Do you not understand a difference between evaluating the merit of a national project in general and, within the context of evaluating one such project, prioritizing the moral importance of that country's own people over humanity in general?

Put another way, giving moral priority to citizens and considering the butchering of "non-citizens" a lesser crime (even when those people were citizens who had their citizenship stripped away from them) is reactionary. Practical priority is a little different because logistical limitations are real, but these people are just excusing literal ethnic cleansing.