Yes I understand your point, and we agree in general principles.
From my days in church, I grew to like St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, in which he says that the letter of the law gives death, while the spirit of the law gives life. There are various translations for that, but we have the general idea.
And so I offer a hypothetical based upon the historical record. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made criminal the actions of any person who assisted a slave in escaping. Had you been LEO during the short frustrated life of that immoral law, would you have enforced it?
Thankfully, I'm not in a position to make life or death decisions like that one. This, though, is another example of what I am referring to.
The law was passed by our corrupt law makers and it was obviously not a fair or just law. It was merely a political expediency.
The law enforcers were sworn to uphold the law, not to enforce their understanding of justice in every instance they encountered.
When this situation exists, that law before the enforcer is perceived to be unjust or unfair, enforcing the law as written should advertise to all the need for a better law. Ignoring law in favor of a preferred tradition is dangerous to any society.
There was a movie with Paul Newman in which he said that the trappings of our courts reflect our goal as a society to embrace justice.
When our legislative system is worked by crooks, the resulting laws enacted will be crooked. After the laws are passed, just or not, if they are enforced or ignored by those with personal agendas, the resulting actions will be crooked.
Our history as a nation in the withholding or allocation of civil liberties by class, race and gender is not one to be proud of. Awarding civil liberties, though, pretty much assumes that the people affected are citizens or legal residents.
That said, though, the treatment of the slaves of the old South brought here against their will or the indigenous Native Americans already here don't seem to me to be a parallel to folks who are essentially "breaking in" to our country. That's probably off topic.
Anyway, on to your hypothetical: If the only way to achieve "moral justice" is to break the law, then we need to examine what the law actually directs and what the notion of justice actually is.
Are non-citizens to be allowed all the rights of citizens? If there's a Romanian Citizen living in Romania who wants to vote in the US even though he has never been here, should he have the right to vote? It is a right, after all.
At what point are rights that we hold to be self evident to be withheld from those for whom they were never intended?
