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Claim: What if some other country held an American child hostage? We have no right to force our values on other cultures. (Apparently, Castro has the right to force HIS values on other individuals...)
Response: This claim asks us not to pass moral judgment. But there is no way around it. The difference between freedom and dictatorship is NOT�as statist-liberals have been pretending for decades�a "cultural preference" or a "difference in lifestyle." A lifestyle is a way of LIVING. Every year, thousands of Cubans, like Elian�s mother, risk their lives crossing shark-infested waters�because Cuba offers them nothing but a way of DYING.
Claim: Letting Elian stay would be inconsistent with the rule of law. The immigration law calls for the deportation of illegal immigrants. Maybe it�s not the best law, and laws may need to be changed or abolished�but so long as they exist, they must be enforced, if only grudgingly.
Response: It may have been a comfort to Northerners who helped recapture blacks in compliance with the Fugitive Slave Acts, and to Germans who delivered their Jewish neighbors to the Gestapo, to pretend that they had no moral choice�that, much as they might disagree with the law, as citizens they could not abandon their "duty to obey the law."
But nothing entitles "the law" to such unconditional respect. By itself, "the law" is nothing but the demand of some fallible being, whose sole qualification to make such demands is that a bunch of gullible beings take him seriously. His demands may be backed by a gun, but they require just as much moral justification as anyone else�s. Sweeping atrocities under the rug of legality will not make them disappear�much less excuse them.
Incidentally, US law has offered sanctuary to fleeing Cubans since the "triumph" of Castro�s little "revolution." Letting Elian stay if perfectly consistent with immigration law, as it is both written and practiced.
Claim: Then immigration law itself is inconsistent. It isn�t fair to have this sort of special status for Cuban refugees.
Response: I agree. Although those fleeing dictatorships clearly need the freedom to live in America more than anyone else, we have no right to ration freedom. The only moral immigration policy is to open our borders to ALL comers, Cuban or otherwise, provided only that they agree to respect the individual rights of other Americans.
It is true that open immigration threatens the static culture desired by xenophobes, and the monopoly on labor desired by unions�but what HONEST objection can be made? Is it feared that unrestricted immigration would overburden taxpayers? Then simply deny the immigrants the alleged "benefits" of the welfare state (which are not "rights" anyway), and exempt them from paying taxes.
America was not always--and never should have become--the "world�s policeman." But we HAVE always been the "land of opportunity"�not the "opportunity" to collect handouts, but the opportunity to live free and to rise as high as your ability can take you. As the inscription on the Statue of Liberty says:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
This is the America that Elizabet Brotons saw when she risked�and gave�her life to bring her son here. It is Castro�s fault Elian�s mother died�it will be our government's fault if she died for nothing.
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