Helping Asylum Seekers Made Me Less Sympathetic To Illegals

Legacy corporate media is awash with sob stories about the plight of illegal immigrants afraid of what might happen to them because of Trump administration policies. “Pregnant asylum seekers fear birthright citizenship will end before their deliveries,” reported The Washington Post on Feb. 9. “How teachers are preparing themselves and their students for immigration sweeps,” was a Feb. 8 CNN headline. “’We are all afraid’: Migrants with temporary status live in fear amid Trump’s crackdown,” was another headline from NBC News in January.

Yet as much as all of this fear-mongering is intended to provoke outrage among American audiences empathic to the plight of the millions of illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, it has the opposite effect for me. The more I hear about illegal immigrants afraid that the government might hold them accountable for breaking U.S. laws, the more firm I am in my conviction that illegal immigration must be stopped, immediately. What makes me this way might surprise you: a decade of advocating on behalf of asylum seekers. 

The Terrible, Never-Ending Struggles of Christian Asylum Seekers

I first began advocating on behalf of Christian asylum seekers 10 years ago while I was living in Bangkok, Thailand. There I encountered literally thousands of evangelicals and Catholics who had suffered religious persecution in Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria. Most of them had overstayed their 30-day Thai visas and were living there illegally in constant fear of being apprehended by the Thai authorities.

One such Christian I met was a man named Michael D’Souza, a Catholic from Pakistan who on multiple occasions was physically assaulted by Muslim militants. His sister-in-law was abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. He never saw her again. Fearful for his life and that of his wife and small children, he fled to Thailand, where he was repeatedly arrested and kept in a Thai detention center.

Since then, I’ve written more than 20 articles for almost a dozen magazines discussing Michael’s plight. I discussed his story in my first book and was able to get it briefed to a congressional subcommittee, which was chaired by now-discredited Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (then a congresswoman) and included Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Bass and Omar demonstrably did not care about Michael or other Christians like him, with Omar quite incredibly shifting the conversation to the alleged persecution of Muslims in the United States.) None of that secured Michael’s freedom from violent religious persecution. None of it attracted attention from secular liberal media (they’re too busy reporting on the “persecution” of transgender people in Africa).

After Michael was forced to return to Pakistan with his family, militants again attacked him and burned his motorized taxi — a story I recounted in The Federalist in 2018, and which provoked many Federalist readers to donate to his cause (thank you!). Today, Michael’s family is living in hiding in Pakistan. They are now awaiting an adjudication of an asylum application with the government of Canada. God willing, they’ll finally be accepted this year and start a new life.

If My Asylum Seeker Friends Can’t Come Here, Why Should Illegals?

From the beginning, I’ve encouraged the many asylum seekers I have sought to help that they must do their best to obey various national immigration laws. Though many people encouraged me to “think creatively” about helping Pakistani Christian asylum seekers by illegally shuttling them into the United States through our southern border, I have always refused. Countries have borders for a reason.

As much as I mourn the suffering of friends such as Michael, I do not want them to disobey any country’s immigration laws, nor to enter my country illegally. It’s true, the international asylum seeker process is a broken disaster, with many of the most needy cases (such as Michael’s) ignored by bureaucrats who have the power to help him.

This is why I have so little sympathy for illegal aliens in the United States. The vast majority of them were not the object of violent threats to their life, with militant extremists threatening to kill them and coerce their female loved ones into marriages and forcibly convert them to Islam. No, almost all people currently living in our country illegally are economic migrants here because they want a better financial future. 

Nobody can blame illegal immigrants for not wanting to be poor, or wanting to escape Latin American countries where the economic opportunities are so limited. But that doesn’t mean they get to break U.S. immigration or labor laws. And it certainly shouldn’t mean that whatever children they have while living illegally in the United States get to become American citizens, simply by being born here. That’s nothing but a reward for illegality.

No Patience for Illegal Immigration

And yet, according to leftist legacy media, I’m supposed to feel sympathy for the millions of people who have crossed our borders illegally and are now hoping they and their children get to become citizens. As Vice President J.D. Vance noted in a recent CBS interview, these are people who work for poverty-level incomes that depress wages for American citizens. They are “building America” only because a broken U.S. immigration policy has allowed them to, to the detriment of blue-collar American laborers who can’t compete with them. 

People like my friend Michael D’Souza have spent decades trying to get the Western world to notice them, and to give them an opportunity to flee countries in which religious extremists are actively trying to murder them. In contrast, most illegal immigrants from Latin America are just impoverished people looking for a better future. I can sympathize with that. Nobody wants to be poor.

But if they want to be in the United States legally, they need to obey our laws. And then get in line.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.