Pages

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Hurting Those Who Love Them

We all have friends and/or family, or know someone who does (or maybe it's ourselves), who believe that it's wrong for the administration to deport those who are in the country illegally but who've not committed any crime while being here.

With certain qualifiers, I'm partly sympathetic to this view, but what I have no sympathy for are those who, because of deep disagreement over this issue, have divorced themselves from family and friends and who will henceforth have nothing to do with the people they formerly claimed to have loved.

One person wrote on social media that separating himself from his family over this issue was a matter of human decency. This is very sad, especially since it suggests that these folks' self-righteousness outweighs their love for those from whom they've estranged themselves and whom they've often deeply hurt in the process.

Imagine a fellow named John who lives in a nice house with a wife and several children. John makes a comfortable living and is politically active on behalf of liberal causes.

John is always careful to lock his doors when he leaves the house or his car because he doesn't want to have his possessions stolen, but one day he forgets to do so. Coming home early before his wife was home from work and his kids were out of school he's shocked to find a rather bedraggled-looking family of complete strangers sitting in his living room.

When he asks them what they're doing in his house, they tell him that the front door was open and they needed a place to stay, so they came in. They also tell John that they left their old neighborhood because it wasn't very nice, there were drugs and gangs, his place was much nicer, he had a well-stocked refrigerator, and they wanted to stay there.

They promise him they'd mow his grass and clean the house, and that since he had an extra bedroom, they assumed it'd be alright with John, since he had old Biden/Harris stickers on his door, if they made themselves at home.

John tells them that he sympathized with their plight, but that they couldn't stay; they'd have to leave; he'd even give them a meal and some cash to help them on their way. Nevertheless, they were insistent about moving in.

Finally, John takes out his phone and calls the police, who come and escort the family back to their old neighborhood.

Was John wrong to refuse to allow these poor people to remain in his house? Did his practice of locking his doors and his refusal to allow the intruders to stay make him a moral reprobate? Does he lack human decency? Doesn't he have the right to decide whom he'll invite into his home and whom he will exclude?

How many of those who've estranged themselves from friends and family because their former loved ones react the same as John did would themselves fault John? How many of them leave the doors to their houses and cars unlocked? How many of them would decline to evict people who tried to move into their houses uninvited?

Yet locking one's doors is analogous to building a wall on our border of our national "house," and calling the police to evict the intruders who were in his house illegally is analogous to deporting immigrants who are in our national home illegally. Our nation is our home writ large.

If you think I'm wrong about this, tell me what the significant difference is between John's situation and that which we find ourselves in after four years of a reckless border policy.