“There is a significant moral difference between a person who commits a violent crime and a person who tries to cross a border illegally in order to put food on the family table. Such migrants may violate our laws against illicit entry, but if that's all they do then they are trespassers, not criminals. They deserve to have their dignity respected.”

— Madeleine K. Albright

On illegal migrants to the United States from Mexico and Central America, in Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership (2008), p. 225
2000s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is a significant moral difference between a person who commits a violent crime and a person who tries to cross a …" by Madeleine K. Albright?

Madeleine K. Albright 21

Former U.S. Secretary of State 1937–2022

Related quotes

“My country, Macedonia, is on Greece’s northern border and feeling the full force of the migrant crisis. We are facing innumerable illegal entries, the destruction of state and private property, the use of counterfeit passports and violence against security forces on the border — all of this by migrants intending to avoid registration and the verification of who actually has a right to asylum.”

Gjorge Ivanov (1960) President of Macedonia

“It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs… The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

"Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," 1986, as reported by National Catholic Reporter
1980s

“Those who sell or facilitate weapons to individuals that will commit human rights violations know that they have responsibility for the death and misery caused by those weapons and at some stage may be liable to face the International Criminal Court for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2013, UN rights expert hails Arms Trade Treaty and urges States to do more to also regulate production http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13207&LangID=E.
2013

“The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 162.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

“Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

“There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Letters to a Young Conservative

“For the very quality of personality is, that a person is a being who recognises others as having a reality as unquestionable as his own, and who thus sees himself as a member of a moral republic, standing to other persons in an immutable relationship of reciprocal duties and rights, himself endowed with dignity, and acknowledging the dignity of all the rest.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.7

“Whatever open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To say, moreover, that the state’s laws made masses of men and women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of determinism, not individualism.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“That Spot of Bother on the Border,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=90 WorldNetDaily.com, May 4, 2007.
2000s, 2007

“we must make it clear that the reform of Europe [the EU] can only start with stopping the migrants, putting an end to immigration, and everyone using their national competence to protect their borders. After that, as part of a joint programme the migrants who have already arrived in Europe illegally must be transported back to some place outside the territory of the European Union.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

“In the final analysis, despite our diversity, there is only one type of vegan — a person who is committed to and practices reverence and respect for all life.”

Joanne Stepaniak (1954) American writer

Source: Being Vegan (2000), p. 5

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Madeleine K. Albright 21

Related quotes

Related topics