TO?THE?EDITOR:
Few Americans, if any, doubt that our nation’s laws on immigration need revision and that the national conversation should be civil. Unfortunately, there are a few not-so-helpful ideas that have been bruited about; let us be on our guard against these.
One unhelpful idea is that it is virtuous to break laws when those laws need revision. As this pseudo-guideline would have it, Americans ought to take part in breaking the nation’s laws and policies on immigration because our immigration system needs
reformation. Civil disobedience is not relevant here; we are speaking of criminal violation of laws of the land by countless numbers of individuals. If it is still true that criminal actions can never claim the moral high ground, citizens are obliged to obey laws
until these laws are changed. Instead, the virtuous action may be research into why Congress has taken such ineffectual action in a reformation. Perhaps we should vote out of office those “servants of the people” who are unresponsive. Maybe we simply have to get creative and smart in dealing with Third World nations who entice their citizens to leave home, rather than reform their economies. If three hundred million Americans were to violate any law that needed
reform, the consequences would be intolerable. If Catholics were to violate Church rules whenever the latter needed reformation, one has to wonder whether or not the consequences would be equally intolerable.
It is also an unhelpful idea that enforcing laws violates human dignity. Enforcing laws recognizes the freedom and responsibility of human acts; removing or muting the consequences of criminal actions does nothing to advance either the moral or the socio-political development of people. Human dignity requires recognition of freedom and responsibility, even though criminals may be happy that we forego
such recognition. We have prided ourselves on being a nation of laws, and so we have to disabuse ourselves of the notion that dignity and law are contradictory.
The question of whether Christian belief brings light as well as heat to the issue is thorny. “I was a stranger and you took me in.”
While the meaning is clear, the application is troubling; what works as a personal, moral principle will not always work when expanded into a national policy. Elsewhere, Christ said that we are to “turn
the other cheek.” An individual may be willing and able to accomplish this, but a nation cannot. A nation that is attacked can, and should, respond. Even the Just War Theory allows this. A nation
cannot “turn the other cheek.” Christ also said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Obeying the laws of the land surely qualifies as “…the things that are Caesar’s.”
The conversation on how to translate and apply Christian principles today has to continue.
Lois Eveleth
Tiverton
