What Is Compassion?

I agree with the overall concept of the editorial at the Deseret News on handling the massive inflow of immigrants at our southern border:

As the United States sees a sharp increase in immigration under President Joe Biden’s administration, the nation must respond from a place of principle — and Utah offers solid foundations from which to start.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist as 4,200 children were being kept in poor, crowded conditions in Customs and Border Protection facilities, in cells meant for adults. Biden, who criticized former President Donald Trump for keeping “kids in cages,” is passing the buck to his predecessor for the current situation, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying that “the last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are caught up in semantics, criticizing the Biden administration for calling the situation at the border a “challenge” and urging the president to label it a “crisis.” They say Biden’s rhetoric since taking office has encouraged the surge in immigration and point to the dangers posed to both American citizens and migrants by the COVID-19 pandemic in packed detention facilities.

The particular nuances of 2021 notwithstanding, it’s the same back-and-forth that’s plagued both parties for decades.

But principle is out there, and it can be found right here in Utah. The Utah Compact on Immigration, first signed in 2010 and reaffirmed in 2019, is “a declaration of five principles to guide Utah’s immigration discussion,” such as urging against unnecessary family separation, acknowledging strong families as “the foundation of successful communities,” recognizing the “economic role immigrants play as workers and taxpayers,” and adopting “a humane approach” to the reality that immigrants are integrated into Utah’s communities, which reflects the state’s “unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion.”

The compact is not meant to be a legislative solution — indeed, director of the National Immigration Forum Ali Noorani praised it as “designed to stop harmful legislation with a set of principles based on values fundamental to the broader community” and declared that “culture and values defeated politics and policy” — but it has been the foundation for numerous real-world solutions. In 2011, after the compact was signed, the state passed an immigration reform law that was heralded as a “model for America.” Years later, the principles laid out in the compact served as the bedrock upon which Gov. Gary Herbert requested more refugee resettlement in Utah, even as other states turned asylum-seekers away.

Lawmakers at the federal level can learn from the values enshrined here in Utah, as they balance the rule of law and complex law enforcement with the United States’ history as a nation enriched by immigrants — and as a beacon of hope for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

What’s happening at the border is not a picture of compassion, but neither is an unfettered pipeline into the United States. Between the extremes is reasonable immigration reform that prioritizes families while maintaining order and the rule of law.

but I suspect I differ from them in what I would consider compassion. I’ll give an example. I think the compassionate thing to do with unaccompanied minors who enter the U. S. illegally is to turn them over to the Mexican authorities. They are much better prepared to return those children to their parents than we will ever be. But is that even the compassionate thing?

The issue of what to do with unaccompanied minors is particularly thorny and fraught. An American parent who sent his or her children into the desert alone, gave them to human traffickers, or, in effect, sold them to adults who wanted to get in illegally as a “family with children” would be considered abusive. Their children might well be taken from them. The attitude I hear in the U. S. about Mexicans and Central Americans is incredibly condescending and patronizing. Treating poverty as a legitimate case for asylum is inconsistent with past practice and tremendously impractical. There are nearly three quarters of a billion poor people in the world. We don’t have work for them or even the resources to admit all of them.