Randy Cohen’s first response in this week’s installment of “The Ethicist” (in the Sunday New York Times Magazine) isn’t exactly unethical, but it isn’t exactly ethical, either, if little things like obeying laws still matter to you. The real value of Cohen’s column this time is to remind those who blithely condemn Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement statute as “cruel,” “racist” or “un-American” the extent to which the Federal Government’s failure to control our boarders and enforce the immigration laws has corrupted and confused us all.

Stuart Gold, from Brooklyn (and I respect Stuart for making his name public) queries Randy about how he should deal with knowledge that a local supermarket is exploiting some illegal immigrants working there by not meeting the legal requirements for minimum wages and working conditions. Stuart is friendly with the workers and wants to help them, but he doesn’t want to get them fired or deported. Cohen tells him to advise them of their rights if they don’t know them, but to leave any proactive steps to them.

This is reasonable advice, but look at what we have:

• Non-citizens living in the U.S. illegally…
• Being exploited by American employers and paid below minimum wage to save the employers money, thus
• Taking jobs American citizens, including legal immigrants , could otherwise have for more compensation, and
• Being aided in violating the immigration law by American citizen Stuart, who..
• Also allows the unscrupulous employers to violate the law,
• With the advice and assistance of a New York Times columnist.

Great. Is this any way to run a country or a society (or a supermarket or a newspaper)? Stuart’s duty as a citizen, you know, is to report both the illegal status of his friends the illegals (Stuart’s poignant question notes that they “lack green cards,” as if green cards were shoes or bus tokens. Lacking green cards means that they lack the right to be in the country. Euphemisms are often hints that one doesn’t want to admit the truth) and their employer. That is a lot to ask, but the current untenable state of our immigration non-policies puts Stuart in a position where whatever he does is wrong on some level.

Cohen wants him to help illegals stay in the country, which also involves allowing employers to cheat them. The other alternative is for Stuart to be a one-man vigilante force and feel like a cur for the rest of his life. In Arizona, at least there is  a law that would require him to report the illegals. In Arizona, he could argue that he did the right thing because he had to, not because he wanted to.

But aren’t we supposed to want to do the right thing?

Stuart, judging from his use of his name and his question, seems not to question for an instant that helping illegal immigrants avoid law enforcement is right, and “The Ethicist” clearly concurs. No wonder Arizona is getting such abuse: and large segments of the media and the public accept the proposition that it is wrong to enforce the law, and right to help lawbreakers keep on breaking it. When Katie Couric, on the CBS Nightly News, made a much derided statement in which she noted disapprovingly that many illegals had been made to feel “unwelcome” by Arizona’s statute, I thought she had just misspoken. Now I think she meant it.

This is what the government’s negligence on illegal immigration has done to our logic, our conduct and our ethics. Laws are supposed to make those who break them feel “unwelcome;” society is not supposed to welcome lawbreakers; and good citizens are not supposed to help law breakers keep breaking the law.

Now, there are protests in the streets claiming that all three propositions are un-American. No wonder Stuart, Katie and “The Ethicist” are confused.