Reply #64: Yet you consciously and willfully broke the law anyway

[primavera]

And I would wager that, the last time you jaywalked or crossed against a Don't Walk sign, you probably didn't go rushing off to the nearest police precinct to turn yourself in. Why didn't you?

C'mon, be fair. Very few, if any, of us are so fanatically law-abiding that we won't occasionally weigh compliance with the law against our own needs and conclude that the latter outweighs the former. In other words, we come up with out own interpretations of what the spirit of the law was and whether it's substantively served by us standing like a sheep before a Don't Walk sign at a deserted intersection in the middle of the night without a car to be seen for miles.

Agreed, the law being violated by undocumented border crossers is much more substantive than a local jay-walking ordinance and the consequences are greater, but then again, the need of the individual to violate it is also proportionately greater. No, I don't think that excuses them for doing it, but I do think it mitigates, and I think it's self-deluding to pretend that we ourselves are such law-abiding types that we would never in a million years do what these guys are doing. Bullshit. When it's your family that's hungry, you can't find work, there's a US company on the other side of the border willing to pay you what for you amounts to a king's ransom, and, in some cases, they're even willing to help you get across the border, you're telling me your respect for law is going to govern your decision? Yeah, right.