Subject: Immigration – It’s About Assimilation, not Invasion
Leviticus 24:22 “You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and the native, for I am the Lord your God.”
“We are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants into this country.” The leader who issued this statement is correctly referencing America’s Rule of Law, the US Constitution, which has established requirements any immigrant, legal or illegal, must meet before being allowed entry into the country.
This public announcement must be from President Trump, who has issued similar warnings to the current “caravan” of over 7,000 illegal immigrants marching toward the US border (it began months earlier in Central America, growing to this number in Southern Mexico). But the above announcement was not from President Trump. It was made in 2005 by then Illinois Senator Barack Obama. President Trump shared Obama’s position on illegal immigration this past week, adding “I agree with President Obama 100%”.
Maybe the following announcement sounds more like President Trump: “All Americans are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”
President Trump did not make that announcement either. That came during former President Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address. So again, President Trump’s current position on how to deal with the huge caravan of illegals is well supported not only by American Law but also by former presidents.
So why are we not hearing from Clinton and Obama, to join President Trump in a bipartisan effort to come up with the best strategy for how to handle the caravan? The answer is obvious. With midterm elections here in two weeks, Democrats would never openly back President Trump on the same immigration policy they also embrace. This is because truth is not the goal post. Power and control is. And some are willing to publicly change their truth claim for their own gain.
In this week’s Bible verse, we turn to the Old Testament book of Leviticus to discover how the God of the Bible regarded those who were not native Israelites but who wished to live in Israel among the Jews. God declared that those agreeing to live by the Jewish Law were to be assimilated into Jewish culture,
Once again, as we have shown in previous articles, this is where our Founding Fathers got their concept for receiving immigrants from other nations. In fact, God repeats this command in many other biblical passages, such as Numbers 9:14 (“If a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native.”).
Why would God desire to allow non-Jews, who take an oath to follow Jewish law, to not only become members of Israel but also to be loved by Jews as if they were born Jewish? Because the Jews themselves were once strangers in Egypt, as God reminded them in Leviticus 19:33-34: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” This is precisely what Obama and Clinton said in their above statements.
The point is that these verses, and the US Constitution, and two former US Presidents, and the current US President, are all basing their positions on assimilation, not invasion. The current caravan of over 7,000 illegal immigrants is an invasion. All Americans should be behind our President to prevent this invasion. Why? Because it is the law, and legal immigration is in the best interest of the Unites States of America.
Ed Croteau is a resident of Lee’s Summit and hosts a weekly study in Lees Summit called “Faith: Substance and Evidence.” He can be reached with your questions through the Lee’s Summit Tribune at Editor@lstribune.net.
