In a variation of the social justice notion of “privilege,” that some of us by the fortune of our birth, skin color and gender, are given undeserved status that is denied others, Michelle Alexander of “The New Jim Crow” fame, argues that none of us deserve to be American citizens.

Answering these questions may be easy legally, but they’re more difficult morally. After all, none of us born here did anything to deserve our citizenship. On what moral grounds can we deny others rights, privileges and opportunities that we did not earn ourselves?

There is a tangential aspect to this question, given that we’re deluged with cries that we are an awful country, replete with racism and sexism, run by an amoral ignoramus. Why then would anyone from elsewhere want so desperately to take huge risks to come here unlawfully, to a nation where women are sexually assault hourly and half the nation carries guns with which to commit mass murder of the other half? Yet, they do.

Alexander tells of Pulitzer Prize winning author Jose Antonio Vargas’ epiphany about his undocumented status after his family came to the United States from the Philippines.

It was suddenly obvious to him that the boys huddled near him deserved safety, security and a place they could call home — a place where they could not only survive but also thrive. If they deserved such a thing, he did too. “Home is not something I should have to earn,” he wrote. It’s something we all have a right to.

If true that everyone deserves a home, it fails to address why here?

Many people will sympathize with Mr. Vargas’s story but recoil at his bold conclusion, as it seems to imply support for open borders — a position that no Republican or Democratic member of Congress supports or even takes seriously. This reaction seems misplaced. The deeper question raised isn’t whether our borders should be open or closed (generally a false dichotomy) but rather how we ought to manage immigration in a manner that honors the dignity, humanity and legitimate interests of all concerned.

The notion of true “open borders” would be disastrous, and Alexander seems to reject it, although she offers no reason why this “false dichotomy” isn’t her position.* If there is no moral basis to deny any immigrant a home here, then how can she justify anything less than open borders?

But to devolve to the squishy language of a “manner that honors dignity, humanity and legitimate interests of all concerned” tells us nothing. How many immigrants should be allowed from Honduras? We need a number, not a plea to “humanity.” We need a means of selecting who gets to be part of the lucky group to be included in that number, not a plea to “dignity.” Give us a number. Give us a methodology for selection. Then give us a way to integrate them effectively into American society, so they can enjoy the vast benefits of our “awful” society they so desperately want to join.

These words are meaningless substitutes for hard answers, the sort of things that appeal to teary-eyed children but not someone as smart as Alexander. She’s playing us with her appeals to emotion.

Reaching for a radically more humane immigration system is not pie-in-the-sky, utopian dreaming. But it does require a certain measure of humility on the part of those of us who have benefited from birthright citizenship. Rather than viewing immigrants as seeking something that we, Americans, have a moral right to withhold from them, we ought to begin by acknowledging that none of us who were born here did anything to deserve our citizenship, and yet all of us — no matter where we were born — deserve compassion and basic human rights.

Nothing here makes any sense. My forefathers came here legally, played by the rules of their day, and so their descendants, me, get to enjoy the benefits of the price they paid. Alexander’s predecessors were brought here by force, against their will, and were subsequently made free people, citizens. Both of us “deserve” to be here.

But if we have no moral right to withhold citizenship from others who come illegally, then anything less than open borders would be immoral. How would Alexander pick which immigrants to let stay and which to deport? How can she distinguish between the “deserving” and the undeserving? It makes no sense.

It’s tempting to imagine that our position as gatekeepers is morally sound — since we’re frequently reminded that “all nations have a right to defend their borders” — but our relationship to those who are fleeing poverty and violence is morally complex. Not only does birthright citizenship bestow upon us a privileged status that we haven’t earned; our nation’s unparalleled wealth and power, as well as our actual borders, lack a sturdy moral foundation. But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist.

This, too, is nonsense. Her “but for” argument applies to all of the New World, and most of the old world as well. History is replete with “slavery, genocide and colonization,” and yet we’re the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world, even though we’re literally awful and the worst place ever (other than all the rest).

Our immigration policy over the past half century has been marked by claims of morality, from those who, like Alexander, proffer an irrational position about privilege and those who believe, wrongly, that “illegals” are sucking up our resources, at best, and criminals, at worst. Whether it’s kismet, planning or a combination of the two, we’ve managed to put together a pretty desirable country in which to live, which is why people are fleeing theirs in favor of ours.

Whether the government’s position as “gatekeeper” is morally sound is irrelevant. Even Alexander concedes we need a gate. Wrapping up the gatekeeping decisions in the squishy nonsense of morality provides no metric for how to deal with immigrants coming in, or how to deal with undocumented immigrants already here.

Rather than call out the “undeserving” nature of American citizens to try to shame us into . . . something, we would do far better to put our efforts into smarter policy to address the fact that we need immigrants, we need to deal with the fact that many are here unlawfully but have become our friends and neighbors over many years of being good Americans but for the requisite papers, and they are no lesser a human being than anyone else.

But this isn’t about morality, but reality and necessity. Shaming Americans for their “privilege” is no way to get smart on immigration, and not a remotely rational argument. Whether we deserve our great fortune or not, we’re American citizens. What to do about those who want to join us requires more than tears or attacks, but hard, realistic thought. Alexander’s got nothing.

*In the middle of her op-ed, Alexander recites the Emma Lazarus poem, The New Colossus, that adorns the base of the Statue of Liberty. Much like people who believe Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court, many believe this is the law, the Constitution, a reflection of some official American policy other than one person’s sonnet. Her inclusion of the poem is a paean to the emotionally ignorant. It’s a nice poem, but it’s just a poem.