Ace EA commenter Ryan Harkins, as he often does, flags the ethics conflict in the current escalating controversy over President Trump’s mass deportations, a.k.a, “Enforcing the immigration laws after a rogue Presidency refused to do so for four years.” The point he raises is not only a valid one but an important one, not just regarding this issue but others. I’m going to append a fairly long addition to Ryan’s excellent work, but first of all, here is his Comment of the Day from “Friday Open Forum, Dedicated To Major Tipton…”:
***
Here’s my concern about the situation we’re in. I would liken it to inconsistently disciplining your children. If you only irregularly discipline your child for a particular infraction, the child learns that most of the time, he can get away with that infraction. When that infraction is then punished, the child reactions disproportionately because he’s used to getting away with the infraction, and he believes that if he makes noncompliance painful enough, it will discourage further disciplinary action.
That seems to be the case we’re in with illegal immigrants. We’ve been very poor at enforcing our immigration laws, and so many said illegals and the communities around them grew complacent about the laws not being enforced. When the laws are enforced, it comes as a great shock, and the immediate reaction is to scream about how unfair it is. And to a certain extent, I do agree that it is unfair. It is unfair to cultivate the expectation that a law won’t be enforced, only to turn around and enforce it. But it is unfair because of cultivating that expectation, not because of the subsequent enforcement.
The significant problem is the whiplash effect of enforcement/non-enforcement depending upon who is in charge. We’ve run the gamut of no enforcement (even inviting in illegals), to soft enforcement, to promises of citizenship, to harsh enforcement. To anyone watching from outside the country, it is like dealing with a schizophrenic or someone suffering from multiple personality disorder. Worse, because we keep seesawing back and forth, the expectation right now is that by keeping up a defiant stance against the current administration, illegals and their allies can simply wait for the winds to change and go back to their lives as they’ve been.
I know this aspect of the situation glosses over the deliberate effort of radicals to the destabilize the nation, the outrage over the money spigots that are being closed, the efforts to import in reliable Democratic voters, and the genuine concerns over destabilizing families that had, admittedly against the law, put down roots and became productive members of their communities. But it is a serious problem that we seem to be lurching one direction, and then back the opposite way, with every swing of political power. This has been exacerbated by most policy changes coming from executive orders, which are easily undone, rather than congressional legislation, which is much harder to walk back.
Ethics Alarms 