So the issue of the day is immigration. And our first reaction as Christians should always be “what does Scripture say about it?”
A summary of biblical teaching is that immigration of a certain kind is a blessing, and is fruitful, both to the immigrant and the land to which he comes. Immigration of another kind is a curse, a sure sign of God’s displeasure. The whole thing can be compared to hospitality.
Hospitality is not just something that is “nice to have,” but is demanded of God’s people, in multiple place. And we are not to be open-handed and hospitable out of a sense of raw duty, but because we understand how much of the kindness of God we have been given. The Bible calls us to a life of hospitality, including such kindness to people who cannot pay us back. So hospitality is good. But hospitality has to be contextualized. Hospitality cannot be defined as “having people in your home who do not normally live there.” The definition is too broad, and would include the midnight porch climber. Nor is it hospitality if the “guests” are abusing the system — think of Penelope’s suitors in The Odyssey. That was not hospitality, but rather extortion.
This distinction made, a nation’s policies on immigration may be thought of as “national hospitality.” We see Scripture speak of treatment of aliens in many of the same ways used to speak of the need for personal hospitality. In fact, many of the injunctions are intertwined. “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex 22:21). You know what it was like, the Israelites are told, to be a stranger in a strange land. Apply the Golden Rule then. “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 23:9).
As God’s people lived under the bounty of God’s law, they would receive the bounty of the land. This was God’s promised covenant blessing. They were to tithe from that bounty, recognizing that all good things come from God, and the first fruits should be returned to Him. But note — one of the lawful recipients of that tithe was the stranger in their midst. “And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you. When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled” (Dt. 26:12).
But all this presupposes something — a faithful Israel, walking with God. When they are doing so, they are to have guests, welcoming them. They are not to vex them, or oppress them. They are to invite them to their religious feasts. They are to apportion a part of the tithe to them.
But what happens when Israel is unfaithful? What do the borders look like then? “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low” (Dt. 28:43). There is a difference between having four people over for dinner, and having four million show up unannounced. The two situations cannot sensibly be placed under the heading “having people over.” The differance is between a host bestowing what God requires us to bestow on the helpless, and having the “host” become the helpless one.
Now, with all this said, let us look at Mexico, and our current immigration woes. The bottom line in what I am about to say is neither liberal nor conservative. Some might want to call it conservative because I am maintaining that what is happening is self-evidentally a slow-motion disaster. But it is not conservative because I want to maintain, equally loudly, that this is a problem that does not admit of a political solution. Politics can’t help us swim here; politics is the anvil we tied onto our leg.
The problem is not the Mexicans. The problem is the Americans. And the central problem is that Americans are feeling put upon by the immigration flood, instead of repenting of those sins we have persistently committed, and which have placed us in this position.
Covenantal judgments are not thunderbolts from a bright, blue sky. If this is a covenantal judgment (and read through Deuteronomy 28 if you have any doubts), then we should be more interested in asking in what senses we have broken God’s law, instead of all interested in what immigration laws the illegals have broken.
There are many elements of America’s disordered cultural life. Thirty years of abortion-on-demand. Loud cries and legal maneuvering for homosexual marriage, and any who oppose it are marginalized as “haters.” Empire-building abroad. Explicit and repeated rejection of the lordship of Jesus Christ in the public square. Now, tell me. Is this is the kind of nation that God throughout Scripture blesses? Or is it the kind of nation that He brings chastizements to? Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. So. Would that be America?
Let us take one small aspect of this mess to illustrate the impotence of politics in solving it. Either Congress will dither and do nothing (which seems likely) or they will act decisively. If they act decisively, and if the president signs their posturing into law, what will happen? Their actions will cause the problems that, twenty years from now, scream for new reforms. It is almost never recognized that loud cries for “reform” are invariably attempts to fix the disastrous actions taken in the last round of reforms. Congress in 2006 is our savior — we need to be saved from Congress 1986. And what will congressional candidates in 2026 be promising to do in all their stump speeches? Right.
Just one illustation of this (there are many). The immigrant flood is a mobile black labor market. This is a black market in labor, and what causes black markets? The answer is simple — legal attempts to repeal the laws of supply and demand. While they are at it, they should attempt to repeal gravity, or at least scale it back. Wage and price controls set a line below which legal labor cannot go. Unionized labor demands can have the same effect if the government backs their extortion up. Now let us say that it is not possible to compete in Market X unless you can manufacture Product Y for under ten clams. If this is impossible to do because of the last round of congressional “reforms,” then what happens? Either factories go to Mexico, or black market workers come here, or the business concerned goes out of business. You cannot fight the fire while simultaneously fueling it. And you cannot pass a law requiring all the unintended consequences to land somewhere else.
Congress is impotent. The president can do nothing. If we demand that they all “do something,” this will only ensure that they pretend to do something. We demand that our leaders lie to us.
This is not a counsel of despair. I really believe there is a solution, and I actually believe that this solution is in the offing. But the solution, in order to be a solution, must be grounded in Scripture. Unless there is a thorough-going reformation in the Church in America — liturgical, doctrinal, practical, and narratival — we are sunk. This is simply another way of saying that if Jesus does not save us, we will not be saved.
Conservative activists need to stop trusting in the broken reed of Congress. The idolatries that have afflicted even the most traditional Christians are clear when this kind of argument is made. When we previously argued that we should fight homosexual marriage with spiritual weapons instead of carnal weapons (in a parallel situation), this was interpreted by some as capitulation on our part. “Hezekiah, what are you doing up in the Temple, praying? Mobilize the National Guard! What are you, some kind of quisling? You are almost as bad as Joshua with his trumpets!”