As certain elements of my party struggle to get in touch with their inner Pat Buchanan, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what the Bible says about immigrants.

Obviously, not enough.

Immigration is different: The Bible is explicit. In the Torah, Moses commanded, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.” The Bible is unabashedly pro-immigrant.

No. It is not.

What you neglect to state here is the Israel had condtions and rules, laid out by God, for allowing aliens within their borders.

It most assuredly was not, "All comers welcome!"

The argument is simple: You were immigrants in Egypt, and you didn’t like being mistreated, so now that you have your own country, you should treat immigrants compassionately.

And legally. They had to abide by the rules to stay. And not every alien was welcome at all.

Compassionate treatment of immigrants is basically an early version of the Golden Rule: Treat people the way you used to want to be treated when you were in Egypt.

Which included legalities.

The Exodus was an act of protection against mistreated immigrants.

No. It was not.

It was when the time of the people of the Promised Land reached the point God said to go take the land for yourselves.

The children of Israel had earlier crossed the border of Egypt to seek a more economically secure life for themselves. Eventually they were seen as a threat to Egyptian cultural purity and national security. Much later, King David surrounded himself with immigrants, as did his son, Solomon. The prophets spoke out on behalf of aliens frequently.

But they never said to be illegal.

Jesus of Nazareth was an immigrant. When he was a child, he and Mary and Joseph crossed the border to Egypt illegally.

No. They did not. It was not illegal for them to cross the border.

You see, they had a well-founded fear of political persecution from a Middle Eastern dictator named Herod.

Yep. They did. But they were not illegal immigrants.

A few years ago, I debated Pat Buchanan on the issue of immigration. His view was that immigrants threaten our culture to such an extent that these people spell the “Death of the West.”

But he’s wrong. Immigrants do not threaten our culture; generally, they enrich it.

ONLY when they bring something with them we want and need. And ONLY when they come to integrate into our society. Not remain cultural diverse.

People who choose this country at great risk are more likely to share its values than those who are simply born here. Latino immigrants sign up for military service in greater proportions than native-born Americans.

Those that sign up do so to legally gain citizen and entry.

Don't even begin to compare them to the illegals.

I know a young man from El Salvador who signed up, even before being granted citizenship, and served with great courage in combat in Iraq. I’m not sure there’s a more telling metric for love of country than the decision to put one’s life on the line.

In the past with Philipinos. They signed up to get citizenship. It was a guaranteed route.

Nice guys. Good friends. But that IS why they signed up.

In this debate, I asked Pat this: If 200 years from now, this country is filled with people who read and love Thomas Jefferson and James Madison but who are overwhelmingly dark-skinned, would this be a good thing? He said that it would be a tragedy and a disaster.

I don't agree with Pat's feeling here.

This isn’t we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident conservatism — this is blood-and-soil conservatism. In my opinion, it is also Pagan to the core.

Hmmmm. God divided Man first by language and then by color. He didn't want us to homogonize. He says that leads to pride and ego.

Does that make me racist? No, simply and observation of fact from the Bible you are talking about on the subject you brought up here.

Then there is the matter of the English language. Someone once asked me, “Do you want your grandchildren to grow up speaking Spanglish?”

Sure, why not? We all grew up speaking “Franglish.” Our language is a mix of French and Anglo-Saxon that started with the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Which would require or society and culture to be overrun and replaced for the language replacement to occur. Which would make grandchildren not American in the historical context. Maybe not American in anything but name only.

Living languages change. I can read the Latin of St. Augustine pretty much as well (or, in my case, as badly) as that of John Paul II, because Latin is a dead language.

You are talking about language replacement, not lanuguage evolution.

No way our language could evolve to Spanish within the time of your grandchildren. It would lave to be forcibly replaced.

Jesus grew up speaking “Hebrelonian,” a mix of Hebrew and the Chaldean that the Jews picked up in Babylon. Didn’t he turn out pretty well?

Actually, Jesus spoke Aramaic.

I understand that on the surface, the current argument is not about immigration per se, but about illegal immigration. I also understand, from nearly a decade of hosting talk radio, that almost every time I run into someone who wants to take a tough approach on illegal immigrants, they also turn out to dislike legal ones as well.

Flat out false statement. I am dead set against illegal, but fully for legal. So are the majority I know or have listend to.

Let’s face an obvious fact: People tend to want the laws that they like to be strictly enforced, and the laws they don’t like to be loosely enforced. Strictness of enforcement is usually proportional to the level of agreement with the law.

You cannot loosely enforce immigration law and still call it law.

Conservatives can complain about “amnesty” being offered to illegal immigrants, but we led the charge for a kinder and gentler IRS that had the power to forgive penalties for back taxes.

Not equivalent issues.

Typically when we see a lot of people violating a 55 mph speed limit, we wonder whether that isn’t a sign that the law was too draconian to begin with.

Often it is. And has been changed in many places.

Do hard-line conservatives want to take away the IRS’s right to negotiate for lower penalties? Do they want to toughen up penalties for people who drain wetlands, or protest on abortion clinic property, or who display a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments on government property without proper permission? There’s no reason why immigration should be treated any differently.

Neon sign here. I AM A LIBERAL!

The argument made from legality is circular, anyway. We can change any statute which we choose to, and if we choose to liberalize our immigration laws, then many illegal aliens will no longer be illegal.

And if we don't they are illegal and should leave.

The president wants to create a program in which illegals can come forward, pay a fine and apply for legitimate citizenship.

Most of America is totally opposed to that idea. Including many liberals.

What do the hard-liners want? My hard-line talk radio callers want deportation.

Just make it where they must leave because they cannot work or get freebies.

I have two words that I’d like for them to contemplate for a moment: “concentration camp.” There is no way that you move 10 to 20 million people from one nation to another, against their will, without concentrating them.

A semantical wizard you are not. What a flawed argument.

We could go the way of the hard-liners, or we (a nation of immigrants) could go the way of the God of Israel, “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt....”

Totally false option set.

Israel had laws for aliens among them.

Did you know an alien, to become a citizen, had to marry a Jews and wait three generations for citizenship on their family?

Now, you want to talk doing that here?

The Bible says a nation must be governed by fair and just laws. Not anthing goes.

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Keeping it real and to the core of the issue, not the peripherals.