Immigration and the Tragic Sense of Life

Like much of the world, El Salvador is an unhappy place. Poverty and gang violence abound. And Mother Nature can be cruel. The country was ravaged by a couple of earthquakes in 2001, for example, and in its generosity, the United States responded by granting Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to nearly 200,000 Salvadorans. It was extended several times during the past seventeen years, per the entreaties of both immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government, whose efforts to rebuild the nation relied on money sent by workers in the U.S. TPS is for countries affected by armed conflict, natural disaster, or other strife. Since those conditions are not exceptions but, tragically, norms in human affairs, the status must be temporary. Otherwise the United States would not be a country so much as a depleted charity, with no end to the persons who seek to immigrate to its desirable shores.

 

So the Trump administration announced on Monday that Salvadorans in the TPS program will have until September 2019 to make arrangements to leave the country or obtain other legal status in order to stay....

 

And yet, there seems to be a moral dilemma. From a moral point of view, it is certainly not a good thing that thousands of immigrants—so many of whom are decent people who want to be good citizens of this country—should have to return to their native lands, where they may experience “armed conflict, natural disaster, or other strife.” But nevertheless, the tragic truth is that the immigration question is an either/or: Either we do what is best for Americans, or we do what is best for foreigners, regardless of how we fare from doing so. That the issue is never put in such stark terms suggests how little disposed we now are to dealing with the tragic sense of life. Indeed, to our sentimental therapy culture, tragedy seems downright scandalous. But however that may be, it remains true that the United States has not the resources to be a kind of permanent asylum for the millions or billions of human beings on this planet who, for whatever reason, feel compelled to leave their native countries for a better life....

 

Note that recognizing the limits of things does not make their effects any less horrible, nor do we necessarily cease to feel pity for others simply because we grasp that the law must trump the heart....

 

There are severe value judgments to be made. People may say all cultures are equal, but who is prepared to actually live like that? For instance, what non-Muslim in the West actually desires the Islamification of anyplace whatsoever? Are we so tolerant that we want female genital mutilation to become a part of American life?...

 

For, without making distinctions between cultures—judging one thing to be better than another—there can be no cultural value at all, because the concept of value is possible only in a comparative sense. To believe all cultures are equal, therefore, is sheer nihilism....

 

In tragic reality, doing what is best for your own country may entail not helping foreigners to alleviate their suffering. To be sure, that would not be a good decision from a moral point of view, but that does not mean it would be a bad one, either. ...