The solution to immigration problems

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jan 4, 2015 at 21:15

Hi, Dave

I agree that Sweden is a canary in the mine to the rest of us; but then, we're all canaries in the mine to one another: In some things, we're the canary, the one who dies first so the others take notice and get out of the mine. I other things, we're the miners.

Concerning immigration, the Swedes have their problems and we Americans have ours. We ought to be "authorities" on immigration, since we've been at this game for some 400 years; whereas the Swedes have only been taking in immigrants in large numbers for the past few decades.

You mentioned the Bible and Emerson. Were our fathers really consulting those works when determining immigration policy? In reality, we did things on an ad hoc basis: When we were a young nation, we craved fellow settlers to help us build and defend our country.. Fairly diverse groups, such as the Huguenots, Swedes, Germans and Scotch-Irish, were able to mix fairly easily with the original English settlers because we faced common enemies, in the form of the French and Indians, etc., and the land itself. As a race of pioneers, we also were very mobile, able to move ever deeper into a seemingly endless wilderness as the new arrivals took up lands we left behind.

Around 1900, all that changed. We had pretty much filled out our country, all except Oklahoma, Alaska and Hawaii, and the immigrants were streaming in by the millions from East and South Europe -- people of strange customs: Jews, Catholics, Anarchists and Socialists. Then we started to curb immigration, setting in place quotas so that the new arrivals were from approximately the same places as the people already here. Essentially, those were racial quotas. The problem for the Swedes, and for the Americans of today, is that racial quotas became "bad" during the Civil Rights days of the 1960s.

You mentioned Emerson. He engaged in a Utopian experiment:

Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre (360,000 m2) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands, a community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by Transcendentalism.[87] The farm would run based on a communal effort, using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use no wool or leather.[88] Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself.[89] Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us much land and money".[90] Even Alcott admitted he was not prepared for the difficulty in operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he wrote.[91] After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord[90] which Alcott named "Hillside".[91]

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

What the US, Sweden and the rest of the Western World embarked on in the 1960s was a great Utopian experiment, based on idealistic notions such as the "human race", the "oneness of humanity", etc. We did this rather jerkily, and are still working out the kinks; but the Europeans dove right into it as though they had just gotten a green light from God. I don't doubt, that their recent dabbling in "white supremacy" had a lot to do with it. What we're seeing now, is the fruit of that utopian thinking.

You also mentioned the Bible. The Bible was based on "Torah": which roughly translates to "teaching", specifically, the teaching of the Patriarchs, prophets and sages. It really wasn't utopian teaching, though some casual readers might think it was. Torah was given by God, yes; but that wasn't the same as some thinkers like Emerson, Alcott, etc. coming up with new ideas to try out. Torah was given by the One who created us and the world we live in; and it dealt with the many weaknesses which the Almighty foreknew, and which the children of Israel worked with among themselves. The Bible is not just a book of teachings, but a book of teachings followed by people stumbling and bumbling, trying to work out those teachings. Even the New Testament is like this: It begins with the teachings and story of Jesus; but most of it consists of an account of the practice of the early church, and letters to that church to address their many problems.

You said,

"there is the biblical injunction to be kind to strangers, since the Jews were once strangers in Egypt."

Yes, there is that injunction. There were also injunctions for the Jews to keep themselves pure and holy, and to separate themselves from the people around them. They were enjoined to totally eliminate the Canaanites before them, lest they learn their ways and abandon God. After these injuctions, came the story of their working them out: a story of imitating the people around them and worshipping their gods, only to fall repeatedly into calamity because of it. Taken together, the injunctions (ALL of them, not just some) along with the working out, we have a good lesson of immigration policy if we care to take it to heart.

If we want to apply those Biblical lessons to today, we should consider (by "we", I mean the Swedes, the Americans, the Jews and others) the heart of the matter: If we don't stand with God and separate ourselves to His name and His service, we will ultimately be overcome by and put into bondage to the people around us: The Swedes will become an Islamic society, with draconian rule by mullahs; the Americans will become a Latin American society, with rule by dictators, corrupt officials and drug dealers; and the Jews, those wise enough to go live in the land God gave to them, will be destroyed by their Arab neighbors. Utopias arise and then collapse, as Emerson discovered; but a country that fears and obeys God will prosper. Some believe this, and profit from it. Others scoff at this, and charge headlong into destruction.

Shalom shalom :-)

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