Moral Crisis

Forget all the other crimes, just fix this.

This is a policy magazine. We write about what’s happening in our country and our world, and we outline how it can be improved. There will be a time for applying such analysis to border policy. (My early read is that it will be politically wrenching, practically challenging, and generally tragic.) But that time must wait for the moral crisis at the border to cease. There can be no path forward in a continuous period of human rights abuses, where the United States stands in perpetual violation of refugee obligations and international law. This is a time only of action, not strongly worded letters or battle cries or even the words you’re reading right now.

Thinking about whether middle America is ready for a more welcoming immigration policy while state-sponsored torture is occurring would be like wondering about the political practicalities of busing while the bodies of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer were exhumed, or the four little girls at the church in Birmingham, Alabama. The state is carrying out a sadistic fantasy, repressing Hispanic men, women, and children for sport. They’re doing it intentionally, with purpose and glee. The primary question, the only question worth asking, is what those in power, and those of us with only the power to enter the streets, are going to do about it.