Lux Lucet

Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

Of all political issues, immigration is perhaps the one most likely to elicit strong emotions from all sides of the political spectrum. For this reason alone it is important that we be careful to define our terms. For my part, I find that seeking to be precise in my language is an effective hedge against allowing emotion to cloud my judgment.

In today’s post I would like to tackle one of the most important, and at the same time one of the least examined, aspects of the immigration debate: According to Scripture, by what method or methods does someone become a citizen?

The answer to this question will have a significant impact on our understanding of what the Bible teaches about immigration.

What is a Citizen?

It’s been said, truly I might add, that if you don’t define your terms, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So let’s begin by asking this question, What is a citizen? My Webster’s Seventh Edition give the following,

• an inhabitant of a city or town; esp : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman
  
• a member of a state
  
• a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to reciprocal protection from it
  
• a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state
  

Of these four definitions, the third “a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to reciprocal protection from it” will be the sense in which I use the term “citizen” in this post.

How Do We Become Citizens?

Throughout this series on immigration, it has been my contention that the Bible teaches there are two ways in which one become a citizen: 1) by birth, which applies in the case of infants having at least one citizen parent, 2) by adults who take an oath of citizenship.

The Bible’s teaching on this point is summarized in the Westminster Larger Catechism, 166, which reads,

Question: Unto whom is baptism to be administered?

Answer: Baptism [Baptism is the sign of the New Covenant, the analogue of circumcision in the Old Covenant, that is, both are signs of citizenship in the visible church] is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him, but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.”

My contention is that the pattern for the church is also God’s design for citizenship in the nation state, which is itself a parachurch organization – Paul describes the civil magistrate as “God’s minister” in Romans 13 – established by God as punishment for, and a partial cure of, sin.

Some Implications Of This Teaching

If the methods of obtaining citizenship in a nation state are the same as obtaining membership (citizenship) in the visible church, several things follow.

First, birthright citizenship as currently practiced in the United States makes a mockery of the Bible’s teaching on the proper methods of citizenship acquisition and should be ended immediately.

For those unfamiliar with current US law on birthright citizenship, at this time it is based on a flawed interpretation of the 14th Amendment, with the result that any child born, with a few exceptions, within the territory of the United States is automatically granted US citizenship regardless of the citizenship status of his portents.

In other words, when a pregnant foreign woman enters the US – legally or illegally, it doesn’t matter – and gives birth, her child is instantly given American citizenship, even though neither she nor the child’s father are themselves Americans.

And because the child is an American citizen, he has a right to welfare benefits, which the parents, though foreigners, are entitled to request on his behalf.

Image from a website that federal authorities say was used to recruit Chinese women to come to the U.S. to have their babies, NBC.

As you might imagine, such a system lends itself to massive fraud and abuse. Consider this recent story about federal raids on California ‘Maternity Hotels’ which were used by organizers to house expectant Chinese mothers until they could give birth in the US and reap the abundant rewards of having a US citizen child.

According to the article, the organizers of this scam used a website in China to attract business which touted the benefits that could be had by Chinese parents by arranging for the birth of their child in the United States.

• 13 years of free education [at US taxpayer expense]
  
• low-cost financial aid [at US taxpayer expense]
  
• less pollution [paid for by regulations on US businesses, that is to say, paid for by American citizens]
  
• a path for the entire family to emigrate when the child becomes an adult [and very likely receive welfare benefits at the expense of, you guessed it, US taxpayers] 

But wait, there more.  Not only do American citizens and legal residents get to pick up the tab for educating the children of Chinese birth tourists, they get to pay the hospital bills for the birth tourist mothers as well.  As the article notes, “They [the birth tourist mothers] were funneled to several Orange County hospitals to deliver, but they didn’t pay full price – approximately $25,000 – for medical services, officials said.  Instead, they got reduced rates for the indigent, ranging from nothing to $4,000, the court papers said.” 

One can find many other such articles on Chinese birth tourism. For example, see here, here and here. Note well, none of these stories is from a conservative source, but rather are drawn from mainstream and even progressive publications.

“Childbirth in New York is the best investment in the future of your family!” reads the Russian-language AmeriMama website, Fox News.

Needless to say, the Chinese aren’t the only ones to take advantage of the birth tourism hustle. This Fox News story reports on Russians doing the same thing in New Jersey.

Although I was unable to find an estimate of the number of US births to Mexican parents in recent years, the proximity of that nation to the US strongly suggests that the number is significant.

The scale of the problem is daunting. A Pew research study estimated that in 2013, the total number of anchor baby births in the US was 295,000. This works out to one out of every 12 births in the US for the year. This figure does not include the estimated 36,000 birth tourism births in that same year. 

Although the Chinese, Russian and Mexican parents who come to the US to have their “anchor babies” are guilty of fraud, they are not the principal problem in these case.  The main problem is with US politicians and the American people who allow this nonsense to go on.  If Americans are ever to hope to have an immigration policy that is not one of suicidal altruism, but one that actually works to the benefit of the American people, birthright citizenship must be ended.  Closing this loophole in American immigration law is, in my opinion, far more important than building a wall.

Second, the Bible approves of naturalized citizens. Just as adults can become members of the visible church through profession of faith, so too can foreigners be joined as citizens to a nation not of their birth by taking an oath of citizenship.

With every post in this series I have included a copy of a picture titled Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. The reason behind my doing so is that Ruth is perhaps the best illustration in Scripture of the naturalization process at work.

As you may know, Ruth was a Moabite woman married to a son of Naomi, an Israelite. Naomi had come to Moab with her husband and two sons to escape a famine in Israel, and while they lived in Moab her two sons married women from the country.

As it turned out, Naomi’s Israelite husband along with her two sons died before the famine ended. When Naomi went to return home to Israel, she bade her two daughters-in-law to return to their mothers’ house. One of them, Orpah, did so. But Ruth refused to return, saying, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; for wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me” (Ruth 1:16, 17).

In effect, this speech represents Ruth’s citizenship oath to the nation of Israel. It includes an allegiance to the people of God, to God himself and by implication to the Mosaic covenant.

Third, the Bible lends credence the idea of a proposition nation. The term proposition nation is sometimes used by neo-conservatives to describe the United States, which emphasizes ones allegiance to the Constitution as the defining characteristic of an American.

Just as Ruth, a foreigner and citizen of a nation whose people actually were prohibited by the Law of Moses from entering the assembly of the LORD (Deut. 23:3) was able to become a citizen of Israel through her oath of citizenship, so too should foreigners be allowed to become US citizens by taking an oath of loyalty to the constitution.

Interestingly enough, the Kingdom of Heaven is also a proposition nation. Consider how it is we are joined to God’s people. We are saved by belief in Christ alone. That is, we are saved and enter in heaven by agreeing with certain propositions, namely the Gospel. As Paul puts it, “For our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).

Fourth, Ruth’s example casts doubt on the “dual citizenship” model that is popular today. Note what she says, Ruth 1) refuses to return to Moab, 2) swears loyalty to the people of Israel, and 3) swears loyalty to the God of Israel. Jesus himself said that you cannot serve two masters. He did not say you should not serve two masters. He said you cannot do it. Becoming an US citizen (or citizen of any other nation for that matter) creates an exclusive relationship between the individual citizen and the nation.

For example, the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America, among other things, requires the naturalized citizen to, “Renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen.” This is serious language. But we do not take the idea of exclusive loyalty very seriously these days. I know of a case of someone who is a naturalized US citizen and is also a citizen of at least two other foreign countries.

Fifth, if the Bible teaches that parents are able to transmit citizenship to their children by birth, this has implications for the correct understanding of baptism as well. Credo-Baptists likely would be appalled if anyone were to suggest that their children were not American citizens and that they had to wait until they came of age to make the decision on their own. But forcing children to wait until they attained the age of responsibility to take a citizenship oath is the practice most consistent with the practice of Credo Baptism.

As it is, Credo Baptists are inconsistent. They have one practice when it comes to national citizenship – they are in effect Paedo-Baptists in this respect – but another practice when it comes to admitting their children as church members. Here, they are Credo-Baptists.

Sixth, a correct understanding of the two Biblical paths to citizenship bears on the DACA debate as well. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and is a program begun by a 2012 executive order by President Obama.

Since participants in the DACA program do not born to at least one American parent, they do not qualify for American citizenship that way. They also do not qualify as naturalized citizens, otherwise they would not be in the program.

By remaining in this country, they have by implication consented to US law. And if DACA is legally rescinded, they are obliged to leave the country.

Conclusion

In the ongoing immigration debates in the US, the phrase “pathway to citizenship” is often thrown around with little attention paid to what the Bible says about this subject.

The Bible lays out two pathways to citizenship: 1) infants born birth to at least one citizen parent, and 2) naturalization of adults who take an oath of allegiance. In the case of the US, this means taking an oath to support the Constitution of the United States of America.

If we follow the implications of these two pathways, we find that both bear directly on the current immigration problem in the US as well as in the West generally.

It is my contention that bringing US law into harmony with what the Scriptures teach about citizenship is the only way to solve the problem of what Peter Brimelow in his book Alien Nation called America’s “immigration shambles.”