Who Will Advocate Against The Beast of a Lawless Border and For Worker Visas? (7.3.10)

Washington has said for decades now that that we can't control the people flow at our southern border. Yet we attempt to control the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan in wars thousands of miles away? (Imagine if Israel said "we can't control our borders.")

Zion Pentecost Mission loves Mexican immigrants, who are made in the image and likeness of God. Moses was a migrant in Midian. Joseph was a migrant looking for food for his clan in Egypt and later became Pharoah's Prime Minister. Jesus' father Joseph fled Herod by way of Egypt, so Jesus was a migrant.

And as many of us Christians have experienced, it is often the Good Samaritan, the good foreigner, who helps us. Gracias a Dios. Likewise, the ten million or so social security paying undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico, have helped many businesses and people like you and me. And besides, even if you haven't experienced the love and help of foreigners here in the U.S., hey we're Christians, and there's no hating our brothers, and as the Good Samaritan proved, everyone is our neighbor.

As to our southern border, no one can dispute with a straight face that it is more or less lawlessly open.  Perhaps this is partly due to the intertwined history of Mexico and the U.S., whereby the bi-cultural border reality has never really given way to any government on either side. Nevertheless, it's time to take the modern concept of more open borders and marry it to the idea of more lawful borders.

And the most realistic way to do this is to begin granting some worker-family visas to folks already employed and otherwise abiding by U.S. laws and also to selectively start granting such visas at the border to qualified applicants.   

As to the issue of health care for workers with a visa work permit, larger corporations that employ more than fifty permitted workers, should be required to pay into a Mexican Workers U.S. Health Care Fund that would address basic health needs of the newly documented migrant. It would seem only fair to also require the Mexican government to provide a nominal percentage (3-5%) of this insurance cost in view of the fact that most migrants send about 20% of their wages back to Mexico.       

We are not saying that any immigration reform is or will be an easy task, but this modest proposal could allow for a break through amidst increasingly heated anti immigrant rhetoric (due to lack of border enforcement which seems sort of unChristian and to blame the migrant for U.S. inaction) on one side of the debate, and what seems to be largely idle hopes for a bipartisan cure all bill on the other side.

But the question remains. Who will politically advocate against the beast of lawlessly open borders and at the same time advocate that undocumented workers seeking a better life get visas? It seems like we Christians, as wayfearers and pilgrims in this world (1Peter2,11), often mistreated by beastly Babylon (Revelation), would be the likely candidates.