In Galatians, the apostle Paul writes in regards to the “fruit of the Spirit” and the “works of the flesh.” The former is a product of God’s influence in our lives, and the latter are actions that come from humanity’s corrupted and unredeemed disposition (Gal. 5:19–26).
Among the works of the flesh, Paul mentions what the English Standard Version refers to as “rivalries,” which the New International Version calls “selfish ambition” (v. 20). These are quarrels born of self-seeking. They divert our eyes from what’s good and true, shifting our focus toward spiting those that stand in the way in which of our gaining worldly treasure. Preoccupied with antagonism and winning the argument, we devalue doing what’s right. The fight becomes more necessary than the answer.
Our country’s immigration policy has long been a casualty of this dynamic, and the partisan rivalries obstructing the pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform exemplify a lot of what’s mistaken with our politics.
America’s immigration problems on the southwest border are not any small matter, involving each a humanitarian crisis for migrants and, on the house front, security and scarcity issues. In 2023, US Border Patrol reported over 2.4 million encounters with migrants on the Mexican border. Texas alone has a backlog of 458,630 immigration cases in its court system.
But migrants keep coming and applying for asylum because they consider the United States offers a greater life—and that in the event that they can just get across our border, they’ll find a way to remain. Many migrants arriving on the southern border have left their native lands, like Venezuela and Colombia, to flee each economic and political hardship. “It’s mistaken to assert that no person arriving on the border is a refugee, as many have very legitimate claims of asylum,” explained Mexico-based journalist Ioan Grillo. “Yet it’s also mistaken to say there aren’t any economic migrants. Or that individuals don’t flee each poverty and bullets.”
God told his people to handle immigrants due to their often desperate situations (Zech. 7:9–10), and that age-old desperation continues to be our world’s reality today. Yet too lots of our political leaders have been, at best, half-serious about fixing these problems. Selfish rivalries, pettiness, and fearmongering have frustrated years of efforts to deal with immigration reform with the cooperation and sobriety it requires.
People on either side of the aisle were optimistic in regards to the prospects of immigration laws after then-president Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. “I feel 2013 is the 12 months of immigration reform,” Sen. Lindsey Graham declared. The bipartisan “Gang of Eight” drafted the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 and passed it within the US Senate, however the House never took it up. The bill died within the 113th Congress.
Soon, bipartisan immigration reform became anathema within the Republican Party. A loud minority of Tea Party activists found that hard-line border rhetoric got more attention than talk of comprehensive solutions. In 2014, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat, at the very least partially, due to his support of immigration reform, which his primary opponent characterised as amnesty for illegal aliens.
On the presidential campaign trail the next 12 months, Sen. Ted Cruz took Gang of Eight member Sen. Marco Rubio to task for the unforgivable sin of working with Democrats on a bill that might’ve given some illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. “The Gang of Eight voted as a gang against enforcing and securing the border,” Cruz said, though his own record on immigration reform was far less restrictionist than he’d claim once public opinion turned.
The rise of former president Donald Trump, who infamously launched his 2016 presidential campaign suggesting most Mexican immigrants are violent criminals, guaranteed the Gang of Eight approach had no near-term future within the GOP. And now, almost a decade later, migrants, border states, and native governments are all unnecessarily suffering due to selfish ambition of just a few.
The situation got here to a head early this 12 months, with the Biden administration in a “standoff” with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and greater than a dozen other red-state governors, after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government in a border dispute. Given the urgency of the moment, one other bipartisan group of senators crafted a narrower compromise deal—but apparently such an answer isn’t politically expedient in an election 12 months.
Trump publicly opposed the deal, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in private, reportedly pressured Senate Republicans to do the identical, saying the previous president desired to campaign on a broken immigration system and urging his colleagues not “to do anything to undermine” Trump. That version of the deal died, and a new edition, announced this past Sunday, died on Wednesday within the Senate.
This is civic malpractice. Foreclosing a chance to deal with a serious national problem to win an election is a violation of public trust. This zero-sum gamesmanship has gone much too far. Legislators don’t have to just accept the primary proposal placed on the table—the deal that failed this week included unrelated war funding—but they do need to interact in good faith, with a watch toward solving the issue.
And the issue shouldn’t be exclusive to Republicans. While Democrats have demonstrated a greater commitment to reform, some on the Left have reflexively resisted strong border control. “I hope Democrats can understand that it isn’t xenophobic to be concerned in regards to the border,” Democratic Sen. John Fetterman recently said. “It’s an inexpensive conversation, and Democrats should engage.”
Whether they are going to stays to be seen. Over the years, Democrats have responded to Republican opportunism and harshness with some rivalry-motivated antics of their very own. This theater may help them win elections, nevertheless it has done a disservice to our country by downplaying the hardships that border states endure.
In some cases, Democrats’ own constituents have suffered for his or her selfish ambition. For instance, cities removed from the southern border—like Chicago, Denver, and New York City—virtue-signaled and bragged about being sanctuary cities without adequate budget or plan for actually supporting 1000’s of migrants. Progressive mayors and governors used the border crisis as a chance to capitalize on national partisan polarization. They used a caricature of conservatives as a foil, talking about sanctuary city status as an affordable option to spite Republicans without having to cope with any of the true costs of our broken system. They boasted of generosity but were never forced to significantly consider what they’d do in the event that they had to control Texas.
That performance was cut short when Texas Gov. Greg Abbot began sending asylum seekers up north to cities that only intended to support them symbolically. His decision was morally and ethically suspect, but he effectively called the Democrats’ bluff and compelled them into the conversation in earnest. Instead of selling wolf tickets to the media, they now had skin in the sport. And after receiving tens of 1000’s of migrants, they began screaming bloody murder. Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticized the Biden administration on immigration. The charade has been exposed.
We don’t should pretend either side are equivalent on this issue to acknowledge that it’s more complex than simply being kind and letting migrants in or mean-spiritedly keeping them out. While the Christian call to treat the immigrant with compassion is obvious, that general disposition doesn’t prohibit us from acknowledging the sensible reality. We don’t let everyone on the street into our homes, because we don’t have enough food or rooms for all. America has wealth, nevertheless it’s not without those self same considerations with regards to immigration. Encouraging people to return to a spot that shouldn’t be prepared to accommodate them shouldn’t be kind.
It’s time to get serious. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and we should always encourage our leaders to do the labor of democracy, to take a seat down and thoughtfully find solutions that either side can accept.
What we want straight away is to start out pondering and acting like a united country. We can’t afford these partisan rivalries and the selfish ambition that perpetually stalls necessary laws until the following election. We can’t afford to only worry about our party, region, state, or city. This shouldn’t be easy methods to maintain a healthy republic.
We can also’t belittle the struggles of our political opponents. Regardless of which party we’re in, Christians shouldn’t have any tolerance for the denigration of immigrants, self-interested gamesmanship, or political theatrics where the lives of wounding individuals are concerned. The Bible calls us to like the foreigners amongst us, to feed and clothe them (Deut. 10:18; Jer. 7:5–7). We can’t let our self-interest or contempt for the opposite party make us lose sight of that command.
Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and the president of AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the co-author of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.
