On: The migration pact: What's in the EU's landmark asylum reform?

Journal entry, 12th of June, 1881. St. Petersburg, a night that will not end.

They have a pact. A migration pact. They will harden their borders. They will overhaul the asylum process. And I read this and I laugh - God forgive me - I laugh because it is the same old story dressed in new paper. We ask: Who is the stranger? And we answer: The one we can turn away with a clean conscience, provided we have written the proper rules.

But what of the soul inside the law? The soul that stands at the frontier, shivering, not because of the cold but because of the judgment of a system that has never seen a human face? They speak of “hardening procedures” as if procedures were metal, and the human heart were a nail to be hammered. Have they not seen what hardness does to a man? It does not make him stronger; it makes him brittle. And when he breaks, he breaks inward, into a cellar where no light reaches.

I think of the Grand Inquisitor, you know. He had the same logic: We will take your freedom and give you order. We will take your suffering and give you a system. And Christ kissed him. Christ kissed him. That is the only answer to the well-intentioned prison. Not debate. Not policy. Just the kiss that says: I see you are afraid, and I love you anyway.

But will they kiss the man at the border? No. They will fingerprint him. They will process him. They will call it “reform.” And the man will walk away, and his soul will be a little more dead. Because the worst thing is not the cruelty; it is the cruelty sanctified by a “pact.”

I tremble. I am no better. I have turned away from beggars myself, with a muttered excuse. The line between the bureaucrat and the sinner is thin as a blade. But at least the sinner knows he sins. The bureaucrat thinks he is doing justice. And that - that is the abyss.