Fundamental Rights and the Myth of Privilege
In the growing debate over immigration and deportation, many people have begun to assert, sometimes loudly, sometimes with an air of certainty, that undocumented individuals are not entitled to due process. That they “have no rights here.” But such claims are not only legally false; they are a symptom of a deeper confusion infecting our political culture: the widespread failure to distinguish between fundamental rights and privileges.
This confusion has been deliberately cultivated. Politicians and media personalities use the language of rights selectively, wielding it when it suits their agenda and ignoring it when it doesn’t. The result is a public discourse where people are more likely to believe that gun ownership is a sacred, untouchable right, while the right not to be imprisoned or deported without a hearing is up for debate. It’s not just hypocrisy. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what rights are and where they come from.
Fundamental rights are not issued by governments. They are inalienable, meaning they belong to us by virtue of being human. They do not depend on citizenship, nationality, wealth, or status. The Constitution doesn’t give us these rights, it recognizes and protects them. Among them are the right to life, the right to due process, the right to seek safety from persecution. The Supreme Court has long affirmed that all “persons” on U.S. soil are entitled to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, regardless of whether they have papers or passports.
But fundamental rights go beyond even what is written in the Constitution. Some are unenumerated, meaning they are implied or understood as essential to liberty and justice. We don’t need a specific clause in the founding documents to know that we have the right to clean air, clean water, or to be free from toxic trespass, the silent, often invisible invasion of our bodies and ecosystems by harmful pollutants. The idea that a person has a right not to be poisoned may seem obvious, and yet this right remains one of the most frequently violated in a world governed more by commerce than by conscience.
In contrast, privileges are conditional. They are granted by governments and can be taken away or limited. Driving a car is a privilege. So is voting, in many jurisdictions, where felony convictions can strip citizens of that right. And yes, so is gun ownership. Despite the passionate defense of the Second Amendment, gun rights have always been subject to regulation. They are not absolute. We require permits, background checks, and limits on use, because gun ownership is a civil privilege, not an inalienable right.
And yet, in today’s political climate, it is not uncommon to hear people defend their right to carry an AR-15 with more urgency than their neighbor’s right to drink clean water or breathe unpolluted air. Many who speak of “freedom” do so selectively, often extending that freedom only to themselves and people who look or think like them. This is the crux of the problem: rights are being reframed as privileges for the few, while basic liberties are stripped from the many.
When we allow rights to be treated as privileges, revocable at will by the powerful, we erode the very idea of democracy. If undocumented people can be denied due process, then no one’s due process is truly secure. If environmental protections can be cast aside in the name of profit, then the right to a healthy life becomes a luxury good. This is not a slippery slope. We are already halfway down it.
To reclaim democracy, we must reclaim our understanding of rights. We must assert that the right to live without toxic trespass is as fundamental as the right to speak freely or to be heard in a court of law. We must remind ourselves that the measure of a society is not how many privileges it bestows on the powerful, but how steadfastly it protects the rights of the vulnerable.
If we fail to draw this line now, between rights and privilege, between personhood and property, then we may one day find ourselves on the wrong side of it
.