The Bible
is Pro-Immigrant
By Jerry Bowyer
Center for Vision & Values
Grove City College
US
President Bush has proposed an immigration reform
plan. It toughens border enforcement, but also
creates incentives for illegal immigrants to come
forward, pay a fine and apply for legal citizenship.
Hard-line conservatives call this approach amnesty
and oppose it. Among them is Pennsylvania Sen.
Rick Santorum, who is attacking Senate candidate
Bob Casey for taking an approach that seems pretty
much spot on with the president's.
As certain elements of my party struggle to get
in touch with their inner Pat Buchanan, I have
spent a lot of time reflecting on what the Bible
says about immigrants.
The biblical case against abortion is inferential.
The Bible does not speak directly to the topic.
It lays out some principles — sacredness
of life, humanity of the unborn — that lead
to the conclusion that abortion is not permitted.
It is the same with stem cells, child tax credits,
faith-based social service provisions, etc.
Immigration is different: The Bible is explicit.
In the Torah, Moses commanded, "Do not mistreat
an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in
Egypt." The Bible is unabashedly pro-immigrant.
The argument is simple: You were immigrants in
Egypt, and you didn't like being mistreated, so
now that you have your own country, you should
treat immigrants compassionately. Compassionate
treatment of immigrants is basically an early
version of the Golden Rule: Treat people the way
you used to want to be treated when you were in
Egypt.
The Exodus was an act of protection against mistreated
immigrants. The children of Israel had earlier
crossed the border of Egypt to seek a more economically
secure life for themselves. Eventually they were
seen as a threat to Egyptian cultural purity and
national security. Much later, King David surrounded
himself with immigrants, as did his son, Solomon.
The prophets spoke out on behalf of aliens frequently.
Jesus of Nazareth was an immigrant. When he was
a child, he and Mary and Joseph crossed the border
to Egypt illegally. You see, they had a well-founded
fear of political persecution from a Middle Eastern
dictator named Herod.
A few years ago, I debated Pat Buchanan on the
issue of immigration. His view was that immigrants
threaten our culture to such an extent that these
people spell the "Death of the West."
But he is wrong. Immigrants do not threaten our
culture; generally, they enrich it.
People who choose this country at great risk are
more likely to share its values than those who
are simply born here. Latino immigrants sign up
for military service in greater proportions than
native-born Americans. I know a young man from
El Salvador who signed up, even before being granted
citizenship, and served with great courage in
combat in Iraq. I am not sure there is a more
telling metric for love of country than the decision
to put one's life on the line.
In this debate, I asked Pat this: If 200 years
from now, this country is filled with people who
read and love Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
but who are overwhelmingly dark-skinned, would
this be a good thing? He said that it would be
a tragedy and a disaster.
This is not we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident
conservatism—this is blood-and-soil conservatism.
In my opinion, it is also Pagan to the core.
Then there is the matter of the English language.
Someone once asked me, "Do you want your
grandchildren to grow up speaking Spanglish?"
Sure, why not? We all grew up speaking "Franglish."
Our language is a mix of French and Anglo-Saxon
that started with the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Living languages change. I can read the Latin
of St. Augustine pretty much as well (or, in my
case, as badly) as that of John Paul II, because
Latin is a dead language. Jesus grew up speaking
"Hebrelonian," a mix of Hebrew and the
Chaldean that the Jews picked up in Babylon. Didn't
he turn out pretty well?
I understand that on the surface, the current
argument is not about immigration per se, but
about illegal immigration. I also understand,
from nearly a decade of hosting talk radio, that
almost every time I run into someone who wants
to take a tough approach on illegal immigrants,
they also turn out to dislike legal ones as well.
Let us face an obvious fact: People tend to want
the laws that they like to be strictly enforced,
and the laws they don't like to be loosely enforced.
Strictness of enforcement is usually proportional
to the level of agreement with the law.
Conservatives can complain about "amnesty"
being offered to illegal immigrants, but we led
the charge for a kinder and gentler IRS that had
the power to forgive penalties for back taxes.
Typically when we see a lot of people violating
a 55 mph speed limit, we wonder whether that is
not a sign that the law was too draconian to begin
with.
Do hard-line conservatives want to take away the
IRS's right to negotiate for lower penalties?
Do they want to toughen up penalties for people
who drain wetlands, or protest on abortion clinic
property, or who display a two-ton monument of
the Ten Commandments on government property without
proper permission? There's no reason why immigration
should be treated any differently.
The argument made from legality is circular, anyway.
We can change any statute which we choose to,
and if we choose to liberalize our immigration
laws, then many illegal aliens will no longer
be illegal.
The president wants to create a program in which
illegals can come forward, pay a fine and apply
for legitimate citizenship. What do the hard-liners
want? My hard-line talk radio callers want deportation.
I have two words that I'd like for them to contemplate
for a moment: "concentration camp."
There is no way that you move 10 to 20 million
people from one nation to another, against their
will, without concentrating them.
We could go the way of the hard-liners, or we
(a nation of immigrants) could go the way of the
God of Israel, "The alien living with you
must be treated as one of your native-born. Love
him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt...."
(Jerry Bowyer, a former radio talk-show host,
is chairman of Newsmakers Leadership Group and
a contributor to The Center for Vision & Values
at Grove City College. This article first appeared
in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and has been reprinted
with the author’s permission)
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