Illegal Immigration

At the request of Dove Mountaineer and WorldMover Kay Long, I am reprinting here an article I originally wrote for Presidentialprayerteam.com.

Few events have brought as much attention to the state I call home as the recent response over SB 1070, the Arizona Immigration Law. Characterized as “discriminatory” and “racist,” what the bill essentially says is that it is now against state law to be an illegal immigrant. Read again carefully: It is a crime to be illegal.

Why would such a statement stir up so much negativity? Nothing is more volatile in our nation than any hint of color or ethnic bias. To analyze this current problem, look briefly at the nature of immigration in America.

Legal immigration has quotas to limit the number of immigrants coming from a given locality. More applicants apply each year than the quotas allow. In spite of unemployment and economic decline, the United States is still a highly sought destination by most of the world’s people. Virtually all of the illegal immigration comes from the southern border. Some of the traffic from the south involves ruthless and well-financed drug cartels. Because we are a liberty-loving people, past proposals for a border fence have not become reality. Once across the border, illegal newcomers are generally able to blend into the prevailing culture inconspicuously.

What that backdrop, consider these figures:
• Some 11.2 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1990 and 2000. This, added to the 6.4 million children born to immigrants already here, accounts for almost 70% of the population growth in the past decade.
• Immigrants now represent more than one in every ten U.S. residents, the highest percentage in 70 years.
• Over the next 50 years, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that immigration will cause the population of the United States to increase from its present 270 million to more than 400 million.

Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer, who is receiving the brunt of the criticism for signing the bill into law, has been a non-corrupt, principled governor in her brief term to date. While national pundits, both liberal and conservative, have ridiculed the new law for being “unenforceable,” most are missing the governor’s point: getting the attention of the federal government. It is the national government, not Arizona, which has failed to secure the southern border, and which has failed in terms of immigration reform. Now the whole nation is aware of this situation.

For over 200 years Anglos, other immigrants, Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans have lived in Arizona without any of the conflicts which characterized the troubled settling of Texas and other parts of the U.S. In Tucson (a mere 60 miles from the U.S./Mexico border), Spanish is taught to Anglo children and English to non-English speakers. People of all backgrounds who live here love the blended flavors and sounds of our border culture.

But someone has to pay the bills. Currently, illegal immigrants can receive a driver’s license, social security card, food stamps, free education, and free health care. This would be hard enough for tax-paying citizens to bear – even if border residents were not seeing their property destroyed by immigrants camping their way north; even if there were no drug-trafficking violence; even if public services were not suffering because of excessive numbers of people in the lines.

On a personal level, God’s people are exhorted from beginning to end of the Scriptures to be gracious to those of a different nationality or ethnicity:

The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:34

Do not forget to entertain strangers: for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2

As citizens of a nation troubled by the complexities of this issue, we should humbly pray:

Heavenly Father,

We cry out to you on behalf of all the residents of this land. We pray for those in need of basic subsistence, and ask that we would be shown where we have the responsibility to help. We pray for those who know you not, and ask that believers would be fervent in living and sharing the Gospel with all, regardless of nationality. And we pray for our nation’s leaders, that they would seek your wisdom, not turning a deaf ear to the cries of those suffering from these problems. May you, triune God, be glorified in all that comes to pass, as we trust you for a solution to this crisis.

In Jesus’ name,
Amen.