Illegal Immigration

Americans have witnessed over the past two days the largest public protest since the Vietnam War: millions marching to protest Congress’s failure last week to enact immigration reform. So many immigrants left their jobs to parade that many businesses in major cities were shut down. The immigration issue is a classic illustration of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The immovable object is, of course, the need to uphold the rule of law in dealing with immigration. But the irresistible force is the economy. Removing all the illegal immigrants in our society would deal a death blow to our economy. This is going to take a Solomonesque solution, something Congress is not very often able to provide. Look at the economy first: If you could find and deport every undocumented alien in America, you would go to the grocery store next week and find the shelves bare. Without immigrant workers, we could not harvest crops. Just as happened yesterday, service industries everywhere would be shut down. With unemployment at a five-year low of 4.7 percent and with 200,000 new jobs added to the economy last month, there is simply a shortage of workers in much of America. Yet while we need immigrant workers to keep the economy going, we are tolerating them at the expense of the rule of law. Once you discover that you have 11 million illegal aliens in your midst, you cannot in fairness grant amnesty. If these new alien workers are going to be assimilated into American life, they have got to understand that we live according to the rule of law. By allowing them to continue to work as undocumented aliens, we are telling them that we really don’t care about the law; that we just want them here to use them as our slaves in our agricultural fields so we can eat cheaply. As Christians, we add a third dimension to this. We are told to welcome aliens and strangers in our midst—no matter how they got here—which is why so many churches are rallying to support the immigrants. But what’s the root of the problem? Why do we have a shortage of workers? Aha, that’s the unspeakable “A” word that the elite dread the most: abortion. The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment. And Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman. Remember the compassionate stuff that the abortionists used to tell us: “We are just preventing these poor kids from growing up in deprived, impoverished circumstances”? Hah! False. What happens is that others come in from abroad to live in those deprived, difficult, and impoverished circumstances and at great public cost. I hope the politicians will have the courage to face this issue in a way that does not undermine the American economy, shows compassion to those in our midst, and restores the rule of law. At the same time, you and I can contend to restore the culture of life, because it is the culture of death that has put us in this mess today. Is there a solution? Sure. Seal the borders, which you have got to do with terrorists out there anyway, insist the workers we have welcomed in our midst file and comply with appropriate immigration laws, and—oh yeah—stop killing our children.

04/11/06