That’s also partially a reaction to so many rules and laws being utterly counterproductive and/or corrupt. Respect for rules and regulations depends on those rules and regulations having respectable motivations and effects in the first place.
It does lead to a general sense of degrading lawlessness throughout society. When powerful people start to have contempt for laws it can get really abusive.
Sure. But at this point everyone picks and chooses which laws they care about. I've observed a pretty heavy overlap between people who care a great deal about taxi regulations (most of which exist merely to artificially prop up rent-seeking owners of taxi medallions) and people who consider American immigration law so fundamentally unjust that it should simply not be enforced anymore. Faithfully Obeying All The Rules And Regulations isn't an especially popular ideology, and if you consistently advocate it, you'll end up very unpopular with everyone.
Immigration is a tough issue. The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death.
But there are also perhaps hundreds of millions of potential immigrants worldwide who would love to come to the US permanently and have the means to do so, if it were legal. But they cannot get a green card or h1b because those are nearly impossible to get from people in some counties. So they never come.
It does seem hard to decide a fair system here but any decision is just that... A system of laws... They have no meaning unless followed. What's the point of rule of law anyways? It's the answer to arbitrary rule: by monarchs and dictators.
> The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death.
Which is exactly my point. According to the law, these people are illegal aliens and the government has every power to stop them from crossing the border, detain them if they're already here, and deport them to their countries of origin no matter how long they've been here. And they have no legal right to reside in the country. And a lot of conservatives argue that "sanctuary city" proclamations represent a fundamental disrespect for the rule of law.
A lot of people balk at this notion and start arguing that US immigration law is fundamentally unjust and that it's reasonable to make exceptions. And that's a perfectly reasonable perspective, but it's hard to keep that consistent with the idea that taxicab medallions, for example, are some unquestionable pillar of society.
Forming a mass consensus on what reasonable exemptions to the laws should be is exactly how the lawmaking process in a democracy should work... What I hear you saying is that we don't live in a functional democracy. I don't think, however, that individuals or cities selectively following laws is going to get us any closer to a functioning democracy.
