The illegal immigrant idea raises its head in this discussion because as the level of dysfunction in a society increases and as the rules that govern reasonable behaviour disintegrate, groups of people require an out group to provide a simple explanatory model as to why this is happening and a way of addressing the crisis.
"The reason things are bad is that tjere are too many of those people here. The solutions is to eliminate those people so that order can be restored".
This process has repeated itself in innumerable historical contexts and is currently playing itself out on a global scale with catastrophic consequences and with worse to come.
In our country, the labelling of people and groups of people as illegal has a recent and devastating history and so imo should be dealt with sensitivity.
In all cases from previous war Germany, to present day USA, to the right wing rhetoric emerging in Europe as well as inntje topic under discussion here (road safety with particular reference to vulnerable road users) the problems are the result of complex interaction between structural, economic and political issues and are largely unresolvable from within the systems that spawn them.
Hence the need for "an other".
It is one of the darkest and most dangerous aspects of our nature. It also, paradoxically, if you follow the worktop yuval harari and others is one of the social mechanisms we use to unite groups in pursuit of collective endeavour.
Edit. I ÷/÷× hate cell phone keyboards
