If you are not struggling over the issue of immigration in this country, you are not thinking about it. The confluence of problems involved in this issue is enough to make your head spin. Here is a slow ride through my thoughts about it.

Let’s begin with the fact that I think lawlessness is a really bad thing and a lot of the country thinks so too, because polls show that about a third of Americans are very sympathetic to the very simple declaration that those who are here illegally are breaking the law and should be sent away. After all, that is why they are called “illegal immigrants.”

The presence of illegal immigrants in the country is not good for America, and beyond engendering disregard for the law, there are a lot of reasons why this is not good. We should know who is here. A shadowy, underground population of non-citizens creates all kinds of problems for law enforcement and for security officials. Illegal immigrants skew every measurement that is made for the purpose of determining the needs of our population, making planning and administration more complex at every level of government.

It isn’t good for them either, to be illegals. They are often left at the mercy of people who exploit them and they are afraid to cooperate with law enforcement themselves for fear of exposure.

They shouldn’t have gotten into this country illegally to begin with. From their side, they broke the law to come here. From our side there are two related problems. First, we have not had in place a proper orderly means of satisfying the labor demands of our industries and farms, making illegal immigration both profitable and tempting. Second, it might be a cliché but it’s true: if we can put a man on the moon, we can figure out how to seal our southern border. And yep, I am one of those who think that the border absolutely must be secured, whatever it takes. I don’t have any patience for someone who says that it is too difficult or too costly or has any other in a litany of excuses. To them I have two things to say: “the moon” and “9/11.”

(Yes, I know the hijackers were not here illegally. I mention this because it is an extraneous point that is inevitably raised whenever someone complains that our southern border is a security hazard. The point being, I suppose, to assure us that since most of the 9/11 hijackers got into the US legally, no terrorist would ever do anything other than come legally into this country; it is just silly to think that anyone intending to do harm to this country would ever sneak in over the southern border. Okay, now back to reality.)

We didn’t seal the border. Yes, we stepped up patrols. Yes, we closed some of the more accessible routes, an action which pushed determined border-crossers into the more dangerous desert areas. But the bottom line is that we didn’t seal the border — it still isn’t sealed! — and now the number of those here illegally has swelled into the millions.

Do Americans who think we should round them all up and deport them have any idea of what this would look like? It isn’t as though we don’t know why most of them have come here. They have come here to find a better life, to earn money for their families back in Mexico, or to secure a more prosperous future for a new family they have started here. Most of them are not criminals. Most of them are not a danger to this country; in fact, they are assets. And many of them have families here, families made up of a combination of illegal immigrants and citizens.

So that is where we need to start, because whatever we do — and we must do something — we cannot destroy their families. We cannot begin a wholesale rounding-up of fathers and husbands and sending them away from their wives and children back to Mexico. The family issues trump everything because that is where the future lies, and next to sealing the border by whatever means necessary, the family issue is also a security issue. Here’s why.

As things stand right now, when it comes to terrorism, we are generally looking at a threat that is not home-grown. In spite of the vast numbers of different people that we have in this country and the number of grievances nursed in a thousand bosoms, we have a situation blessedly unlike that of countries like France, England, the Netherlands, Germany and others. Throughout Europe there are multi-generational, non-assimilated, citizen ethnic minorities turned in hatred upon their own countries. It is not a situation to envy, so we had better consider what the recipe for it is. The last thing we need is to inadvertently throw the wrong ingredients into the pot here.

You want to make somebody hate you? Make Daddy move away.

Now I expect someone who is on his toes to point out that we remove criminals from their families and lock them up all the time — we don’t not imprison an American just because he happens to be a father. Yes, I know. And I also know that the children of these imprisoned fathers suffer horribly and often blame “the police” because Daddy can’t be home. Just as the child of an imprisoned father blames and resents the police for removing his father, so a Mexican-American child will blame the US government for removing his deported or imprisoned father; these are decisions made by “the United States,” not by local police, and not even in response to some clearly criminal act. And if you are thinking, “Well, their fathers are to blame and the kids should just realize that,” you don’t understand the human heart and the fierce loyalty of children.

Loyal children. That is what we want. That is what the future of this country needs. You see, if we turn the hearts of fathers toward their children, we can turn the hearts of the children toward this country — which, by the way, is their country, because they are citizens and they are not going anywhere. We should tremble before God at the thought of destroying these families, and if we don’t, then we should tremble at the future we may be cooking up for ourselves. Punish the fathers, turn what is right now a civil offense into a felony, start shipping these men back to Mexico, and we risk turning a generation against America. We risk feeding Mexican irredentism. (Did you notice how many of the protest marchers last week were carrying Mexican flags?) We wound these children to our peril. It isn’t just wrong, it is dangerous. Like the Basques and Spain — that kind of dangerous. We have to be wiser — and better — than that.