¶ … Borderline Leadership" discusses the need for policy change regarding immigration. The form of reasoning used in this article is solidly utilitarian. The author urges the White House to take solid steps toward creating "realistic and enforceable" legislation to curb illegal immigration, and the federal government should "tailor the law to economic reality." The concept of economic need is the underlying reason used by the editor to support his view on immigration policy. Furthermore, the author refers to immigrants several times as being "needed" to maintain the American economy. The greatest good for the greatest number, according to the author, would be to change immigration laws to allow for more migrant workers.
However, twice the author slips slightly from his or her strictly utilitarian perspective, as when he or she discusses the high school student illegal immigrants. Referring to a judge's "sensible step of blocking their deportation," the author suggests that permitting the students to stay was a moral imperative. To punish the two students for having crept over the border when they were two and seven years old would have been an immoral decision from a deontological perspective. Similarly, when the author mentions the "hundreds of migrant workers who die each year crossing the desert in search of work," he or she hints that all human beings, illegal immigrants or not, have an ingrained moral right to live and work according to their needs. However, "Borderline Leadership"...
In fact, the author's stance on permitting the students to remain in the country is also utilitarian because of the allusion to their being "honors" students on a trip for a high school science competition. By inserting this detail, the author suggests that those two individuals might grow up to contribute to the greater good of the United States economy by becoming productive wage earners.
Illegal immigrants are discussed as having both natural and posited rights: when the author discusses the unwitting illegal immigrant honors students and the hundreds of migrants who die each year crossing the border, he or she assumes the rights of all persons to some form of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are natural and innate. Moreover, even though the high school students did not initially have a legal right to education in America, they do since a judge permitted them to stay in the country. Therefore, the author suggests that all persons have the natural right to education, and that all young people have the natural right to escape the consequences of their parents' errors, or issues that were beyond their control. On the other hand, the author also discusses the relevance of posited rights in relation to the issue of illegal immigration. Technically, illegal immigrants have no posited rights because of their alien status. In fact, the editorial elucidates the essential conflict between natural…
