a new kind of crime

Something else comes to mind concerning this immigration thing. Illegal immigration is a different sort of criminal activity from just about every other kind of lawlessness we encounter. I bet when most of us think of laws being broken, we think of specific actions or instances in which a person does something that is clearly outside the law and harmful to society. But illegal aliens not only chose to "invade," if you will, but they continuously break the law merely by being here. They don't have to do anything but breathe and they're still constantly violating our laws. They aren't so much guilty of some specific action at some point in time as they are of just being alive in a land they're not allowed to be in. It's a continuous, ongoing sort of lawbreaking that can't be separated into multiple actions.

So to prove someone guilty in this sense, one must only ask the defendant to produce the documentation giving him right of passage in this country. If he can't produce the evidence he's guilty by means of his existence on this side of the border. It seems that in the courts the burden of proof shifts to the defendant to prove he is indeed allowed to be here. That thought is a bit scary at first but that's the way the law works in this case.

Actually, as I think about it more this isn't such a foreign concept--not to Christians anyway. We don't deserve death for the specific actions we've committed over a lifetime, we deserve death for being sinners that fail to meet God's standard of holiness. We aren't convicted on the basis of actions, we're convicted on the basis of our being. Thus the guy who lives an outwardly holy life is still under the same condemnation as the guy who lives an outwardly filthy life. Now I'm not claiming we citizens are somehow in God's position here or that we hold such ultimate authority over illegals; to imply such would be blasphemous. I'm simply saying we're dealing with a crime of "being" not "doing" in much the same way God deals with us as sinners.