This specific technicality is important for your point though.

I’m gonna explain my reasoning so you can choose whatever you want have a conversation about.

Your claim was that putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.

My point is that putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of a state. And furthermore, that it is a good thing.

Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and that we should avoid it.

If both of our statements are true. The natural conclusion is that we should have a stateless society. I don’t think that a stateless society is a good thing. Therefore I’m trying to find a flaw in the argument. I think that the flaw is that you are wrong. So I have to have a conversation with you about why I think you are wrong.

If you are wrong, it must mean one of these statements are wrong:

• Putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.
• Putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of the state.
• Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and we should avoid it.

Since 2/3 statements are made by me, of course I think they are true. So I’m going to argue about why the first one is wrong.

The only way to proof your statement to be wrong is by first defining what xenophobia is. Which you might call a technicality, but I don’t think it’s possible to have a conversation if we don’t first agree what the meaning of the words we use is.

After defining what xenophobia is, we have to figure out if the “equation” is true: “putting citizens above non-citizens” = “xenophobia”.