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I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
Are Open Borders Biblical? with John Ferrer & Jason Jimenez
00:48:08
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- [00:00]
Dr. John Ferrer
Foreign
- [00:03]
Frank Turek
Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be talking today with Dr. John Ferrer and Jason Jimenez about immigration, one of the most controversial topics out there right now. But before we get there, I always forget to tell you guys about. About things because I'm so interested in the content. I forget to tell you about some free things that we have that can actually help you. I don't know if you know this. This has been out for at least 10 years. The cross examined app. Did you guys know we had an app? Yeah, there's, I don't know, 300,000 people that know it, they've downloaded it. But the cross examined app has everything pretty much that we do on there that you can just get in one place and there's even a quick answer section. So, you know, if you're talking to somebody and they bring up an objection to Christianity, you're not quite sure how to answer it. You can just pull out your iPhone, pull out your droid and go, hey, hang on, I'm getting a text. Right? You can just go right to the app and get an answer to the question or objection they're bringing up. In fact, a lot of times it's not even an answer. It's often a question you ought to ask. So check out the cross examined app. Two words in the app store, Cross examine. You'll find it there. I also always forget to tell you guys about the homeschool products. We have, the small group products. We have, the Sunday school products. We have. If you click on crossexamine.org and click on store, you're going to see a whole bunch of materials. I mean, there's why I still don't have enough faith to be an atheist course out there that you can teach to other people. There is, I'm looking at it right now. There are curricula and as we're coming up to a new school year, there's curricula for second to fifth graders called yes, God is real.
- [01:49]
Lucas Miles
There's teacher workbook, student workbook, and then
- [01:52]
Frank Turek
for kids who are a little bit older, say sixth to eighth grade, there's let's get real Examining the evidence for God. It's basically, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. For kids. There's also train your brain that's a course in logic. These are also, by the way, many of these are online courses as well. In fact, we got a new online
- [02:10]
Lucas Miles
course coming up for seventh and ninth graders. It's called Expedition to Reality. Shanda Fulbright is the main teacher. I'm involved with it as well. And it'll show kids the right worldview. It'll compare all the other worldviews, these other world religions out there, Expedition to Reality. In fact, that's a course that I think starting at the end of August. So if you click on online courses, you'll find that there. But if you click on store, you'll find hard copy material for that. So that's all up there as well.
- [02:37]
Frank Turek
Also want to mention I'm going to
- [02:39]
Lucas Miles
be out in St. Louis or near St. Louis the weekend of August 22nd
- [02:42]
Frank Turek
for a church there.
- [02:44]
Lucas Miles
And then Duluth, Georgia, which is just kind of to the northeast of Atlanta the next weekend. That's August 30th, Lord willing, the War on Reality. The book comes out September 8th. I want to mention that if you can help us out by pre ordering it, you're actually going to help get that book in non Christian bookstores. Because non Christian bookstores look at the pre orders and they go, oh, this might be a book that our clientele might want to see. And so they order the book. If there's a lot of preorders.
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Frank Turek
If there's not a lot of preorders,
- [03:15]
Lucas Miles
they probably won't order it. So by pre ordering it, you're actually going to help more non Christians see it, which is what we want to happen. Also, by the way, if you pre order it at thewaronreality.com thewaronreality.com we're gonna if you pre order the the paperback and you send us a link to the receipt or whatever you get for pre order in a book, we're gonna send you chapter 10 right now. One of my favorite chapters in the book, it has to do with cultural Marxism. And if you understand what we have in one chart in that book, if you understand that you're going to understand why there is a war on reality in our culture, you're going to understand by just looking at this one chart that we have in chapter 10 of the book, the War on Reality. So if you can get that in advance, that would help us out greatly. Also this topic we're about to dive into. Immigration is one of the four eyes that we think a lot of people in our culture are struggling, particularly Christians, are struggling to articulate the biblical view on the four eyes are Israel. We covered that last week. Immigration, we'll cover that today. Then we're going to talk about Islam and also identity. Those are issues in the book, the War on Reality as well. But if anybody's listening right now and you're A pastor, a Christian leader of any kind. Go to pastorsbrief.com pastorsbrief.com Give us your email address. We're not going to give your email address to anyone else. You're not going to get a thousand emails. Later this month, we're going to start some live Q and A zoom sessions. We're going to give a short brief on each of these four eyes, Immigration, Israel, Islam and identity. And then we're going to provide you with some resources that you can use for your own congregation, your own small group, your youth group, whoever you're leading, even your business group. And so we'll do the research for you. You'll have the material and you can share it with others. Again, pastorsbrief.com you'll see. It's myself, Jason Jimenez, also Lucas Miles from TPUSA Faith. We're going to be facilitating these live Q and A zoom sessions where we're going to interact with one another on these difficult topics. We want to help you research because you know, as a pastor or a Christian leader, you don't, you don't always have time to dive into all these details. So our research team is doing that for you. If you want to be a part of it, it's by invitation only. Pastors brief.com check it out there. Now we're going to get into immigration with my friends, Dr. John Ferrer and Jason Jimenez. Here we go,
- [05:55]
Frank Turek
ladies and gentlemen. Immigration is one of the four eye topics that we're dealing with here in America. Immigration, Israel. We covered that in the last show. Also we'll in a future show cover Islam and also identity. In fact, we cover all those in the new book, the War on Reality. Please pre order it. It will help it get into other bookstores, secular bookstores, if there's a big pre order backlog. So thanks for doing that. But today we're going to dial down or drill down into this issue of immigration. We just had a few minutes in the last podcast to get started. I mean, aren't we supposed to welcome the sojourner? Should we just have open borders and help and allow people to come into America or whatever country we live in? What's the biblical stance? What's the theological stance? Then we're going to look at what should we be doing morally and then finally, what should the policy be that we should have? Maybe we'll have some disagreement over that. But we have Dr. John Ferrer and also Jason Jimenez with us again to talk about these issues. We talked about Israel last time. Jason, why don't we talk about immigration and welcoming the sojourner? We started to talk about this in the last podcast, but kind of refresh us on the difference between a, say, legal immigrant in the Old Testament and an illegal immigrant in the Old Testament. Does the Old Testament first of all make that decision? And then secondly, how do we. How are we supposed to treat people?
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Jason Jimenez
Yeah, so there's, there's essentially, this is important. There's two categories. There is the one that's permitted to enter into a land that they're not native to. Right. And this, like, think about Abraham, think about Jacob, think about Ruth with Naomi. And we see these instances when you're leaving one foreign, foreign land to a new land. Well, the question is, when you enter into that new land, were you permitted to be there in the first place? And you see this going back to Abraham as they. Especially when he's getting the lot of Sarah, he's paying, he's paying tribute and he's paying a cost in order to enter a certain land to bury his wife. So you're seeing this approval, and that is known as a sojourner foreigner. In English translation is. The Hebrew term is ger. The plural is gurm. There's privileges now that are associated with that. Permitted resident, legal immigrant. A legal immigrant in modern legal. Legal.
- [08:18]
Frank Turek
Okay.
- [08:19]
Jason Jimenez
And this, this is a. This they have documentation, they have proof that they have access, but also through approval. And with that approval comes privileges and protection. And you see that throughout the Old Testament. Now we understand that an ancient code, we can't take everything from the scriptures of old and apply it to our immigration code today. Right. That would not be philosophically, constitutionally sound. But what we're talking about, Frank, which is important theologically, is in the principle of it, that is moral, that's reflective of God, who is the one that installed this law. And the reason he did that was because he's the founder right of these nations. And he puts boundaries and borders to them. And then there's human dignity and there's respect. And so when you're applying Romans 13, that God has an institution known as government, so civility of its citizens that they are to enact not just the sword, but also through conscience knowing to do the good, right? And to do the good, you have to protect people from harm. So, so now the second category would be the nakar or tsar. And in some cases they could be a merchant, a tradesman who come into another foreign land to do work, and then they would go back into that land. And that is what would be in modern day known as maybe a documented, but an immigrant who's not permitted to stay forever and be receiving protection or privileges of that particular nation. In many cases, though, nakar zar is used in the Old Testament as when they're committing crimes to a particular nation like invading the land and taking over through war. Right. So there's this annihilation process that you're seeing. And you see this sometimes when it comes with Israel coming out of foreign land, going into exile and you know what I mean, back to their land. And you're seeing the nation surrounding them, the Moabites, the Ammonites, et cetera, the Assyrians, who take, you know, you know, they conquer, they'll take land. And so those are not people who are permitted. So it just depends on the context. And I think that's important because the Bible specifically gives those categories to understand the ones that are approved and ones that are not approved. And so today as Christians, when we're looking at our nation where and we know that this nation was built with a Christian heritage within a Judeo Christian ethic, when you look at the outline, not just through the declaration, but the Constitution, and the Constitution has given Congress the ability to give naturalization of citizens. And you look at our legal code that associates that, we see the principle of identifying from the Bible, knowing from Romans 13, giving the authority to Congress government to enact the sword. But also there's a conscience that we have as moral people of how to treat foreigners and how we accept them that come here through approval. There's an approval process. And also what we do with people in removing them that don't belong here. And that's important. And I think that's hard because the two polar opposites is the mercy side and the justice side. But what we see in Scripture is the both. And because they're characteristics of who God is.
- [11:27]
Frank Turek
See, that's a big distinction that we need to make. And I think that many of us sort of gloss over that. We're confused by certain passages because we don't think in categories that God created three institutions. He created the family, he created government, and he created the church. And we often think that certain commands to say the church should be commands to government as well, when that's false. For example, turn the other cheek would mean if somebody insults you, you don't have to return insult for insult. But the government isn't commanded to turn the other cheek. If they did that, anarchy would result if the government didn't punish evil. That's the purpose of government to punish wrongdoers. According to Romans 13, we'd have anarchy. John, I want to turn to you because we hear that when people come into America or any country, we need to welcome them and take care of them, whether they're legal or not. But the problem is some people that come in, particularly illegal immigrants, want to do harm to the nation. What is the problem with open borders? Isn't open borders a compassionate idea?
- [12:45]
Dr. John Ferrer
Well, I don't have a problem with immigration. I have an issue with lawbreaking. And the law breaking has to be principled. And it is principled because the government can't do everything for everybody. The government has practical constraints. Romans 19 stipulates that the government has the responsibility of the sword. We're talking in age.
- [13:06]
Frank Turek
Romans 13.
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Dr. John Ferrer
Romans 13 has the responsibility of the sword. That means it's the agent of justice, it's the agent of judgment. And if they don't do that, it might not get done, because you need that for the sake of preserving civil order and making sure that gross law breaking is punished. So if you were to have an open border policy where what you have done with that policy is you have played party to gross human exploitation, like what? You're going to have sex trafficking, you're going to have human trafficking because a great deal of your undocumented immigrants, because they're undocumented, they can't go to the police, they can't go to the courts. They are easy to exploit for forced labor, for stealing someone's visa once they get here, or stealing their passport or stealing their id, and then holding it hostage to till they do the work for you. That kind of thing happens. You can have sweatshops and coerced labor, not to mention child exploitation and child trafficking. And then you've got another kind of exploitation where you're using immigrants themselves, illegal immigrants, often so that you can tamper with the population in given states and cities, so that will affect your population numbers so that you can have more representation in the next election cycle. And so it's a way to make these people into political stooges for a whole political process that they don't necessarily have any interest in. And so you're exploiting immigrants for the sake of your own political agenda. And that's exploitation. And if we're going to have a humanitarian government, we're going to try to reduce and stop human exploitation. And so that means we need to take a practical stand on, on the immigration issue so that we're anti law breaking, but we can still be pro immigration, recognizing that the government can't do everything for everybody. So we have to have privileges and responsibilities tied to citizenship that don't go to just anybody.
- [15:09]
Frank Turek
This is not just theoretical, ladies and gentlemen. This was the case under the Biden years. Open borders. We have over 300,000 missing girls in America. They've probably been sex trafficked. I know the Trump administration, the doj, has tried to locate many of them, to rescue them. They have been able to do some of that.
- [15:29]
Dr. John Ferrer
Tens of thousands of people rescued from human trafficking. Yes.
- [15:33]
Frank Turek
This idea that open borders is compassionate is nonsense. It's anarchy. And as you just pointed out, so
- [15:39]
Dr. John Ferrer
many evil things could occur and it's institutionally confused. If the government has the power of the sword comparable to that the church has the power of the gospel. The church is the agent of grace. They can administer grace, compassion, in a way that if you try to do it through the government, you've basically got this big gorilla trying to pet a kitten. You don't have the delicacy, the social nuance to be able to do that
- [16:09]
Frank Turek
effectively or to hold people accountable. To hold people accountable, to have them improve. Like a church can do that.
- [16:15]
Dr. John Ferrer
A government family can do that. You can rear children in homes. You can be Compassion ministries through churches. When the government tries to do that, it does it very poorly and with a lot of corruption, very inefficiently. And there's usually no exit strategy. It tends to hone in on the domains that were properly suited to church and family and community. But when the government moves in, it never moves out. And every government dollar has a string attached to.
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Frank Turek
What were you going to say, Jason?
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Jason Jimenez
Well, no, I was going to say along lines of what? What, John, you were just alluding to. And in context of scripture, it says this when we're reading in Romans, chapter 13, but specifically it says in verse 4 and says, for he is God's servant for your good. Talking about the government or civil government. But notice it says, but if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in the subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. So that's what we're seeing we as a government, though, because of our Judeo Christian ethic. And yes, we could talk about later about immigration code, how we can reform it, but that's fundamental. The amazing thing is we the people, we consent to that meaning we're not giving up natural rights that we believe that are given by God that are fundamental and inherent to all of us, but understanding that when we build a government to protect those rights, it's incumbent upon that government, that is an enumerated power of our federal government, to protect the borders, not only showing mercy by protecting us, our citizens, but extending mercy beyond the border to protect people from not trying to go there by being exploited.
- [17:56]
Frank Turek
There is a proverb that says when you let the guilty go free, you punish the innocent, which is saying when you don't have laws, the people that are doing evil are therefore then punishing the innocent people who they are exploiting these guilty people. And so that's the reason God created government, one of the three institutions he created. And we can't confuse the commands in Scripture that he gave to government with commands to individuals or vice versa. And I think that's so enlightening when you realize that just because you have these commands to say turn the other cheek or love your enemies, that doesn't mean that the government shouldn't do its role of securing justice to protect innocent people from evil.
- [18:47]
Dr. John Ferrer
Yeah, the government that Paul would have been referring to, that's important to keep in mind. When he was talking in Romans 13, he wasn't talking about a constitutional election based democracy with republican representatives, that he wasn't talking about this kind of government. He was talking about an imperialistic monarchy type of, type of government that wielded capital punishment pretty, pretty leisurely. And that is the kind of government he says some sort of civil order has to be maintained where justice can be expected, punishment and consequences are real. And within that sort of foundation, that template, you then ideally can have some freedom for individuals, communities, and eventually through churches, because they were born in that era, to be able to handle all of these more localized needs, like child rearing, like education, like training up the next generation. The government tends to be very bad at those things that require a delicate touch. But God has instituted and blessed these institutions of family and church to be able to do that delicate work that the government is too heavy handed and too brutal and too violent to be able to do effectively.
- [20:08]
Frank Turek
What do you say to people who will say, well, you're a Christian, you're supposed to love people. Why don't we just welcome everybody in? That would be the right thing to do. We should share America with everyone. What would be your response to that? Be biblically and morally?
- [20:23]
Jason Jimenez
Well, it'd be great that you can welcome everybody. And that is on the TABLE but there's a process just like there is in other nations. And again, God is one that sets the boundaries. So it's going against God. That's not how God enacted things. When he created the nations since Genesis 11, when they were scattered and they individualistic in their own tribe and tongue developed their own nations and their own customs and way of life, that's not the way of living. That is merciful. Because here's the thing, you can't have mercy if you don't enforce laws. And if you have laws on the books but you don't execute them, then it becomes lawless. That's not a society that anybody would want to live in. To preserve the nationality of who we are and our identity, there has to be a process, and that's a biblical one that we do see within Scripture. Not only that, but also what Peter says here. He says, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. So it's not just for sanity's sake, but for morality and civility's sake is that if there's an institution that is enacting in accordance to what God has given. We talked about the three. And if you don't distinguish between the three, just like we're talking about the
- [21:29]
Frank Turek
categories, the three institutions.
- [21:30]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah, three institutions. If you're lumping them all together, as John was alluding to earlier, then you're gonna have bad theology. And if you have bad theology of what the church is supposed to be doing or the government's supposed to be doing, or look at the broken families in America and what they should be doing. So when the families are taking responsibility, I have four children. If I'm expecting them just to be on welfare for government, take care of them, then that's not going to be a good thing in the end. And so when you're having bad theology that way with these institutions that God has erected that we're to be subject to and not only says, but whether it be for the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good, that gets muddied by the bad theology which leads to bad policies. And that's what we're seeing today. So there's no doubt that yes, we can distinguish and understand biblically Frank, what these institutions are. But because of the bad theology and understanding, we're seeing these bad policies. And I think now what we need to be addressing is where did we go wrong? What can we do to improve legislatively in Congress for the executive Branch to execute in our nation to uphold to certain standards that we would hope, you know, in this podcast that is honoring the Lord.
- [22:43]
Dr. John Ferrer
And could I add to that, if someone were to ask me, why can't we just let everybody in? I would say, who do you mean by everybody? Are you. How many pedophiles are you okay with us letting unvetted through our borders? How many drug traffickers, how many sex traffickers are you okay with?
- [23:02]
Frank Turek
How many terrorists?
- [23:03]
Dr. John Ferrer
Just on average, how many, how many terrorists who are not interested in any kind of cultural assimilation and making America great, making America beautiful, making this part of the world more humanitarian. Some of them do not have those interests. And if you have no effective vetting policy for that, if you have no benefits or differences between citizens and non citizens, then you're expecting a utopian outlook for the United States to be able to do basically everything for everybody. And that doesn't happen this side of eternity. That's a deeply blasphemous, heretical idea. To expect the privileges of heaven without the God of heaven, without submission to him, without his plan in action.
- [23:45]
Jason Jimenez
But the thing is, again, on a national level, it's easy for people to say that, but on a practical level, they don't apply that same standard.
- [23:51]
Dr. John Ferrer
People lock their doors at night.
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Jason Jimenez
Exactly. You don't welcome everybody. Sometimes Frank doesn't even welcome me.
- [23:56]
Frank Turek
Dude. But the point is, you stay out of my house.
- [23:58]
Jason Jimenez
But the point is though, it's like you.
- [24:00]
Frank Turek
How come you don't the next time the phone doesn't ring? That's right, it's me.
- [24:06]
Jason Jimenez
But I'm saying it's the funny thing. So you said, you know, we're asking the question, who are you welcoming? Of course they'll be like, well, of course not, John, but there's so many people who we should be welcoming that we're neglecting. Well, then what are you doing? Yeah, how do.
- [24:17]
Dr. John Ferrer
Yeah, you need smart sense. I'm all for smart, sensible reformation of our immigration policy, taking any given part and making sure it's more efficient, more effective and not gluttonous and wasteful and bureaucratic. I'm all for that, but it needs to be smart. It needs to be realistic, not idealistic, not utopian. Because we don't live in a utopia. And we won't on this side of eternity.
- [24:44]
Frank Turek
Yeah, we're only 4% of the world population. There's no way we could take in the other 96% anyway, right? There's gotta be limits. And it's interesting, why are there no caravans going from the United States to Venezuela. Do you know anybody that gets on a rickety boat in Florida to flee to Cuba? Nobody does that. Why? Because the system that we have here, which has been protected by law and good enforcement of law, is the most prosperous, free, affluent and benevolent system ever in the history of any government. If we let anybody in here that doesn't share those ideals, we're going to lose that system, which is going to be a big tragedy for the entire world.
- [25:34]
Dr. John Ferrer
Some of your most patriotic Americans that you're going to run into are new citizens because they came here and went through citizens. They came here and went through the citizenship process because they believed this is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And I want to be in on that. And so when we clarify the immigration question, that's why it's so important to distinguish between illegal and legal immigration. We're not anti immigration, we're anti law breaking.
- [26:00]
Jason Jimenez
Well, we know that we are a nation of immigrants. That's our history, that's our founding, and we want to continue that. But again, by abiding to the law, knowing that there are codes within our own immigration code of law in Titus 18 or Title 18, where we apply mercy to certain residents that are in our country that maybe have overstayed a visa, maybe something happened or a situation that we can accommodate. So it's not just like we rid them all or we're not enforcing it. There is a balance that I do think that we do need to get our legislators to be following through a lot more than we're currently doing. But that doesn't mean. Because the process seems to be broken or there's such a huge backlog that we just don't do anything about it and just have a board with.
- [26:41]
Dr. John Ferrer
Fix the process, don't trash it.
- [26:43]
Jason Jimenez
We can do it better. Yeah, we could do it better.
- [26:44]
Frank Turek
Charlie Kirk used to say that. How did he put it? Immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We're seeing that in Europe. We're seeing it in Dearborn, Michigan, in Minneapolis, in certain neighborhoods, even sometimes in Dallas. Now.
- [26:59]
Dr. John Ferrer
It's on purpose.
- [27:00]
Frank Turek
Yeah, it's on purpose. Sharia law will take away the freedoms that we have in America and the prosperity as well. Sharia law is just contradicting the United States Constitution.
- [27:14]
Dr. John Ferrer
It's a theocratic law.
- [27:15]
Frank Turek
Yes, it is a theocratic law. And we'll put in the show notes a short little video we did on what is Sharia law? What is the law in Iran? We'll put it in the show Notes so you can see it.
- [27:27]
Dr. John Ferrer
If you're worried about Christian nationalism but not Sharia law, then you are being inconsistent at best.
- [27:35]
Frank Turek
You know, when people talk about Christian nationalism, I say, what's the alternative? Secular internationalism. That's what we had under Biden, and it was a disaster. So whenever people talk about Christian nationalism, I always want them to define their terms. Are you saying that Christians shouldn't be involved in politics? That they shouldn't impose what they believe is right in law? Oh, you can impose what you believe is right in law, but we can't.
- [28:02]
Jason Jimenez
Even in the basic terms of a Christian nationalist is not proselytizing, forcing people to believe.
- [28:07]
Frank Turek
That's right.
- [28:07]
Jason Jimenez
Where Sharia law is.
- [28:09]
Dr. John Ferrer
It's forced conversion built into it. Yeah. That is an element in this immigration debate. Folks who want to compartmentalize and separate and not talk about drug trafficking, sex trafficking, not want to talk about jihadists, not want to talk about intentional planned cultural invasion, trying to usurp this heartbeat of Western civilization, the Christian heritage that we have here. I'm not a Christian. I don't identify as a Christian nationalist
- [28:38]
Frank Turek
myself, but you gotta know what it means.
- [28:41]
Dr. John Ferrer
I'm a nationalist and I'm a Christian.
- [28:43]
Frank Turek
Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you mean theonomy that we want to try and get people by force of law to become Christians. No, no. This is freedom of religion that we have here in America, rightfully so. God can't force anybody to believe anything, and he doesn't force us. He gives us a choice. But if you mean that we want to legislate laws that are consistent with the natural law and consistent with God, because the natural law comes from God and therefore also consistent with many biblical laws, then yes, of course, freedom of
- [29:14]
Dr. John Ferrer
religion is part of the classically liberal, humanitarian vindications of our constitutional republic. And it's part of what makes America such a great country that a lot of people do want to come here. If they've been indoctrinated against it, they. They can expect the U.S. to be terrible. We saw that happen with FIFA. The World cup folks came over and said it wasn't at all like I expected. I expected everybody to be shooting each other and assaulting folks on the streets and racists against everybody. But they were so kind, so polite, and the food was great and the traffic was. People were shocked to find that America wasn't this hellhole. And yet we have it built in our DNA, constitutionally and in the Declaration of Independence, that we have this humanitarian principle that has roots in a Christian history we have this view of human dignity that we protect and preserve on a national level. And folks who want to be part of that, that makes sense. So we can have sensible immigration policy to let people access it, but we can also wreck the whole project by not regulating it.
- [30:23]
Jason Jimenez
That's why it was fascinating when you go back to the World cup is where obviously these people are here temporarily. Right. But the people that have migrated here and have done through, they've gone through the process legally, but they came, like I was talking to two friends who came from communist countries, and they came here, and now they have permanent, you know, lawful residency here, and one of them's becoming a citizen, which I think we should change. I think the process for some of those is way too long. But we could. But I digress from that. But the issue here is they recognize what they have here versus where they came from, where people who are born or take it for granted, like air conditioning. And the ones.
- [31:02]
Frank Turek
Yeah, the ones that are arguing it's not rocket science.
- [31:06]
Jason Jimenez
You know what? Go spin a summer in Iran and tell me.
- [31:08]
Dr. John Ferrer
I know.
- [31:09]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah.
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Frank Turek
Well, yeah, it's been said, if you want to know what America's like, come to America. If you want to know what it isn't like, watch the media. Yeah, right.
- [31:16]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah.
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Frank Turek
And so the media is so.
- [31:18]
Jason Jimenez
Which?
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Frank Turek
I don't watch America.
- [31:19]
Dr. John Ferrer
I won't do that.
- [31:20]
Frank Turek
Yeah, you get that idea. It's like, okay, so let's sum this all up then. You're saying that biblically and the Old Testament law is just for Israel, but there are principles there that we can transfer. You're saying that biblically, there's a distinction in the Old Testament between a legal immigrant and an illegal immigrant. And nobody had a right to stay in a country if they're an illegal immigrant.
- [31:40]
Dr. John Ferrer
Okay.
- [31:42]
Frank Turek
Secondly, we talked about the difference between the three institutions that God created. And they have different roles. The government's role is to protect innocent people from evil. That requires law enforcement. It requires secure borders, just like we have secure borders in our homes. We have passwords on our bank accounts and on our phones for a reason. Because there's evil out there, and evil needs to be constrained, needs to be constrained. Evil people need to be punished. Of course. Well, let's deal with a really hard question here, and it has to do with immigration. There are, by some accounts, maybe 30 million illegal immigrants in America. They're in our churches, they're working in our workplaces. They're maybe friends of ours. I mean, you guys are legal immigrants. I mean, you guys were born here. But you have a Filipino background. You have a Mexican background. Your ancestors, we don't know what your background is. I came from Europe many years ago. What do we do as a church if we have, say people in our congregation and we know they're here illegally, how do we treat them? Are we supposed to turn them in? Are we supposed to turn the other way and just make believe they're not violating the law? What do you say?
- [33:04]
Dr. John Ferrer
That's a great question. What do you say?
- [33:05]
Frank Turek
Jason, thanks for tuning in.
- [33:11]
Jason Jimenez
I should call it. I don't have enough time to answer that question.
- [33:14]
Frank Turek
I mean, what are your thoughts on this? This is a hard question, this.
- [33:16]
Jason Jimenez
And I will be, I will be very frank, not frank Turk, but I'm going to be frank myself and say I don't know the full answer, but I will say this based on what we do have in our immigration code, which by the way, is over 500 words or 500 pages, I should say. And they're just like laws on laws on laws. And some of them don't even make sense when you have the almost 30 million, some say 20ish million, whatever. And again, each administration, it varies on who's coming through the board.
- [33:42]
Frank Turek
Let me pause for just a second on this. According to the most recent stats, I want to say that the Trump administration has maybe deported a million and a half of them, maybe 2 million. And about a million voluntarily went home.
- [33:56]
Jason Jimenez
Right.
- [33:56]
Frank Turek
So that's 10% of the people that might be in the country illegally, maybe 3 million have either been deported or have gone home. So there's still, if the numbers are right, still 27 million people here illegally. Go ahead.
- [34:11]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah, well, so again, in that category, the people that were being removed by ICE and also border protection, they work together, which is under Homeland security. That was enacted through Congress and signed into law by President Bush at the time and you know, in 2002 and that was based off of 1952. Right. With the Immigration of Naturalization Act. So you have this enforcement law. These are federal agencies or officers. So you hear about these sanctuary cities and mayors and saying that these are not real legitimate law enforcement officers. Yes, they are. They are given this power by Congress and it's being executed and enacted under the President, the executive branch. So this is law. These are law enforcers. What they're doing is they're removing the, the greater of the criminals, people that have gone, have entered here illegally with no process, no documentation, who have ill content, evil intent in America through exploitation, criminal acts, cartel, etcetera so those are the ones that we're starting with first when you're talking about another percentage. And of course, this numbers have gone down since the Biden administration, as we're recording this into the Trump administration, where you're having less coming through the border illegally with no process and they're not permitted to be here. What you're having is a lot of people that are here in that 20 ish million that have been here. They were approved to be here through visa, through family reunific unification or something to that extent. And they've overstayed it. Right. So they're not now currently having a status that's approved by our customs or the immigration services. And they get afraid and they're friends of ours and they don't know what to do. And they think that if I do go to the local consulate, the nation I came out of, or if I go to my representative or the immigration's office, they're going to deport me. And what about my job, what about my kids, et cetera. And that is a true reality that a lot of them are facing. Frank, what I would say with that, and this is where these Mercy codes, the Mercy law comes in. If they were approved at one point, and now they have overstayed their visa, which is millions currently, as we're recording this, I think this is where the church comes in and we sponsor some of these immigrants. I think the ESL classes are important in this, that we extend their visa stay, that they pay a fine to some extent. They have to report obviously to a local place in the cities, depending on what that looks like. Like each city's different.
- [36:39]
Frank Turek
So you're encouraging them to make themselves known to the authorities.
- [36:42]
Jason Jimenez
They make themselves known, but they have a sponsor. So we validate them, we can validate that they. There's no crimes they committed since they've been here, right. There's no diseases that they carry. This is a coronary immigration code that we can, we can validate. I don't know if you have any diseases I can't validate, John. But, but when you go through this, there's a process, but you sponsor them, that you can validate their character, right? These are people who are paying taxes, these are people who are contributing. They're trying to assimilate. That's the key, right back from the Old Testament. They are a proven track record that they have assimilated, but for whatever reason, because some of the immigration policies, they are pretty messed up and they're confusing and a lot of it is just filing the wrong paperwork or missing a deadline or not having the money to pay. Those are not. Yes, the technicality. It's a misdemeanor. And the reason why it's not a federal offense is because when it comes to deporting these, it's easier not to do due process on a federal level. So it's a misdemeanor. So all it is, it's a fraction. So it's a paying of a fine that we can help contribute to keep those people here who are actually making our society better. So that's what I would say to that.
- [37:52]
Frank Turek
Okay, how about the case where they were illegal from the beginning, they came across the border illegally, they have no documentation, they came into America and you find them in your church.
- [38:04]
Dr. John Ferrer
Could I say that the church should live not by lies? Believers should not advocate lies and should not be lying. There's a difference. However, if someone is in your congregation that you think might be illegal, they haven't outed themselves. You don't necessarily have a duty to ask everybody in your congregation and then go vet them for legality status. But as Christians, the church can engage in the political level for smart, sensible immigration reform where it's got lapses and problems that are keeping good people out and not just the derelicts, the bad ones, the problematic people, the jihadists and whatnot. So it's valuable for the church to do what the church can do, that is be agents of mercy, to offer the delicacy that the government oftentimes can't do very well and to be a voice for people who might not have a legal voice very well. That's not to say that the church is advocating for open borders, but should
- [39:10]
Frank Turek
you encourage that person, I'll just be very stark. Should you either say I'm going to turn you in, that seems pretty harsh if you know. Or should you say I need to encourage you to obey the law and turn yourself in.
- [39:27]
Dr. John Ferrer
The church should at least encourage people to become law abiding as far as reasonably possible. Okay, now there are. This is why I want to add caveats because there are weird circumstances where a person has been following the law but their kid was sick or they were unavailable or they're update letter for their, their visa.
- [39:51]
Frank Turek
I'm talking about, I'm talking about these people never. Okay, well yeah, they were illegal from
- [39:56]
Jason Jimenez
the va, so yeah, so and I know that, that there's debate with this and we have, again, we have laws on the book on every circumstance. We're not implementing them. If you have somebody who in Mexico finds a way to come into our country illegally, they bypass the process, okay? For whatever reason, they can't afford to go to their consulate and pay for the filing paperwork or they did and they got denied. So like I've tried and they're not in desperation, but they just want to try to exploit the system and they get here through a coyote or some means or whatever and they're here and they intentionally came here to deceive our government and to plant themselves here obviously to make have a better success. Like you said, we're not going to Cuba to make, you know, to build a business, but they want to build something. That person is here illegally and that is an immoral act. And I think that person should be reported if in fact you find out about that. Because that's not the way that our nation works.
- [40:54]
Dr. John Ferrer
If you don't know, you might have some wiggle room saying don't ask, don't tell. That's a wiggle room. But what we have here are two layers. Let's not mistake the wisdom layer for the law layer. There's a law layer that tends to be black and white, that tends to say do it this way, that says do this, don't do that. Then there's a wisdom layer that says how to go about doing it? How do we best go about helping people to become law abiding In a given case, the best policy might be help them get back home and then do this the right way. That might be the best policy. The best policy might be to talk with an understanding government agent saying hey, what, what paperwork can we help them go through to become naturalized to get this done right? It might be reporting them. That's not to say that the church should ever be supporting law breaking, but the church can facilitate abiding by the law in different ways by different circumstances. Because there's a law layer that we should be honoring. Even if there's a wisdom layer that leaves open how to best do that.
- [42:03]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah, but that's the thing is the question is what? When people are defining this objectively what they think would be the wise thing to do and not knowing what the law is before policy, that's fair. The law is very defined. You're asking somebody who's manipulating the system. That's the key term, that's the operative word. Secondly though, when you do have somebody, because most people outside of the criminals, that exploiting a system of industry, of drugs, you know, human trafficking, etc, which are in the millions as we know and that's mainly what, what our border protection and ICE is dealing with. They're going to be some casualties in the process. Yes. You know, you know why?
- [42:41]
Frank Turek
Yeah, because the governors aren't.
- [42:43]
Jason Jimenez
No. With actually with immigrants who actually have lawful permanent residency. But I have been, get, have been arrested and in the process sometimes, which is not a high number is because they don't speak English, which is, which causes confusion.
- [42:56]
Frank Turek
Well, a lot of times too, it's governors like Governor Walsh up there in Minnesota who would not cooper with ice. They had criminals in jail and instead of handing them over to ICE to be deported, they let them go and then ICE had to go out in the neighborhood and track these criminals down.
- [43:12]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah.
- [43:12]
Dr. John Ferrer
So that puts people in harm's way.
- [43:16]
Jason Jimenez
The other thing now, the other thing is so when you're looking at the majority of people who are here that are now technically undocumented, which that's not a term that our law code uses actually they refer to him as an illegal alien. But if they came on a visa knowing full well that after that time period expires, but they're not going back, that person's also being manipulative. And I think that. But if again, if they've not committed a crime outside of that. Right. Then they should be prosecuted. That again, it's only a misdemeanor. So these are not like they're going to be doing five years in prison, federal prison. So the fines themselves are within reason. And I think that's where on a local level where the church or charitable organizations, we can support giving them an immigration attorney to prove that in a court of law. That's an immigration law. So that's an immigration judge. So we have this in place. We just don't know what to do as Christians in the church. This is not.
- [44:13]
Dr. John Ferrer
Because we don't know the law.
- [44:14]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah. This is not talked about. So we do it as a moral issue, but we don't ever get into the policy of it.
- [44:20]
Frank Turek
That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to go from, from theology to morality to policy. That's what we're trying to unpack here. Now we got limited time. We can't do it all. But we should be law abiding people and we should be encouraging law abiding among people, even if we have sympathy for somebody who is not in, in who is, who is violating law.
- [44:45]
Jason Jimenez
So now the other thing I would say, and this is a, it's part of it I just want to bring up because some people are watching and are into this, they'll know the asylees and the refugees. There's a distinction in our immigration code of the two, but not that distinguished. And what people are doing right now that I think that we have to be addressing and with our politicians, the people that we're electing that oversee in Congress is people are coming here illegally, bypassing. Right. Whatever through the border, coming here illegally. And they're claiming asylum as they're here
- [45:23]
Dr. John Ferrer
and claiming refugee status.
- [45:25]
Jason Jimenez
Yeah. When they're not. And that is a big problem right now. And so there are people on the left that are using that loophole to get illegals to come on Asylee claim asylum here with no intention to assimilate.
- [45:39]
Dr. John Ferrer
And that's illegitimate. And the church, that's not proper. The church should abuse that out and not say anybody claiming to be claiming asylum, refugee status. That doesn't necessarily mean you are in that asylum refugee status position, even if you're using that to game the system.
- [45:57]
Frank Turek
Yeah. When people come into the country and do not assimilate and are against freedom of religion, read Muslims, many of them, not all of them, but many of them, you're as a church ultimately leading to your own demise. Because if they don't assimilate one day Sharia law be put in place and you won't have the right to preach or live the gospel.
- [46:19]
Dr. John Ferrer
And that can still leave open the option. If there's another holocaust that is brewing in the next 10, 20 years in some big circumstance in Europe, the US would still be able to say, hey, we're going to open up refugee status and allow this targeted group to come in mass scale. That's still an option if we are taking seriously refugee status and asylum status. But the more you're abusing it through all of these false claims and the boy who cried wolf, the more you create cynicism and start restricting actual cases that would really need it.
- [46:56]
Frank Turek
And by the way, why are people abusing it? Because this is the greatest nation in the world based on its laws that we have put in place which are a derivative of the Christian worldview. And for those of you that don't believe that, you should watch the short video we did with Speaking Mike Johnson in the Capitol just a couple of weeks ago. We'll put it in the show notes he points out why America is so great and why everybody wants to come here. So this has been a great discussion. I know we could talk a lot more. I know. Jason, there is a paper done. I'm trying to think of the old Testament scholar Dr. James Hoffmeier. Hoffmeier, yeah. We'll put that paper in the show notes. It's on immigration. It makes some of the distinctions that
- [47:41]
Jason Jimenez
he did with the American association of Evangelicals.
- [47:45]
Frank Turek
Okay.
- [47:45]
Jason Jimenez
It's based off of his book called Immigration Crisis that he wrote over 20 years ago.
- [47:49]
Frank Turek
Okay. We'll put that in the show notes. So it's a PDF you can download if you want to get into the details. But thank you, John. Thank you, Jason. Thanks for being with us here on I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Look, for us next week, Lord willing, will be here. Hope to see you then. God bless.