The amnesty march of the evangelical Right's "leaders" continues, with soft-headed figureheads (some likely harboring mixed motives) trying to bring along parishioners to embrace mass legalization and open-borders.
But those occupying the pews don't agree. Their hesitation is highlighted in a recent article in the Deseret News.
The Pharisee class may be enjoying the acclaim of Big Media and open-borders zealots, but they probably shouldn't count on long-term popularity. And their marching over the cliff on immigration could cost them the support — or at least the confidence and trust — of their congregants.
While the "conservative" religionists seek the praise of men, an important new book by Catholic scholar John Horvat II, Return to Order, examines the economic crisis our nation faces from the loss of honor and trust in our society. These factors "so essential to our daily lives" are necessary to achieving a naturally regulated balance in society, our economy, and public life.
With respect to immigration, it can have a disruptive effect, displacing those human relationships that foster honor and trust:
[B]orn of a legitimate instinct of sociability, this identification process [inculcated through growth and development of individuals within family and community] continues up the scale to include regions and nations. All are proportional scale relationships since they make the person feel comfortable within that which is known.
This also explains the uneasiness caused by massive and disproportional immigration since it artificially introduces a situation that destroys points of reference and overwhelms the ability of a society to absorb new elements organically into a unified culture. A proportional immigration is always a healthy development in a society since it injects new life and qualities into a social body, which enriches the whole but does not destroy cultural points of reference.
This observation explains well and plainly why those Americans (of faith or not) who consider our immigration system out of control hold the truly just, humane, and reasonable position on the issue. With legal immigration alone running four times America's historical average, reducing legal (and, obviously, illegal) immigration toward traditional levels would benefit the nation tremendously.
This isn't something you have to explain to normal people, who bear the consequences of the religious elites' "compassion" on their rank-and-file backs and wallets.
It would be helpful if those elites would recognize — finally — that with respect to the nation's public policy, "the least of these" are the American citizens whose nation, economy, culture, etc. are being sacrificed on the altar of the idol, free immigration. This position wins plaudits in elite newspapers. It leads to invitations to pontificate on panels and to hobnob with prominent people in rarified circles. But it destroys the protections of sovereign nation-states the Lord has provided, through His common grace, to protect the innocent with the sword of justice. That's a steep price to pay for a bowl of temporal porridge.
