Can Christians Support Remigration?

It has lately been fashionable to speak of the leveling of nations, of the disappearance of individual peoples in the melting pot of modern civilization… the disappearance of nations would impoverish us not less than if all men should become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities; the least among them has its own unique coloration and harbors within itself a unique facet of God’s design. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is an email inquiry sent to the True Texas Project’s Year of the Patriot Conferenceorganizers. I think the sender is clearly writing in good faith, and there are probably many other Christians struggling with the same idea: How do we maintain the recognition of universal Christian humanity with an immigration policy that puts Americans first? So I’m publishing his question and my reply here for the benefit of others who are likely grappling with this same question.

He writes:

I really like Rush Limbaugh’s statement about American Exceptionalism. I own a copy of the first Rush Revere book, [Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans] and it’s excellent! Rush’s statement about American Exceptionalism ought to be required reading in grade schools.

I clicked on the link to read the WPPI’s timeline on US Immigration law. I was rather shocked that it reads like a White Supremist rant. The laws listed all focus on limiting *legal* immigration based on race, not on character or criminal background. As Christians, we understand that God created one race: the human race. Ethnicities are merely different sets of physical characteristics common among regional gene pools, but all of these various characteristics descended from the same original DNA that God gave to Adam and Eve.

I have absolutely no issue with legal immigration from any nation or ethnic background, provided that the immigrants assimilate into our culture. My beef is with those who immigrate with no intention of assimilating (we call that “colonization”) and those who immigrate illegally. This timeline does not address either of those issues.

So I need to check out this White Papers Policy Institute to see who these people are. Maybe I have misjudged this timeline, or maybe not. But it bears looking into.

He wonders why we need to limit legal immigration for those who wish to assimilate (although we cannot always judge an immigrant’s genuine desires to immigrate, we can analyze the effects of immigration on the native population and the economy as we do here in regard to native-born wages, here in regard to taxation, and here in regard to welfare use and remittances).

However, this is what I see as his key question and the root of the struggle to make the moral case for remigration:

As Christians, how can we reconcile the desire to welcome all human beings, no matter where they come from, what they look like and what culture they practice, as brothers and sisters in Christ while rejecting some from our nation’s body politic?

First, American immigration policy does notreject the personhood of other peoples. It affirms that the purpose of the nation state is to serve the interests of its founding polity.

We can honor international human rights while also upholding the fact that a nation exists to serve the people who created it. (i.e., “to ourselves and our posterity.”)

When the asker reflects on American Exceptionalism, he is invoking the idea of Civic Nationalism. This idea that a nation is an idea not a people, has two fundamental flaws:

What exactly is American Exceptionalism?

As described by Rush Limbaugh in the introduction to Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims it is:

American Exceptionalism and greatness means that America is special because it is different from all other countries in history. It is a land built on true freedom and individual liberty and it defends both around the world. The role of the United States is to encourage individuals to be the best that they can be, to try to improve their lives, reach their goals, and make their dreams come true. In most parts of the world, dreams never become more than dreams…

Our country is the first country ever to be founded on the principle that all human beings are created as free people. The Founders of this phenomenal country believed all people were born to be free as individuals. And so, they established a government and leadership that recognized and established this for the first time ever in the world! America is a place where the individual person serves himself and his family, not the king, or ruling class, or government.

Rush Limbaugh is not the first to describe America in this way. In 1931, historian James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” in The Epic of America and defined it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” He further clarified, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

This distinction “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages,” but that of a new system of virtue that prioritizes meritocracy over aristocracy is important.

We have to understand that immigrating to America does not mean the immigrants automatically accept this set of values. Most do not forfeit their identity upon immigrating to America. Most view America as an economic zone while preferring their own culture. This is the norm. And from the immigrant’s perspective, why shouldn’t it be? Why should we expect them to reject their own culture, history, ancestry, and traditions in order to assimilate to ours?

Furthermore, is assimilation of large groups even possible?

Thanks to recent developments in scientific research, we now know that political ideology is about 50% heritable. That’s quite significant. To expect assimilation from dramatically different cultures into ours that values freedom, self-employment, meritocracy, the nuclear family, and other American principles is unrealistic and unsustainable.

Moreover, should they? Our Remigration platform recognizes that many people who gained citizenship may still, after generations, feel out of place. It offers voluntary incentives for people who wish to return to their ancestral homelands. This BBC Documentary covers the stories of third-generation Senegalese immigrants in France who are planning their return to Senegal, even without cash assistance. A Monmouth University poll revealed that 45% of people of color in the United States would leave if given the opportunity to do so. We suggest offering the necessary resources.

Of course there are those few immigrants that do assimilate (which is why there are always exceptions (see Remigration and the Complexity of Communities), but public policy is necessarilybuilt on generalizations based on observable reality.

Rather than capitulating to the Left and rejecting the views of the founders and the immigration policies that protected the way of life that gave birth to American Exceptionalism, we can instead embrace it and affirm our national identity.

In order for Limbaugh’s American Exceptionalism to have a future, Americans need to have a future.

Limbaugh is correct. When America flourishes, the whole world flourishes with us.

At White Papers, we refuse to close our eyes to science, discovery, and the beauty of biological diversity. We accept nature as God created it and we have the honor and responsibility to boldly craft our future for, yes, us and our posterity.

Further reading:

• Who is an American? 200 Years of America and 50 Years of Multicultural Madness
• The Pot that Refuses to Melt
• Remigration and the Complexity of Communities
• Response to Vivek Ramaswamy
• The American Repatriation Policy Platform
• Remittances: The U.S. Is Not the World’s Cash Cow
• The Party That Forgot Its Base