God, Man, and Immigrants

Another Catholic churchman has weighed in on the issue of illegal immigration, this time Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island. His question with regard to enforcement of laws against illegal immigration is “What would Jesus do?” – and his answer, basically, is that Jesus would not enforce those laws (assuming it was His job in the first place, which is highly doubtful). And yes, Jesus would undoubtedly have compassion on illegal immigrants as much as on anyone who is poor, homeless, hungry, ill-clothed, and lacking in decent and reliable shelter. And He would also recommend that others show the same compassion. But is that compassion the same as saying that those people have an indisputable right to go anywhere, be anywhere, and live anywhere? The Holy Land of Jesus’ time on Earth was not only a patchwork of religious, ethnic, national, and political groups, but also a crossroads through which many of these groups migrated (or fled, or invaded) at various times. And there, as everywhere else up to the present, the stranger, the interloper, was universally regarded with suspicion and dealt with only cautiously. He was not granted “rights” of any sort unless he was carrying official papers from Rome or from a local monarch or warlord. And certainly someone coming in at the socioeconomic bottom was given absolutely no deference; in fact he was lucky to be merely kicked out of town rather than severely beaten or killed. There was certainly no room, in a village of that time, for any surplus people who constituted a drain on resources, and there was very little room in the larger towns and cities for suchlike. In brief, everyone was expected to carry his own weight, and charity was, at best, extended to close kin. Admittedly, begging was considered an at least semi-legitimate occupation, but I suspect that even beggars were expected to be from, and remain within, the community; I don’t see much mention in the Bible of itinerant panhandlers, tramps, and hoboes.

And in any case, Jesus, while always recommending compassion and sharing with those less fortunate, was strangely silent when it came to the “rights” of the poor, the homeless, and so on. I suspect this was because our modern-day concept of “rights” is based entirely on the secular humanist model which can be traced to 18th-Century France, and which was anything but “faith-based”. Up to that time, civilized people (and just about everyone else as well, for that matter) had duties and obligations, and were expected to conform to a complex system of social expectations – but “rights” were seldom, if ever, in the picture. And yet this is precisely what makes compassion – today as much as in Biblical times – important. If the government does not function as a guarantor of “rights”, or if it functions poorly in that role (as, arguably, ours does), then the oppressed have few places to turn except to those individuals and organizations, such as the Church, that practice genuine charity (vs. the kind the government claims to practice, but which is long on coercion and short on results).

Add to this the fact that Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.” By which he did not mean “until the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the Great Society or some other government program eliminates poverty” – he meant _always_. So what does this mean? Does it mean that certain people will always be fated to be on the short end of the stick, to get less than their “fair share”, to get a smaller piece of the much-discussed – but to my knowledge, never actually seen -- “pie”? Are some people simply bound to be poor, for reasons not under their control? Or perhaps they’re being punished for misdeeds in a former life? But no, Christianity says we only go around once. I would say that poverty is, in a sense, the down side of what we call “diversity” – it’s the bottom quarter, or third, or whatever portion you please, of the infamous “bell curve”. On a deeper, more karmic – if you will – level I would say that it’s a result of original sin, of human failings, and of human nature in general. If we truly live in a fallen world, as the Church teaches, why do we constantly protest whenever we encounter symptoms of its fallen-ness? It would be like having a serious illness but complaining that one didn’t feel tip-top anyway. So yes, poverty is a symptom, but not always (not usually, in fact) of other people’s lack of compassion, charity, or awareness. There is, truly, something intractable about it, as witness the billions spent on “poverty programs” ever since the days of JFK, and the poverty rate has barely budged (at least if you go by government statistics, which are designed primarily to keep the poverty programs in business).

Another aspect of the issue, of course, is that, for immigrants of any type, the issue of “rights” is anything but abstract. Every “right” that immigrants have, or claim, constitutes a claim, in turn, on the economy (national, state, local) and thus on the taxpayer, i.e. on the “native” resident of the place in question. Illegal immigrants arrive in town, having come by car, bus, train, or even plane – seldom on foot – already bedecked with more “rights” and claims on the local economy and the local social structure than a Christmas tree has lights. They come armed, in effect, with demands that are legitimized by the government at all levels. So any discussion of immigrant “rights” has to take into account that we are not simply dealing with a social or political ideal here, but with real material demands, backed up by government coercion. Now, would Jesus really have advocated not only recognizing the humanism-based and more abstract “rights” of immigrants, but also their government-backed rights and entitlements? Whatever happened to “rendering unto Caesar what which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God’s”? The bishop, like so many other religious leaders, has allowed himself to slip into the secular humanism-based morass of ill-founded ideas which typically have dire political, social, and economic consequences.

But hey, since we’re talking about “rights” here, let’s talk about the rights of _non_-immigrants. For example, is there a right to keep using the language you were born into and brought up with in everyday commerce without having to make allowances for the fact that half the people you deal with don’t know English? And how about the right of free association, i.e. with one’s “own kind” rather than with the increasing proportion of social, cultural, and ethnic strangers in our cities and small towns? And how about the right to be protected, in one’s person and property, against the aggressive habits of the invading hordes? (Ask someone in southern Arizona how “trivial” this right is.) How about the right to have the world one grew up in preserved, as much as possible? Now, I’m not claiming that these “rights” have any absolute significance or over-riding legitimacy, but they are at least as arguable as the alleged “rights” of immigrants. Would Jesus really adopt a policy of benign neglect in the face of the accelerating fragmentation of the social and economic fabric that uncontrolled immigration is causing? I think not.

So, with all due respect to the bishop, I say leave Jesus out of it and do what has always been done in the face of invasions, namely defend the integrity and coherence of the home and the society, and allow the newcomers to stay only to the degree they are willing to adapt. Because our job isn’t to adapt to them, and any politician who says it is should be… well, how about exiled to Mexico?