Illegal on Earth? Humanity and Trump’s immigration policy
I read the lines by your columnist, Joel Ruiz Butuyan (“A superpower gone rogue,” 1/15/26), with great interest and agreement. What is often forgotten is that here in the United States, we are not talking about criminals, but only about people with an illegal immigration status. They live in a country on this planet Earth, which considers them illegal. Dehumanization is taking place. Strictly speaking, every one of us is illegal somewhere on Earth in some country.
But can a person who shares a planet with other people and breathes the same air truly be illegal? It’s often about provocation and populism, that is, propagandistic exaggeration. The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, was very good at that.
If an organization denies other people their humanity, isn’t it already bordering on being a terrorist organization? If someone in the US were to label Make America Great Again a terrorist organization, like the Ku Klux Klan, for example, the outrage in the Republican Party would be enormous.
The ancestors of the current United States President, Donald Trump, are also all immigrants from Germany. Incidentally, from a place not far from my own hometown of Kaiserslautern. As a philosopher, I sometimes like to delve a little deeper intellectually, which might bore some people. Nevertheless, please allow me to briefly share the following thought.
Before one can actively practice humanity, one must first know and learn it. A very human experience of humanism. This is precisely the problem with the Trump administration. Every form of humanity, of grace, compassion, and mercy is alien to him. How can these people call themselves Christians?
Going to church on Sundays and then denouncing their neighbors to the authorities as illegals on Mondays? What would Jesus say? Those who neither know nor have experienced love and humanity cannot live them out. It’s like someone trying to talk about an astronaut’s experiences without ever having been one and seen Earth from the perspective of a spaceship. You have to experience something like that emotionally; you have to have felt it and lived it.
I recommend reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground,” a work of world literature, and rightly so, as it offers a profound insight into the human condition. Of course, there is also light at the end of the tunnel.
On Nov. 7, 2028, the next election for the United States President and Congress will take place. A date that already reeks of history. This also applies to the presidential election in the Philippines, which will be held in the same year! Once again, the world will change its face, though in which direction it remains completely open.
If I have to choose between hate and love, I always choose love. Because I still believe in the power of love. Thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts; this, too, is humanity and respect.
Jürgen Schöfer, Ph.D.,
Biopreparat.Schoefer@gmail.com
