According to the Bible, Illegal Immigrants Must Be Welcomed

Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review at 12:16 PM on January 21, 2008.

If you believe the Bible is the word of God -- and especially if you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God -- you must believe this:

Leviticus (19:33-4):"And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself."

It would be interesting to know how the "God said it-I believe it-that settles it" crowd would square this admonition with their blood lust to round up 12 million people and send them back to Mexico.

Speaking of fantastical thinking, has anybody calculated the cost of deporting 12 million people, housing them (in concentration camps, assumedly), processing them and then shipping them across the border? If it is, say, $3,000 per person, then the cost to U.S. taxpayers would be $36 billion. (If we outsource it to Halliburton, multiply that by a thousand.)

What Americans see as a domestic illegal immigration crisis is, in reality, an economic diaspora of unskilled workers fleeing ancient structural flaws ingrained into the Mexican political and economic system -- which are compounded by a religious abhorrence for birth control among the people of the exodus.

Mexico is, in effect, the sort of oligarchy Republican economic and social policies are designed to create in the United States: A tiny elite group of people and corporations who control the country's vast reserves of wealth and resources sits on top of a weak and struggling middle class, which in turn rests on a population of tens of millions of people who are poor, uneducated and easily manipulated.

The Mexican oligarchy profits from the exodus, as does the Bush oligarch wannabes: The influx of millions of unskilled laborers, combined with the defenestrating of U.S. jobs overseas, weakens the American labor movement, which, in turn, strengthens domestic corporations and oligarchs.

A question from a conservative published in a recent edition of the popular column, "Ask a Mexican," points to an aspect of the crisis that is rarely discussed:

Why doesn't Mexico have [the] drive toward technology and math/science education that has virtually transformed India? India doesn't even have the mass economy like China, but they have billions and billions of dollars because of their brains. Mexico doesn't produce labor other than the kind that will scrub, wash, press and cut grass.

Leaving aside the rightwing cultural bias, the larger question is on target. Why won't the Mexican government do as the Indian government has done and educate its underclasses?

Why should they?

For one thing, the Mexican government does not view the U.S. illegal immigration crisis as a crisis because, from their point of view, it isn't a problem, it is a solution. They have shifted the burden of caring for millions of their poor, unskilled people to the United States.

For another, educating its masses would actually weaken the Mexican regime because, unlike India's democratic government, the Mexican oligarchy (rightly) views a strong middle class as a threat.

If this illegal immigration crisis is ever going to end, it won't be resolved by the political parties in the United States playing rope-a-dope with each other -- although Republicans will try to use it for their short-term political gain in the general election this year. The crisis will only be settled when the United States government forces the Mexican government to take responsibility for its people by feeding, clothing and, especially, educating them.

Until that happens, if it ever does, we have no other practicable option but to follow the biblical injunction and treat these people as our own. Restricting them from healthcare and education, as rightwing Christians insist on doing, will only exacerbate the problem by creating the ideal conditions for crime, domestic terrorism, deadly epidemics that spread like wildfire into the general population and worse.

Tagged as: religion, immigration, mexico, the bible

Jon Ponder is regular blogger for the Pensito Review