How to Love Your Neighbors in an Immigration Crisis

By: Chris Johnson

Maybe it was the complaints coming from his border agents; maybe it was the public outcry from his constituents in liberal strongholds like New York, LA, and Chicago; maybe it was the governors of those cities’ comments about his lack of response; maybe he was just required by Congress to spend the money; hey, maybe he read my email alert from last month – all we know is that Joe Biden finally is doing a little something about the river of illegal immigrants gushing across the southern border.

A very little something, it’s true, but still a lot more than he has been doing: twenty miles of new border fence isn’t nothing, especially when you promised on the campaign trail to never build one foot and stopping new construction was one of your very first acts as president.

Whatever the deciding factor, on October 5 President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced that, not only would the stretch of wall be built, but it would bulldoze through 26 federal laws in order to make it happen.

Nullifying environmental safety laws and endangered species protection laws, Secretary of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas cited an “immediate need” for the wall as over 200,000 migrants illegally crossed the border in September alone.

Perhaps not by coincidence, Biden’s decision comes days after Elon Musk visited the border, using the occasion to test X’s (the app formerly known as Twitter) live streaming ability with an interview of local law enforcement regarding the border.

From the New York Post: “Musk then mentioned how he heard a man hopped the border with facial tattoos, including teardrops, which he said ‘means they have murdered someone and they are so proud of having murdered someone that they tattoo — one tear on their face for every one person that they killed.’

“‘That’s exactly right,’ [Rep. Tony] Gonzales — whose district covers hundreds of miles along the border — replied when Musk asked if that was correct.

“The flow of people coming to the country is so large that Musk said it is ‘leading to a collapse of social services where even America’s largest city, New York, is buckling under the pressure of just how many illegal immigrants are going to New York.’”

Then, just the next day, New York City Mayor Erik Adams made moves to temporarily revoke the city’s “right-to-shelter” law, which requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who asks for it, citing projections that the cost to the city was untenable.

In his statement Mayor Adams said, “With more than 122,700 asylum seekers having come through our intake system since the spring of 2022, and projected costs of over $12 billion for three years, it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue…”

Housing the masses of foreign immigrants is only one of the concerns. The New York Post reports of a 20% increase of tuberculosis infections over the last year: “The spike in NYC tuberculosis cases has also been partly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic — and vaccine fatigue — hindering efforts to diagnose and treat cases, and to the arrival in the city since spring 2022 of over 100,000 migrants, who are at a heightened risk of developing active tuberculosis infections.”

And New York City is far from the only city struggling under the burden of supporting the migrants the Biden Administration has allowed into the country. Chicago residents are also growing frustrated with their city’s handling of the situation. Citizens of the “Windy City” are losing the facilities built using their tax dollars and for their well-being. At the beginning of August, the first group of migrants moved into a “temporary” shelter in Broadway Armory Park – to the consternation of residents of the surrounding areas.

Another such facility is planned for the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse where, Jazz Shaw of HotAir.com writes, “One woman with a bullhorn said, ‘We ain’t having that. No! You want to tell us what to do in our park? You cannot do that! We pay our money!’

“Others explained passionately how it had taken years to develop sports and community programs at the park for youths, many of whom have no fathers at home. Mentors and coaches come down and, in some cases, ‘a lot of these coaches, they are their father,’ as another woman said. Later, a town hall was held inside the fieldhouse and some local elected officials came to speak and take questions. Some of them clearly regretted it. The meeting was described as being standing-room only. And one woman took to the podium and called out the Mayor directly. She said, ‘What I want to say is, Mayor Brandon Johnson, we are disappointed in you. This is the community that supported you, how dare you!’”

Chicago Resident Cata Truss even told FOX host Jesse Watters that, “as a life-long Democrat, to me, the Republican Party is looking real good.”

It makes you wonder how many other residents of these typically deep blue areas are feeling the same way.

The complaints of these citizens reveal the weakness of the argument by liberal Christians: that we have to allow any and every immigrant because we have a Christian duty to love our neighbor. First, loving our neighbor doesn’t mean giving everyone everything they want. Even if that were possible, some people want and need things that others expressly don’t want or need to not have. Second, when we allow unlimited immigration into this country in an effort to show love for the immigrant, we’re exposing another, closer neighbor to diseases like tuberculosis, we’re ending vital youth and athletic programs in the inner city to make way for migrant housing, we’re flooding community job markets with those who aren’t from the community, and when migrants enter the country illegally, unvetted, we have no idea what kinds of people they really are, as Elon Musk discussed with Rep. Gonzalez.

When it comes down to it, closing the border is an act of love for neighbor. Not only that, but government’s sole reason for existence is the safety of its constituents. This has not been a priority for the Biden administration by any stretch of the imagination, and this news of new wall construction is likely not a reversal of course, sadly. We’ve been reminded over last weekend how important border security is by the tragic, despicable events in Jerusalem. Does the Biden administration have the clarity to take that warning to heart?

 

To view this article in your browser, Click Here

For more information, articles and newsletters, please check out our website at https://americandecency.org/

You can support ADA financially by visiting: https://give.cornerstone.cc/americandecency

 

---