If you haven’t noticed, immigration has been a much hotter topic in Illinois news recently.

As waves of migrants are bused up to Illinois from the southern border and as they try to find living space in shelters, airports and even police stations, Chicago and other cities are seriously struggling to find room for them all.

At the end of September, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s administration announced over $40 million in grants for local governments wishing to receive asylum seekers. Chicago is advancing with a $29 million contract to construct winterized tents for migrants.

It seems that the political left wing—which has touted its welcoming “sanctuary” spirit for years and years—is finally being forced to foot the bill.

And the bill is steep.

The financial costs associated with these new waves of immigrants raise alarm all by themselves. But I do want to step back for a minute and focus on one aspect of the immigration-liberal ideology that got us here in the first place. (By immigration-liberals, I mean those favoring lax enforcement of immigration law, as opposed to their counterparts, immigration-conservatives.)

So think for a second: have you ever seen one of those front-lawn signs,

“In this house we believe love is love, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal…?”

Most of us probably have. So let’s ask ourselves a question: what’s the point in saying that “no human is illegal?”

Doesn’t it seem pretty obvious? On a closer look, however, I think the point is incredibly insightful. It betrays one of the major blurry spots in the thinking of immigration-liberals.

Many of those who criticize the term “illegal immigrant” do so because it seems to imply that a human being is illegal, which is of course impossible. (See this well-written article from the University of Cincinatti Immigration and Human Rights Review.)

And thus, they argue, calling them “illegal immigrants” is grammatically incorrect, factually false, and ultimately dehumanizing.

From a grammatical perspective, this objection may have a point.

Sure, actions, not people, are technically the things that the law forbids. So perhaps we should all be technically precise, acknowledge that legality applies to actions instead of people, and adopt the adverbial form (“people who have immigrated illegally“) from now on.

I’m not sold on this—if someone entered my house at night, I might very well call him an “illegal entrant,” and I don’t think it’s more dehumanizing than “person who entered illegally”—but let’s give it to them on this one.

Ultimately, I think this grammatical criticism distracts attention away from the major concern many of us have about illegal immigration; it blurs the distinction between law and person.

America’s legal tradition is predicated on the notion that law and person are two different things. On the one hand, we do not have a king. The law is not the will of any one individual person. Rather, it is created slowly and methodically by many elected rulers working within checks and balances.

Contrary to a monarchy, simply being “the right kind of person” does not give you the authority to make the law in America.

Likewise, on the other hand, simply being “the right kind of person” does not give you the authority to break the law in America.

After the law is created slowly and methodically by many rulers, it binds both rulers and ruled together under the same standard. Neither Congressmen nor their janitors can break the law without consequences. No one person gets to decide what the law is, and likewise no one person gets to decide what the law is not.

Think about it this way: if I were king over you, refusing to obey the law would be synonymous with snubbing me. After all, the law is embedded in my will, my person. Now, say we live in America, and I illegally set myself up as king over you; you would now be perfectly justified in refusing to obey me.

You would not be dehumanizing me as a person—because in America, I and the law are two separate things. You would be standing against my unlawful actions without snubbing my person.

Likewise, because law and person are two separate things, standing against illegal immigration does not inherently dehumanize these immigrants.

Their persons and their actions are two separate things: their persons are made in the image of God, and their actions are nonetheless unlawful. But the “No Human Is Illegal” signs seem to imply that those who stand against the act of lawbreaking are dehumanizing the lawbreakers.

That is not true.

Now, do some people stand up for law in a dehumanizing way? Absolutely. But many warm-blooded Americans wholeheartedly respect the human dignity of every other human God has created, while at the same time recognizing that some humans commit actions that deserve to be condemned and stopped.

Breaking the law is wrong, even if you are the “right kind of person” to elicit sympathy from liberals.

Immigration-liberals put up “No Human Is Illegal” signs as if that proves the conservative side is wrong. But it really just shows, at most, that the conservative side perhaps needs to shore up their wording. (And even that is dubious.)

It does nothing to address the concerns of those who agree that no human is illegal, but still have a problem with the illegal things those humans are doing.

(What’s ironic is that the very same UC article admits that we could use the term “unlawful” instead of “illegal.” So, quick question: Is there such a thing as an “unlawful” person? Well, now, UC clarifies that we can use “unlawful” to refer to their actions, not to people. Okay then—can we use “illegal” to refer to their act of crossing the border contrary to law? While I’m a big fan of parsing nuances of words, I’m not a big fan of word games.)

To tie this back to Illinois’ current situation—this isn’t meant to say that everything in my analysis exactly applies to Illinois’ particular situation, or that everyone in the recent waves of immigrants has come here illegally.

But many of these immigrants have, and I’m sure much of my analysis characterizes the political sentiment that led the state to this crisis.

We certainly need to be compassionate toward the suffering and fugitives; it would be un-Christian to do anything less.

But we also need to respect the rule of law, especially in a country based on it, and not give in to guilt-imposing ideologies that shame us into breaking our bank because of those who are here illicitly.

Doing so is taking money from those who follow the law and giving to those who have broken it.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Congress and the White House to demand that they take action to secure the southern border. In order to stop the influx of immigrants, criminals, potential terrorists and deadly drugs, you may want to urge them to pass the Secure the Borders Act and specifically:

• end policies relating to the “catch and release” of illegal immigrants into the United States;
• build a physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border;
• mandate that Homeland Security deport aliens who have been convicted or charged with any criminal offense.