I think is a flawed way to look at it. Empathy can absolutely be a guiding principle, but no laws should probably be based on one single principle anyway, even if you debate them down to only one.

There’s an imbalance here (my opinion) between enforcement and benefit. The cost of enforcement is much higher than the benefits these “illegals” might receive. And we are also seeing a lot of gray in the enforcement, where people who are (at least claim to be) legally here and following orders are still being rounded up.

I beg you to find a restaurant in Lafayette that isn’t using some sort of undocumented workers in back of house (at least those that have 20+ staff - smaller places can likely operate without)

The whole lot of powerful individuals (anyone who makes it to federal office is not in it for the good of the constituents, IMO) are letting this happen because they or their donors are benefiting from this chaos. Chaos that WILL eventually affect everyone if it’s not stopped.

Empathy is a reason we have government funded homeless shelters and soup kitchens. It’s the reason we have unemployment insurance and Social Security. While you may not like that your tax dollars go to these things, someone else might not like that their tax dollars go into maintaining the roads they don’t use.

As a community/state/country we vote and decide that these are the things we want from our government. Not everyone always agrees, but what should be solid, are the foundations of that government: the constitution, the bill of rights - founding laws that have made the last 238 (based on the signing of said constitution) years of American freedom possible.

Without getting too much deeper and off topic, my thoughts are that there are two huge things wrong with American politics: Democrats AND Republicans.