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A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. —1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees

First, let us be very clear about a few things:

This has nothing to do with enforcing our laws. Seeking asylum is not a criminal act. People have a right to come to the United States and make a petition. The right to seek asylum is a recognized principle of international law and has been recognized in the United States for decades. When somebody shows up on our doorstep asking for asylum, we do not have to give it to them. But we do have to consider the request and treat the people making it as fellow human beings. They are not criminals. They have broken no laws. And they are entitled to the same due process that we must constitutionally afford anybody over whom we assert our jurisdiction. This has nothing to do with jobs or the economy. We have acute labor shortages in our agricultural sector right now, and it is getting worse. Nobody involved in the current immigration debate has asked, or even appears to care, whether or not we currently allow enough immigration into our country to meet the needs of our economy. The point is to be tough on immigrants and asylum seekers because that is politically popular–not because it is economically necessary or even fiscally responsible. Border security theatre is a political issue not a national-security concern. This has nothing to do with being a nation that espouses religious values. The current practice of separating children and their parents is wrong from just about every conceivable system of religion or morality. For those who happen to be Christian, it is a fundamental rejection of perhaps the most important religious obligation that we have: the responsibility to care for the stranger among us. And for those who happen to be Latter-day Saints, it is a rejection of the Church’s official position on immigration, the second point of which is “the importance of keeping families intact.” To tear children away from their parents at our border, we must actively reject the pretense of being a religious people

This has almost nothing to do with what we are arguing about and everything to do with the most important question that we must collectively ask ourselves every generation: What kind of country do we want to be?

Do we want to be an isolated industrial nation or a or a world military power? That was the question for the generation that fought World War II. Do we want to be a nation of equal laws and equal rights or an apartheid state? That was what we had to answer during the Civil Rights Era.

Immigration is shaping up to be our generation’s ‘What kind of country do we want to be?’ question.

As many have pointed out, we have a long tradition of being a nation of immigrants. That is true, but “What kind of country have we been?” is not quite the same question as, “What kind of country do we want to be?” Immigration policies that made sense when we had a small population and huge tracts of land do not necessarily make sense for a nation of 300,000,000 people and limited resources.

By the same token, though, the reactive nativism that now defines American politics makes little sense for a country experiencing acute labor shortages in its most crucial sectors. Our current immigration policy is so driven by ideology that it cannot ask the very pragmatic question, “How many people should we allow to immigrate legally?”

In the current historical moment, the question has become all tangled up with another important question, which is, “How should we treat human beings who come to our country seeking refuge?” This question has nothing to do with building walls, or securing the border, or preventing people from breaking our laws. We can do all of that and still be decent human beings and treat people with dignity. Inhumane treatment is not necessary. It is not even a byproduct of anything necessary. It is a strategy designed to deter immigration. Cruelty, in other words, is not tragic necessity. It is the entire point of the exercise. That is the country that some people want us to be.

Turning this into an issue of border security misses almost everything about the point. The families that have been ripped apart and detained are not evidence of a border that we have failed to secure. It is precisely because we do secure the border that they have been arrested and detained trying to cross it. Intentional cruelty is not necessary to secure the border.

The people coming to the United States are fleeing very real problems in Central America: drug gangs, sexual violence, human trafficking, extreme poverty — a good deal of which stems directly from America’s past economic policies and current drug laws. They are coming here because they believe that our country is more compassionate than the countries they are leaving. They are refugees in the purist sense of the word. They are seeking refuge.

And they have a right to knock on our door without having their children taken away–or without being turned back before they even make their case because the hell that they have lived through was not produced by the enemies that happen to be out of favor with the administration. They have a right to be treated with compassion and dignity. Our government has decided to deny them this right, and to do it in the name of the American people.

Our government, in our name, has determined that our immigration policy can have no room for compassion, decency, or the integrity of families. It has decided to use cruelty and state-sponsored terror as stage props in its cynical security theatre.

This is not the kind of country that any of us should want to be.