A Guest Post by Ryan Harkins
[This guest post’s origin was the most recent Open Forum. Personally, I don’t believe there is a rational, ethical, realistic “other side” to the issue. As I wrote in a longer response to Ryan that you can read here, “the issue of illegal immigration is quite simple. It’s against the law. It’s against the law because open borders to a country like the US is literally national suicide…The immigration laws we have, flawed or not, have to be enforced uniformly and strictly.”—JM]
My wife and I have been debating the illegal immigration issue on and off for a while now, and part of the reason we keep returning to ethics of the illegal immigration issue is the fact that so many in leadership in the Catholic Church have been very critical of Trump’s deportation efforts. As faithful Catholics, we believe we need to listen when our bishops speak. It doesn’t mean we mindlessly agree, but in cases where the bishops take a position we initially oppose, it is incumbent upon us to study and ponder the issue as thoroughly as we can before making any objections.
To that end, my wife and I are trying to be as open as we possibly can regarding the issue of how to manage people who are in our country and in our local communities illegally. I have told her that I think the best way to understand a viewpoint with which we disagree is to argue from that viewpoint and to steelman its arguments as best we can. Interestingly enough, my wife and I do highlight differing aspects of why we have problems with illegal immigration. I focus very heavily on the human trafficking issue. She focuses very heavily on the financial injustices the illegal immigration causes.
From the trafficking standpoint, I think that is it clear that a lot of illegal immigrants end up practically as slave labor, which has largely been overlooked because it seems like it keeps prices down in the supermarket. But far more devastating is the sex trafficking which never seems to get the attention it deserves, especially when so many of these “lost and displaced children” end up serving the debauched desires of affluent Americans who believe they can continue their predations because “Who would dare contact the authorities?”.
Ethics Alarms 
yes, follow the money.
My partner was perplexed that the school district wanted his American-born kids to get language services through the school.
The question was: do you speak non-English languages in the home? My Polish-born partner and his X- born wife spoke Russian (and English) at home. His kids spoke perfect English (better than him, I am sure). When I identified the financial incentive of classing his kids as ELL, the light bulb went off; kind of surprised he did not see it, considering he grew up in Communist Poland.
As for the question at hand, whether Jack agrees with it or not, “there are worse things” is how you have to understand immigration law.
Someone enters illegally? That is very bad. That gets you deported (unless you have a good reason not to be sent back).
You enter illegally, but then have a reason to enter legally (like marrying a citizen). Not as bad, but they send you home to come in legally.
You enter legally (good), but violate your terms for being here (bad), like coming on a student visa and not leaving at the end of the semester. If caught, they may allow “voluntary departure” so that you are not “deported” or “removed,” meaning you can come back.
You enter legally (good), but you overstay your visa (bad), but you have marry a U.S. Citizen (good), so we don’t make you go home because you entered legally, so we “adjust status” from non-immigrant student status to immigrant marriage status.
Or, you enter legally, never fall out of status, are legally here the whole time and transition into citizenship.
For me, it is the people who enter illegally that are the most culpable. People who enter legally and fall out of status (this is where the Elon Musk outrage on the Left sits, all while loving on the Maryland Dad) have different options because their situation is not as bad.
The U.S. Immigration system does a very good job at tailoring the law to the individual’s specific circumstances.
The Big Lie, however, has been revealed. The Left does not want enforcement on anyone. The law treats different alien nationals in different ways, depending on their unique circumstances. The Left wants them treated all the same way: make all the distinctions you want; just don’t enforce them.
-Jut
Now remember, “It’s not the worst thing” is invalid when it is used to excuse something that is still wrong. Obviously some things are worse than others.
Very thoughtful post, Ryan. I have struggled with many of these same issues, but the magnitude of the problem has led me to the inescapable conclusion that there is only one solution at this point in time:
Deport everyone here illegally. Mitigation is preemptively denied.
I know this sounds harsh, even cruel. I don’t care. This country is awash in fraud by enclaves of non-English speaking low-trust ethnic groups who, for various reasons, refuse to assimilate and attempt to form mini-countries within our own. That, in itself, is utterly destructive of the country we have founded, for it was founded on the fundamental precept of assimilation into its unique culture. When we were begging for immigrants in the early part of the last century, we didn’t intend to import miniature countries to replace sections of our own — we demanded assimilation into the American culture. It didn’t always happen, but usually it did.
Somewhere, somehow, that changed. Not sure when or why, but what we have now will destroy the country or force it to split up within a decade or so if it isn’t radically reduced. That’s just my opinion, not a fact, but I have seen persuasive evidence supporting it.
I regret having to send blameless children to a country they have never really known, but I have resigned myself to the necessity of doing so. Sometimes, the necessary thing just sucks, but in my view, there is no other way.
Bingo, Glenn.
I agree with all of this in principle, which means mostly. Practically, I believe any administration of law enforcement agency needs to have priorities. Getting the criminal elements deported should have the highest priority. Getting the otherwise law abiding illegal aliens out who came to the USA as a baby should have the lowest priority.
Any administration needs to be smart on how to enforce the laws, maximize political support and minimize the chance of PR disasters. This is extremely difficult as the ICE enforcement actions in Minneapolis has shown, were anti-ICE activists supported by the Democrat party literally fought to the death to prevent the deportation of the hard criminals among the illegal aliens from the USA, creating a PR disaster for the Trump administration followed by the Kristi Noem resignation.
I pretty much agree with all this.
Glenn,
I don’t really disagree with the “no exception policy” for deportation, but I don’t really think adopting it gains us very much. (I’m always open to data showing otherwise, though.) One of the practicalities of the deportation issue is the scope. On a previous EA column on illegal immigration, I linked to Holly Mathnerd’s Substack post, in which she crunched numbers on how fast we could process arrested illegals, and I added some additional number crunching on how fast we could even arrest them. The time and manpower needed to deport everyone even with expedited processes is intractable.
Part of the reason we cannot do away with processes entirely is we do have to protect legal citizens from accidental deportation. This means even for identified and arrested illegal immigrants, there still needs to be some court hearing, and all that takes time. So the premise I’m working from, which I did not make explicitly clear, is that there will be time between an illegal immigrant being detained and when he is actually deported. So what do we do with the illegals in the meantime? What do we do with the illegals we have not yet even arrested, given it may take years before we can round them up?
One thing I will grant is that anyone in the United States illegally is acting unethically and should self-deport. But wanting that to happen is essentially wishful thinking. So the question remains, how do we handle the illegals in our midst until they are deported? This is especially pertinent for those of us who are not policy makers, who are not law enforcement officials or judges, who can only add our voices to the debate and try to influence some small number of others to our point of view.
So, like Cees, I agree with prioritizing, by targeting and removing those illegals that are imminent threats, and allocating resources to other categories of illegals commensurate to the priority assigned. If we had the manpower and time, then sure, even the illegals at the very bottom of the priority list will be targeted.
Ugh. I’m never sure where to conclude these comments, because it always feels like I could meander forever through additional arguments and nuances. It doesn’t help that my five daughters all clamoring for attention has a Harrison Bergeron-like effect on my thought processes…
Thanks for that thoughtful response, Ryan.
Ryan, with all due respect to you and Mrs. Harkins, and I mean that, the reason the Catholic Conference of Bishops is in favor of illegal immigration is because most illegal immigrants are Hispanic and Catholic and those otherwise unwashed masses will keep the nearly empty Catholic churches much fuller than they would otherwise be so they can be ministered to by their Nigerian pastors.
Ryan is leaning heavily on the teachings of the bishops. I am not a Roman Catholic, and I often feel uncomfortable with the moral statements made by church conferences, bishops and other church officials; it is probably worth delving into this a bit deeper.
Initially I felt tempted to follow the cynical approach. This approach is that any organization of do-gooders (e.g. churches, NGOs, action groups) benefit from the problem they are fighting because the existence of that organization depends on it, and the people who work for that organization will lose their jobs if the problem is solved. That is why more than sixty years after passing the Civil Rights Laws the SPLC is richer than ever; they cannot admit that the fight against racism is won because then they will have to disband and lay of people. The same cynical approach can be used regarding churches and illegal immigration; if all illegal immigrants would all of a sudden self-deport a lot of people assisting “any foreigner residing in your towns” will be unemployed, and churches will have reduced membership and attendance.
But I think a better way is to look at the teachings of the churches, and the arguments used by church officials. Once we understand these arguments we may delve into a critical evaluation.
I am not going to evaluate all these arguments right now; if you are curious where I stand, I tend to agree with most of Glenn Logan’s approach in his earlier comment on this post. I also found an interesting article that is relevant to the topic:
https://firstthings.com/the-church-and-immigration-sanity/
one of the “last gasps” of the former American.
Look on the bright side, people! You got Walmart. You got King Soooers. You can get taco sauce delivered BY THREE O’CLOCK TODAY right to your door! No more big, happy families and little faces with ‘roses in their cheeks’. Don’t you know?!
“I’ll take ‘How did all of this happen’ for $100, please!”