I don't know why legal immigration even exists anymore when I can

Hear the sharp and controversial words of Lauren Southern, who once declared: “I don’t know why legal immigration even exists anymore when I can just put on some bronzer, get on a dingy boat, and just show up at the beaches of Sicily with the Koran in my hand.” These words, though steeped in sarcasm and provocation, reveal a deeper cry of frustration about law, order, and the tides of migration in an age of upheaval. To understand them, we must look past the rhetoric to the clash of values beneath: the struggle between legal order and perceived lawlessness, between structured pathways and uncontrolled waves of humanity moving across seas and borders.

The origin of this saying lies in Southern’s work as a political activist and commentator. Known for her criticism of mass migration into Europe, she spoke during a time when thousands crossed the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East, fleeing war, poverty, and despair. To Southern, this uncontrolled migration undermined the very idea of legal immigration, which requires process, documentation, and adherence to law. Her statement was meant to expose, through exaggeration, what she saw as a contradiction: why maintain strict processes for some, when others appear to bypass them by simply arriving on foreign shores?

History offers us many examples of such anxieties. In the late Roman Empire, waves of Goths, Vandals, and other tribes pressed across the empire’s borders. Many came as refugees, fleeing harsher peoples further east. Yet Rome struggled to manage this flood, sometimes welcoming, sometimes fearing, and often failing to integrate them. The empire’s laws and structures bent beneath the strain. To some Romans, these arrivals represented salvation through new allies; to others, they heralded collapse. Southern’s words echo this ancient tension—the fear that uncontrolled arrival erodes the fabric of legal structures that hold nations together.

Yet her words also point to a darker danger: the temptation to reduce real human suffering to symbols and caricatures. To speak of simply donning “bronzer” or holding a Koran is to mock the identities of people whose journeys are born not of choice, but of desperation. The dingy boats she mentions are not merely metaphors, but vessels of hope and despair, carrying families who risk death at sea to escape certain ruin on land. In her attempt to critique the failure of law, Southern also highlights how easily compassion can be lost when political struggle overshadows human tragedy.

The meaning of the quote, then, is twofold. On one hand, it raises a serious question: what is the worth of legal immigration if states cannot uphold their own laws and borders? A society that demands legality from some while allowing others to bypass it risks undermining faith in its institutions. On the other hand, it also exposes the peril of cynicism: when migrants are spoken of only as burdens or threats, we forget that they, too, are human beings, children of God, whose dignity does not vanish at the border.

The lesson, O listener, is this: a just society must hold two truths together. First, it must protect its laws and ensure that legal immigration remains a real and meaningful process, not an empty formality. Second, it must also protect the dignity of those who flee, ensuring that compassion is not drowned by fear or mockery. To abandon law is chaos; to abandon compassion is cruelty. Only when both walk together can nations endure with strength and humanity.

And what shall we do in our own lives? We must resist the temptation to see migration only through the lens of politics. When we speak of refugees and immigrants, let us speak with both truth and empathy. Support systems that balance order with mercy. Uphold the rule of law, but also uphold the command to love the stranger. And let us remember, too, that in times past, many of our own ancestors were migrants—seeking a better life, often unwelcome, but determined to endure.

So remember the words of Lauren Southern: they cry out in anger against a perceived collapse of legal immigration, but they also warn us of the dangers of mockery and division. Let us instead build a path of justice—where law is respected, where borders are honored, and where compassion flows, not as weakness, but as the highest form of strength. For only then shall the seas of migration cease to be a battlefield, and become instead a bridge between peoples.