Justice & Law Quote by John Linder

Linder’s question is engineered to make the middle feel like the only sane place to stand. By framing “current policies” as treating immigration laws as if they “have no value,” he creates a crisis of legitimacy: not a debate over which rules to enforce, but whether the idea of law itself still means anything. It’s a classic political move, less about immigration mechanics than about moral order. Once the audience accepts the premise that the system is being casually ignored, the conclusion (“we must restore enforcement”) stops sounding partisan and starts sounding like basic maintenance.

The rhetorical structure does most of the work. The exaggerated hypothetical - “throw them all out, the entire lot” - is a pressure tactic. Nobody is proposing a legal bonfire; that’s the point. He sets up a straw man so extreme that rejecting it (“I hope not”) feels like a modest, reasonable choice. The subtext is: if you tolerate selective non-enforcement, you’re already halfway to anarchy. That’s a powerful insinuation in American political culture, where “rule of law” functions as both civic principle and identity badge.

Context matters: this comes from an era when immigration politics were increasingly fought through symbolism - “amnesty,” “secure the border,” “sanctuary” - rather than the mundane trade-offs of labor demand, asylum obligations, and bureaucratic capacity. Linder isn’t inviting a policy audit; he’s cueing a posture. The real target is trust: in government competence, in national boundaries, and in the idea that citizenship isn’t optional.