Day 14 – O’Keefe – Point of View
The American legal system is in trouble today: it is slow, it appears to favor the rich, and it does not provide justice with reliability that people trust. But it has tremendous strengths, including at least two bedrock principles that opponents of immigration like you are assaulting. I do not think you understand how much damage you are doing to our laws. It would be better if you debated with your opponents, and explained – or changed.
You routinely assault American law by your bland assertion that undocumented immigrants are here “illegally.” In order to make that equation, you assault American law by skipping over the necessity defense, and ignoring the assumption in law that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
The necessity defense embodies a simple idea: there is nothing wrong with violating a statute if you have a good reason to do so. Running red lights to get your wife to the hospital when she is delivering a baby violates a statute – but you have a defense. Trespassing in a burning house in order to get people out violates a statute, but common sense and common law over-ride the statute: in that situation, breaking and entering is heroic – and legal. If you break a law because you have to break it to protect some higher good, it’s legal: your defense against criminal charges is the “necessity defense.”
When someone crosses the border into the United States without documentation, that violates the law. But if it is in fact the only way he sees to feed his family, he has a legal defense. If she crosses the border to escape gang violence, she has a defense. If they cross the border to find a little sister who’s been missing for six months, they have a defense. The details of the lives of immigrants are not just irrelevant sob stories; they are legal defenses – if you believe in the principles of American law.
Perhaps many undocumented immigrants are here to build a better life, not because of a specific emergency. You still can’t call them “Illegals”; they are innocent until proven guilty.
American courts have become slow, ponderous, expensive. So the idea that millions of undocumented immigrants should have a shot at presenting their cases in American court does not fill us with pride in our system; it sounds really expensive! I see the problem. But scrapping ancient common law principles is not an acceptable solution.
Moses explained over and over that the statutes protecting immigrants make sense, when we look at them from the perspective of the immigrant: “Remember that you too once were a stranger in a strange land.” Jesus also challenges his followers to shift perspective: “Who was a good neighbor to this victim by the side of the road?” American law does the same: we do not enforce our laws without any reference to circumstances. This is Biblical teaching; it is common sense; and it is our law.
Mr. Parrott?
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