With the Democrats controlling neither the presidency nor Congress and having largely failed to stop deportations via the courts, they’ve exhausted the political options for advancing their pro-illegal-migration agenda (at least for now). So they’re perhaps left grasping at straws.
Enter the religious option.
To wit: Many leftists are now citing the Bible to condemn deportations. The idea is that if you’re supporting illegals’ expulsion, why, you’re defying God, you irredeemable heathen.
Reporting on the story Sunday, commentator Andrea Widburg wrote:
One of the fascinating things about following leftists on social media is that they are lemmings. The order goes out that all must put up a specific meme and, suddenly, all do. That’s why my long-ago high school classmates (99% of whom are leftists), suddenly started posting a variation of a meme insisting that Leviticus … mandates accepting illegal aliens. Naturally, these leftists, who wouldn’t recognize the Bible if it bit them, are completely wrong.
Widburg then posts this meme’s most popular version, which was put on X by one Devin Duke (no relation). With a robust X following, Duke’s bio reads, “Social Media Strategy, PhD in Cog Neurosci, Military Brat, Drummer, Metal Head.” (What metal his head is composed of is not specified. But I suspect it’s osmium.) The Leviticus passage Duke cites reads:
Do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, but treat them just as you treat your own citizens. Love foreigners as you love yourselves, because you were foreigners one time in Egypt.
Duke’s tweet is below.
Of course, some are struck by how leftists actually found a Levitical passage they like. As X respondent John Jacobson asked:
If they really believed what Leviticus wrote, then why don’t they quote it regarding homosexuality[?]
Ouch.
Another X user, Logan Riley, posted a warning:
The Devil uses scripture to manipulate as well. Take notes.
Yet another X user, owner of the popular account @amuse, noted, essentially, that the “devil is in the details.” And now for the rest of the story.
The reality is “that Moses, in relaying God’s strictures, was not mandating the end of borders,” writes Widburg, “with the entire world flooding America’s welfare and DEI state.” Rather, as @amuse explains:
These verses instruct the Israelites on how to treat gerim, or sojourners, resident aliens who, crucially, accepted the laws of Israel and lived peaceably among the people. These were not foreign invaders, illegal squatters, or enemies of the covenant. They were, to borrow a modern analogy, lawful immigrants or refugees under the jurisdiction of Mosaic law. Leviticus 24:22 reinforces this distinction: “You shall have the same law for the foreigner and for the native-born.” In other words, the ger was held to the same moral and legal standards as the Israelite.
In this vein, your very own Duke (me) responded to Duke. Regarding the injunction to treat foreigners “just as you treat your own citizens,” I wrote:
Realize here, too, that among the Israelites in Old Testament days, the religious laws were the laws of the land. Traveling to their territory and “doing your own thing” was not an option. Why, treating the foreigner “as you treat your own citizens” could perhaps occasionally mean stoning him for a moral transgression.
As Widburg sums up:
The key point is that these foreigners, living in a time before modern immigration laws, still had to follow immigration rules: They needed permission to be on the land and had to abide by Jewish moral and legal rules. Those who sought to upend Jewish values were subject to a very different type of mandate from God.
As to this, @amuse elaborated:
Exodus 23:33 is unambiguous: “They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me.” The context here is conquest and settlement. God commands Israel to drive out the Canaanite nations to prevent idolatry and moral corruption. This is not mere xenophobia, it is covenantal protection. Numbers 33:55 continues the theme: “If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land … those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides.” The biblical model is not integration without conditions but separation when values and loyalties conflict.
Deuteronomy 17:15 explicitly prohibits appointing a foreigner as king: “You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.” This is theocratic nationalism, not globalism. It is the recognition that self-governance requires a shared moral and cultural framework. Deuteronomy 28 goes further, warning that disobedience to God will result in foreigners rising in power over the Israelites: “The foreigner who resides among you will rise higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower … they will be the head, and you will be the tail.” Foreign rule is not a blessing; it is a curse.
(The Roman Empire perhaps learned this, by the way, with their 14-year-old, Syrian boy emperor, Elagabalus. It didn’t end well — for Elagabalus in particular.)
In reality, the Bible makes clear what’s obvious, Widburg asserts. “[W]elcoming foreigners into one’s land must not be a suicide pact,” she writes. This is, too, she continues, how “conservatives, including those who take the Bible very seriously, feel about immigration to America.”
As to this, by the way, consider the following graphic, which illustrates well the U.S.’s balkanization.
Now, if “demography is destiny,” as is said, does the above reflect wise policy or caution thrown to the wind? And is it somehow biblically mandated?
According to the Left it may be. But leftists’ cynical use of Scripture to justify lawbreaking was summed up well by X commenter “Red.” “Its difficult to quote a book you’ve only heard about but never opened,” she wrote.
“Not shocked at all.”