There is a Christian case for bounded admission, and it is a good deal better than its opponents allow. It runs in four movements. Civil authority is divinely warranted and not merely tolerated, so that the regulation of entry and residence falls within an office Scripture describes in theological terms. The love commanded of Christians is ordered rather than uniform, so that proximity and relation genuinely condition obligation. The Old Law, which is not shy about the stranger, nevertheless admits him by stages rather than at once. And the duty of the individual believer toward the man at his door is not the same thing as the duty of the magistrate toward a population, the two operating in distinct spheres with distinct instruments.‍

Popular argument on this question, from both directions, tends to treat the Gospels as though they were a manual of border statute waiting to be applied. They are not, and a piece that pretends otherwise earns nothing but the reader's justified suspicion. But refusing that error is not the same as refusing the question. Scripture, read across its full canon and its subsequent theological elaboration, does make two distinct and authentically weighty claims that bear on the matter of illegal immigration — one concerning the competence of civil authority, the other concerning the personal duty owed to the stranger.