Immigration Series; Session 3: Logical and Theological Analysis of The Anti-Immigration Ideology of Modern Conservatives

Dear Sir: I am informed that a Ship with [Germans] is gone up to Baltimore, among whom are a number of [Craftsmen]. I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner and Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) and you would do me a favor by purchasing one of each, for me. I would not confine you to [Germans]. If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be [Muslims], Jews or Christian of any [denomination], or they may be Atheists. I would however prefer middle aged, to young men, and those who have good countenances and good characters on ship board, to others who have neither of these to recommend them, altho, after all, the proof of the pudding must be in the eating. I do not limit you to a price, but will pay the purchase money on demand. This request will be in force ’till complied with, or countermanded, because you may not succeed at this moment, and have favourable ones here after to do it in. My best respects, in which [my wife] joins, are presented to Mrs. Tilghman and Mrs. Carroll. and I am etc.

Before you take offense, this is not about buying slaves, but about hiring indentured servants. Indentured servitude was the way for many people to pay off debts and accumulate capital while being economically protected. It was the institution that helped many immigrants come to America and settle here. In fact, if you can trace your ancestors in this country more than 6 generations back, there is a 100% chance that they either arrived here as indentured servants, or hired indentured servants as a means to help them immigrate. The history of some towns in Central Texas, the German/Czech/Polish heart of Texas, is a history of whole families coming over as servants of one or another Austrian or German noble. Indentured servitude is a Biblical concept, and you can read about it in Gary North’s economic commentary on the case laws in Exodus 21-40.

Can anyone guess the name of the author of this letter? Any takes as to who the rich employer is that would not mind hiring Africans or Asians, no matter what religion they are, Jews, Atheists, or even Muslims, as long as they are good workers? Any takes as to who this despicable wealthy liberal traitor is who sees no problem with even Muslims immigrating to American soil and even hiring them for his business, effectively robbing local honest American workers of their right to his business?

The letter, my conservative and Christian friends, is signed, “Mount Vernon, March 24, 1784, George Washington.” And before someone replies that Muslims were not back then a threat as they are today, I will remind them to search the origin of the words “to the shores of Tripoli” in the US Marines’ Hymn, and see what threat Muslims were back then as they are today.

I am not an absolute fan of George Washington; I am more skeptical concerning him than most Americans educated in government schools. Much in his ideology was closer to centralism and statism than my beliefs. But this letter speaks about more than just Washington; it shows us the spirit of the early decades of the new American Republic. So as we continue discussing our present policies and the views of many conservatives on immigration, keep in your mind this vision of America restored to her roots: An airport gate with no border control or TSA or any other kind of government thugs and perverts, and George Washington picking workers to hire for his business, of those who just got off the plane. And if this vision is not part of your greater vision of America restored to her roots, then you are not part of the solution; you are part of the problem we have today. A problem that is statism, tyranny, and injustice, brought upon us by crafty socialist politicians with either R or D behind their names.

Notice how when speaking about the immigration of those workers, Washington speaks in terms of two issues: One is economics: He has an economic need of workers, and he wants them skillful and understanding their profession. The other is spiritual/religious: He wants them to be of good character and of “good countenances.” (It was believed at the time that the good character of a person is inevitably expressed in his outward countenances.) The economic and the spiritual factors were the only factors that controlled the issue of immigration. Notice carefully that one factor is missing. A factor that is absolutely dominating the immigration debate today, more than any other factor.

It is the political factor. Washington doesn’t seem to have any concern about any political issues. He doesn’t mention any laws about immigration. He doesn’t mention any problems with unions or government bureaucrats. He is not concerned that a shipment of so many workers from a country that just three years prior had 18,000 mercenaries in service of the British government on American soil, fighting the army of Washington himself. He doesn’t mention anything about the possibility that there may be a political assassin among these people who would be more than happy to take out the very leader of Revolutionary America. Which makes us wonder: Why would were these Americans in the early days of the young fledgling Republic so oblivious to the dangers of uncontrolled immigration? Why aren’t they mindful of the political consequences of letting people just come and find a job? Why is the very person who led the troops in the War of Independence so pragmatic in his attitude to immigrants, even to the point of seeing no problem with Muslims or Atheists coming over, as long as they are of good moral character?

In order to understand the immigration policies of the US today, we need to look all of these issues, political, economic, and religious, and compare ourselves to America as she was supposed to be. We already saw how we compare to the Biblical Law: And we saw that as Christians, we have actually been on the wrong side, friends with the enemy and enemies of God, mistreating the foreigner and worshipping evil laws imposed by an evil, pagan regime. We also saw the history of these laws, where they came from, and we saw that there is nothing Christian nor conservative nor American in the laws limiting immigration. We saw that they were passed by fascists, socialists, liberals, and statists, and we have allowed to be brainwashed by those same fascists, socialists, liberals, and statists to accept these laws as legitimate, and even root for them and insist on their enforcement, instead of returning America back to her roots.

But we have a final argument to address: What about today? Isn’t today different than yesterday? Aren’t there different principles today to look at immigration? Aren’t there unique dangers today that previous generations didn’t face, problems that make in necessary and expedient to make a U-turn on immigration and adopt a stance which our forefathers would find immoral, unjust, and paranoic? Can we learn from the past, and therefore try to return America to her roots, or is the present so wildly different that her past experiences don’t matter anymore, and we are to be like the “progressives” we criticize, declaring our past experiences to be of no consequence to us today?

To answer these questions, we need to look at the modern arguments for immigration restrictions, and answer them. We need to look at them from all perspectives – political, economic, and religious – and honestly assess our situation and our views and policies. And if necessary, be humble and acknowledge if we have been wrong and change our views, and change our practical living and social and political action.

As we saw, political considerations were excluded from Washington’s letter about immigrant workers. There’s a good reason for such omission. The American Patriots had dealt with the political side of the issue in the Declaration of Independence: restricting immigration by legislation or political means they considered an act of injustice and tyranny. It was injustice and tyranny enough to make it one of the good causes for righteous rebellion. The solution they had to it was to de-politicize immigration altogether, taking it out of the set of the legitimate prerogatives of the civil government. Controlling immigration was just as much an act of statism and tyranny as was a 3% tax on tea. Therefore, the civil government should be barred from controlling it.

We seldom stop to think today that the essence of politics, the primary question of every political issue is this: The individual vs. the government. (On a deeper, spiritual level it is always “Christ vs. Caesar” but you will have to listen to my talk to the Kuyper Foundation Conference last year to get that message.) No matter what the issue is all about, it is all about the government trying to grab more power and destroy the freedom of individuals. If it’s about helping the poor, it’s not about helping the poor, it is about more power to the government. If it’s about protecting the environment, it is about more power to the government. If it is about gun control, it is about government control. If it is about education, it is about more power to the government. If it is about food safety, it is about more power to the government. If it is about school vouchers, it is about more power to the government. And, if it is about immigration, it is about more power to the government.

Any issue is just a smokescreen for the real agenda of the bureaucrats: more power to the government. When you have a politicized issue, an issue that politicians talk about extensively and draw lines in the sand, separating between “them” and “us,” watch out: the final issue is, “How is the government trying to expand its own power?” For the politicians, the “them” is always the individuals, and the “us” is always the political class.

Given this constant greed of government officials for more power over the individuals, our political participation must be based on the following rule of thumb for discernment of political causes: Any political cause that ends up asking for more power to the government over individuals is an evil, wicked cause, a cause of tyranny, and we are under obligation to stand against it. No matter how beautiful the declared intentions of the politicians are, we must stand against it, because it is tyranny. If your local representative shows you a starving child in Africa and says we need more taxes to save that child, we must stand against it. If he shows you the 9/11 destruction and says we need more power to the government in the Patriot Act, we must stand against it. And if he shows you a bunch of illegal immigrants and says we need the government to do something against them, we must stand against it.

The patriots in the 1770s understood this simple truth. Modern American Christians and conservatives, when it comes to immigration, are blind to the obvious, and immune to common sense. They rather prefer to think on reflex level, like amoebas: “If Obama is for amnesty, immigration must be bad. Let call for more Federal troops in Texas to secure the border!”

This stupidity leaves conservatives open to manipulation. It makes it easy to produce some fake crisis, which would make more conservatives mindlessly ask for more Federal troops in Texas. At the end, Obama will have tighter military control over one of the freest states in the US, and that at the insistence of the conservatives in the state! Every time you are not thinking in depth but only superficially (“If Obama is for amnesty, immigration must be bad!”) you become a victim of crafty politicians. The current so-called “immigration crisis” is just the same kind of manipulation as showing pictures of hungry kids in Africa to make people agree to more foreign aid sent to African dictators. Except that one is designed to manipulate liberals, the other is designed to manipulate conservatives. The final objective of both, of course, is “more power to the government.”

The very fact that the first reaction to a crisis is, “more Federal control, please,” should make a true lover of liberty stop and consider what is going on. As with everything else, we should be wise and not give free reign to our emotions, let alone emotions driven by fear.

We should show such wisdom when we think about the amnesty our socialist government wants, and not make the mistake of confusing amnesty with open borders, as so many conservatives do. Have the socialists really changed their mind on immigration? No, they haven’t. Remember, they don’t care for immigration one way or another; they want to use any crisis, any occasion possible to increase the control of the Federal government over the individuals. From this perspective, open borders means “no government intervention,” immigration laws mean “government intervention,” and amnesty means “double government intervention”: once when deciding who gets in legally, and once in deciding who of the illegals stays and who doesn’t. The government then becomes not only a law-giver, but a giver of grace as well. In this regard, asking the government to “secure the border” is only helping the socialists: securing the border will never work, it will create more crises, and more power to the government to solve the crises and give grace.

The only truly conservative response to the Federal government, then, is this: Obey the Constitution, get the government out of the immigration business, let people travel and settle wherever they want, and only make laws about naturalization, as the Constitution requires. And, most of all, Mr. Obama, get your troops out of Texas.

The political rhetoric has affected another area in the thinking of the conservatives, and with devastating effect: Immigration is the main issue through which conservatives are groomed to worship Federal legislation and submit their moral senses to the Federal government. Few are the areas where this idolatry of the Federal government is so obvious. So brainwashed are they that they do not stop to think how the conservative mind is now conditioned to define good and evil not according to an objective standard of a transcendent law but according to whatever laws are passed in Washington DC. You don’t believe it? Here’s the proof.

It is in the argument used so often to justify the hatred so many American Christians and conservatives show toward immigrants: “If they were decent people, they would come here legally, through legal means.” Do you see how Federal legislation has become the ethical standard for good and evil? Do you see the worship of the state in this argument? If you don’t, let me apply the same argument in another area:

“If you are decent person, you will comply with Obamacare.” How does that sound? Or, “If you were a decent person, you will comply with the gun control laws.” Or, better yet, “If the Founders were decent people, they would have complied with the King’s laws.” “If Cory Ten Boom was a decent person, she would have complied with the Nazi laws.” “If Soviet dissidents were decent people, they would have complied with the laws of their Communist state.”

What should be the reaction of a Biblical Christian or of a true conservative when we hear such an argument. It will be this: “No, if the law was a righteous law, it wouldn’t make criminals out of people whose only crime is their desire to find a job and provide for their children. If it was a righteous law, it wouldn’t give the government so much power over individuals. If it was a righteous law, it wouldn’t deprive the employers of the liberty to hire whomever they want.” And then, as is the good old American Patriot tradition, the conclusion would be: If it is an evil, unrighteous law, I have no moral obligation to obey it, and those immigrants have no moral obligation to obey it. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

The reality is, by the stroke of a pen, Congress created a new legal category of a “criminal,” an artificial category supported by neither the Constitution nor the Bible: the illegal alien. Conservatives have cheered for it and have transformed that artificial legal category into a moral category: “Illegal aliens are bad people.” And then the same conservatives are surprised that Congress creates other artificial legal categories of criminals: for example, “uninsured American,” who must be fined for his refusal to get health insurance. Reality is, once Congress imposes unjust laws on foreigners, it will inevitably end up imposing unjust laws on US citizens. God is not mocked.

Not to mention the practical issue of, “Who exactly decides who gets in legally and who doesn’t?” Isn’t that the same Federal bureaucrats who, as we know, have a very different idea of what America’s interest is compared to our ideas. Would you trust a Federal bureaucrat with finding you a job? Deciding your healthcare? Educating your children? Deciding what to do with your money? If not, how come you suddenly trust those leeches when it comes to immigration? Are those Federal bureaucrats in the consulates less corrupt than the rest of them? Less bribeable? I know of hundreds of cases where decent, hardworking, independent, entrepreneurial people were not given even business visas to visit and meet business partners, while we know of multiple cases of outright criminals who get visas. How’s that immigration control working for ya? Isn’t it much better to disband that bureaucratic army and let people travel freely, for in this way we have a better chance to have decent people come in?

As we saw, for over 1,500 years Christian Europe, and for over 300 years Christian America knew these obvious truths. That is why the American Patriots denied the civil government power over the immigration of people. And that’s why George Washington didn’t have to include any political considerations in his talk about hiring immigrant workers. Liberty was liberty.

Thus, politically, a conservative shouldn’t be against immigration. If anything, if conservatives in America were really conservatives – and if Christians in America were really Christians – they would be demanding the repeal of all immigration laws, immediately, as the solution to the fake immigration crisis today. The crisis is not real; it is artificially created by laws that shouldn’t be there in the first place, if America stood faithful to the original intent of the Founders.

But about the economic consequences of uncontrolled immigration? Wouldn’t the economy collapse under the pressure of so many immigrants pouring in?

When it comes to economic issues concerning immigration, Christians are just as unable to think clearly and employ common sense. The picture formed in their minds when they think “open borders” is millions of immigrants who are entrepreneurial enough to cross several borders and into the US, only to remain passive for the rest of their lives and only live on welfare, destroying the American economy in the process. Such picture is the fruit of fears instilled by two decades purposeful liberal propaganda, and its origins can be traced back to the trade unions and their socialist propaganda techniques in the early 20th century. But it has no precedent nor confirmation neither in the history of the US, not in the history of the world. In fact, a thorough study of the facts of history reveals that only positive things can come out of “uncontrolled immigration.”

First let me say this: There is no such thing as “uncontrolled immigration.” Immigration, like any other human action, is always controlled by some factor or another. It is controlled primarily by economic conditions but it is also controlled by religious, cultural, and linguistic factors. In general, if left free of government interference, immigration will depend on the market forces: People will calculate the cost of immigrating, and will compare it to the perceived benefits. This balance between perceived costs and perceived benefits will always be the controlling factor of immigration, if the government is not included in the equation. When the government intervenes, though, the information from the market is twisted, and immigration now depends on the government, not on the natural development of the market.

So immigration is always controlled, the question is who controls it, the market or the government. When the government controls it, the market suffers, as is with everything else.

Historically, we don’t have a single instance in history when economic immigration has destroyed a country or a civilization. We do have examples when mass immigration actually helped accelerate the economic growth – and America of late 19thand early 20th century is the most perfect example of it. In fact, for countries with aging population – like the US, Canada, and Western Europe – and low birth rates – or high level of abortions – mass immigration may turn out to be the only tool for preserving the economic growth. Let’s not forget that the US alone has killed more than 55 million human beings in the holocaust of abortion. These are 55 million workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, production organizers, etc. The chicken are coming home to roost in our day, as 70+ million baby boomers are entering retirement age, and given the increased average life expectancy, will need senior care for another 20 years, at least, after retirement. (The average life expectancy after retirement at the time they were born was about 5 years.) Germany, Britain, and the Scandinavian nations are facing the same crisis; the presence of “guest workers” is important for the survival of the whole system. Even Hitler’s Germany, for all the racism and xenophobia of the Nazis, had to import millions of foreign workers to keep their economy going. China and Japan are in a much worse condition than the US and Europe, chiefly because there isn’t a large demographic contingent that is willing to immigrate to those countries; and the Chinese themselves tend to leave their country at first opportunity, rather than stay.

The picture of millions of lazy immigrants who only wait on welfare is a false picture, and it has nothing to do with reality. To the contrary, in any place where immigration is freed from restrictions, the industrious, active, entrepreneurial immigrants outnumber the lazy and criminal elements by a large margin. It is to be expected, because immigration is an undertaking of significant cost to the individual immigrant, and when allowed the liberty to immigrate, it is usually the future-oriented, entrepreneurial type of person who is willing to pay the price. In fact, it is partly for this reason that the socialists in the past – and Marx himself – have always been firm opponents of open immigration, because open immigration never changed the political landscape in their favor. Karl Marx himself admitted that the policy of open borders of Britain was a reason why his ideology couldn’t spread in Britain.

As improbable as it may sound to you, it is possible that the current change in policy of the liberals – in favor of immigration instead of their traditional hostility to immigration – is caused by the realization that their economic policies don’t work, and therefore they need more immigrants to keep the economic growth. (Remember, for all their xenophobia, the Nazis imported millions of workers to keep their militaristic-welfare state going.) The welfare state in the US is a step from collapse, and since America has no means to naturally replace the needed workers, the fastest measure to prevent economic collapse is to import workers. In this, they have finally returned to economic common sense; but now the conservatives have adopted the old liberal policy and the culturally suicidal ideology of closed borders.

Restricting immigration has other economic, often invisible consequences. The major one of them is outsourcing. The connection is seldom made but it is real, and it has to do with the distorted economic environment created by government control over an area that is purely economical. How then does immigration affect outsourcing? Here’s how:

Immigration laws are normally proposed by lobbyists of Big Labor, the trade unions. Since unions are the voting power behind immigration laws, they have a say as to who gets admitted and who doesn’t. Of course, as with everything else, they shape the laws to admit only those who wouldn’t be competition to the unions’ members on the market place. Thus, lower middle class workers seldom get immigration visas. Only higher middle class entrepreneurs and professionals and lower class welfare recipients get admitted because neither group is a competition threat to the unions. Such policy, of course, distorts the market in the US: The lower middle class workers who are members of trade unions remain in lower supply compared to the other groups, and therefore their relative market price and political leverage are much higher. Thus they can twist the hands of the entrepreneurs (who now face competition from the admitted higher class immigrants) to get better terms: better wages, more benefits, earlier retirement, pension funds, etc. But better terms for the workers mean higher costs for the entrepreneurs. Eventually, increased labor costs in the US make business unable to compete. The solution? Entrepreneurs take advantage of the better global communications and the spread of knowledge and outsource their production facilities. Because of immigration restrictions, they can’t decrease their costs by hiring those potential immigrant Mexican, or Chinese, or Indonesian workers. What they do, then, is go where these workers are, move whole production facilities to Mexico, China, or Indonesia, and give the same jobs to the same Mexican, Chinese, or Indonesian workers. The only difference is, because of immigration restrictions, it is the US that is losing production facilities, and not only the unions lose available jobs, but service companies in the US lose business that would have normally stayed in the US, if it wasn’t for the distorted economic environment created by the immigration laws.

The fear of immigrants is based on a basically socialist view of the economy: There are only so many resources for so many people. Therefore, the opponents of immigration say, we need to limit immigration so that we don’t get poorer. Amazingly, Christians seldom stop to think who they align with in this argument. Isn’t this the same argument of those who advocate birth control? “There are too many people on the planet and too little resources base, let’s limit the population.” Isn’t this the argument of rich liberals like Bill Gates who hopes that vaccinations in Africa will help reduce the population there? Isn’t this the argument of abortion advocates in this country: Better kill a baby than let her live in possible poverty? Isn’t it absurd that with the same mouth we debunk the myth of overpopulation and at the same time agree with it wholeheartedly?

If only Christians could stop and realize the absurdity of the argument. If more people really meant less resources per person and richer individuals, would reducing the population of the US to one man only make that man the richer man in the world? After all, he will have all these resources, n’est-ce pas? The reality is, if you reduced the population of these United States to one person, or even a thousand people, or even a million people, and somehow kept all the resources intact, this group of people will be poorer than an average farm worker in Bangladesh. Why? Because the availability of resources is not what makes people rich but the work that makes them usable for humans. Wealth is not in resources that are passively existing somewhere, wealth is created by work and division of labor and mass production, and work, division of labor and mass production depend on the size of the population. (Other factors play a part, too, like government policies, traditional views of work and entrepreneurship, etc.)

Related to it is that other socialist argument, “Immigrants are taking our jobs.” Er, excuse me? Whose jobs are those? In what sense does a job belong to you and not to the employer? If I need a man to mow my back yard, does this job belong by right to my next door neighbor just because he lives closest to the job? Or can I hire the guy who lives two blocks over, just because I  want to hire that guy over my next door member? Can your Walmart send the cops to your home for shopping at Sprouts, because Walmart has the right to your business being closer to your home, in your neighborhood? Since when do we conservatives think in collectivist categories like little well-trained communists?

An argument is sometimes proposed, that given the socialist wasteful policies of the US government, open borders will only increase the waste, so therefore, let’s first close the borders, fix what we need to fix, and then open the borders again. The problem with this argument is that it presupposes that limiting immigration will limit the waste. But what in the world would make us think that government waste depends on the size of the population or on limiting immigration? Has there been a time in America’s history when Congress actually needed the excuse of more immigrants to increase taxes and spending? When has there ever been such correlation? Congress increases spending for any reason whatsoever, it never sets aside money for immigrants specifically. If you we open the borders, Congress will increase spending; if we close them, Congress will increase spending. What in the world can make anyone believe that closing the borders will in any way decrease spending and waste, or will help us fix the problems in our society and government? And of course, when we close the borders, we actually give the same Federal government the power to decide who gets in. And guess what, who gets in will be those who pledge loyalty to that same Federal government, which will decrease our chances to turn things around, as opposed to entry uncontrolled by the government where lovers of liberty will have better chances to enter and help us restore liberty and justice for all.

There are many more economic arguments in favor of open borders that we won’t have the time to cover today. As with everything else, whenever an area is controlled by the government, the economy suffers. Labor is simply another economic resource which needs to remain fluid and movable to be able to respond to the demands of the market; when the government controls the movement of any economic resource, the economic environment is distorted. Human resources are not an exception. Also, when the government controls the movement of any economic resource, this open opportunities for corruption and crime. And again, human resources are not an exception. The only solution to the current immigration crisis is get the Federal government out of the immigration business, open the borders for free travel and settling, and let the market forces control what is a market phenomenon in the first place.

But nowhere is the madness of American Christians more pronounced than when we come to the religious issues and factors of immigration. In their minds, American Christians are so blind to their own professed faith and to the facts of history and of the current situation in the world, that they are completely unable to see the real picture of modern immigration. In their minds, open borders means that “the lawless pagans of the world will flood America.” Seriously, because America doesn’t have lawless pagans, and the world outside America is full with only lawless pagans, and if there are any Christians, they are not so enterprising as to immigrate for whatever reason, they do not want a better future for their children, and they prefer to live in misery, tyranny, darkness, and persecutions.

Stop here and ponder over this last word. Ah, aren’t we such softies, tearfully posting pictures of persecuted Christians around the world! Don’t we show such solidarity with our brothers and sisters insisting that the Federal government takes measures to stop persecutions of Christians around the world! Aren’t we so righteous to post data that Christianity is now the most persecuted religion in the world? And aren’t we so incredibly foolish to not stop and connect this fact with our rooting for restrictive immigration laws!

If Christianity is the most persecuted religion around the world, I ask, who of the representatives of all religions is most likely to want to immigrate to another place, most of all the United States? And therefore, who of the representatives of all religions is most likely to be stopped and deported and returned back home by our immigration laws? Good people will obey immigration laws, you say? But are those who enforce the laws good people? Aren’t they Federal bureaucrats? Would you trust Federal bureaucrats to protect you as a Christian in the US? Would you give them the power to decide whether you need protection or not? If not, why do we trust Federal bureaucrats to actually make decisions in favor of protecting persecuted Christians around the world? How did this work for the persecuted German Jews in the 1930s? How many of them were returned back to the Nazi slaughterhouses because of our immigration laws? And what in the world makes you think it will work differently for persecuted Christians today?

Stop here and consider this. If this argument doesn’t make your blood freeze in your veins, you are not a true Christian, you are a fake Christian, you are just a church-goer, your true faith is not in Christ, and your true religion is statist idolatry, or American idolatry, or any other kind of idolatry, but not the Christian religion. If these immigration laws you have been supporting have been the reason for the return of even one Christian back to his persecutors . . . nay, if these immigration laws have been the reason for even one Christian to despair of even trying to find asylum in the US because of the high bars imposed on legal immigration, or because of the corruption of Federal bureaucrats using those same laws, the blood of that Christian is on your hands! If it’s better to tie a stone around your neck and jump in the sea rather than seduce one of these small ones, then it is better to have ten thousand Dearborn-Michigans in this country than send one Christian to death by persecution by supporting evil laws! And before you take offense at this statement, could it be that Dearborn MI is actually a warning by God for us, to make us see what we have done to Christians around the world with our immigration laws, and give us a foretaste of the judgment coming on us? Could it be that in our foolishness we have misinterpreted the signs God is giving us?

Contrary to what many Americans believe, of all religions around the world, Christians are disproportionately represented among the world’s immigrants, even in the United States. Also, even among the non-Christian immigrants, the statistical odds of conversion to Protestant Christianity are much higher than among the homeborn. The best example, right here, in front of our eyes, is the Hispanic population of the United States. A study of 2002 shows that while Roman Catholicism was the religion of over 90% of the Hispanics over 60 years old, the same percentage is down to 60% in the age group of 30-40-year-olds, with Protestantism in all its forms rising to 40% of the faith of the younger generation of Hispanics. Hispanic Protestant iglesias strike the observer with their average age, compared to the aging population in the traditional Anglo churches, as a commentator on the study wrote ten years ago. But there’s more, and the two books of Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom and God’s Continent give real facts and data about the religious constitution of the immigrant communities in Europe and the United States. Contrary to the prejudices we all hold today, when immigration is not restricted, Christians are those who dominate immigration, even if their home countries are not predominantly Christian. The Korean and the Filipino populations in the United States are the greatest examples of that: While Christianity is the religion of only about 40% of the Korean population, in the Korean community in the US, Christians outnumber non-Christians by more than 20 to 1! The situation is the same among the Filipinos, and similar among – listen to this – the Arabic immigrants. When you meet an Arab immigrant – or anyone of Arabic origin – in the United States, you run a 50% chance of them being Christian, a percentage far far higher than in the Arabic world. Such is the picture among Russian and Ukrainian immigrants as well, and the Russian and Ukrainian pockets in New York City are actually bastions of the Republican Party in a city that is heavily Democrat in its voting preferences. And it is known to all that immigrant Jews from the former Soviet Union separate themselves from American Jews for one simple reason: Immigrant Jews are self-consciously conservative, and much more loyal to the original vision of America than are American Jews.

The situation is the same in Europe, as Philip Jenkins shows. While we love to be scared by pictures of immigrant communities in Europe with women in burkas and men in turbans, the truth is, Christian churches – not just the dead European traditional churches, but vibrant, live, active churches – outnumber mosques in the immigrant communities by 4 to 1. This not visible to the eye because these people do not go around in flowing robes and turbans and burkas, but the truth is, Christianity in Europe is flourishing among immigrant communities, and in some areas immigrant communities provide the only place a true worshipper of God can go to. The examples are too many to be listed here, but you all need to read these two books to actually learn the real facts.

Restriction of immigration, therefore, won’t help save the Western civilization, it will only help surrender it to the forces of atheism and socialism. Just like the influx of Gentiles in the church helped save and continue the Covenant of God, saving it from the homeborn Jews, immigration today may be the same forc?”e sent by God to save the Western civilization from its downward spiral to atheism and lawlessness. Religiously, we have nothing to fear from immigration; and we have everything to fear from our own spiritual stagnation, and our violation of God’s Law in this particular area.

Thus, there are no reasons, political, economic, or religious, to curb, control, limit, or restrict immigration. Immigration is not bad, and in fact, it is good for America. Restrictions on immigration are only another area of government control that has gone beyond the limits God placed on civil governments, and they are destroying America politically, and economically, and religiously.

The final question, then will be: How then do we deal with the immigration crisis we are facing today? If we were asked, as Christians, by our representatives in Congress, “What do we do? What does the Bible say?”, what answer are we to give them? Our answer should be:

Like so many other crises American has been through, this crisis is an artificial crisis, created not – as many wrongly believe – by the lack of involvement by the government, but by too much government. Just like the violence and gang crisis created by the Prohibition a 100 years ago, we today have a violence and gang crisis created by another prohibition, the immigration prohibition. If we were faithful to the Bible, and if we were faithful to the Constitution, and if we had never given the Federal government the power to control the movement of individuals, these children would have been with their parents because their parents would have come over the normal way just as your ancestors came here several generation ago. As we saw before, between 1880 and 1910, in the span of 30 years, America’s population tripled thanks to immigration. And there was no such immigration crisis, as wave after wave of immigrants reached the shores and made their new home in their new country.

The real crisis is not that we have allowed more immigrants; actually, if you look ate the individual states, the states boast when they are able to attract more people, and Texas is the state that boasts more than any other state with attracting people from the other states. The crisis that we have allowed to be duped by the liberals to declare immigration a bad thing, and adopt a socialist view.

When the Prohibition created the crisis of violence and corruption and gangs, the only solution was: End the Prohibition, now. When they did, the problem disappeared over night. The more they delayed the solution, the worse the problem became. You don’t solve a problem by delaying the solution.

Therefore, there is only one solution to this crisis: Obey the Bible and obey the Constitution, get the Federal government out of the business of immigration, and repeal all laws that limit immigration. Return America to the original formula of open immigration, limited political franchise. Let the people move free, restrain the government, and limit the voting privilege. Anything else will only continue the agony, and will eventually bring judgment on this once great nation for her disobedience to the Law of God.