By Roshan Jayasinghe
There comes a time in every nation’s story when silence is no longer a virtue, when neutrality becomes complicity, and when the measure of a country’s soul is not its GDP or global dominance, but how it treats the most vulnerable among its people. We are living in that moment now.
Immigration, in its essence, is not a political issue, it is a human one. Behind the headlines and soundbites are families, mothers, children, elders, people who cry, love, dream, and fear just like us. And yet, the policies we enact and tolerate often strip them of their dignity, reduce them to numbers, and ignore their pain. When a democracy tolerates such cruelty under the banner of law and order, it wounds not just the migrant, but the soul of the nation itself.
Human Values Are Not Conditional
Compassion is not partisan. Dignity is not earned. Love for fellow humans is not negotiable. These are not liberal values or conservative ones, they are human values. When children are separated from their parents, when people are detained in cages without basic rights, when fear is weaponized as a border strategy, we are not just violating rights, we are betraying our shared humanity.
What does it mean to be human if we lose our ability to care for those in need? What does it mean to be American if the dream of freedom becomes a tool for exclusion?
Where Are the Voices of Conscience?
Many of us wonder: where are the former presidents, the wise elders, the statesmen and stateswomen who once stood for something greater than political gain? Have they forgotten the weight of their legacy? Or do they believe their time for influence has passed?
When leaders fall silent in the face of injustice, the moral burden shifts to the people. To the artists who paint truth into the public eye. To the teachers who refuse to normalize hate. To the faith leaders who preach love over fear. To the everyday citizens who refuse to look away.
History has taught us this pattern: silence in the face of cruelty is not just weakness, it is a failure of moral imagination.
Let Us Remember What Being Human Means
To be human is to weep when another is hurting.
To be human is to listen deeply even when we’re afraid.
To be human is to stand for justice even when it costs us comfort.
To be human is to break the cycles of inherited fear, division, and indifference.
We must stop treating human lives as strategic risks or policy burdens. These are mothers crossing deserts with blistered feet for their children. These are fathers escaping gang violence to find a safe haven. These are teenagers who dream of becoming doctors, teachers, artists. And yes, they are also the elderly, the tired, the displaced, and the forgotten.
The question is not whether they belong here. The question is whether we still believe in the moral fabric that once made “here” worth coming to.
A New Call to Citizenship
If leadership at the top has failed to speak with integrity, then let us become the moral leaders we seek.
Let us model a citizenship rooted in courage, not comfort.
Let us remember that policy without empathy becomes cruelty.
Let us lift our voices not to shame, but to awaken.
Not just for the sake of immigrants. But for our own children, our own conscience, our own humanity.
To the Former Presidents and Voices of Wisdom
This is your legacy moment, not your retirement. You are not just former leaders, you are still moral compasses to millions. Speak. Write. Show up. Stand on stages and say the unspeakable truths. The world needs your integrity more than ever. And if you do not, know this: your silence is not neutral. It echoes through every detention center, every deportation van, every courtroom where a child stands alone.
To the Global Community Watching
We ask not for judgment, but for solidarity. Let the world remind us of who we claimed to be. Hold us accountable, not to punish, but to help us heal.
The deeper wound in the American conscience is not just about immigration. It is about forgetting what it means to care. It is about the slow erosion of the soul beneath the slogans.
But here’s the truth: that soul is not lost. It is only buried beneath fear, disillusionment, and fatigue. And it can be recovered, not through politics alone, but through a collective remembering of what it means to be human.
This Is the Time
This is not a moment for blame. It is a moment for responsibility.
This is not a time for silence. It is a time for courage.
This is not a crisis of immigration. It is a crisis of the human spirit.
Let us rise, not against each other, but for one another.
Let us speak, not for power, but for love.
Let us act, not from fear, but from the radical remembering that every life matters, every border is imagined, and every soul belongs.
America’s healing begins not in policy rooms, but in the hearts of those willing to see again, feel again, and love again, fiercely, loudly, and without condition.
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About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe is a humanist thinker and emerging writer based in California. With a background in administration and a deep passion for social equity, he explores the intersections of politics, identity, and compassion through a lens grounded in nature’s own self-correcting wisdom.
Roshan Jayasinghe
Rooted in the belief that humanity can realign with the natural order where balance, regeneration, and interdependence are inherent. Roshan’s reflections invite readers to pause, question, and reimagine the systems we live within. His writing seeks not to impose answers, but to spark thought and awaken a deeper awareness of our shared human journey. Roshan will be sharing weekly articles that gently challenge, inspire, and reconnect us to what matters most.
About the Author
