So, in case you missed the growing trend, sending “migrants” to Martha’s Vineyard was just the most recent move by Redstate governors to pressure the Biden Administration to do something about the border.

And I must say that there is something inherently rich and hilarious in watching Bluestate governors and Bluecity mayors cry foul about the overwhelming influx of illegal immigrants into their cities and states. They are calling these actions a “stunt”. They are complaining that Governors Abbot and DeSantis haven’t called ahead. They say that it’s cruel, and dehumanizing, that it’s a stunt.

Now, I’m not going to spend the whole episode pointing out the logical incoherencies of the Democrat arguments against this practice. Other people who are committed to politics and not theology have already done so. But I will say that the arguments against Abbot and DeSantis are all either incoherent, idiotic, or bad-faith.

The reality is that there is one person who actually has the power to do something about this now – and that’s President Biden. And there is 1 body who has the power to provide a more permanent solution – that’s congress.

Congress has the power to build a wall, to pass border legislation, to empower Border Patrol. The President has to power to enforce the laws we have on the books. He can halt all entry into the country. He can stop and detain people at the border.

This may be a problem with no complete solution; but it’s not a problem without a satisfactory solution. Immigration stabilized throughout President Trump’s term in office. Border removals were up but interior removals basically disappeared because Bluestate gov’s and mayors refused to help enforce the laws. So-called Sanctuary Cities resisted ICE’s ability to remove illegal immigrants.

But, according to research compiled by Cato, the total number of illegal immigrants residing in the US dropped from about 11.3M to 10.9M from 2016-2020. Granted the total number had been on a decline since 2010, when it was estimated to be 12.5M. And the number stabilized and declined under President Trump’s presidency, despite a booming economy and a refusal to enforce the law in many places in the US interior.

So, again, there will never be a complete solution to ending illegal immigration, but we certainly can significantly reduce it.

And there is a moral and theological case to ending illegal immigration. Despite the caterwauling of congressional professional mourners, these moirologists have actually set themselves up for a fall. By claiming that sending illegal immigrants to very large wealthy cities in the north, they are proving the point – illegal immigration is immoral, exploitative, and intolerable.

Let me pause and prove my point in a way that is, indeed, ironic. And not only is it ironic because the quotation itself says the opposite of the point it’s trying to make, but it’s ironic because it is so often quoted on the internet by people who seemingly have also missed the towering irony of the statement. The quote I’m giving you is the beginning portion of a much longer piece of writing from Anthony Bourdain. And Bourdain has, I admit, a lot of good and worthy and deep insights in this piece. But I think he maybe misses the point on at least on major issue. And it’s a major issue that a lot of people seem to miss the point on…or, more darkly, perhaps Bourdain didn’t miss the point at all and he was pointing out American hypocrisy. I’ll leave you to determine whether Bourdain was oblivious or subversive. But here’s what he said:

“Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people — we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy — the restaurant business as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.” But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position — or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.”

Now, I’m not going to dispute with him that in many or most major metro areas illegal immigrants or immigrants on visas do in fact do almost all the cooking, cleaning, landscaping, and nannying.

I’m not going to dispute that he’s NEVER had one American kid come in and apply to be a busboy or a dishwasher.

The bigger question is why.

Why have no American kids applied for these jobs where Bourdain has worked? Why do Americans “demand” that Mexicans do this work? Why do Americans refuse to do this work?

Because it doesn’t pay well enough. It’s not a complicated issue. It’s not some insoluable riddle. Does decadence and laziness play a part? Sure! But when I was in High School I got a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant working for family friends, and I was grateful for the job, and I worked hard. Growing up in the Evergreen school district all of the boys, at least all of them who wanted money and who weren’t farming in the summer, and even some who did, all of us worked construction or worked at restaurants or baled hay or fed hogs. Evergreen kids worked for the road crews, the concrete and roofing companies, the fast food joints, the local businesses and farms.

The work wasn’t beneath us. But in places like Southern California those jobs don’t go to High School kids or people looking for entry level positions in a career – they become terminal positions for illegal immigrants who are paid slave wages. And everyone, or at least everyone with a shred of honesty, admits that places where illegal immigrants are tolerated in the workforce are places where wages in those fields drop.

When Bourdain argues that Americans won’t do those jobs, he’s wrong and right. He’s right that Americans won’t do those jobs FOR THOSE WAGES. But he’s wrong that Americans won’t do those jobs. I’m American. I’ve done those jobs. My wife has nannied for wealthy families; my sister-in-law has nannied for wealthy families, and my wife and her sister are as white as they come; nobody’d mistake them for Mexican.

But this is the point. Illegal immigration is not tolerated because it is a humanitarian moral imperative – the fact that all these Bluestaters are moaning about it proves they don’t actually believe their own rhetoric. Illegal immigration is tolerated because it creates a nearly bottomless pool of slave-wage workers to make sure that our houses, babies, and dishes are all clean. And this, by the way, isn’t new. In the West there were Anti-Chinese Leagues because people said that, the “Chinaman couldn’t outwork the white man, but he could underlive him.” And this is not in any way to diminish the plight of Chinese immigrants to this country; a lot of people suffered very significant trauma and hardship. But the point was that having a huge pool of labor that would work for far less than others was a threat to the wages and standards of living of other workers.

And this has happened all over the world and many times over. There is a constant struggle between wage earners and wage payers and consumers. Wage earners have an incentive to form guilds and unionize to ensure that wages stay high. Wage payers have an incentive to increase the labor pool to create a race to the bottom and to earn more profits. Consumers have an incentive to see prices lowered across the board.

But, for some reason, lots of people in America, lots of people who like to view themselves as compassionate, caring, class-conscious people are either blithely unaware or cynically don’t care, that there are millions of people in this country who are living FAR below where a fair market would place them, because it’s convenient for capitalists and consumers to bring in illegal immigrants and pay them lower wages so that the business owners pocket more money and the consumers save more.

But this is immoral. It’s not only immoral because it’s exploitative towards the illegal immigrants (who, are participating in their own victimization, by the way) but it’s immoral towards actual citizens who want to do those jobs but who also have taxes to pay and who want to earn a decent wage. It’s also immoral because it’s employing people without paying into the social security and Medicare/ Medicaid and Workers Compensation systems. It creates a criminal class of employees who are taking wages, taking jobs, and not paying into the system they exploit.

Now look, if I lived in a desperately poor and crime-ridden place I might be tempted to hop the border illegally, too. But let’s not pretend that what they’re doing is a victimless crime, because it isn’t. It drives down wages, it takes money out of the social safety nets, it leaves broken societies in Mexico and Central America where there are whole communities with no men.

More than that, it undermines the actual value of citizenship. Tolerance of illegal immigration reinforces the ludicrous cosmopolitan notion that we’re all just “citizens of the world” and that citizenship in a nation and state and community don’t matter. But, of course they do. Maybe if every, self-described “citizen of the world” would voluntarily de-register themselves to vote, I might take them a little more seriously. But they don’t so I won’t. The undermining of the value of citizenship is destructive to the body politic and weakens communal ties and the sense of responsibility to a people and a place that God has put upon all people.

But perhaps the worst thing about tolerance of illegal immigration is that it teaches us to look at Mexicans as an underclass. I don’t think people realize this, but when you see illegal immigrants, almost all from Mexico, and they are the only people who are doing what some consider menial tasks, that has a formative power on the brain. We associate a race of people with a kind of work, and if that weren’t bad enough, we associate a race of people with work we deem dirty, and beneath us. Mexicans are not only deemed to be an underclass – albeit subconsciously – but because they lack citizenship and political agency they have no means of raising themselves above their current position. And that sounds an awful lot like slavery.

And perhaps it’s worse, in some ways, because at least with slavery you had to look its ugliness in the face and recognize it for what it was. But with illegal immigration we’re creating a permanent underclass and patting ourselves on the back because of how nice and virtuous we are.

I could say more on this topic; but suffice to say, that theologically, from a Christian perspective, illegal immigration is immoral. And as Christians we should seek to uphold laws, value citizenship and communal duties, protect tradesmen and unskilled workers, and maintain the dignity of all people despite their race, heritage, or place of origin.

Christians have a moral duty to oppose illegal immigration, because illegal immigration is immoral. We need to take that duty seriously.