I want to be careful here because this topic gets deliberately muddied.

Being against open border policy is not the same as being against immigrants. It is not the same as being against people who are desperate for a better life. Most conservatives I know have deep respect for the courage it takes to leave everything familiar and start over somewhere new. Legal immigration built this country. Nobody serious is arguing against that.

What we are arguing against is the deliberate dismantling of border enforcement and the consequences that follow – consequences that land hardest not on the people making the policy but on the communities closest to the chaos.

Working class neighborhoods absorb the strain first. Hospital emergency rooms that were already stretched get stretched further. Schools that were already underfunded get more students and fewer resources. Wages in low-income labor markets get suppressed because the supply of desperate workers willing to accept less has increased. The people who feel this most directly are not wealthy liberals in gated communities making compassionate speeches. They are people who cannot afford to move away from the problem.

There is also the criminal element. The vast majority of people crossing illegally are not criminals. That is true and worth saying clearly. But some are. And a functioning border policy exists precisely to filter the difference. When the filter is removed the communities on the other side absorb whoever comes through – including the ones who should have been stopped.

Then there is the cartel economy that has built itself around human trafficking and drug smuggling through porous borders. Fentanyl is not a coincidence. It is a supply chain. And the people dying from it are American families who never signed up to be casualties of a border debate.

Scripture is clear that we treat the stranger with dignity. Leviticus says it. Jesus affirmed it. A Christian cannot look at desperate people and feel nothing – that is not the heart of God. But dignity for the stranger and open borders are not the same policy. You can receive people lawfully, process them humanely, and still believe that a nation without borders is not a nation at all.

Order is not cruelty. Law is not hatred. And pretending otherwise does not help the people waiting in line the right way.

Stephon Rudd

Buy Still A Man: Restoring Biblical Masculinity in a Culture That Erases It on Amazon today!