Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?
- Matthew 20:15
A few weeks back, I received a text message from Tim Shaughnessy, a friend and Reformed brother who lives in El Paso Texas, about an emergency with a church he pastors. El Paso sits in the far west of Texas, right across the US-Mexico border from the large Mexican city of Juarez. The Rio Grande forms the border between both cities and both countries. Knowing El Paso’s location, and if you follow the news at all, you won’t be surprised when you hear what the emergency was.
Tim’s church had been meeting at the Rescue Mission of El Paso, and the chaplain of the mission called up Tim on a Saturday and told him that his church would not be able to use the mission’s building for services on Sunday. The city had been dropping off migrants at the mission and the entire facility was packed with people and full of cots. Given the vast scale of the current flood of illegal aliens pouring across America’s southern border, doubtless the loss suffered by Tim’s church could be multiplied many times over.
The current immigration disaster started with the inauguration of America’s second Roman Catholic president, Joe Biden, in January 2021 and shows no signs of letting up. Indeed, by some reports, the flood of illegal aliens, far from subsiding, is getting worse.
Since I mentioned El Paso earlier, let’s look at a few immigration-related headlines from just this one Texas city.
- “Migrant surge overwhelms border patrol, shelter in El Paso” by Robert Sherman, NewsNation, September 15, 2022
- “El Paso hit by 1,500 illegal migrants a day while small fraction sent to liberal cities strains resources: Many of the migrants are from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua” by Adam Shaw, Fox News, September 24, 2022
- “El Paso city government spending $300,000 a day on migrant response” by Robert Moore, September 20, 2022
These stories all paint a picture of one American city being overwhelmed by illegal aliens with little hope of relief. Indeed, migrant numbers historically are higher as we move into fall and cooler weather comes to the region making passage safer for those seeking to enter the United States illegally. As Tim said in his message to me, “Our city is overwhelmed right now.”
That, one could say, is an understatement.
But while America is being overwhelmed with a flood of illegal aliens, it’s important to keep in mind that this flood is not some force of nature, but the result of deliberate policies put in place by the current president and his government. On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed an executive order pausing the construction of the border wall. And this was not the only action taken by the president and by other Democratic government officials across the nation to make it easier for migrants illegally to cross America’s southern border, to make it harder to deport them, and indeed, even to reward them once in the United States.
To give you some idea of how Biden has encouraged illegal immigration to America, a quote from the article “The Border Crisis Comes to a Once-Quite part of West Texas” will suffice. In this piece, journalist Todd Bensman interviewed a “human smuggling guide” whose name was given as Jose Antonio. Antonio referred to Biden’s immigration policies as la invitación, the invitation.
Indeed, one would have a hard time coming up with a better name than la invitación to describe the immigration policies of Joe Biden in particular and the Democrats in general. To show just how committed the Democrats are as a party to forcing American taxpayers to support illegal aliens, consider the response of the field of democratic presidential candidates in 2019 to a show of hands question about whether their health plan would cover “undocumented immigrants” – the proper term for “undocumented immigrants” is “illegal aliens.” The response of all ten of the Democrats present was to raise their hands “yes.” You can see the video here.
There is no provision in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s ruling notwithstanding, for the federal government to fund anyone’s “health plan,” not even health plans for the American people. And if it is unconstitutional, and more to the point, immoral for the federal government to use tax dollars to pay Americans’ doctor bills, how much more is it unconstitutional and immoral for the federal government to use tax dollars taken from the American people to pay medical bills for foreigners who have violated America’s immigration laws?
So, ask yourself this question: If you tell people to go ahead and break America’s immigration laws and we’ll reward you with fabulous cash and prizes, do you think you will get more immigration law-breaking or less immigration law-breaking? If you said, “more immigration law-breaking,” go to the head of the class.
Lux Lucet 