I’ve been encountering a fair number of graphics like the one below:
We all know what the point is. Look at those plaintive faces! Look at the kids, so in terror of being deported, even if they don’t know what “deported” means. Such innocence! How could anyone want to kick such nice people out of the United States? What about Emma Lazarus’s poem!
Yes, yes. It plucks the heartstrings. It makes us question ourselves. It forces a hard look at what it means to enforce the borders after-the-fact. All that and more for the price of a cheap graphic.
We should ask ourselves all those questions. It’s ethically mandatory. When we set out to enforce a law that previous administrations allowed millions to break, we must know what we’re about: the challenges, the costs, the risks, and where to place the blame.
An illegal alien is a lawbreaker ab initio. He gets no credit for not breaking any other laws. He gets no credit for being self-supporting and responsible, or for being a pillar of the Undocumented-American community. He should get a shred of sympathy for believing that the new administration would perpetuate the previous one’s folly. He should not be tortured or brutalized, just deported with all his kith and kin.
That’s the law.
One of my favorite writers, Greg Bear, gave us this powerful insight in his novel Anvil of Stars:
“No villain comes in black, screaming obscenities. All evil has children, homes, regard for self, fear of enemies.”
The enemy – for now, at least – is human. Vulnerable, fallible, and mortal. But he’s still the enemy. He must be dealt with. Bear’s novel is a masterpiece for depicting what that would mean on the largest imaginable scale. I can’t think of another fiction that brings it home so vividly.
The lawbreaker is a special category of enemy. Perhaps he meant no harm to anyone. When the subject is illegal immigrants, that’s probably the case more often than not. But he’s a lawbreaker. If we believe in the law, and in enforcing the law evenhandedly, he must go: hopefully, without violence.
Granted that the perfect enforcement of the law is beyond our abilities. Some illegal aliens will never be discovered, and so will remain within our borders. That is not an argument for declining to enforce the law as best we can. Those illegals we can identify must be expelled. Not only has the public demanded it; maintaining general respect for the law requires it.
The late Gonzalo Lira spoke of “moral hazard:” the consequence of allowing oneself (or others) exceptions from the law. The concept applies not only to statute law but to the ethical laws that make a peaceful, civilized society possible. Moral hazard is what makes such exceptions dangerous, for they speak broadly: “If we can get away with it, why not?”
If you’ve encountered the term weaponized empathy, this is where it’s most potent. That graphic and others much like it attempt to weaponize your empathy. “They look so innocent and defenseless! Let them stay.” It’s insidiously seductive. It invokes your compassionate nature in opposition to your interests and those of the whole nation.
We are not somehow evil for insisting that the law be enforced as written. The evil resides with those who sought to nullify the law de facto by not enforcing it. They were trying to serve their interests: their desire for permanent power. We are not required to oblige them.
Have a nice day.
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