Why is Jeff Sessions Quoting the Bible to Justify Our Immigration Policy?

Who is Jeff Sessions and why is he quoting the Bible to justify the current immigration policy that separates families?  To answer that question you need to know a bit of his background and upbringing.  He was born in Selma, Alabama, known historically as a bulwark of racial equality and tolerance.  He was named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.  His namesakes are Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, and P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general in the Civil War.  You will never find two more racially tolerant and fair-minded people.  Mr. Sessions has referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as un-American and Communist-inspired.  Testimony at his failed nomination to district court stated that Sessions thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out that they smoked pot.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions

“There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.”  George Galloway.

Over the years, I have encountered many individuals who use blind patriotic fervor and/or Christian beliefs as they interpret them from the Bible, to justify any number of positions.  It is usually when someone adopts an otherwise indefensible stance that the perpetrator feigns patriotism or justification from the Scripture.  It’s like when your parents justified something with, “Because I said so.”  When someone uses patriotism or the Bible in their rationale, they seem to infer that there can be no other way but the one they prescribe.  All other positions are indefensible in light of their interpretation of what it is to be patriotic or Christian.

Old Testament

In Sessions case, he believes that his Methodist teachings and interpretations of the Bible are above reproach and paramount to the Law of the Land.  By siting Romans 13 and the Apostle Paul and claiming that we are “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions has set himself and his interpretations to be sacrosanct.  I’m sure Mr. Sessions ignores the fact that our laws of government were in place when his two namesakes elected to violate that law by seceding from the established union in the prelude to our Civil War.

General Beauregard

President Jefferson Davis and First Lady Varina Davis
Confederate States of America

In our nation’s history, the Bible was regularly used to justify slavery.  From the King James Bible slaveholders quoted Genesis IX, 18-27 and a story about Noah who had three sons.  Noah got angry with one son and cursed him to forever be a servant.  In “re-interpreting” this passage, the fact that the servant son would have been of the same race as his brothers was ignored and the new story made him black.  We can also ignore that Noah went on to live another 350 years after the flood.  I won’t even get into the big boat and all the animals.  You can read an expanded version of this in Time.

Our founding fathers were essentially Christian and our constitution was, in fact, based on the morality found in the Christian faith.  The nation at that time was 98% Protestant, 1.9% Catholic, and there were roughly 2,000 Jews.  Read more of the Jewish influence during our formative years here.  While a Christian morality certainly played a role in the establishment of our government, religious tolerance was clearly outlined in the First Amendment.  The separation of church and state has also been regularly upheld in our courts.

Founding Fathers Signing of US Constitution

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."  Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Sessions also has quoted the Bible to establish that God wants the wall on our border with Mexico.  “God told Nehemiah to build a wall when he got back to Jerusalem.”  What more justification do you need than that Jeff has found a reference in the Bible to a wall to keep the bad people out?

Do we need serious revisions to our immigration policies?  Yes, we do.  Should we comb through the Bible to find out what to do?  No.  Our nation was founded on immigration.  If you can find moral guidance in the Bible, be my guest.  Just don’t use the Bible or your patriotism to justify positions that are morally wrong.  We need immigrants to pick our crops and work at jobs that our citizens won’t do.  We need immigrants at the other end of the socio-economic and intellectual spectrum to enrich our society with their presence.  We need a comprehensive system to allow this immigration.  We need to control our borders but need to do so in a humane way.

President Trump knows the ins and outs of immigration and uses the loopholes in the H-2B visa program to hire seasonal workers for his hotels.  Since 2016, he has hired 143 foreign guest workers and only 1 US citizen to fill seasonal jobs at three Trump properties in New York and Florida.  Read more here.  Under this program employers must try to fill positions with American workers first.  Then, and only then, can they ask the Labor Department to hire foreign guest workers.  The law itself is just a way to pay wages so low that no American citizen would want to work so you can fill positions with immigrants ¹.  President Trump talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.

President Trump is married to an immigrant.  His grandparents on his father's side were immigrants from the Kingdom of Bavaria.  His mother was an immigrant from Scotland.

Trump Family 1915

¹ Note:  I worked for two years in the Florida State Employment Service and regularly saw bogus "job ads" where the job descriptions were written in such a manner so as to preclude almost all humans on the planet.  The lack of any response over a set period was then used to justify going to the Dept. of Labor to request a specific individual foreign aid worker on a H-2B program.  That worker would then qualify for the opening even if it meant waiving some of the more onerous specifics in the job requirements.