This is how me, as a single elderly woman do this, by giving my tithe to my church that does exactly what this is referring to. I can't go to another country to serve, but I can give to my church or other organizations that CAN go do what is needed. It's the responsibility of Christians to take part in this and encourage our countrymen to do the same.
I like a lot about this, but I am still unsure how Vance is wrong.
You seem to agree that there are limits to how much we should help others before we need to help those closest to us. So, I think more work needs to be done to show what that limit is in the context of immigration, especially since the last administration had hardly any immigration restrictions at all.
I assume you probably think things aren't bad enough in the status quo to justify these orders. Sure, illegal immigrants might depress our wages and there have been a few cases of crime and refusal to assimilate (e.g., Laken Riley), but these aren't bad enough to do much about just yet. While I think Vance would disagree, I think he plausibly sees himself as securing a long-term good by these orders: they not only squash the short-term bads of the sort I mentioned above, but they set a precedent that the US will no longer allow a ton of people in anymore. The long-term good you secure by this is deterring many, many more potential illegal immigrants from entering in the future. That actually seems like a pretty plausible justification that is consistent with what's all said here.
So, I think much of this turns on an empirical debate: Would status quo immigration eventually cross that threshold where we aren't providing for our loved ones and nation sufficiently? In the long term, it's plausible that it would, even if Vance's critics quickly point out he's wrong about how bad things are in the short term.
I would say that the overall picture of moral obligation is correct, insofar as there are special obligations, but it takes a lot, quite a lot, to free us from our duties to others. We actually need to be at a point where we *cannot* do that. And we are nowhere near that. The way he is wrong is he is using this to justify things that really do go against Christian ethics - shutting down funding for refugee resettlement and freezing foreign aid, for example. The empirical part matters, to be sure. That's part of my point. We are nowhere near that sort of decision at a political level. We have so much, we can care for our nation and help others, including those who come here fleeing violence, etc.
This is how me, as a single elderly woman do this, by giving my tithe to my church that does exactly what this is referring to. I can't go to another country to serve, but I can give to my church or other organizations that CAN go do what is needed. It's the responsibility of Christians to take part in this and encourage our countrymen to do the same.
I like a lot about this, but I am still unsure how Vance is wrong.
You seem to agree that there are limits to how much we should help others before we need to help those closest to us. So, I think more work needs to be done to show what that limit is in the context of immigration, especially since the last administration had hardly any immigration restrictions at all.
I assume you probably think things aren't bad enough in the status quo to justify these orders. Sure, illegal immigrants might depress our wages and there have been a few cases of crime and refusal to assimilate (e.g., Laken Riley), but these aren't bad enough to do much about just yet. While I think Vance would disagree, I think he plausibly sees himself as securing a long-term good by these orders: they not only squash the short-term bads of the sort I mentioned above, but they set a precedent that the US will no longer allow a ton of people in anymore. The long-term good you secure by this is deterring many, many more potential illegal immigrants from entering in the future. That actually seems like a pretty plausible justification that is consistent with what's all said here.
So, I think much of this turns on an empirical debate: Would status quo immigration eventually cross that threshold where we aren't providing for our loved ones and nation sufficiently? In the long term, it's plausible that it would, even if Vance's critics quickly point out he's wrong about how bad things are in the short term.
I would say that the overall picture of moral obligation is correct, insofar as there are special obligations, but it takes a lot, quite a lot, to free us from our duties to others. We actually need to be at a point where we *cannot* do that. And we are nowhere near that. The way he is wrong is he is using this to justify things that really do go against Christian ethics - shutting down funding for refugee resettlement and freezing foreign aid, for example. The empirical part matters, to be sure. That's part of my point. We are nowhere near that sort of decision at a political level. We have so much, we can care for our nation and help others, including those who come here fleeing violence, etc.
(Also, I'd say this without anonymity on Facebook, but that platform is just not conducive to these kinds of disagreements in the way Substack is.)