a pro-reform argument, not so much pro-sanctuary cities. I think if you wanted to make it stick, it’d have to be about the idea that the federal government often gets it wrong, meaning that we should side with more local law enforcement as a means of preventing undue punishments to individuals. That requires some support.
I expected to see this argument about how racist, anti-immigrant is tendencies among police tend to reduce trust in those police. The missing piece here is the explanation for how federal contributions to that problem exacerbate those tensions. I can think of ways to support that argument, but as it is, I can mostly beat this back by pointing out that immigrant perspectives largely don’t shift when they’re still being arrested and racially profiled by officers who would rather that they could deport them. If people come there because they wish to avoid deportation but still expect that police will mistreat them, then why are they more likely to trust police enough to report crimes in that city?
Finally, with regards to those economic costs, be prepared to address the distinction between nationwide effects and local effects. Data gets a little muddier the more focused your attention is on those specific populations.
ah, yeah, the undocumented is not as severe as actually stealing or killing, etc.
Since this is merely a practice debate, I'll ask this question: What did you mean in your most recent round about letting guilty people go instead of arresting innocent people?
By definition, all illegal immigrants are guilty of breaking immigration laws. Are you saying that they are "innocent" if they haven't committed subsequent crimes since arriving?
hmm... seems different enough. Uses similar crux phrases and quotes but has more details. That's fair.
This is fine, right?
Somehow I missed both of these most recent comments.
Yeah, I’ll wait to post waiving this round. Just let me know when you’d like me to do so.
And yeah, I usually only push framework when it’s clear that solely pushing impacts on a Net Benefits framework would be tough. In this case, I feel it’s valid to pursue the relatively normal angle. There’ll be a lot on criminal activity to come, for sure, and I’ve already got thoughts on that that I can share with you if you’re interested. I think the main thing that you’ll have to do is really focus hard on how this affects the preconceptions that make it so difficult for police and certain minorities to establish mutual trust.
sorry I've been busy, can I waive this round and you'll wait a while and then also waive your round?
nicely done, I think you were clever to avoid the comparison of crime directly (since Con would be losing the argument), but rather focusing on the crime that occurs and reoccurs. It's lucky that you didn't use a framework based approach like you did against Undefeatable, but I think it's rather trivial to conclude that it undermines the very justice and safety that my point 1 makes. I will have to think over how to outweigh or negate that argument.
I would agree with you on the relationship with the law, though especially in my rebuttals, be prepared to address a lot of correlation v. causation issues. Some of my rebuttals to these points may become obvious from my arguments, though there are a few that I haven't written out yet. I think you're right to focus your attention there.
I can also see why you'd expect that kind of argument from me. There will definitely be a contention along those lines, though the link story will be a little different, since I'm anticipating the "but that's just racism" response.
Sure. I think my argument's strongest point is the relationship with the law. Specifically, I plan to go further in hammering in safety of citizens and improvement of justice in later rounds. This is because based on what I've seen in Undefeatable's immigrant debate, the economic problems are always going to infiltrate on US citizens' rights. The immigrants will take people's jobs, and keeping sanctuary cities could encourage more of that, which is problematic.
I think you are going to take the opposite route and point out the problems with criminals that are inherent within sanctuary cities. Since they are forced to allow "undocumented immigrants", other ideas based on ambiguous or unset laws could erode the justice that I claimed for. If you use US prison or police arrest statistics, I plan to cleverly show that the US justice system is inherently flawed with the corruption (see: Und's systemic racism debate). Thus sanctuary cities which enforce more rights would reduce the bias presented.
Hey, figured we could start discussion of this debate before I post my round (it's practically done, but I've got 3 more days and we should do something with it).
I'll give you my view of your argument in a bit, but first, I'd like to get your impressions.
What do you think are your arguments' strongest points?
What do you think I'm going to go after in my rebuttals (that'll be next round)?
I'll definitely keep the opening short, so no need to worry about a huge start. Plan is under 10k.
Nevermind. I'll be keeping my rounds well under 20k, trying to use this as an opportunity to improve my word economy.
Hey, I'll go ahead and accept this a little later today. Only change I'd like is to reduce the character count down to 20,000. Not that I suspect either of us would go up to 30,000, even with that option, but I'd rather it was just off the table.
Here you go.