Does God Have an Immigration Policy?

"Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?" – Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

We have a disconnect between how we judge others, and how we hope God will judge us.

1. The never-ending debate.

I have friendly debates with friends about illegal immigrants. From my point of view, people have assumptions about illegal immigration, and these assumptions don’t hold up. For example, people assume that there are a limited number of jobs, so that every job taken by an illegal immigrant is a job lost to a citizen.

This assumption doesn’t hold up when it’s studied by economists. Economists find that illegal immigrants create as many jobs as they take. Money doesn't go to illegal immigrants and stop. They spend it. That spending creates jobs. So illegal immigrants don’t just eat the pie; they make more pies. They make pies as fast as they eat them.              .

So I don't think that the facts are on the side of my debate partners. But sooner or later in my friendly debates, the argument becomes a moral argument. Sooner or later, my friends resort to this argument: people shouldn’t come to the country and break the law. And by coming to the country, illegal immigrants are breaking the law.

It’s a fine argument. After all, people should obey the law. Who can endorse law-breaking?

Who wants to be on the side of law-breakers?

2. God and grace.

Well, Jesus.

Yeah, him.

The guy who said:

But go and learn what this means: "I desire compassion, and not sacrifice," for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. [Matthew 9:13; NASB.]

To know God and to know yourself is to know that "[B]y grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:7-9; NASB).

We need grace when we stand before God so that our own too-scrupulous words don’t return to judge us when we crave mercy. I would not want to be judged by the parable of the slave who’s debt was forgiven by his king, who then threw into prison a debtor who could not pay a debt to him. (Matthew 18:23-35.)

"On Earth as it is in Heaven" means that we must strive to be like Christ.

3. On Earth as it is in Heaven?

That doesn’t mean that we lock up the Penal Code instead of locking up law-breakers. It does mean we pray for the grace to know that we need grace. It does mean we pray for the grace to know when we should confer grace, and when we should withhold it. It does mean we think hard about these things.

When I was a relatively new Christian, I worked at a law firm and had a secretary who undermined me in every way she could. Yet I knew that Christians had to forgive, so I tried and tried to forgive her and to return good for evil. All I ever got back was evil. I finally decided that if it was alright with God for me to hold that job, it was alright with God for me to try to get that secretary fired. Which I did. That is, I tried. In fact, she wasn’t fired until the day I quit the firm.

The point is that I know that it’s hard to model God’s grace; sometimes, it’s impossible. For me, that’s true.

But it’s more possible than a lot of people think.

At the very least, we should not necessarily demand strict obedience to laws, when no harm actually is being done. We should understand that judging others in legalistic strictness is not the righteous, unanswerable argument that it seems to be.

4. Obama, immigration, and grace.

The Obama administration is coming under predictable attack for extending grace to good kids – kids who came to the country illegally as children, who have stayed out of trouble, who want to go to college or join the military. The Obama administration has decided not to bring deportation proceedings against these good kids. Instead, the Obama administration wants to use more resources to eject illegal immigrants who commit crimes and harm our country.

I think that’s a sensible policy. I’m proud of the president for it.

I prefer the president’s plan to the attitude of my friends.

5. My hypocrisy.

But I’m a hypocrite. I pretend to be gracious, but I’m not, because I judge my friends. I act like they are hypocrites, who rely upon grace but are not gracious. Well, they are human, so that’s probably true. But it’s true of me, too, every day.

Maybe they just calibrate grace differently than I do.

But that’s the debate: it’s not law-breaking versus not-law-breaking. It’s lawbreakers learning by grace how much law-breaking we should tolerate, especially when that lawbreaking does no harm.

And it’s knowing that we're not born citizens of Heaven. We don’t earn citizenship. If we enter Heaven, we enter by grace, and by grace alone.

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The Obama Administration policy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19immig.html?scp=2&sq=illegal%20immigrants&st=cse

A paper on the net effects of illegal immigration:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/09_immigration_greenstone_looney/09_immigration.pdf