“Tonight, illegal alien invasion.”- Lou Dobbs, March 21, 2005

Dehumanizing undocumented immigrants is inherently un-Christian, since treating all of God’s children with dignity and respect is a key Biblical message.

Back in college, my roommates and I made a game out of watching the introduction to CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. We tried to guess how many headlines would relate to the “threat” of “illegal aliens.” Whether it was a crime wave spurred on by Spanish-speaking gangs, leprosy carried by immigrants across the border, or a loss of jobs by “hard-working Americans” to “illegals,” Dobbs’ anti-immigrant paranoia usually saturated half his headlines.

Three years on, Dobbs has not backed down. And the anti-immigrant rhetoric and sentiment that pervades his show has spread.

In September 2006, Glenn Beck invited talk show host Pat Gray onto his CNN Headline News show to discuss immigration. The following exchange occurred:

Gray: We are in a war with Mexico right now. They're the only ones fighting it, of course…

Beck: …and we are in denial on every single front. And, my gosh, we better wake up soon.

Gray: It's – or we're going to wake up dead is the problem.

Like Dobbs, Gray and Beck use themes of invasion and war to paint immigrants as an enemy to U.S. citizens. Gray even suggests that undocumented immigrants are out to kill.

Last summer, presidential candidate and U.S. congressman Tom Tancredo went one step further in an ad that blurred the line between immigrants and terrorists:

There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia. The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.

It concluded with the sound of a bomb detonating.

Tancredo’s ad does not directly equate undocumented immigrants to terrorists. However, by talking about immigrants, then showing ghastly images of terrorist attacks, it subliminally links terrorism to undocumented immigrants.

Equating immigrants to terrorists or using military rhetoric to refer to immigration serves an obvious purpose for immigration opponents: the dehumanization of undocumented immigrants. This is made absolutely clear in publications like “Invasion PA,” produced by Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl D. Metcalfe. An excerpt:

Pennsylvanians should be very alarmed by the more than 3,100 illegal alien invaders documented in this report… foreign invaders that deserve immediate deportation, rather than the dignity and respect of being called immigrants [emphasis mine].

Dehumanizing undocumented immigrants is inherently un-Christian, since treating all of God’s children with dignity and respect is a key Biblical message. Even if undocumented immigrants were truly enemies, as Dobbs, Gray and Metcalfe contend, Jesus commands us in the Sermon on the Mount to love them. And even if one discounts that passage as radical or unrealistic, numerous Old Testament passages command the humane treatment of immigrants, including Lev. 19:34: “You shall love the non-citizen as yourself.” The Bible is consistent – and insistent – on this point.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric that includes references to invasion or war is poisonous to the immigration debate, and should be resisted at every turn. Opponents of comprehensive immigration reform may have legitimate concerns, but any argument that is fueled by this rhetoric is philosophically bankrupt and at odds with finding a solution to the broken U.S. immigration system.