Remember, everyone, this young man carried an incredible spirit with him. He spoke with power and conviction and understood the heart of the Gospel at least as well I do. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a more spiritually in-tune missionary in my life – and that’s not hyperbole. God walked with that young man as he served his mission.

That is not inconsequential, as it relates directly to how he is being characterized, even if only indirectly, in many of these comments. This isn’t just a person; this is a man of God – a truly amazing man, quite frankly. It’s easy to lose sight of that fact, especially or those who have not met him or felt the depth of his spirit.

Discussions of legal options and the law are one thing; statements that demean his character and paint with overly broad brushes of condemnation and vitriol are quite another.

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

There’s a lot of stone throwing in this thread, and that makes me FAR sadder than even this young man’s plight.

Kent, If having Mexican workers here in the US is so great, why can’t those workers do great things while remaining in Mexico?

I’m not sure that I was calling this immigration “great.” I’m not sure it is the best thing at all — it is often quite inefficient to move people around, and I think in general moving the opportunities to them, as you suggest, would be better.

BUT, I don’t think that it is moral to prohibit people from moving around if they wish.

The reason is that there are much less opportunities in Mexico to create wealth through hard work than in the US. Why are there so few opportunities for work and wealth-creation in Mexico? Two reasons: 1) they have less freedoms: economic, political and social; and 2) they have more corruption.

I don’t want to agree too strongly with this, because I don’t think that we should be looking down on Mexico and assuming some kind of moral superiority here. Most patriotic Mexicans would probably disagree with most of what you claim. BUT, I do recognize that they have less economic opportunity, probably from a lack of capital, over-concentration of capital among the rich, problems with criminal organizations (which are undoubtedly bolstered by their ability to sell drugs into the US — something which is at least partially our problem), and yes, corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency are part of the problem also.

When you talk about “less freedoms: economic, political and social” I get the sense that you mean that the government is oppressive. I’m not willing to go that far, from what I understand of Mexico.

Instead of importing cheap workers from Mexico to the US, why can’t the US export freedoms and opportunities to Mexico? In small part, we have, by many companies building factories there. But mainly, we can’t because of Mexican laws that prohibit foreigners from owning land in Mexico, and laws that restrict foreign investment in Mexico, laws that restrict foreigners from working in Mexico, and again because of corruption.

Your statement here assumes companies investing in Mexico, which is generally thought of as the preferred way to do things. There are other ways, including through the World Bank and other development resources, through U.S. Government foreign aid, and through charitable work and programs, including things like the PEF.

I’m not enough of an expert to know how much local laws are preventing the needed investment. BUT I do know that when ALL of these different methods of opening up opportunities in Mexico are raised, the same groups in the U.S. who object to immigration and want legal immigration heavily restricted as it is now, are the first ones to object, claiming that we should not be sending our tax dollars to foreign countries and that our companies should not be exporting “our” jobs overseas.

From my point of view, no matter which way I suggest alleviating the pressures that lead to illegal immigration, I hear objections from the far right!!

If you don’t want these immigrants to come to the U.S., let’s make it possible for them to stay there! Let’s help them develop so that people will want to stay!

Mexico is hungry for those billions of dollars that Mexicans working in the US send back home every year. (There’s another factor in the net economic cost of so many foreign workers, legal or illegal: loss of capital across the border that will have no return).

You are right. But to the extent that capital stays in Mexico, doesn’t it help solve the problem above? Doesn’t it help develop Mexico so that its people are less likely to want to come to the U.S.?

But I do have to add one observation to your economic cost point — you are forgetting to factor in the value of the labor of these workers. All that capital you say is lost was paid to these foreign workers for their labor. I’m pretty sure we got valuable labor in return.

This is kind of like purchasing raw materials from Africa. The money went out to Africa, but we got the raw materials, and, presumably, we will use those raw materials to make things. And often in these cases, what we make is sold back to Africa or the place where we sourced the labor.

The Mexican government is all for increasing illegal crossings of the border so that they send money back. It’s a huge source of foreign exchange for them.

I suspect that the border crossings and the associated illegal activity of coyotes and drug traffickers are enough of a headache that any pleasure at the increase in crossings is tempered substantially.

But it doesn’t matter. If you can either develop Mexico enough, or allow enough immigrants in legally, the situation will stabilize and everyone will benefit.

Kent, on the other point: comparing to slavery is a non-sequitur both on moral points and economic points of the open border/immigration issue. Good arguments can be made that share-cropping and using day-laborers was cheaper for land-owners than buying and maintaining slaves.

I don’t follow exactly. I don’t want to make a big deal about whether or not the analogy is good, but I really don’t understand what you are saying doesn’t work there.

Kent, your open-borders mentality also seems disconnected to reality. Taken to it’s conclusion, you’re implying that all nations should have open and uncontrolled borders. That’s just ridiculous.

Indeed. That’s why I’m not advocating taking it to the extreme. I suggest a more moderate, controlled immigration policy, one that recognizes and tries to confront the economic pressures that are on immigrants to come to the U.S., balanced by our ability to absorb those immigrants.

Not only is our current policy immoral, it simply doesn’t work. More people want to come than we are allowing to come, and our infrastructure can support a much higher immigration rate than what we have now. In addition, we are doing little or nothing to alleviate the pressures on immigrants to come, and instead putting them into impossible positions when they do come, positions that exacerbate the problem.

I just believe we need to let a lot more people in than we do now, while carefully thinking about the effects of the law and what it means immigrants will do and while encouraging and increasing our efforts to help foreign workers find reasonable employment at home so they don’t have the incentive to come.

Instead, the reactions I hear on this blog and elsewhere, especially from the far right, is that we should concentrate on enforcement and on making the law more strict, and, apparently, on the Church punishing those members who are here illegally in an attempt to force them to return to their home country regardless of circumstance.

All I can say is that these ideas WILL NOT WORK.

In the Millenium, when Christ reigns over all, and all acknowledge his reign, when everyone on the planet is “Terrestial-worthy” or better, there will likely be no national borders, and that will be fine.

But in the mean time, nations are sovereign, and one nation should not drag down those around it. We (the US) should be a good neighbor, and attempt to lift up those around us, but not do so in a way that our neighbor drags us down.

Amen. Can we talk to the far right about allowing this to happen? Can we tel the “America First” crowd to back off?

Now maybe, seriously, maybe this immigration thing is a partiual fulfillment of the prophecy of the Lamanites “treading and tearing” through the Gentiles. So maybe the end result is that we (the US) actually deserve these things going on as per the prophecy in the Book of Mormon.

I hope not. Because, at least until now, the immigrants seem to be taking the brunt of the suffering.

(More judicious editing)

Nah, nothing else I can say.

I don’t much care for the concept of “noble” poverty, and I have no problem with people who are trying to better themselves through hard work.

The young missionary in question here, probably never has “lived in squalor”, and as far as holding his head high, he seems to be acting in a noble manner as much as the restrictions of the ICE detention center allows. I can’t imagine any of the posters here who are taking such a hard anti-immigration status to be able to look this young man in the eye, and make those same arguments to him.