While in Indiana for a family visit this weekend, I saw a sign that said “Veterans Over Illegals.”

I’ve heard this sentiment before, and it always saddens me. When did it become an either/or proposition - either help veterans OR undocumented people, but not both?

In this country, we can and do pursue many policies at the same time. We should ensure that veterans receive better medical care, that they are better integrated into our society both during and after deployment, that we better understand and respond to post-deployment mental health issues, that we think and vote carefully about whether we send soldiers into unstable regions at all.

We should also treat people who arrive at our border seeking asylum (which, by the way, is legal) with compassion and dignity. We should keep children with their parents, appoint a lawyer to represent them in our morass of a legal system, provide a prompt and impartial hearing - and realize that, if it were our only choice to keep our children alive, we would do the same thing they’re doing.

It’s unfortunate that politics has turned us against each other, taught us that we have to choose between humanity toward one group and humanity toward another.

I hear this particular version of it more often from the right, but the left has its own version. That version denies that large migration waves can cause localized economic and social shocks that affect lower income people and certain communities adversely. It denounces anyone who tries to point to such effects.

Generative Compassion

Compassion is not a zero-sum game. Treating one group of people with dignity doesn’t mean you have to treat another group worse. Even the federal budget doesn’t work like that. Funding for the VA doesn’t come out of the DHS budget, or vice versa.

Compassion for only one group is not compassion at all, because compassion is not selective. Compassion is not extended to one group because they appeal to our political ideology (veteran, immigrant, Black, White, rural, urban, blue, red). Compassion is extended to everyone because they are human and so are we.

Compassion is generative. The more we open our hearts to the needs of others, the more our capacity to love and care for all people is deepened. If we want to see people care more about veterans, maybe we must advocate for the humane treatment of immigrants. And if we want to see more people care about immigrants, maybe we must advocate for veterans.

And the elderly. And Blacks. And neuro-divergent people. And White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males. And, basically, everyone who is human. (And while we’re at it, maybe other species too.)