Five Myths About Illegal Immigration
6 May 2006
Myth #1 – Illegal immigrants do jobs that Americans won’t do.
The truth is; illegal immigrants work for wages that Americans won’t work for. Greedy business owners who refuse to pay a living wage to their employees look to illegal immigrants for cheap labor. The less these lawbreaking business owners dole out for wages the more their pockets are padded with profits. Unfortunately, being taken advantage of by greedy American employers is better for illegal immigrants than being victimized by the corrupt governments of their former countries. Thus, illegal immigrants continue flooding into this country to do hard labor for low wages.
Politicians, whose campaigns depend upon donations from American business owners, are not about to do anything to offend those who make such generous contributions to their political coffers. Hence, we need not expect our elected officials to ever get serious about enforcing our immigration laws. There’s simply no way that our government is going to offend American business owners by deporting their cheap labor force or cracking down on those hiring illegal aliens.
Myth #2 – America is a nation of immigrants.
While America may be a nation of immigrants, it is not nor never has been a nation of illegal immigrants. The key word here is “illegal.” I don’t know anyone that is against immigration. Illegal immigration, on the other hand, is a horse of a different color.
All true baseball fans are against steroids. They realize if steroids are not outlawed from the game then America’s favorite pastime will be no more. Baseball will be ruined. Likewise, one can be a big fan of immigration and still be a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, realizing that without laws controlling immigration our country will be no more. Our economy will be ruined, our national security compromised, our distinct culture forfeited, and our future imperiled.
Myth #3 – It is unchristian to oppose illegal immigration.
While it is true that the Bible has much to say about the humane treatment of strangers in our land, these Scriptural admonitions, like all others, can only be properly interpreted in the light of context and other Scripture. As it is often said, “The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible.” When particular verses are pulled out of context and severed from all other Scripture the inevitable result is heresy. Cults are good examples of the inescapable consequences of such poor exegesis. Though they claim the Bible as their spiritual authority, they are guilty of twisting the Scripture “unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).
Many Christians make a blanket-application of every Scriptural admonition concerning the treatment of strangers to every foreigner in our land. By doing so, they paint themselves into many precarious corners. For instance, should Exodus 22:21—“But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you”—be applied to foreign Al Qaeda members who have snuck into our country to carryout terrorist attacks? Obviously, such an application of this admonition is not only unscriptural, but absurd; something made abundantly clear elsewhere in Scripture. For example, Nahum 3:13 warns us that our nation will be devoured by fire if “the gates of [our] land shall be set wide open unto [our] enemies.”
The strangers Scripture admonishes us to treat as our fellow citizens are those willing to be assimilated into our culture, not those antagonistic to it and determined to supplant it with their own (Leviticus 17:8-9; 24:16; Deuteronomy 5:14; Ezekiel 44:9). Contrary to the opinion of today’s multiculturalists, America is not obligated to change its culture, become multilingual, and renounce its Christian heritage in order to accommodate each and every immigrant crossing our borders or coming to our shores. Instead, it is the obligation of all immigrants to assimilate themselves to our culture, learn our language and respect our Christian heritage. Any who refuse to do so should be denied entrance into our land.
No president of the United States ever articulated the Christian position on immigration better than Theodore Roosevelt. On January 3, 1919, Roosevelt said the following about immigration: “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Myth #4 – Illegal immigration is good for America’s economy.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, illegal immigration cost our country $10 billion a year. In actuality, the annual cost of illegal immigrant households to America is $26.3 billion; however, this figure is reduced to a $10 billion deficit once we factor in the $16 billion illegal immigrants pay in taxes. If, as much of Washington is now proposing, all illegal immigrants currently in America are granted amnesty, the Center for Immigration Studies predicts that the deficit these households cost our nation will almost triple to $29 billion, due to the fact that these families will have more access to government services without paying more in taxes.
Despite these frightening figures from the Center for Immigration Studies, the real price our nation pays for illegal immigration is much higher. For instance, the Bureau of Justice reports that 29% of America’s federal inmates are illegal immigrants who have been arrested, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned for crimes they’ve committed while living here unlawfully. Needless to say, the apprehension, prosecution, and incarceration of these foreign born criminals has strapped a huge financial burden to the back of our country’s criminal justice system.
George Borjas, a Harvard professor, estimates that illegal immigration costs today’s American workers $133 billion a year in wage depression and job loss. According to Mr. Borjas, 2.3 million American workers lost their jobs to illegal immigrants in 1996 alone. Of course, this figure has gone up since then, with anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 illegal immigrants crossing our borders everyday.
Myth #5 – America can’t deport 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants.
Deportation is a straw-man set up by illegal immigrants and their supporters to knock down all opposition to illegal immigration. If successful in convincing us of the impossibility of deporting 12 to 20 million people, illegal immigrants believe that they can force us to throw up our hands and surrender to their demands for amnesty and open borders. Unfortunately, this scarecrow appears to be scaring many into throwing in the towel and running up the white flag.
Conservative pundit George Will recently opined that the deportation of America’s illegal aliens would take “200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska.” Speaking to California’s Orange County Business Council, our president recently remarked, “Massive deportation of the people [illegal immigrants] here is unrealistic. It’s just not going to work.” Yet, contrary to Mr. Will’s and President Bush’s opinions, the solution to our immigration crisis is not deportation, but attrition.
In response to the President waving the white flag to illegal immigrants, Will Adams, a spokesman for Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, said, “No one is talking about mass deportations. Our approach is one of attrition where you make it difficult for an illegal alien to get a job in this country or to access our social services, so that over time, illegal aliens stop coming to this country and the ones already here go home.”
Wow, what a novel idea, our country actually enforcing its immigration laws to solve its immigration crisis. I wonder why our lawmakers never thought of that. If they had, they could have prevented our illegal immigration problem from occurring in the first place. Now, however, all they can do is attempt to solve what they should have prevented by doing what they should have done to start with.
Don Walton
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