Ethics, law, and the border.

There has been a lot of talk about how our government should handle the US/Mexico border in this recent election season. Most of the arguments used to support the fence, the creation of felony charges against those here illegally, and other political immigration reforms have been based in the proclamation of following the law. I am concerned when the law is the only thing used to gauge right and wrong. Many times in the past we have found laws to be unethical, immoral, and just plain wrong. A good example would be past laws that discriminated against racial minorities. Though following the law was used as a weapon to chastise those who fought for rights, we would later look back on these laws as in fact wrong and deserving to be abolished or changed. Take Martin Luther King Jr. for example. Many religious leaders, colleagues of King, found following the law more important than fighting for what was right in the struggle for civil rights. What does it take to bring people to the realization that ethics, the decision to do what is right, comes before the law. In the sense of the US/Mexico border, we have to think of the right thing to do toward our fellow man, not just whether they cross over a desert without our permission. I’ve heard the argument that people should not have to be ethical towards “lawbreakers”, but is that how we honestly gauge ethical behavior? If you consider ethics, and look from the standpoint of many who are willing to pay coyotes to show them across a dangerous border, the crossers are making an ethical choice. They are choosing to risk their lives to ensure that they can support their own basic needs and that of their family. To them, that is the right thing to do, the ethical choice.

So how do we address the border issue from an ethical standpoint? We must first stop using ethnocentric policies to address the issue and look at the roots of the problem that drive these people into our borders. We also really need to look at what we really are afraid of. Is it really racially motivated? Are we as a country capable of looking past nationalistic and unethical standards in order to do what is right for thousands of desperate people waiting to risk it all to come here?

“The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34)

~ by dcsleeps on November 7, 2006.