The Space - Episode 1 - Immigration

What you're about to witness is what I think is a very helpful and interesting conversation about immigration and basically the issues that we've been talking about the last week or so. I think one of the things that I've noticed about this particular conversation, and this is all kind of related to every kind of social justice thing that's going on in the church, but I think a lot of people have a tendency to oversimplify things, and they kind of make it seem that if you don't have my opinion of the immigration issue, well, then you're barely even a Christian.

You're not loving your neighbor as yourself. It's really just that simple. And I don't think it's that simple, and I think that there's room for nuance and there's room for disagreement. Now, obviously, the Bible teaches one specific thing, but the way we understand that, I don't think we should be lobbying anathemas to people over their differences here.

And I think that what you're about to witness sort of demonstrates that it's possible to disagree and it's possible to have nuanced discussions about this issue without lobbying bombs over to the other side of the table.

What we have here, we have four professing Christians and also myself. I'm going to introduce them really quick, and I'll add some links and stuff to the description of this video so you can find these people.

But the first person I want to introduce is Jacob Brunton. He is a co-founder and author for a website called ForTheChristianIntellectual, christianintellectual .com. Next we have Bobby McPherson, currently pursuing a master's degree in philosophy, and he's writing for thereformedconservative .org.

The third person is Steve Schlichter, and he is associated with a website called tauandtauhid .com, and that's a Muslim evangelism and apologetics website. And finally, we have Matt Travis, whose website is thekingsrights .com.

He's a blogger. He's on Twitter. He's on Facebook. And of course, I'm A .D. Robles, and this is The Space. All right, so we'll just get started here. We're going to talk about Romans 13. We're going to talk about immigration.

We're going to talk about probably about separating children from their parents and all of the above. And hopefully, you know, this will just be a sort of an example of how, you know, Christians from different perspectives can have a real conversation about all of this stuff, because clearly there's been sort of a dumbed down simplistic version of this argument that has played out all over the place, even on, you know, mainstream media with Christians saying things that sort of make it seem like it's a very black and white, crystal clear issue.

And I'm not saying that the scripture is not clear. I think it is, but it is a nuanced issue. And so we want to talk about that and have a good discussion here. And what I'll do is I'm going to start with just a few points that I think we can all agree on, but it's possible that we can't.

And so if you don't agree with something that I say, feel free to jump in. And this will just kind of be a free formed conversation. And, you know, the first time you talk, if you want to if you want to introduce yourselves, that'll be fine.

Or if not, we'll just let people figure out who you are. So here's here's where we'll start. I think that we can all agree and correct me if I'm wrong, that Romans chapter 13, the verse that Jeff Sessions used to sort of justify his policy, or at least obeying the policy.

That's not teaching blanket obedience to literally anything the government says. Can we all agree on that? Yes. OK, OK, good. Here's something I think we can all agree on as well, and I'm not sure if we really can.

So we'll see. The Bible, according to the Bible, borders are something that is allowable, it is OK, according to scripture for Christians to have borders, is that right? I would agree. Does anyone disagree with that?

Well, I sort of have a border or to be able to restrict movement across the borders.

You see that as two separate things. Well, why don't you. Why don't you. Why don't you tell me what you think about that? Because because I think a lot of people would see that as two separate things, but some.

People wouldn't. Yeah, so I don't think I don't know where the right to restrict movement across the border would come from. And one of my arguments would have been, you know, you wouldn't want someone restricting, restricting your right to leave a particular border.

But I saw in one of your questions that that was yeah, that is a right you think does exist. So I'd have to know where why where that right would exist outside of possible necessity because of some previous right that was already violated, requiring that right to, you know, requiring that to happen.

So I see the freedom of movement and freedom of associations as as kind of a human right. I don't think enforcement of not letting people do so is kind of a.

Problematic. So if anyone wants to respond to that, again, this will just be a free flowing thing. I'll be moderating it. And if if I have something to respond, I will. But I'll kind of defer to you guys to have the conversation.

If you want, I can elaborate further if you don't have any any thoughts on that.

Up to you. Sure. No, that's fair. I mean, if everyone agrees with what he just said or if they don't understand, we can kind of go from there.

Yeah. Well, we have to go. We can't agree with both me and your original statement, probably. So we're clear later. We have to have some kind of disagreement. Fair enough. Fair enough. I would make a I would make a very a distinction between immigration and naturalization.

So I'm not talking about I'm separating natural rights. We're using the term immigration and political privilege or political rights. So naturalization, I think we should have a very high bar. In fact, I'm concerned about most of the people that are already here voting, much less other people coming in and being able to vote money out of other people's wallets.

So referring specifically to immigration, that's a natural rights are basically your life, your liberty and your property. Right. You can't kill. So you can't take someone's life. You can't steal. So you can't take someone's property.

You shouldn't enslave someone. So you can't take their liberty. So to to restrict someone because they're on one side of a border from having voluntary associations, you're not just restricting the person coming in.

You're restricting the person that's here wants to hire someone. You're restricting their ability to have some kind of a voluntary association with someone because they're on the other side of a of a border that doesn't really exist outside of, you know, in our own kind of construct.

So that's basically the the idea that you restrict immigration, not political rights, but natural rights. You're restricting someone's ability to make a living, to freely move about, to associate voluntarily both the person coming in and the person that's hiring them.

Yeah. Or go ahead.

Good. So I have a I have a question about that. Would that also mean that if somebody is not if somebody is not allowed to come here for a legitimate reason, or at least what I would see is a different reason, I'm not sure if you would like security reasons, would that would be violating the rights of the person who couldn't associate with them, even though the person that's here didn't do something that caused them to be a security risk?

Yeah, I mean, that gets right. I understand. Well, if someone has a history, is that what you're saying?

Well, I'm saying that it seems that that argument falls apart, like saying that it's restricting the rights of people here to not let others associate with them. Seems like it falls apart if the person that you're not letting them associate with is not allowed to enter the country for like security purposes or something along those lines.

Yeah, I guess the assumption of security purposes is problematic to me. I think a good number of the people that are already here are probably a security risk. The you know, someone coming from a certain region, perhaps I can see, you know, I mean, you can very easily pull this pie in the sky idea of human rights down.

So I'm not I'm not naive. I'm not I'm not saying that you couldn't you couldn't do that. There's security problems. But the assumption that that people coming to work here from South America or Latin America are a security problem in and of itself, I think is kind of problematic.

You could say it's, you know, people talking on their cell phone after midnight is a security.

Problem. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. I would say that I was I was arguing more with the principle of your statement that if we don't let somebody come here, therefore they can't associate with somebody here, therefore restricting the rights of people here.

I think that that would be that would there be an issue. If you're saying that, then that would mean we can never restrict anybody coming here ever. You know what I'm saying?

Because then somebody's right. We could do it. What you're saying is that by doing it, you'd be violating someone's rights here already. Correct?

Yeah, that's the issue that I have. Not that you'd be violating the person that couldn't come, because obviously the security risk, they've done something to where they've gone. There's been some process that has taken place where we say that that person's rights aren't being violated because they did something and we verified it through some process.

Right. But my issue that I'm taking with this is that you said that the person here's rights are violated, which unless we're going to hold people here accountable for what other people did somewhere else and then therefore say that they can't associate with them.

And that's OK. I'm saying, yeah, I do see what you're saying.

Right. So there's a point where you have so much freedom to who can come here without any vetting that you're violating someone else's rights by having a known killer walking freely. Is that?

No, no, no, not necessarily. I don't think I'm explaining very well. But OK. OK, so initially you said you said that the reason that people should be able to cross the border is not only because it's their right to cross the border, but also because people within the borders of citizens of the United States have a right to associate with them.

So what I was saying is if somebody does something that makes it to where they no longer get that right to cross the border, because I think we would all agree there are circumstances specifically surrounding security where we would say they no longer have the right to come here.

Well, then that means by restricting that person, you're also restricting the individual that lives in the U .S. That is a citizen of the U .S. You're restricting their rights to associate with somebody.

You know what I'm saying? So so to say that if to say that by not letting them come here, we're taking the person, the citizens here, the citizens here, their rights away from associating with them. I don't see the argument is valid because that would almost put them as responsible for people who can't come here for the crimes that they did that don't allow them to make it so that we don't allow them to come here.

For the crimes that they've already done.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that seems fair. That same thing is true with you hire someone who commits crimes here, right?

Yeah. And I'm probably not explaining this well. Sorry. That's the first time I've ever heard that argument. So I'm just trying to so I'm on my head right at this moment. But hopefully that made sense in the end.

So so let's let me let me just something Steve said in the beginning. I think I don't know if everyone would agree with this. So, you know, let's let's talk about it a little bit. So he kind of recognizes a difference between the freedom of movement.

So letting people come over the border for, you know, to engage in commerce or whatever it is. And he makes a distinction between that and naturalization. So he said, I think I think you said, Steve, that the bar for naturalization should be pretty high.

But the freedom of movement, the bar for that, you know, there is a bar. It's not like you just let anyone who wants to come come. There is a standard there, I think you said, but it's a lot much lower.

Is that does everyone agree with that? Is that is that is that a biblical concept to allow sort of the freedom of movement? And that's something that's that's biblical.

Yeah, I would generally agree with that. I would say there's exceptions, but sure.

So everyone would agree that the that the civil government does have the right, according to scripture, to control to some extent who can come in and who can come out. Or no.

Yeah, I think that there might be differences on what those controls should consist of. Yeah, or what what the proper role of government is in outlining those controls.

So what would you say that the biblical sort of warrant that we have and what would what would that look like? What kind of things could we control and what kinds of things should we not?

Well, I don't like to claim that it's a biblical warrant, per se, because I I take into account a lot of general revelation when I think about these issues. And I think you never really have to, because I don't think the Bible is a political science book or a political theory book.

But I think if you utilize all of God's revelation, including scripture, you can come to a principle that says that the government's only purpose is the protection of individual rights, specifically the rights of those within its borders or within its own geography.

And in that case, when it comes to immigration, there's not really a function of the government for keeping people from moving across the border other than threats to physical safety. So, you know, if someone's got a communicable disease, if someone has a significant criminal history, if someone's got ties to a terrorist organization, those are things that the government should step in and, you know, either prevent them from coming or do some sort of intensified checking.

But apart from those things, I can't think of any principled role of the government when it comes to immigration, whether biblical or otherwise.

So would not be legitimate for the government to control, you know, people in order to protect the economic interests of people that are already citizens? No, I mean, I get kind of.

Infuriated when I hear conservatives, especially making those sorts of arguments. I call that half-hearted socialism. The idea that you've got a right to a certain job is essentially no different than the idea that you've got a right to a certain wage.

It's ludicrous and it's really shameful that conservatives and especially Christians would make that type of argument.

Fair enough. Nobody here would make that kind of argument, right?

No, I think I'd agree with you on all that. Great. Great. I know a place where I would differ,.

Though. I know Jacob's views in a number of ways, and they are very, very like-minded, but I would, and I don't know how I could be succinct, I would agree with Jacob that looking more at general revelation, I would argue a common law theory understanding of a principle that the government can use in regards to understanding borders, understanding, well, almost everything, everything from authority to law to rights and how you can get to rights.

So common law theory began, you could argue, with Edmund Burke, who I would argue is the Augustine of modern politics, and after Edmund Burke, you end up getting people like Friedrich J. Stahl, people like Herman, I always struggle with those names, and they argued a theory of law, they're all reformed guys, and what they said was, is that order, and this is my own language, I don't use this terminology, they would argue that order is its own moral principle.

One of the things, here's a scenario that I think hypothetically, they would argue would work in regards to this. You have, like where I come from, a small little town, Winfield, Kansas, not a very big population.

Well, due research has shown that there's been 11 to 12 million people that have immigrated, legally or illegally, over the past two decades. That's good, most of them are not all over the place, they're all over the place, but if you had 12 million people come to my hometown of, I don't know, like 25 ,000 people in that town or something, the infrastructure there could not handle it.

It would be complete disorder, and when you have disorder, it actually undermines law, and not to mention it's a bit of a safety hazard itself. So it's not just that the individual has a right, but the individual may or may not have a right to come.

For the sake of order, too many people coming creates a problem that has to be dealt with, and for them to say, well, no, even though you are free to come, we're full. And so that's a common law principle that I think that needs to be brought into the.

Discussion as well, that I think that could contribute. But Bobby, don't you agree that the Bible says you need to love your neighbor as yourself, and you need to take care of the.

Sojourner? Of course I agree with that. I don't think, in fact, I think that that is exactly part of the thing. You don't want to take, you see this principle with the lady who was interacting with Jesus, the one who said to him, well, the food that falls from the table, the dogs eat the scraps, don't they?

There's an aspect where Jesus pointed out this aspect. He said, you don't take food out of the mouths of children, my own children, to give to others. You don't let your own children starve. If people in that area are, and this goes actually back to, and this would be fun, a conversation for maybe Jacob and I, but egoism and altruism.

I will argue, unlike if I understand Jacob's position, I would argue that there's a both and there. With Christology, you have both Jesus as God and Jesus as man, and you have to uphold both of those principles.

Most philosophy actually is a both and conundrum, and usually you fall into a problem when you don't uphold the other part of the equation. And so, I can't help somebody who's dying in a water, in the ocean, in a river, if I can't swim.

So, there's an aspect of where, a healthy aspect that we are losing. Well, I have to be able to take care of myself first before I can take care of somebody.

Else. Bobby, that is honestly very, very true, and I think this kind of thinking that you're critiquing there is rampant in the church especially. There was a brother the other day who was talking about how we're supposed to live in this radical way where we're giving away to the poor and things like that, and he even said almost to the point where you are sort of foregoing saving for retirement and saving for your children.

And the problem is that the scripture doesn't say to do that. The scripture says that a righteous man gives to his children and also his children's children. And so, there has to be a way to sort of connect the way we're supposed to divest ourselves of some of our money and also at the same time have capital for our children and our children's children, and like you said, taking care of yourself in addition to others as well.

I think that was pretty astute. Well, and like I said, that's something that Jacob would agree with as well, that you can't take care of other people if you're not taking care of yourself. Now, then we get into, is it arrogant though?

People say that it's arrogant to place the nation first. You really have two sides of this debate. You have the, I call them the cosmopolitanists, the globalists, whatever you want to call them, who argue that we ought not to place the nation first, and then you have those who say that, if you want to call them nationalists, those who say, well, no, a government is supposed to place its own nation first.

And that's the side that I would land on, is that a government is not supposed to necessarily be putting, not necessarily, period, is not to be putting another nation first. The borders are meant for, well, it's meant for many purposes, but it is included to protect ourselves.

When we pay taxes, Jesus said, you know, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. He's talking about giving taxes to Caesar so that he can then use those, provide for his own people, not for another people.

But then we get back to, what is a citizen? And that's part of the problem too, is does that include the foreigner? Does that include the stranger? And that opens up a whole new can of worms. There is an aspect of where we are to protect, I suppose, the stranger within our gate, that we're not to treat them like garbage.

There is an aspect of where they do deserve basic human dignity. So I'm not at all arguing that we don't love our neighbor. In fact, I would argue, along the lines of Arthur Brooks from the American Enterprise Institute, he did a whole bunch of research showing that actually, conservatives are the most loving people, actually, the most compassionate people.

They give a whole lot more than those on the left. And interestingly, though, I brought that up to a socialist professor of mine and he said, well, that's because socialists and those on the left, they're giving when they pay their taxes.

I'm blown away by that. I think that that's a complete cop out. You can't sit there and say, well, I give to people because I pay taxes. But if it's true that they are more generous, then you would expect them to also be generous with their time, generous with other non-financial means.

But again, with that research that the president of AEI, Arthur Brooks, showed, no, those who are conservatives actually spend more time donating their money and their time, donating, a couple of words here, they donate their time, institutions, charities, helping out, poor relief, you name it, way more.

So this whole idea that people like Jacob or any of us here are unloving or uncompassionate, it's really, it's not true. It's slander.

I'll let somebody else jump in here. But just to say this to you, Bobby, I think you're exactly right. I think there's a tendency to sort of say, well, if you're not for very open borders, then automatically you're not obeying, you know, love your neighbor as yourself.

And I just think that that's just so simplistic. And I think it is what you said. It is slander. But let me ask the group here, because what you said about potentially making sure that the infrastructure is capable of supporting these numbers, do you think that the government has, you know, sort of a mandate in order to do what Bobby's saying here?

No, because there's no collective right. And that's sort of the idea behind, you know, protecting the infrastructure. It's the idea that the infrastructure is sort of collectively owned. And then as a collective, we as a small city or as a nation or whatever it is, has a right to it.

I want to say that we should reject collectivism totally. Not just the collectivism of the socialists, but the collectivism of the nationalists. I don't think the government needs to put America as such first.

I think the government needs to put its own individual citizens' rights first, or the individual rights of those within its borders first. Rights are individual, not collective. And I mean, we run into application problems right now because we've got a lot of collectivized property, like infrastructure, roads, things like that.

And so, you know, there's some good, interesting questions of how do you apply that principle in our current context, or how do you move towards that ideal? But I think it's important to first identify what the ideal ought to be.

And I would argue the ideal ought to be individualized property and individual rights. And in that context, if thousands of people want to move to a certain area, then they've likely got good reason to want to move there.

And if that, quote, unquote, hurts somebody else in a non-material way, in a way that doesn't actually violate their individual rights, then they're not actually being hurt in a way that the government ought to step in to guard against.

And if you say that, well, you can hurt them without violating their individual rights, well, then you're stepping in to the concepts of socialism that socialists adopt when it comes to government regulations.

Can I jump in there? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Go ahead.

Okay. So, for the sake of everybody, back to the one and the many balance there in philosophy, both individualism and collectivism are wrong without the other counterpart, and both of them have a half-truth, is my position.

Both need to be balanced, just like I explained earlier, is my, again, that's just my position. I'm not trying to debate that. And then secondly, in regards to order, you can deny common law theory, but none of us deny the common law principles.

Here would be a good example, and you can go a few different examples, really, that I think are very illustrative and they're very helpful. I think in the modern context that we're looking at today, if you have so much racial tension going on, if you have a cop who pulls over a guy, doesn't know what his race is when he pulls him over, the idea is he enforces the law.

The law and justice, it's all about justice. But then when he finds out, let's say, too, and this actually happened, it's a prominent member of a president of the NAACP or something like that, he could just let him go for the sake of order, because to go ahead and write a ticket or arrest or whatever the case may be, could incite violence and a rioting.

And so the common law principle would say, well, let that go, so that order is maintained. Order is an equally a moral principle as, but we see this every time actually in church. In church, you don't fight every single error, every single heresy.

Well, I think the heresy part out. Well, that's how we.

Define heresy. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I think we all know what you mean,.

Though. The same thing even happens in regards to the president. Final point there or explanation in regards to the presidency, we have a peaceful transfer, a peaceful exchange of power. And so what you have happened, it's called a hypothetical scenario where you have two people who are for candidates.

One is a complete scumbag who slandered the other person and who has horrible policies, but that other person, good policies, all agree with their policies, a righteous character, and refused to slander.

Let's suppose the first person won because of slander. Sounds kind of familiar, probably. Well, what if justice was absolute and not order, then people would argue it'd be okay to go ahead and use maybe a little bit of violence, maybe use a little dirty tricks to go ahead and put the right guy in power.

But for the sake of order, I would hope we all would agree no. As unfair as it is, the guy that slandered, the guy that's a scumbag is the president. We let that peaceful exchange of things because if we go ahead, here's what will happen.

If we go ahead and put the right guy in by force, then what's going to happen is in the future, not so good guys are going to get in by force, and it's going to further undermine order, which then.

Further undermines law. This seems to sort of relate directly to what just happened with Romans 13 and Jeff Sessions, because a lot of people would disagree with the law that Jeff Sessions was upholding and were encouraging him to not uphold that law, and that kind of ties in.

Directly to what you're saying. Well, and yeah, and here's something I'm playing with. See, I'm new to the common law theory, so I'm still trying to figure it out, but I'm willing to, at this point in time, speculate.

I'm not dogmatic about this. I'm willing to change my mind, but I, at this point in time, I'm willing to say that Romans 13 is not about justice. It's about order, and if that's true, then the government's job is order and not justice, and if that's the case, then it totally redoes the whole rights is about the individual thing, and it totally changes everything.

On its head. What are your thoughts? I think this is a problem with contemporary conservatives. Order is not a definable principle. It's completely pragmatic, and it will inevitably give way to a more principled version of chaos, which is socialism or something similar.

The idea that you can forego justice, or it's even morally ideal to forego justice for the sake of order, just encourages those who would sow disorder and chaos, right? So your example of not wanting to arrest the guy in order to avoid a protest, well, then what is the incentive there?

The incentive there is to threaten lots of protests, and the extent to which you've got a lot of people, a big mob, ready to protest is the extent to which you can get away with anything.

I agree with your concern, but I disagree on two notes. One, the cops do do this. I have a buddy of mine that I was sharing this with, too. And they shouldn't. I know they do. They shouldn't, is what I'm saying.

Hear me out, though. I parents, and this is why these conversations, I think, are so good, because I love how the connection between society and government and family and home. I think that one is a natural outflow of the other, and the way I parent reflects my idea of government.

I don't like the idea of having any kind of rule in my home that can't be enforced. If I can't, even if I like the idea of the rule, if I know that I can't enforce it, I'm not going to make that a rule.

And so you see with government the same kind of thing, and I think this is a matter of order. So a buddy of mine was sharing this idea with him. He talked about how he was at a concert, and there was a bunch of people smoking weed.

A ton of people smoking weed. And so the cops there were doing nothing about it, so he went up and he talked to them and said, well, hey, what are you guys doing? Why aren't you guys doing your job? And he said, well, if we try to enforce this, there's not nearly enough here.

There's thousands of people. We don't have the manpower to enforce this. And if we did, it would be a huge mess. People might stampede. People might get hurt in the process. It's better to not do that.

So there's an aspect of where, do you agree? Sure, but I think we all agree that smoking weed, laws against smoking weed are unjust. Change the illegal behavior to rape or murder. If there's a whole bunch of people raping or murdering, and you went up to the cops and said, why aren't you doing your job?

And they said, well, it would just be too difficult. We can't do it. It's not feasible. We need order. It's more orderly to just allow the rapes.

To continue. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Let me mention this in scripture then.

I believe that scripture teaches that. We'll let Steve answer right after you, Bobby. Okay.

So Jesus was asked about marriage and people asked him, well, I forget what they asked him. He said, originally, it was not so when it comes to divorce, but it was allowed because of the hardness of your hearts.

Now, every scripture, you always see hardness of hearts as a matter of sin. And that passage has always troubled me. I've always struggled with, wait a minute, if it was originally, it was not so, and it's allowed because of hardness of heart.

You're saying it's allowed because of sin. God is winking at sin. God doesn't wink at sin. And so the only way I've ever been able to actually make sense of that passage is if the hardness of their heart meant a lot of disorder would have happened.

And order is actually a moral principle. So it's not Jesus being a pragmatist. It's not Jesus being a good politician. It's Jesus actually saying that order has a moral value to it.

And that makes sense to me. I agree that order is not really a principle, although there may be pragmatic concerns and that's not a bad example. And Jesus's attitude toward divorce and how he expounds on, answers the question, how, why did Moses command us to give certificates of divorce?

Said, well, it's not because God hates divorce. We know that, knew that divorces were going to happen and wanted to protect those. So that we're the weakest partner in the divorce. So that may be an example of what you're doing, what you're saying.

But I don't think order itself is a principle and kind of tying it back to immigration. I think the issue is that we've lost, like conservatives, especially have really lost conservative values and they can't conceive of immigration without like an element of socialism that we've already accepted.

So we accept the fact that if an immigrant comes here, that means he's, we're really talking about the political rights of political rights of healthcare, the rights to social safety nets. And when we talk about infrastructure and problems related to immigrants, it's really the problems related to our bad view of what the immigration would have to mean that we have those sorts of things versus immigration.

That is just the freedom of movement. And we could tell, the free market could tell us exactly how many immigrants could be here because the immigrants that would belong here would be the ones that could take care of themselves, could find employment, could find housing, and could prosper here.

When the free market can't do that, and there's no other reason for immigrants to be here, immigrants wouldn't come here. So I don't think order is really a principle. I think the principle derives from biblical concepts of love your neighbor.

As Jesus broke down the 10 commandments, it gets broken down into two things, love your neighbor and love God. When you put those two, you aggregate them beyond how do I love one individual person? Well, I don't steal from him.

If I, if there's 10 of us, that means I don't hire someone to steal from him. I don't elect someone to steal from him. And I think the same thing applies to how to love immigrants. I find a lot of the, the, the application of this to be phony and kind of fake, fair, terrible view where, you know, we have this desire, this Christian, this appeal from Christianity to help immigrants isn't just allow immigrants to, to, to seek employment and prosper.

It's that you have to steal money from someone else in order to give it to the immigrant. It's, it's not even that you're doing it yourself. You know, the idea that we have to, you know, we have to get a plane and fly and, and, and pay for a plane and fly a bunch of people over here because of love of immigrants with money that doesn't even belong to us is kind of a.

Phony implementation of that. It certainly does complicate the issue for sure. I would agree with that. Matt, do you have anything to say here? I think you're on mute. Oh yeah. Sorry about that.