For years, I have wondered why the Democrat Party in the United States of America has pursued a policy of open borders. The problem of the border was around during President George W. Bush’s time in office. He tried to get Congress to pass a border bill but was unsuccessful. Yet the Democrat Party kicked into high gear in opposition to candidate Donald Trump’s promise to close the border and build a wall along the southern border with Mexico in 2015. Under President Joe Biden, with Vice-President Kamala Harris charged with the border, the Democrats pretended that there was no ‘crisis’ at the border while throwing it wide open. They not only permitted people to enter en masse, without regulation. They also allowed conditions for people to be trafficked by cartels, enter dangerously across the Rio Grande River, and disappear into the country, losing track of thousands of unaccompanied children. Remarkably, this was all presented as humanitarian by a media that refused to investigate the real story. They even flew migrants into the United States, clandestinely moved them around the country during nighttime flights, and used tax dollars to house, feed, and otherwise support them. The real story also included illegal drugs, sexual abuse and sex trafficking, exploitation of labour (slavery), and criminal gangs. How on earth could a government be so mindless and self-destructive? I will suggest six possible reasons.
The Permissive Society: Alongside the Democrats’ open border policy were policies relaxing laws prohibiting drugs, more permissive attitudes toward sex in society, allowing criminal behaviour and theft, and protecting people who broke the law in ‘sanctuary cities’. Thus, one reason for ‘open borders’ was that Democrats were advocates of a more permissive society in general. Borders of all sorts were being crossed, even in the area of marriage and gender. What is the difference between a Venezuelan entering the USA illegally and a ‘transgender’ boy in a girl’s locker room?
The Immigrant Vote: Much of the discussion of open borders from Republicans focussed on a second reason. They accused the Democrats of wanting to flood the country with immigrants who felt welcomed and protected by their party. That some areas of the country wanted to include non-citizens in voting this past election cycle gives credence to this allegation—although it has not worked in the Democrats’ favour as they had hoped.
Postmodern Culture: A third possible reason for open borders is the cultural shift in the West to postmodernity. Talk of ‘civilization’ even seems immoral when one claims that all cultures are equal and therefore advocates the greater standard of multiculturalism. Indeed, Democrats managed to argue that wanting regulated immigration and appreciating ‘American’ culture was racist. Incompetent historians (really, journalists) advocated a revisionist history of America in which it was said to be based on slavery and racism. The American story as a story of progress based on certain values had to be cancelled, and a blind acceptance of all groups was touted as the moral high ground—despite the fact that everyone crossing the border into America was coming here precisely because they preferred America. By valuing multiculturalism above the notion of America as a cultural melting pot, the Democrats pressed their politically motivated approach to governance as a service to groups with their own identities rather than a service of citizens. They spoke of people in terms of their identities: sexuality, gender choice, race, class, and religion. (If racism is defined as seeing individuals not as individuals but in terms of their race, their pretense that Republicans were racist is exposed: identity politics is racist, among other things.)
The Marxist State: A fourth reason for advocating open borders might betray the Marxist element in the Democrat Party. According to Professor Douglas Rae, Marxist interpretation of socio-economic history includes views on monopolies, the falling rates of profit, the consequence of an increasing misery of the working class, the inevitable result of social revolution, a theory of the universal class of the lowest social group, and the consequent withering away of the state. The theory of class involves the idea that each class exploits the one below it until the class at the bottom has no one else to exploit. This class in each society shares its situation with others in other societies. It is, therefore, a class without state loyalties, and the uniting of the proletariat of the world means the withering away of the state. Democrats have held together a socialist idea of a state with expanded powers, a cancelling of American nationalism, and the idea of a stateless proletariat. Watching a middle-aged woman wade across the current of the Rio Grande, holding a small bag of possessions on her head and the hand of a small child, does not evoke repulsion at a government allowing such unregulated migration but a sense of revolutionary demolition of the state by the universal class.
Collectivism: To Professor Rae’s list of Marxist interpretations of history, I would add Marxism’s collectivism and opposition to private property. One might recall Josef Stalin’s collectivization of farms in Ukraine—and his incarceration and killing of the kulaks owning property of a 3 hectare or more. America’s wealthy elite hypocritically advocate policies opposed to the possession of private property, particularly through taxation. The goal is not so much to confiscate private property as to make government the wealthy distributor of goods for social, economic, and political reasons. Marxist ideology and political expediency work together: the confiscation of private property through taxation strengthens the power of the bloated federal government and makes them the benefactor of a large, voting, and grateful proletariat (urban blacks, poor Hispanics, college students). As long as votes matter (and cannot be stolen), wooing this class with government handouts is important for maintaining power. Collectivism and opposition to private property, then, is a fifth reason for promoting open borders.
Redistribution of Wealth as Generosity: A sixth reason for open borders expands on the previous point about collectivism and private property. Some people have argued that it is wrong to shut out the poor masses from the privileges enjoyed in America by citizens who have worked to achieve their property and lifestyles, although they have often stumbled when asked to apply this to their own home and gated community. Illegal migrants deposited in Martha’s Vineyard were quickly removed: the wealthy elite advocating diversity, equity, inclusion, and socialism were not serious when it came to their own playground. However, wanting to be generous and kind to others and feeling guilty about one’s privileged situation and possessions has motivated many in the argument for open borders. Indeed, the Marxist, woke ideology that took hold of America and spread to Europe and England and beyond is centered not only on the core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion but also on identifying one’s own privileges as immoral and favouring social ‘victims’ (intersectionality and equity). Hard work and fortune do not explain privilege, on this view: oppression of victims does. Thus, equal outcomes, not simply equal opportunity, is held to be moral. Reparations for the enslavement of ancestors six generations ago is claimed to be justice. To achieve equal outcomes (as opposed to equal opportunity) means to oppose privileges like private property. ‘Thou shalt not covet ... anything that is thy neighbour’s’ (the Tenth Commandment) becomes, ‘Thou shalt let those who covet anything that is yours have it.’ Hence, open borders.
Biblically, there is no argument for open borders. Caring for the aliens in the midst of Israel has nothing to do with open borders. The Gospel is for all nations, but the universalism of the Church has nothing to do with the proper regulation by a government through its laws and border policies. Scripture does affirm private property and oppose theft (two of the Ten Commandments). The morality of almsgiving is moral because it is freely given, not a tax collected by the government for the redistribution of wealth. Care for the poor is important for Christians (e.g., Galatians 6.10; 1 Timothy 5; etc.), but even the collective practices of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 2-4) were voluntary. On the other hand, open borders have allowed the proliferation of misery, slavery, sexual abuse, drugs, crime, and the exploitation of children, let alone the breaking up of families. It has also not addressed the problems in those countries from which people flee.
That said, however, this does not mean that Christians should treat individuals who are here as unworthy of Christian love and charity. Christians can appreciate the government’s deportation of illegal migrants while at the same time expressing Christian love to all. The missionary goes abroad to share the Gospel to sinners, and the illegal migrant comes to the USA and hopefully encounters Christians. The Church does not welcome migrants because of their immigration status but because they, like all believers, are sinners seeking the grace of God and the fellowship of the Christian community. Christians can feed the hungry, help the needy, employ the unemployed, educate children, provide healthcare to those without insurance, and so forth. They can do so in the USA just as they can do so in some foreign land where missionaries of previous generations took the Gospel, established schools and clinics, and witnessed to the love and grace of God. Paul expressed the ‘sincere love’ of the Church alongside the notion that God uses government to bring social order in Romans 12-13. Indeed, social disorder is a failure of love.
English (US) · 