Over a Decade Later, Evangelicalism Still Hasn't Repented of Its Open Borders Activism
I watched President Trump’s State of the Union last night with a mix of relief and frustration. Relief, because finally someone at the podium unapologetically defended our nation’s right to secure its borders as a matter of moral duty and love for our own citizens. Frustration, because for years I’ve seen a very different sermon preached from within my own evangelical community—syrupy homilies about “loving our neighbor” that’s been twisted into a slogan for open borders.
It’s the kind of feel-good rhetoric that sounds Christian on the surface but, deep down, feels like a con. The disconnect hits me hard. How did loving thy neighbor turn into selling out thy nation under the banner of evangelical faith?
Let’s be real—Christian compassion is a core virtue. Scripture commands us to love our neighbors and care for the stranger. But what happens when that holy compassion is hijacked and weaponized as propaganda?
Over the years I’ve watched certain church leaders and religious activists cherry-pick the Bible to push an open-borders agenda, essentially telling us that to be a “good Christian,” we must support mass illegal immigration, no questions asked. They drape their arguments in Bible verses and pious platitudes, but conveniently ignore the real-world fallout of lawlessness.
As one immigration scholar bluntly put it, these religious leaders “invoke the ‘love of neighbor’ to justify their unconditional support for illegal aliens”—yet their love “appears to largely exclude American citizens, including American children, who are victimized by illegal aliens”.
Ouch. That cuts to the bone, doesn’t it?
Our supposed shepherds talk endlessly about “compassion,” but it seems some neighbors don’t count—namely, the Americans next door who bear the brunt of illegal immigration’s costs.
Time after time, I’ve analyzed policy data and heartbreaking stories of families of Americans killed by violent illegal repeat-offenders, communities wracked by drug trafficking, blue-collar workers seeing jobs and wages undermined. I can’t help but ask, “where’s the love for these neighbors?”
It’s as if in the rush to appear compassionate, evangelical leaders developed a selective blindness. They shed tears (and expect us to shed tears) for those sneaking in unlawfully, but turn a blind eye to the innocents hurt by that lawlessness. That isn’t Christ-like compassion. That’s a one-sided narrative, charity with an agenda. True biblical love is honest and just—it doesn’t lie about consequences or play favorites with who deserves protection.
It didn’t happen by accident. There’s been a concerted effort to reshape evangelical attitudes on immigration from the top down. In my research over the years, I’ve discovered an eyebrow-raising alliance between prominent evangelical institutions cozying up with open-borders secular activists (and their mega-donors) to sell the church on mass amnesty.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, indeed. Case in point—the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), a coalition formed in 2012 with glossy evangelical branding, pushing for “comprehensive immigration reform” (read: amnesty for millions). At first it sounded grassroots and holy—who wouldn’t be moved by campaigns named after Bible verses, like their “I Was a Stranger” initiative, urging Christians to welcome these migrants?
But dig deeper and it turns out this EIT operation was about as grassroots as Astroturf. In fact, it "does not even legally exist as an independent entity at all, but functions as an arm of the George Soros-funded National Immigration Forum, which bankrolled a $250,000 ad campaign urging evangelicals to back mass legalization. That’s sounds crazy, but Soros’s money waltzed its way into the pews, clothed in pious language and sentimental music.
The marriage of convenience between evangelical leaders and Soros’s open-borders machine is well documented. The National Immigration Forum, flush with millions from Soros’s Open Society and the left-wing Ford Foundation, helped orchestrate EIT’s media blitz.
Even Sojourners, a liberal-leaning Christian magazine led by Jim Wallis (a prominent EIT backer), received hefty Soros funding. All roads lead to the same deep pockets. Now, I’m not saying every pastor or Christian who favored compassionate immigration policies was knowingly bought off by a billionaire atheist with a political agenda. But the facts show a concerted PR campaign was engineered, heavily funded by one group, infamous for bankrolling open borders causes.
The goal was to create the illusion of a mass evangelical support for amnesty and sway lawmakers accordingly. In other words, to hijack the moral authority of the church for a political end.