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The question itself shows that we're already looking at the question through precisely the wrong lense. The idea that a resident of the United States, legal or illegal is not entitled to any civil rights is one that should be completely foreign to any American concept of justice.

It is popular to claim that those who are not citizens, captured terrorists, illegal immigrants, are somehow not entitled to the protection ofthe US legal code and the recourse the rights that all citizens of America enjoy. This is a feasible, though hardly ironclad, legal arguement yet it is to be hoped that Americans hold themselves to a significantly higher ethical standard than only acknowledging civil rights for a small, narrowly defined subset of the population.

Our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence prime among them speak of a belief not of a narrow idea of rights for only a select few, but rather of a universal human dignity that is represented by our belief that "all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." While the Declaration holds no legal power, it is largely (and correctly) seen as a guiding principle behind American political theory. The Declaration lays out the idea that white or black, American or non-America, every person is entitled to be being treated with both dignity and respect.

Residents having "no civil rights" is a betrayal of that idea. No person who lives in America, regardless of their citizenship status, is any less human, or any less deserving of the most stringent of protections to their civil rights. After all, when we speak of civil rights, we often, and not un-mistakenly, speak of human rights, because we must view civil rights as human rights if we are ever to consider ourselves either sophisticated or civilized.

What is our obligation to residents "with no civil rights?" The same as our obligation towards all peoples. Civil rights are not something that are given to a person through some scrap of paper, or the randomness of birth. It is something that man has by virtue of simply being a human being. Everyone is entitled to rights, legal or illegal. Anyone who says otherwise truly doesn't understand the dream that is America.

Learn more about this author, Bryan Jennings.
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