The Sojourner Is My Neighbor: A Biblical Case Against Statist Immigration Control
The immigration debate among Christians has become exhausting, not because the Bible is unclear, but because we keep asking the wrong question. We keep asking, “What new powers should we give the magistrate so he can decide who gets to live among us?” Scripture never asks that question because it never grants the magistrate those powers.
Leviticus 19:34 is clear: the sojourner who dwells among you shall be to you as the native, and you shall love him as yourself. One law, one judgment, one standard for the native and for the foreigner. When he steals, he makes restitution or dies just like an Israelite would. When he is stolen from, he is defended just like an Israelite would be. No new category of “immigration crime” is ever invented. No visa, no green card, no background check, no quota. Nothing.
So I keep asking the obvious question: what is the difference between the sojourner and my native-born neighbor that justifies an entirely separate set of coercive rules? The Muslim who wants to tear the country down is no more dangerous than the home-grown communist who wants the exact same thing. Both are equally capable of idolatry, theft, and murder. Both fall under the exact same law. To create a crime called “illegal presence” that applies only to one and not the other is to add a distinction to God’s law that God Himself never made.
The Magistrate’s Job Is Justice, Not Border Patrol
The magistrate’s commission is spelled out with painful clarity: he is God’s servant to punish wrongdoers and praise those who do good (Rom 13:4; 1 Pet 2:14). Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue (Deut 16:20). That is the whole job description. There is not one syllable in Scripture that expands that commission to include vetting motives, stamping passports, or deporting people who have injured no one. Until there is a victim, until there are two or three witnesses, until the matter has been inquired into diligently, the magistrate has no case and no sword.
Every family is free to sell, rent, give away, or refuse to transact with anyone—native or foreigner—for any reason or no reason at all. If the covenant community does not want large numbers of foreigners settling permanently, they have the most powerful tool imaginable: just don’t sell or rent to them. No statute is needed. No bureaucracy is required. No magistrate is authorized to force a sale, and no magistrate is authorized to forbid one.
That is regulation by the people who actually own the land, not regulation by a centralized state pretending to own the land. If I want to open my house to immigrants, that is my decision, and the magistrate has nothing to say about it. If I don’t want to sell to them, that is also my decision, and the magistrate has nothing to say about it. Private property settles the question without a single new law.
Give the government control of immigration and that is exactly what they will do: control immigration. First, they control the foreigner. Then they control you. The same Christians who screamed for the power to deport the alien because “I don’t like you” are the same ones who will be shocked when that power is turned on native-born citizens labeled “white supremacists” under whatever the latest definition happens to be that week. The sword you hand the magistrate to keep out the people you fear will be used by the next administration to keep out – or round up – people like you.
The Real Problem Is Our Own Statism
The welfare state, government housing, anchor-baby policies, in-state tuition for non-citizens, fiat-money subsidies – those are the magnets. Americans live in government housing too. Americans live on welfare too. Should we deport them? The problem is not that foreigners are coming; the problem is that we have abandoned God’s law for man-made law and created a system that rewards vice and punishes virtue. Enforce the eighth and ninth commandments honestly and the attractions disappear overnight.
Of course, Israel had borders. They were enforced by the sword of justice against covenant-breakers, not by the pen of bureaucrats against peaceful settlement. Rahab was welcomed because she feared God. Ruth the Moabitess became David’s great-grandmother without a background check. Solomon prayed that foreigners would come from the ends of the earth to worship the true God and placed no prior requirements on their entry (1 Kgs 8:41–43). The Canaanites were driven out for the specific abominations listed in Genesis 15:16, not for lacking paperwork.
Some insist the land was “collectively held” by the tribes and therefore the magistrate or the community may forbid individual sales to outsiders. Show me the verse. Show me the law that punishes an Israelite for renting a field to a foreigner because “the tribe didn’t approve.” The Jubilee protected inheritance, not through a national zoning board, but through automatic reversion every fifty years. Individuals remained free to lease or temporarily sell the use of the land, and the text is full of foreigners living, trading, and prospering among Israel without any hint of centralized permission. To turn tribal allotment into a modern immigration quota is to replace God’s mechanism with man’s.
Someone would say we must deport all the immigrants, illegal or not, and then get our house in order. This is, however, to prioritize order and safety above justice. We must not do evil that good may come. How can we expect the foreigner to respect our laws when we don’t even ask or require our own people to follow them? All the attention and focus is on making sure that foreigner does the right thing, but regarding our own native-born citizens, the attitude is “we will fix that later.” This is a lazy and godless attitude toward both our neighbor and the foreigner, and most importantly, toward God’s law.
A society that actually enforced God’s law tomorrow would see: (1) No welfare magnet (theft); (2) No forced integration (violation of private property); (3) No deportation of non-criminals (violation of one law for native and sojourner); (4) Swift, public justice against any person – native or foreign – who actually violates God’s law. The result would be rapid assimilation by those willing to live peaceably and rapid self-deportation by those who are not. And it would happen without a single new statute, without a single new bureaucracy, and without the magistrate ever stepping outside the commission God gave him.
