Vulnerable Children and Moral Responsibility: Loss of Humanity

In this essay, Barbara Thayer-Bacon considers the arguments made in favor of "zero tolerance" for immigration at the United States-Mexican border as an example of principled ethics, and she contrasts this position with a caring ethical response. She compares the U.S.'s current zero-tolerance immigration policy to the zero-tolerance approach U.S. public schools adopted in response to violence in schools. The zero-tolerance policies implemented by schools in the wake of several high-profile incidents serves as a strong illustration of the moral dilemmas that zero-tolerance policies create generally. Both examples illustrate that zero-tolerance policies are not an effective moral response to ethical dilemmas; on the contrary, such policies lead to a lack of attention to context, subjectivity, positionality, and institutional power, which in turn generates a range of new and different ethical quandaries. Ultimately, Thayer-Bacon argues that taking a zero tolerance approach to serious, complicated problems such as immigration policy is misguided; developing fair, humane, caring, and just immigration policies requires a more nuanced approach that attends to the full complexity of the issues involved.