The push for DREAM has become a self-parody: The group called “Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” headed by former Mexican cabinet official Juan Hernandez (“I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first’“) has issued a press release headlined, “Conservative Evangelical Leaders to Senators: Will There Be Room at the Inn for Immigrant Children This Christmas?” “Room at the inn,” huh? I’m waiting for opponents of the amnesty to be labeled Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caiaphas. “You shall not press down upon the brow of aliens this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify illegals upon a cross of enforcement.” Or something like that.
The distressing thing is that more and more of the evangelical leadership really is defecting to the post-American, amnesty side. The “room at the inn” announcement included support for DREAM from Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law, while the president of Regent University is also pro-amnesty. I’m afraid evangelical Protestants are simply seeing the same thing happen to their institutions as has already happened among Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Jews (not to mention blacks and organized labor): the elite/public split on immigration, where the ostensible leaders of most groups in our society are for effectively open borders, while their supposed constituents are for national sovereignty. In fact, it looks like the only two mass-membership groups whose leadership isn’t for open-borders are the American Legion and the National Federation of Independent Business (the small-business lobby).