On emotional appeals for amnesty for illegals

I hear much hand-wringing about the plight of those swept up in ICE raids. I'll tackle this sort of political argument here.

Both left wingers and right wingers trade in powerful emotional appeals, mostly focusing on the suffering or the depredation of individuals. The right wing used the rapist Willie Horton to defeat Dukakis. Here in California the left used a "Hate Ahnold" campaign to defeat a nonpartisan redistricting initiative. Goes on all the time.

With immigration, the left uses Maria Sanchez (to pick a name out of a hat), hardworking, honest mother of three citizen children. The lefties ask how can we be so heartless as to deny her the good life we ourselves enjoy?

Then the right uses Guillermo Horton, evil rapist/murderer (to pick another name out of a hat), currently doing life and then some in a federal pen. So the right asks how can we be so misguided as to let this monster into our country to prey on our wives and daughters?

The right also brings up Yung Jo (yet another hat name), who has gone the legal route and been on an immigration waiting list for 10 years. and who is a professional engineer whose wife is an accountant. Here the right asks how can we let Maria Sanchez, regardless of her virtues, jump the queue ahead of Yung Jo, who played by our rules?

All these stereotypes have a kernel of truth.

But using them to make decisions means renouncing what makes us different from a dog. Dogs have great capacity for empathy. If someone they care about is hurting they'll do everything they can to allay their pain.

But they can't count.

We can. So we can weigh one hurt against another, and act based on the greater good--not just individual situations. To do any less is to renounce our humanity.

ICE raids scare people. Maria Sanchez looks up at the brutal cop, eyes welling with tears, clutching her terrified children around her. Whose heart wouldn't melt? Well, remember Guillermo Horton. And Yung Jo. If we let Maria in illegally, we let Guillermo in too. And we keep Yung out. You have to advocate all three situations writ large, or, like me, advocate rule of law--which has served this country pretty well, and which I'd be darned reluctant to give up. Especially after having experienced what relatively lawless societies are like.

Arresting drug dealers--excuse me, "undocumented pharmacists"--scares them too. And it really scares their children. But we can't go around not arresting lawbreakers because it scares them. And we can't let children provide lawbreakers with a free pass. You can see where that would lead.

Of course those who advocate amnesty for illegal aliens don't consider them lawbreakers. But that's not up to you, or to me. I'm not a country--just a citizen of one. I don't approve of all our laws, and I despise some of them. And I do what I can to change laws I don't like. But I don't set myself above our legal system just because it isn't perfect. No sane person wants to live without laws, and making each individual an autonomous arbiter of our legal system produces just such a result.

Historically, America has benefitted greatly from immigration. One reason is our skill, both personally and institutionally, in assimilating foreigners. However, it's always a problem when you get an influx of foreigners from one culture--enough to form huge ghettos where they can preserve their original language and culture and not assimilate. That's the problem Europe is facing today. And it's the problem we're facing in the Southwest here. I'm fine with letting thousands of Maria Sanchezes into our country legally, if that's what our country needs. But I'm not in favor of letting millions in illegally.

And as with the last two times in the last 40 years that we granted amnesty to everyone who'd managed to get here, I see the long-term consequences of illegal immigration being so bad for our country that scaring Ms. Sanchez and her children is by far the less evil. She actually has a country that's responsible for her welfare--most likely Mexico. So I recommend that all those who feel bad for the plight of all the Maria Sanchezes demonstrate in front of Mexican consulates and embassies and encourage vigorous international efforts to get Mexico to do right by its citizens. To claim these people are America's problem is actually an insult to Mexican soverignty and to its dignidad as a nation.