Religionists of all stripes are giving aid and comfort to the pro-amnesty crowd by claiming the moral high ground to justify mass amnesty and vastly increased immigration. But the facts demonstrate how empty this notion of morality is.

The U.S. Senate’s amnesty-guestworker package is being sold as “compassionate,” welcoming the alien and treating illegal immigrants “without animosity.”

Is this what Scripture teaches? What can we learn from reason and experience? We’ve tried the legalization route before. It not only failed, but made things worse.

Amnesties sparked more illegal immigration. People concluded that the United States won’t enforce its immigration laws very vigorously and, if they get in, they will be legalized eventually.

The people who gain the most from amnesties are the well-off: Employers let off the hook for having employed an illegal workforce and gaining an unfair competitive advantage over law-abiding employers.

Amnesty effectively shows favoritism to the rich and to the alien, and would demonstrate civil authorities’ failure to protect the people they’re charged with looking after.

With an eye to frequently referenced Old Testament passages, we should remember that it’s a long way from “do not mistreat an alien” to “you must accept all foreigners who wish to live in your nation and legalize all illegal aliens.”

Amnesty, moreover, risks abrogating the “love your neighbor” commandment and biblical standards of justice. It privileges the foreigners who broke our laws to get and stay here, and puts at a disadvantage the poorest citizens, law-abiding employers, and legal immigrants. This doesn’t sound at all like what Romans 13 describes, where the civil government wields the sword of justice to punish the wrongdoer and protect the innocent.

We all can empathize with someone who aspires to a better life. We wish the same for ourselves and our children. But there are lawful ways to achieve it.

Particularly in light of the utter failure of previous amnesties, the legalization route would constitute the government’s failure to mete out justice. It certainly wouldn’t be merciful, on balance.

When government tries to show mercy, it often results in injustice toward someone else. In this case, it’s native-born Americans who’ll suffer government-inflicted injustice.

Some 12 to 20 million illegal aliens have broken just, duly enacted laws that deserve to be enforced. Mass amnesty and a failure to enforce immigration laws subject all our laws, to contempt. That is a very high price to pay, because the rule of law protects us all against tyranny.

What about a guestworker program? The increase of laborers by some 400,000 to 600,000 foreign workers each year — on top of the more than one million legal immigrants who come to America annually, the quadrupling of chain migrants, and the 12-20 million who will gain legal status and, ultimately, citizenship — could devastate the livelihoods of American workers. It will start an economic race to the bottom.

It’s easy to envision the buyer’s market bonanza that would follow. The labor supply will be flooded, and with more workers vying for jobs, employers will be able to pay less generous wages and benefits.

The present legislation requires businesses to first advertise for an American worker, but that’s an easily eluded imposition.

When American middle-class wages do not merely continue to stagnate, but fall outright, it will be attributable to swelling the labor supply with foreign guestworkers. Those who wanted “compassion” from the government will see that legislating compassion towards one group equals harming another.

True, a lot of “willing workers” would marginally improve their own earnings here, relative to what they earn in their home countries. And there are a whole lot of “willing workers.”

The average Mexican worker earns one-twelfth the average American’s wages. Some 4.6 billion people in the rest of the world earn less than the average Mexican.

But what about the well-being of Americans? Our fellow countrymen could and otherwise would do those jobs for decent pay. Aren’t they our government’s first responsibility, its own citizens?

Those in Congress who are truly concerned about showing mercy and compassion should consider the limits on government’s ability. Mass amnesty and the massive increase of foreign “willing workers” will harm the most vulnerable Americans.

Scripture makes clear that justice is the government’s strong suit, not mercy. Government may show mercy, but only in carefully limited ways, such as narrow exceptions written into a general law, or providing for judicial discretion.

Broad shows of “mercy” by government, like amnesty of millions of illegal aliens, force the innocent to bear the costs of unequal treatment — the very foundation of injustice.

If a parent were to withhold food from his children to feed a stranger, that’s mercy gone too far.

Mercy is voluntary, not coercive. This isn’t mercy. Senators, presidents, Cabinet secretaries, and clerics should stop pretending this raw immigration deal has any whiff of morality to it. It is a slap in the face, and not the kind to which you can turn the other cheek.

–James R. Edwards Jr., coauthor of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, is an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute.