On Citizens and Humans

A meditation on immigration.

Photo by K E on Unsplash

There is a distinction we must hold, clearly and without compromise, if we are to remain a people capable of democratic self-governance. It is a simple distinction, ancient in its wisdom, yet one we find ourselves desperately needing to restate in our present moment.

A noncitizen is not less human than a citizen.

This should not require saying. And yet here we are, watching the distinction collapse in real time, watching legal status become confused with moral worth, watching paperwork become the measure of whether someone deserves basic human dignity.

I am not advocating for open borders. I am not claiming that nations lack legitimate authority to control their borders or determine immigration policy. I am not suggesting that citizenship is meaningless or that legal status carries no consequences.

A country may reasonably remove people who lie, who steal, who harm others. A democratic people may decide, through legitimate processes, what levels of immigration they wish to permit based on cultural and economic concerns. These are proper subjects of democratic deliberation, and reasonable people will disagree about where lines should be drawn.

The unlawful presence of a person in a country is a legal matter. It comes with legal consequences. No legal status. No right to leave and enter freely. The constant precarity of existing outside the law’s protection. These consequences are real and substantial.

I am not minimizing any of this.

I am saying that unlawfulness of presence is not something that intercedes on the moral status of the person. That legal violation, however we choose to address it, does not transform a human being into something less than human.

To concede this point—to accept that “illegal” means “less human”—is to engage in fascistic thinking. It just is.

Not fascistic as epithet or insult. Fascistic as precise description of a mode of thought that makes mass cruelty possible by first making it psychologically tolerable. The move that allows us to treat some people as outside the circle of moral concern because they’ve violated a legal category we’ve constructed.

This is how it works. This is always how it works.

First, establish a legal category that marks people as “other.” Then, gradually, allow that legal distinction to become a moral one. Then allow the moral distinction to justify any level of dehumanization. Then, when the cruelty becomes undeniable, point to the legal category as justification: “They shouldn’t have been here. They broke the law. What happens to them is their own fault.”

By the time the pattern is complete, we’ve convinced ourselves that people are less human because of their paperwork status.

Here is what maintaining human dignity looks like in practice:

The peaceful, productive person living unlawfully in our country has committed a legal violation. That violation may warrant removal—that’s a democratic decision we’re entitled to make. But the breach of law of the peaceful, productive unlawful migrant is surely mitigated by their prosocial value.

This doesn’t mean they get to stay regardless of our laws. It means that when we enforce those laws, we remember they are human beings whose lives and contributions have weight.

We may decide, democratically, that they must leave. But even then—even then—we may ask them, nicely, to leave.

“Ask them, nicely, to leave.”

I can hear the scoffing already. In our present discourse, the phrase sounds almost absurd. Nicely? We’re talking about law enforcement. About sovereignty. About people who broke the rules.

But this is exactly the test.

Can we enforce our laws while maintaining recognition that the people subject to those laws remain fully human? Can we remember that legal status and moral worth are separate categories? Can we do what we believe necessary without requiring ourselves to believe the people we’re acting upon deserve any cruelty we inflict?

Or do we need the cruelty? Do we need to believe they’re less human in order to tolerate what we’re doing?

If the answer is yes—if maintaining our sense of ourselves as good people requires first believing that “illegals” are somehow less than fully human—then we’ve already crossed into fascistic thinking.

Fascism doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive with jackboots and declarations of tyranny. It arrives through the gradual erosion of distinctions that used to seem obvious.

It arrives when we learn to think of certain people as non-citizens in the deepest sense—not just lacking political rights, but existing outside the circle of human concern. When their suffering stops triggering our moral alarm. When their persecution seems, if not justified, at least tolerable. At least not our problem. At least something they brought upon themselves.

This is what Jefferson despaired of in the Declaration: “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

The fascist pathology becomes sufferable because we partition its victims as “not us.”

Not citizens like us. Not people whose rights violations should concern us. Not humans whose dignity demands our protection.

And so we suffer it. We watch federal agents conduct warrantless mass detentions and think: “Well, they shouldn’t have been here.” We watch families separated and communities terrorized and think: “They knew the risks.” We watch human beings treated as vermin and think: “What did they expect?”

We make it sufferable by making them less than human.

There is border enforcement, and there is fascism. The difference is not in whether we have borders or enforce immigration law. The difference is whether we can do those things while remembering that people are people regardless of their paperwork.

Can we make democratic decisions about immigration while treating migrants as humans? Can we enforce those decisions with methods that respect basic dignity? Can we remove people when necessary while doing so with basic decency?

Or does our enforcement require us to forget that they’re fully human? Does maintaining our policy require accepting their dehumanization? Does “securing the border” necessitate methods that would be unconscionable if applied to citizens—and does that tell us something about what we’ve decided about their worth?

This is the question that separates legitimate policy from fascistic practice.

Not “do you support border enforcement?” but “can you enforce borders while maintaining the distinction between legal status and human worth?”

I am not naive about the challenges of immigration policy. I am not claiming that every person who enters unlawfully should remain. I am not suggesting that democratic peoples lack authority to make collective decisions about who may join their polity.

But I am saying: not like this.

Not with methods that require us to stop seeing people as people. Not with rhetoric that treats human beings as invasions, infestations, vermin to be eliminated. Not with enforcement designed to terrorize rather than remove. Not with raids that separate parents from children and leave communities traumatized for generations.

Not with policies that only work if we first accept that some humans are worth less than others.

Because once we accept that—once we allow legal status to determine moral worth—we’ve surrendered something essential. We’ve accepted the fascistic move that makes mass cruelty possible by first making it psychologically tolerable.

We’ve learned to think of people as non-citizens in the sense that really matters: as beings whose suffering need not trouble our conscience.

The center—the space where democratic self-governance remains possible—holds only when we maintain certain distinctions even when maintaining them is inconvenient.

The distinction between legal status and human worth is one of those.

A person may be unlawfully present and still fully human. May lack political rights and still deserve basic dignity. May be subject to removal and still warrant decent treatment in that removal.

These aren’t contradictions. They’re the basic requirements of remaining a society that doesn’t require dehumanization to function.

The moment we collapse these distinctions—the moment we decide that “illegal” means “less than human”—we’ve accepted fascistic logic.

Not as accusation. Not as insult. But as precise description of what we’ve chosen to believe about who deserves to be treated as fully human.

And once we’ve accepted that logic for them, history shows us with depressing regularity what comes next.

The circle of “us” keeps shrinking. The category of “them” keeps expanding. The methods we accepted for people “who shouldn’t be here” become methods we accept for people “who don’t belong” in other senses. Legal status, then ethnic identity, then political affiliation, then insufficient loyalty.

The dehumanization that starts with the most vulnerable doesn’t stop there. It never stops there.

A noncitizen is not less human than a citizen.

Unlawful presence is a legal status, not a moral stain.

We may enforce our borders without requiring ourselves to believe that people who cross them illegally deserve any cruelty we can devise.

These are simple truths. They should not need defending. And yet.

Here we are, in a moment when these distinctions are collapsing in real time, when “illegal” has become license for any level of dehumanization, when methods that would shock us if applied to citizens are deemed not just acceptable but necessary when applied to migrants.

Here we are, being asked to accept that some humans are worth less than others based on their paperwork.

And the terrible thing—the thing that should terrify us—is how sufferable we’re finding it. How easily we’re learning to partition the victims as “not us.” How naturally the rationalizations come: They broke the law. They shouldn’t be here. They knew the risks. What did they expect?

How readily we’re accepting the fascistic logic that unlawful presence justifies unlimited cruelty.

May we remember what we’re being asked to accept. May we recognize the distinction we’re being asked to surrender. May we understand that once we’ve decided some humans are worth less than others, we’ve accepted a logic that doesn’t stop where we think it will.

May we find the courage to say: not like this.

Not because we oppose border enforcement. Not because we advocate open borders. Not because we’re naive about the complexities of immigration policy.

But because we refuse to become the kind of people who need to believe humans are less than human in order to tolerate what we’re doing to them.

Because we insist on holding the distinction between legal status and moral worth, even when—especially when—surrendering it would be more convenient.

Because we remember that citizenship determines political rights, not human worth.

And because we understand that the moment we forget this—the moment we accept that “illegal” means “less human”—we’ve crossed a line that separates democratic peoples from fascistic ones.

The circus continues. The ground approaches. The wire still holds for those willing to walk it with eyes open.

But it requires seeing clearly. Maintaining distinctions others want us to surrender. Refusing to make cruelty sufferable by first making its victims less than human.

Not like this, America.

Not like this.

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Go Deeper into the Circus

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