Sanctuary Cities
St. Louis and many other like minded cities in the United States have deemed themselves to be Sanctuary Cities. What this means to my mind is these cities will not cooperate with federal officials to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. This is certainly a morally popular position to take and on the face of it makes sense. After all, immigration policy is in a shambles and many undocumented folks are key people in their communities.
I have two problems with Sanctuary Cities, both practical and philosophical. From a practical point of view, cities should not be harboring dangerous criminals. The Trump administration has seriously exaggerated the seriousness of this problem, but it exists. Second, I have a problem with any city disobeying federal law. I am a big believer in law and society will become unmanageable if everybody only followed laws they liked. What if some cities decided to not enforce civil rights laws or gay marriage. We can’t pick and choose what we obey.
The answer to the problem of Sanctuary Cities is to pass a sane immigration law. I am not optimistic this will happen in the near future. Written by Paul Dribin
The St Louis Contrarian 