Mouse on Moral Dilemma

My previous blog – an allegory of the immigration problem – elicited responses that ran from left to right across what may not be the entire range of opinions, but comes close enough. There was, in any case, a high road, a low road, and a middle road. A young man from Sweden (he’s only in his 60s) took what I see as the high road, a belief that we owe to all people the same consideration we might give to, say, our own children. A truly young lady from Virginia (she’s 21) took the low road, strict enforcement of the laws of the land, and strong punishment for those who violate them. A school teacher from New Jersey took what seems to me to be the middle road; he agreed with the young lady that the laws ought to be enforced, but seemed torn between his Christian faith – which would point to the high road – and his desire to remain a law abiding citizen.

I may be fudging their opinions a bit just to fit them more neatly into the mold cast by the blog’s original writer, a Presbyterian minister, Rev. John D. Storey. Rev. Storey saw that the problem presents a moral dilemma. His title for the piece asked a question that he never answered: How should we respond to an invasion of personal space? True, in his last paragraph, he tentatively makes the point that “immigrants” are people too, finally taking an even bolder move to the left than even the young man from Sweden, suggesting that “perhaps we do not own the road,” by which he meant that piece of the earth we call our nation.

Rev. Storey’s question could easily be answered if the only force driving human action were a commitment to keep the law of the land at all costs. Round up the immigrants and ship them home. But he would not have asked the question had he not felt something of the same urge felt by the man from Sweden and the teacher from New Jersey. Rev. Storey asked the question because he recognized in himself a conflict that could not be resolved without one or the other of the two drives being sacrificed to the other. And that’s what the word “dilemma” means: torn between two premises, or (in this case) between two moral imperatives.

After a few initial sorties (in which the use of an allegory was called into question – and finally laid to rest) the commenters came together around a suggested solution proposed by the man from Sweden. The proposal centered upon one point in which all seemed to agree, that the real criminals in this case were those employers who have knowingly hired the illegal immigrants and, often, paid them under the table, withholding no taxes. The failure of the illegal immigrants to pay taxes is the one big burr sticking in the craw of the people in the areas with high concentrations of illegals (my daughter for one). The hospitals, schools, and other social services in those areas still serve the illegals, setting up a situation that flies in the face of what I suppose everyone would consider justice. This is “representaion without taxation.”

The point has not gone unnoticed that for employers to withhold taxes from people without credentials of any kind (Social Security numbers in this case) would have been out-and-out theft, since the monies could not have been paid into non-existent tax accounts. If we can judge from the discussions in the Congress and in the press, no current laws specifically prohibit hiring illegal immigrants, but there are laws that require employers to withhold taxes from their employees. But even this law has a loop hole. If the employee is a self employed contractor, and has signed a paper to that effect, the employer is not required to withhold taxes. I would not be surprised that the majority of the firms that consciously hire illegals know all about that loop hole. I have seen in Arizona Mexican workers brought to and from work sites in large busses. When I asked who owned the busses, the answer I got (soto voce) was “private contractors.” The farmers actually paying the wages were, thus, dealing with a company, not individual laborers. The companies furnishing the laborers are no doubt well aware of the loop hole in the law, and no doubt have required all their workers to sign the paper. So, what we have here – at least in the far southwest – are companies operating large scale “employment agencies” trafficing in illegal labor. I do not know this for sure, but those companies are probably breaking both the law and the moral code: they earn their revenues from taking a slice of the wages paid to the laborers they illegally sell to farmers.

But those practices – and the proposed solution – do not remove the moral dilemma. Even if those who knowingly hire illegals are prosecuted, and even if the illegals thus identified were sanctioned, the troublesome questions raised by the Christian ethic would remain. This is the Neuremburg dilemma all over again. The governemt is legally bound to enforce the laws of the land, but the citizenry is morally, and just as strongly bound, to obey the law only when the law does not present a clear abrogation of personal conscience. Perhaps this case is not so clearly visible as was the case in Germany, but then, the moral dilemma is perhaps more visible. It is probably true, that many Germans were unaware of the genocidal crimes being committed in their name, though they certainly were aware of the public restrictions and persecutions of Jews. The question of whether they should have rebelled against those overt atrocities applies in the case at hand. Was I, for instance, after learning of the way laborers in Arizona were being peddled, obliged to do something about it. I think I was so obliged, and it is apparent to me now, that if I and hundreds like me had taken action when we first became aware of the problem, today the nation may already be well on the way to a sane and morally consistent policy.

In short, moral law does not rest upon the shoulders of government. It lays heavily upon the backs of individual people. As Machiavelli opined, the government is obliged to take immoral action when necessary to protect the state, but the people – especially in a republic – are charged with holding themselves and their government morally accountable for their acts. We should not be too surprised that the current occupant of the White House seeks some sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants. He is charged with the political problem of seeing that the laws of the land are bent where necessary to accommodate the economic needs of a large segment of the economy. That’s his job, and like the proverbial blind squirrel, he has probably found an acorn this time. But his ambivalence to the law does not and cannot relieve the people of their awareness of the moral dilemma.

Perhaps that’s what a great man meant (I forget who) when he said that the test of maturity lies in our ability to function as human beings while holding contradictory ideas. And perhaps it is the tension created by that holding that leads us ever and always to feel the need for “something better.” For a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for. (Robert Browning.) We live on that same darkling plain where Matthew Arnold’s ignorant armies clashed by night. And we are never, ever to be relieved of the urge to seek the right, without knowing for sure what is the right. Moral dilemma is the human condition.