Lux Lucet

Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. (Ruth 1:16)

Immigration. Mention the word in conversation and you’ll likely find few people lacking an opinion on the topic. It’s a hot button issue and one badly in need of a Scripturalist analysis. In the past I have made abortive attempts to write on immigration, but found the results unsatisfactory and thought it best to lay off the topic until I had the chance to do further study.

As if my ignorance weren’t enough of a hindrance, my plans to write on immigration have been further hindered by the bane of many an amateur scholar and blogger: a lack of study time. Work and school combined to play havoc with my schedule, but even so, I have had some opportunity to read and reflect on the subject. In light of this, it seemed best to at least get a few thoughts down in writing, if only as a starting point for further development.

One thing that has impressed me in my admittedly brief survey of Christian literature on the immigration: the lack of sound scholarship on the subject. This is disappointing. The world is in search of answers on the question of immigration, but Christians, who of all people should be able to provide the needed answers, are largely absent from the discussion. And what work they have done is, for the most part, not of high quality. For instance, in June 2011 the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution titled Immigration and the Bible, which the SBC leadership intends to serve as a framework for solving the immigration problem. Unfortunately, while I am sure the framers of the resolution meant well, their efforts miss the mark. For while this resolution is put forth as the answer to the nation’s immigration problem, in reality it addresses only the problem of undocumented workers already in the US, while failing completely address what caused that problem in the first place: a broken immigration system badly in need of reform. In other words, they have offered the American people a band aid when it needs radical surgery. For example, the resolution states,

“[W]e ask our governing authorities to implement, with the borders secured, a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country

This sounds good, but what does the SBC mean by, “with borders secured”? The resolution itself provides no help. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a drafter of the resolution, provided some clue what this means in A White Paper: Just Principles for Immigration Reform. Here, Land wrote, “we expect any system that is put in place to be able to prohibit illegal entry.” That’s all well and good, but it tells us nothing about what constitutes illegal entry. While it is not fair to expect a single resolution or a single white paper to address every aspect of a subject, it is fair to expect a resolution intended to resolve our nation’s immigration problem to define major terms. To date, the SBC has remained vague on this critical topic.

Further, a Scripturalist wanting to write on immigration will be disappointed to find that to date little work has been done on the subject by leading Scripturalist scholars. Gordon Clark, so far as I have been able to discover, never mentioned the subject. John Robbins, on the other hand, did discuss it, but only briefly.

At the 1998 Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting, Robbins gave a lecture titled The Educational Establishment Versus Civilization. As was his custom the end of his lectures, Robbins took questions from the audience, and one of those questions was about immigration. The transcript of the exchange, which starts at the 25:30 mark of the lecture, is below,

Audience Member: (Muffled audio makes it hard to understand the question, but it sounds like he asks Robbins to say a few words on immigration.)

Robbins: “Immigration. Well, I agree. If you say we should not restrict immigration, then we can keep out criminals because they are evil doers. But other than that, yes, I agree entirely that there should be no restrictions on immigration.”

Audience Member: “I think there should be lots of restrictions on immigration. I think that free immigration is an assault on a nation state. I’m not arguing with (seems to mean “arguing for”) free immigration at all.”

Robbins: “I’m sorry. I misunderstood you. The gentleman is not arguing for free immigration. I would, because it is not a legitimate function of government to decide where people will live. If I can put it that way.”

While this exchange is brief, it does provide direct and important information on Robbins thinking on immigration: 1) immigration, excepting criminals, should be without restriction, and 2) this position rests on the fact that the Bible does not give governments the power of telling people where to live. I think many Evangelicals, myself included when I first heard this, would find Robbins remarks challenging to their thinking. While his statement certainly deserves close study, in the interest of time, I’ll defer discussion of it until later.

Robbins made at least one other statement, which, although brief, has important implications for the formulation of a Biblical immigration policy. This statement can be found in his essay The Sine Qua Non of Enduring Freedom, which, in addition to being found on the Trinity Foundation website, is also included in the excellent compilation of Robbins’ essays on politics and economics titled Freedom and Capitalism available through the Trinity Foundation. Writing on the subject of international relations, Robbins made the point that, “Borders were instituted for the purpose of separating rulers, not peoples, from each other.” This insight, if taught in Scripture, would overthrow at once all the arguments of the immigration restrictionists. Like the first Robbins immigration quote, this statement – short in length but far reaching in implication – deserves careful study, which I’ll reserve for a future opportunity.