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Antichrist's Irredentist Illegal Alien Assault on America: A Review of Strangers No Longer

Steven T. Matthews

Download the PDF version of this review. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your system please click here on Adobe Acrobat Reader to download.

Editor’s note: The following article is the text of the message Mr. Matthews presented for the 2024 Reformation Day Livestream. It will continue in succeeding Trinity Reviews.

It was just recently that I was surprised to hear about a growing crisis in Springfield, Ohio, surrounding the large population of Haitians who had taken up residence there. I was surprised because I have spent much time studying and writing about America’s long-running immigration crisis. Further, Springfield is more or less in my backyard, just an hour’s drive away. However, I was unaware of the situation until it burst onto the national scene in the late summer of 2024.

According to most reports, approximately 15,000 – 20,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield in recent years, a city with a population of 58,000. As you may imagine, such a massive influx of people in such a short time would create difficulties even under the best of circumstances. And what has been going on in Springfield is far from the best circumstances.

Some of the first evidence I saw of the crisis were testimonies of Springfield residents before the Springfield City Commission pleading for help with what had become an unlivable situation.[1]  Hearing their testimony, I was reminded of the verse from Isaiah I quoted in my Reformation Day 2022 presentation, “Your land, strangers devour it in your presence.” Strangers are devouring Springfield in the very presence of the city’s historical population. Yet those in positions of power seem far more concerned with justifying the decisions that led to this disastrous situation and denouncing those who have called attention to it than protecting the lives and property of the people who elected them to office and to whom they are responsible.

How is it possible for 20,000 Haitians to suddenly show up in a medium-sized Ohio city with no historical ties to Haiti? Who orchestrated this situation? If you’ve listened to or read my earlier Reformation Day presentations on immigration, you won’t be surprised to find out that the Antichrist Roman Church-State’s fingerprints are all over the disaster in Springfield.

One clue is a story in the Springfield News-Sun dated January 18, 2024. The headline reads “New Catholic Charities center to help city’s Haitian population with immigration, jobs.” In the article, we read, “A new Springfield facility that will provide services including help with immigration status applications, legal advocacy and case management, will open this year.” Note that the facility is set up not to do anything for the suffering residents of the Springfield but to facilitate the ongoing importation of Haitians into the area. We learn from the article that the facility “will be operated by Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio, which has been providing aid in Springfield for about a year and a half,”[2] according to CEO Tony Stieritz.

In a statement issued on September 9, 2024, Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio denied having any role in bringing migrants to the Springfield area or offering resettlement services.[3] Yet by making it easier for Haitians to settle in Springfield, Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio is aiding in destruction of the city.

Much more can be written about the terrible situation in Springfield that has been brought about in part by the efforts of Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio. Just as the disaster along America’s border with Mexico has been brought about by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, so too is Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio facilitating the destruction of Springfield, Ohio.[4]

But as bad as things are in Springfield, the situation there is but one manifestation of Rome’s longstanding, ongoing immigration war on the United States and the historic Protestant American nation.

I’ve titled this talk “Antichrist’s Irredentist Immigration Assault on America: A Review of Strangers No Longer.” Before going on, it would be helpful to define a few terms.

Antichrist

My definition of Antichrist is the same as that of the Westminster Confession of Faith that historically has identified “the Pope of Rome” as “that Antichrist, man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that it called God.”^[5]

While this definition of Antichrist was the standard position of Reformed writers from the 16^th century through the early 20^th century, calling the Pope “Antichrist” today is considered, at best, bad manners and shocking in many circles.

The identification of the Pope of Rome as Antichrist is one of the more prominent conclusions of what is known as the “Protestant system” prophetic interpretation. This school of thought is also known as Historicism.^[6][SM1]  Historicists hold that Revelation records the history of the church from the time John wrote the book in the first century through the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Irredentist

Irredentist is the adjectival form of the noun Irredentism. Christian J. Pinto has described irredentism as Jesuit immigration warfare[SM2] .

Encyclopedia Britannia defines “irredentism” as “the process by which a part of an existing state breaks away and merges with another.”

By way of example, one of the most obviously irredentist movements in the United States was called La Reconquista, Spanish for “the reconquest.” This term was quite popular in the first decade of the 2000s. It was described in the Washington Times as “a radical movement calling for Mexico to ‘reconquer” America’s Southwest.”^[7] The idea was that Mexico would retake the territory it lost to the United States due to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, which ended the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

One wonders about the recent disappearance of the term “la reconquista” in the popular press. Given the flood of aliens, both legal and illegal, pouring into the United States under the Biden Administration, perhaps the Roman Church-State feared using the term would make what’s going on a bit too obvious.

Immigration

I use this term in the general sense of “entrance into a country for the purpose of settling there.” There are several different ways foreigners can enter the United States. Some individuals come here intending to permanently settle in the United States as resident aliens or citizens. Others come here on work visas or student visas with the understanding that they will return to their home countries once their studies are completed, or their work arrangements end. Others are here under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which means they are supposed to go home when the emergency in their home country has passed. In practice, there are few things more permanent than the presence of individuals with TPS.^[8] In this talk, I use “immigration” as a non-technical term to cover how foreigners come to settle in America in the long term.

Assault

The United States has been under attack by the Roman Church-State for most of its history. Some of these attacks I mentioned some of these attacks in my Reformation Day livestream last year and will not repeat them in this talk.^[9] The millions of aliens pouring across America’s borders during the current presidential administration is no accident but rather an orchestrated assault, an attack, a war being conducted against the American republic. The principal agent of this assault is the Church-State working through the Roman Catholic, Jesuit-connected Biden Administration.

America

I use the terms “America” and “United States” interchangeably.

Exsul Familia Nazarethanaand Strangers No Longer

In last year’s Reformation Day talk, I discussed Pope Pius XII’s 1952 Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia Nazarethana (EFN hereafter). This document formalized the principles of Rome’s irredentist immigration practice.

One of the noteworthy features of this apostolic constitution was how it specifically targeted the United States. In 1952, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act still governed America’s immigration policy. This Act prevented Rome from flooding America with Roman Catholic immigrants as it had in the latter half of the 19^th century. Reading between the lines, one gets the sense that EFN was written, at least in part, to overturn the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and allow Rome to restart the process of inundating America with its foot soldiers.

The Vatican got its wish with the 1965 Immigration Act, championed in the Senate by Edward Kennedy.^[10] This Act was a legacy achievement of President John F. Kennedy, whose posthumous book A Nation of Immigrants was published in 1964, calling for an end to the national origins immigration quotas that had been in place since 1924.^[11]

The topic of today’s talk is another important Roman Catholic document on immigration titled Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (SNL hereafter).^[12] SNL can be viewed as applying the general Roman Catholic migration principles found in EFN to the specific situation of the United States and Mexico.

SNLis the title of a 2003 pastoral issued jointly by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and their counterparts in Mexico. We will now turn to an analysis of this document.

In his 1984 book American Democracy & the Vatican: Population Growth & National Security, author Stephen D. Mumford noted, “Americans…are also aware that 90 percent of all illegal immigrants are Roman Catholic.”^[13] Granted, these are old numbers and may not reflect the current religious affiliation of the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States during the Biden Administration. Nevertheless, Roman Catholics remain a significant portion of the aliens, legal and illegal, currently pouring across America’s borders.

Drawing on the dogmas outlined in Pope Pius XII’s 1952 Apostolic Constitution EFN, SNL can be seen as Rome’s irredentist battle plan to conquer America for the Roman Church-State using illegal immigration as one of its principal weapons. Rome’s approach to illegal immigration can be summarized thus: get ‘em in, keep ‘em in, put ‘em on the dole, legalize ‘em.

This author contends that the ongoing border disaster that has occurred during the Biden Administration is proof that the SNL battle plan against America is working. Whether it will continue to work is ultimately up to the Lord. But in a proximate sense, whether Antichrist succeeds or fails in his bid to Romanize America is up to America’s Protestants. But the American Protestant church has largely taken itself out of the fight, or perhaps more accurately, has never gotten in the fight in the first place.

Liberal Protestantism is just as bad as Romanism on immigration. In my experience, liberal Protestantism, at least on the issue of immigration, is simply a colony of Rome[SM3] , presenting the same basic arguments for mass, socialist immigration as do Catholic priests, nuns, bishops, cardinals, and popes, only without all the specifically Catholic rhetoric and symbols.

Bible-believing Protestants, while better than the liberals, still largely fail to understand that Rome is the primary cause of America’s illegal alien disaster. Further, they fail to recognize Rome’s irredentist immigration assault on America for what it is, the work of Antichrist. This is due to their abandonment of the Historicist school of prophetic interpretation and their embrace of Jesuit-created alternatives such as Preterism and Futurism.^[14]

Historicism, or the Church Historical Approach, is the eschatological school that understands Revelation as “a prophecy about the whole history of the church from the ascension of Christ to his second coming.”^[15] One of the key doctrines of Historicism is its identification of the “Pope of Rome” as “that Antichrist, that man of Sin and son of perdition” spoken of in the Scriptures. Had Protestants not thrown out their forefather’s biblical eschatology and replaced it with Jesuit-inspired substitutes, it is doubtful that Rome would be anywhere near as successful as it currently is at carrying out its irredentist immigration policies. As it stands, Antichrist is actively destroying the United States of America with his irredentist immigration battle plan while most Protestants, even believing Protestants, fail to recognize his work, even though it’s being done right under their noses.^[16]  

It is my prayer that the following analysis of SNL will serve to open the eyes of my fellow American Protestants to the great danger they are in due to Antichrist’s aggressive immigration war on America.   

SNLis a Marian Document

One facet of SNL that should not be overlooked is that it is a hard-core Marian document referencing Our Lady of Guadalupe on five occasions. In paragraph 3 of SNL, the bishops write,

On January 23, 1999, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope John Paul II presented his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, which resulted from the Synod of Bishops of America.^[17]

The significance of Ecclesia in America (EIA hereafter)to SNL can be seen from the fact that the bishops specifically note at the end of SNL that their letter was “Delivered on the fourth anniversary of Ecclesia in America, January 22, 2003, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and Mexico City, Mexico.”

EIA is itself a strongly Marian document referring to “Our Lady of Guadalupe” as “Queen of all America,”^[18] “Patroness of all America and Star of the first and new evangelization,”^[19] and “Mother and Evangelizer of America.”^[20] Further, as the quote above notes, it was delivered “at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” which is in Mexico City, supposedly at the site of the apparition of “Mary.”

Writing in EIA, Pope John Paul II, himself an avid devotee of Mary, expressed his desire to see that “the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother and Evangelizer of America, be celebrated throughout the continent on December 12.”^[21]

Our Lady of Guadalupe has long been considered a national symbol of Mexico, perhaps the national symbol. Pope John Paul II’s endorsement of the apparition^[22] and recognition of Juan Diego as a saint have elevated Our Lady of Guadalupe as one of the primary symbols of Rome’s irredentist immigration war on the United States.

An example of the central role Our Lady of Guadalupe plays in Rome’s irredentist immigration assault on America can be seen in a striking photograph from 2018. The picture shows a large statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe being unloaded from a truck at the US-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico.^[23] A mass was held at the site, followed by a procession with the statue. The caption under the photo reads in part, “The Mass and a procession with the statue of our Lady of Guadalupe were a call to remember and pray for migrants and were led by Archbishop Francisco Moreno Barron of Tijuana.”

Back to SNL, the bishops further push their Marian dogma, writing,

Under the light of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the littlest of her children, who were as powerless as most migrants are today, our continent's past and present receive new meaning. It was St. Juan Diego whom our Mother asked to build a temple so in it she could show her love, compassion, aid, and defense to all her children, especially the least among them.^[24]

Rome’s satanic deception of substituting a demonic apparition masquerading as the Biblical Mary for the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel of Justification by Belief Alone is a breathtaking blasphemy. The weapons of Rome’s irredentist immigration war on America, far from being mighty in God, are the work of the devil and should be seen as such by all who possess spiritual discernment.

Strangers No Longer Is a Socialist Document

“Migrant crisis has US taxpayers on the hook for up to $451B, House GOP report says.” That’s a real headline in the New York Post from November 2023. 

According to the article,

Americans could pay up to $451 billion to care for migrants who entered the US illegally, but have been released into the country or escaped from custody, according to a new report due out Monday from House Republicans and obtained exclusively by The Post….

Compiled from federal and state records, media reports and other public information, the 50-page document outlines the taxpayer costs incurred in medical care, housing, education and other welfare benefits for tens of millions of migrants — to say nothing of the additional costs for law enforcement.[25]

One could argue that this report is biased in that it was put out by the GOP while a Democrat was in the White House.

The Post article cites another study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) claiming that “federal, state, and local costs of illegal immigration amount to around $182 billion annually – with aliens defraying just $31 billion of that cost in tax revenue.” That means American taxpayers are on the hook for $151 billion.

To bring the discussion of the costs of Antichrist’s irredentist immigration assault on America down to the personal level, Breitbart reports, “In 2017, the National Academies of Science noted that state and local taxpayers are billed about $1,600 each year per immigrant to pay for their welfare and revealed that immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households.”^[26] It’s reasonable to assume that the $1,600 billed to state and local taxpayers in 2017 is much higher in 2024.

Many more appalling numbers of this sort could be cited, but these should suffice to give you a sense of the overwhelming financial burden that’s being imposed on the American people.

These numbers are no accident but are the practical outcomes of Rome’s socialist, irredentist immigration war being waged on the American people, a war with its theoretical roots in Roman Catholic Social Teaching.

Under the heading “Migration in the light of Catholic Social Teaching,” we read in SNL,

Catholic teaching has a long and rich tradition in defending the right to migrate…. In modern times, this teaching has developed extensively in response to the worldwide phenomenon of migration. Pope Pius XII reaffirms the Church’s commitment to caring for pilgrims, aliens, exiles, and migrants of every kind in his apostolic constitution Exsul Familia affirming that all peoples have the right to conditions worthy of human life and, if these conditions are not present, the right to migrate. "Then—according to the teachings of [the encyclical] Rerum Novarum—the right of the family to a [life worthy of human dignity] is recognized. When this happens, migration attains its natural scope as experience often shows."

While recognizing the right of the sovereign state to control its borders, Exsul Familia also establishes that this right is not absolute, stating that the needs of immigrants must be measured against the needs of the receiving countries:

“Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.”^[27]

Roman Catholic Social Teaching is socialism in theory. In practice, it is the welfare state, big government, globalism, and irredentist immigration invasions.

My Reformation Day talk last year was an analysis of EFN,^[28] one of the documents quoted in the above citation. One of the interesting facets of Rome’s immigration socialism is how coy the popes and bishops are about who will foot the enormous costs implied by their immigration war.

If you haven’t guessed by now, dear listener, the payee is you. You are the one who is going to fork over the money to pay for health care, education, and housing for the millions upon millions of aliens, whether legal or illegal, that Antichrist is bringing to America. You are the one who is going to have to have your wages reduced through the increased labor supply and your taxes hiked, either through actual tax increases or through the deceptive policy of inflation.^[29]

And according to Pope Pius XII,^[30] the author of EFN, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the Mexican Conference of Catholic Bishops, you have no right to complain. After all, “the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reason, denied to needy and decent people from other nations.” Since according to Rome, welfare migrants have a right to barge into your country, your state, and your hometown, and a “right to a life worthy of human dignity,” you have a reciprocal obligation to pay up and no basis to complain about it. Just ask the residents of Springfield, Ohio, who are getting a firsthand taste of what happens when Rome puts your community in its immigration crosshairs.

Put differently, the bishops and popes of Rome have shifted the cost of their irredentist immigration assault on America from themselves onto the shoulders of the American people. The Popes and bishops get to primp and preen and act all pious in public. You get to foot the bill. That’s the pure evil genius you’d expect from “that Antichrist, Man of Sin and Son of Perdition.”^[31]

Irredentism

“America is a dying nation. I tell the Mexicans when I am down in Mexico to keep on having children, and then to take back what we took from them: California, Texas, Arizona, and then to take the rest of the country as well.”^[32]

Irredentism is probably not a word many of us use in our day-to-day conversations, but it’s an important concept when discussing Antichrist’s immigration assault on America. We defined irredentism earlier in this talk. But if you want an example of it, it would be hard-pressed to find one better than the preceding quote from Roman Catholic priest Paul Marx.

Irredentism, Christian J. Pinto tells us, is Jesuit immigration warfare.^[33] It is the idea that by flooding America, a historically Anglo-Protestant nation, with millions of Roman Catholic immigrants – whether they are legal or illegal immigrants, it matters not – the popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and nuns of Rome hope “to secure” America “to [their] holy church.”^[34]

If you look closely, you’ll find irredentism lurking behind many statements in SNL. One of them is found in paragraph 67, where we read: “Family unity also is weakened when the children of immigrants are left unprotected. In the United States, birthright citizenship should be maintained as an important principle in US immigration law.” 

One of the most effective irredentist tools in Rome’s toolbox, not only to flood America with illegal aliens but to make it difficult, if not impossible, to deport them, is an oddity in American law that automatically grants citizenship to the children of illegal aliens born in the United States. This is what the bishops mean in the paragraph above when they use the term “birthright citizenship.” Under the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, children born in the United States to illegal alien parents are United States citizens by virtue of their being born here. Such children are sometimes referred to as “anchor babies” as these American citizen children serve as anchors, both making it harder to deport their illegal alien parents and, when they reach adulthood, enabling them to sponsor their parents as well as other family members back in their home countries to become American citizens.

From time to time, the anchor baby issue comes up in political campaigns, so many people have at least heard of the issue. What likely would surprise many people, however, is the size and cost of the problem. The Epoch Times reports,

According to data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the total number of US-born children of illegal aliens in the United States as of June stood at 5.78 million, a population more than two times that of Chicago.^[35]

Breitbart reports that according to a study published in 2018 by the Center for Immigration Studies, close to 400,000 anchor babies are born in the United States each year.

Anchor babies are rewarded with birthright American citizenship despite their parents having no legitimate ties to the US, many having only recently arrived. Years later, when the child is considered an adult, they can sponsor their parents and foreign relatives for green cards — anchoring their family in the US for generations.^[36]

The article notes that, of the approximately 400,000 anchor babies born in the US each year, about 300,000 of them are born to illegal alien parents.

Further, the article reports that the number of anchor babies born in the US each year exceeds the number of births in 49 states. Only California, with about 420,000 total births yearly, exceeds the total number of anchor babies born in America annually.

Another facet of the anchor baby issue is that while illegal aliens are ineligible for welfare, their children because they are American citizens, are eligible.  As The Epoch Times reports, “A dozen states offer Medicaid to all low-income children regardless of immigration status. Such children also have access to various government food and meal programs.”^[37]

What is the cost of all this welfare, including the costs associated with indigent illegal alien mothers giving birth in US hospitals? As you might expect, it’s a big number. One old article from NBC News claims, “Each year about 16,000 babies are born at Parkland. The hospital estimates about 70 percent of them are delivered by undocumented mothers.”^[38] The story notes that one illegal alien mother’s medical bills ran more than $6,000. That’s just one hospital. On a national level, Breitbart reports, “Every year, American taxpayers are billed about $2.4 billion to pay for the births of illegal aliens.”^[39] And this is from a story that ran in 2018, well before the illegal alien flood unleashed on America by the Biden administration and before the massive price inflation that has occurred in the past few years.

To give one example of how Rome uses the anchor baby ploy to prevent the deportation of illegal alien parents, I’ll cite what was a big story a few years ago in my area. A Mexican woman, who was married and a mother of four, who had entered the United States illegally fifteen years previously, was deported after a drawn-out court battle. In a statement issued on April 19, 2017, the Catholic Legal (sic) Immigration Network (CLINIC) wrote, “The result of this hard-nosed and hard-hearted approach to enforcement [of US immigration law] is that her US citizen children must either live without their mother or leave the only home they have known to go a county (sic) they have never even visited….^[40]

How did these children of an illegal alien mother receive their US citizenship? As discussed above, they received it under the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment granting U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens.^[41]

Note also CLINIC’s appeal to pity.^[42] We’re told that the decision to deport her was “hard-nosed and hard-hearted,” and the suffering of the children is put forward as one of the reasons. Yes, following their mother to a country they had never visited would present some hardship to the children, but if this were the standard for enforcing laws, no parent could legally be held responsible for any crime, as all criminal punishment, to some extent, creates hardship for their children.^[43]

CLINIC wasn’t the only Catholic organization to get involved in the case. The Cincinnati Archdiocese was busy organizing protest marches and making public statements.^[44]

Maribel has made a life in Ohio based on positive contributions to her church and her community. She has no criminal history. She is a lay leader at her parish, whose members are surrounding her with prayers that she be permitted to remain with them and her family. Maribel’s children, ages 14, 12, 10 and 3, are all U.S. citizens. Her 3-year-old daughter has recurring seizures and requires the attention and care of her mother.^[45]

One will often find stories in the mainstream media decrying as a myth any notion that America’s anchor baby provision encourages illegal immigration. For example, a 2020 article in The Guardian would have us believe, “The idea that people give birth to stay in the US has no basis in reality.”^[46] But anyone with an ounce of knowledge about economics knows full well that when you reward people for doing something, more people do it. When you pay people to break American immigration law, more people will break American immigration law.

If the anchor baby loophole were not an incentive for people to flout American immigration law, then there would be no birth tourism industry. Birth tourism is where pregnant women come to the United States specifically and dishonestly to give birth to an American citizen child. According to a report from Fox News, “A Chinese woman who operated a Southern California business that helped pregnant women in China lie to immigration officials so they could travel to the United States to give birth was sentenced to 10 months in prison Monday for the wide-ranging ‘birth tourism’ scheme.” The story reports that her business charged pregnant women $50,000 for its services.^[47] The article further notes, “The [birth tourism] business touted the benefits of giving birth to American-born children, citing free public education and helping their parents immigrate to the US years later.”

The anchor baby issue is a huge irredentist dagger aimed at the heart of the American republic and represents a significant threat to the historic Protestant American nation. The servants of Antichrist know this full well, which is why they included the statement about birthright citizenship in SNL and go into full attack mode anytime anyone dares to challenge it. Let us now examine the misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that has led to the absurd anchor baby problem and propose a Biblical solution to it.

The Fourteenth Amendment

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The purpose of the amendment – adopted on July 2, 1868, shortly after the end of the American Civil War – as Michael Anton noted in his Washington Post opinion piece,

[W]as to resolve the question of citizenship for newly freed slaves. Following the Civil War, some in the South insisted that states had the right to deny citizenship to freedmen. In support, they cited 1857’s disgraceful Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which held that no black American could ever be a citizen of the United States.

A constitutional amendment was thus necessary to overturn Dred Scott and to define the precise meaning of American citizenship.

That definition is the amendment’s very first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

The amendment clarified for the first time that federal citizenship precedes and supersedes its state-level counterpart. No state has the power to deny citizenship, hence none may dispossess freed slaves.^[48]

Anton observes in his article that “the amendment specifies two criteria for American citizenship: birth or naturalization (i.e., lawful immigration), and being subject to US jurisdiction.”^[49]

The first criterion – birth or naturalization – is not subject to much discussion or controversy.  But the second, “subject to US jurisdiction,” is. Most American legal opinion interprets “subject to the jurisdiction” as meaning simply “subject to American law.” Anton comments,

That is true of any tourist who comes here. The framers of the 14^th Amendment added the jurisdiction clause precisely to distinguish between people to whom the United States owes citizenship and those to whom it does not. Freed slaves definitely qualified. The children of immigrants who came here illegally clearly don’t.^[50]

What does “subject to the jurisdiction” mean if not simply “subject to American law.” According to Anton, it means not owing allegiance to any other country or tribe.

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, a principal figure in drafting the amendment, defined “subject to the jurisdiction” as “not owing allegiance to anybody else” — that is, to no other country or tribe. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, a sponsor of the clause, further clarified that the amendment explicitly excludes from citizenship “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”^[51]

Anton is wise to appeal to the ratification debates about the Fourteenth Amendment to help clarify its framers’ intentions.  Yet many conservative critics, many of whom are Roman Catholic,^[52] reject Anton’s method and conclusion, appealing to Supreme Court precedent and questioning his research. 

Anton’s work on the birthright citizenship issue is some of the best that I have found. Yet his work suffers from the defect that it fails to appeal to the Scriptures as the grounds for rejecting current American legal theory and practice that absurdly grant American citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, many, probably most of whom give birth at American taxpayer expense. It is to the Scriptural argument that I will now turn.

Unless we are naturalized citizens, most of us probably have not spent much time considering how we acquired our citizenship. However, there are two basic answers to the question, How does one become a citizen? One is called jus soli, Latin for “right of the soil.” It is the idea that “citizenship is acquired by birth within the territory of the state, regardless of parental citizenship.”^[53] America’s current practice of awarding citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is an example of jus soli. Jus sanguinis, Latin for “right of blood,” is the other option. Jus sanguinis “grants citizenship on the basis of the citizenship possessed by one’ parent or parents.”^[54] In this author’s opinion, the Bible supports jus sanguinis, not jus soli.

According to The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) Chapter XXV.2, “The visible Church…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children.” How do children become members of the visible church? By having at least one believing parent.  For this conclusion, the WCF appeals to, among other verses, I Corinthians 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now they are holy.” This shows that jus sanguinis, and not jus soli, is the rule in the church. If jus soli prevailed in the church, an infant would be considered part of the visible church if the mother gave birth on church property.

Jus sanguinisas the rule for the church is also supported by The Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) Question and Answer 166. It reads,

Q. 166 Unto whom is baptism to be administered?

A. Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him, but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.

Again, we see the principle of jus sanguinis applied to the church. Infants descending from at least one believing parent are part of the church, are to be baptized, and are considered “in that respect within the covenant,” that is, they are part of the visible church.

What about those who are not born to at least one believing parent? Is there any hope for them? Do the Westminster Standards allow them to become members of the visible church? In short, yes. Adults can receive baptism and become members of the visible church by a credible profession of faith in Christ Jesus.

Protestants historically recognized three forms of government: family, church and civil. Further, they have recognized that these forms of government have been established by God. And because all three have been established by God, we should expect to see the same principles of justice apply to all three. In view here is the principle of justice by which we can determine who is and who is not a citizen.

We have already seen that one becomes a member of the visible church either by being born to at least one believing parent or by professing faith as an adult.

Likewise, there are two ways to become a family member: by birth or by adoption. One example of adoption in the Scriptures is Joseph and Jesus. Although not Jesus’s natural father, Jospeh raised him as his own son; that is, Joseph was Jesus’s adoptive father.

Applying these principles to civil government, the Bible endorses two ways to become a citizen of a nation: first, by having at least one parent who is a citizen (jus sanguinis), and second, by naturalization.^[55]

The children of the Hebrews were considered covenant members of the nation by virtue of their birth, and male children were required to be circumcised on the eighth day as a sign of their membership in the covenant community. Israel practiced the principle of jus sanguinis.

However, one could become a naturalized citizen of the Hebrew Republic as well. Ruth, the young Moabite woman who was an ancestor of King David, is perhaps the clearest example of this. In the opinion of this author, her words, recorded for us in Ruth 1:16-17, represented Ruth’s citizenship oath to the Hebrew Republic. There we read,

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. [17] Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.^[56]

Viewed in light of what the Scriptures teach about government and how an individual acquires citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment’s granting of citizenship to freedmen “born in…the United States” falls outside the normal rules of what the Bible teaches about how one acquires citizenship in a nation – either by a child being born to at least one citizen parent or by naturalization.  The freed slaves had no citizen parents, and, as Michael Anton notes, naturalization did not apply to them either.^[57] While the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment was good, they created confusion by codifying jus soli as a constitutional principle and, probably unwittingly, provided an opening for Antichrist to exploit in its irredentist immigration war on the United States. Had they instead applied the Biblical principle of jus sanguinis, this likely would have prevented the issue of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens from ever coming up. Further, it would have allowed freedmen to obtain American citizenship via naturalization.

In the end, the most important question for our purposes is whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born on American soil, as several conservative commentators believe.^[58] In the opinion of Anton and this author, it does not. But even if the Fourteenth Amendment does require birthright citizenship to be granted to the children of illegal aliens, the Bible does not support this. Since civil government is a creature of God – Paul in Romans 13 calls the civil magistrate “God’s minister” – a nation’s laws must be justified by an appeal to God’s written revelation in the 66 books of the Bible. This is an application of what Martin Luther called the Schriftprinzip or writing principle, the idea that “nothing except the divine words [found in the 66 books of the Bible] are to be the first principles for Christians; all human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them.”^[59] The Bible teaches that one can acquire citizenship in a nation in two ways: first, by having at least one parent who is a citizen, and second, by naturalization. Children of illegal aliens born in the United States – having neither one parent who is an American citizen nor having themselves taken an oath “to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States” – have no claim on American citizenship.

In this author’s opinion, ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens is the single most important step that can be taken to defeat the Antichrist Roman Catholic Church-State’s irredentist immigration assault on America. In the first place, it removes the “magnet” the US welfare benefits the illegal alien parents can claim for the infant.^[60] Second, it prevents Rome from using an appeal to pity. Often, when it comes time to deport those who have violated American immigration law, Antichrist will argue that the parents cannot be deported. Why? Because they have American children! It’s time to stop this madness and put an end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens.

We spent some time looking at the birthright citizenship issue, first, because it is such a key component of Antichrist’s irredentist immigration assault on America, and second, because at least as far as I am aware, it has been largely ignored by Christian writers. However, other statements in SNL need to be refuted from the Scriptures.

Scriptural Arguments

In SNL, the bishops appeal to four Old Testament passages, Exodus 23:9, Leviticus 19:9-10, 33, and Deuteronomy 14:28-29. According to the bishops, these passages justify the massive influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, that have come into America over the past few years.

Exodus23:9 reads, “Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Sometimes, Christians can be swayed by Rome’s arguments from the Scriptures. But it’s important to keep in mind that the Devil can quote the Scriptures and did so in his temptation of Christ.  Another point to remember is that we must ask what the bishops mean by this quotation? The key here is that a statement gets its meaning from its context.  In this case, the context is the doctrine of the Roman Church-State, specifically, Rome’s Catholic social teaching. The bishops write:

The Holy Spirit has been present throughout the history of the Church to work against injustice, division, and oppression and to bring about respect for individual human rights, unity of races and cultures, and the incorporation of the marginalized into full life in the Church. In modern times, one of the ways this work of the Spirit has been manifested is through Catholic social teaching, in particular the teachings on human dignity and the principle of solidarity.^[61]

The first thing to know about Catholic social teaching is that it is socialist; that is, it represents an attack on the Biblical institution of private property that traces back to Adam.^[62] This attack began in earnest with Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII that is the foundation of Catholic social teaching. In his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins wrote,

One of the Roman Church-State’s most influential statements on economic matters is the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, On the Condition of the Working Classes. In this encyclical the Roman Church-State allied herself with the proletariat, which in Marxism is the great and final enemy of the capitalist order. The encyclical’s Marxism is so blatant that one Roman Catholic writer declared that “much of the encyclical [Rerum Novarum] appeared only to repeat in more orthodox language what Marx had said ten years before.”^[63]

Because the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church begins with collectivist premises and not the Biblical premises of private property, Rome misinterprets the passages quoted in SNL as justifying welfare for aliens, both legal and illegal.

In SNL, the bishops tipped their socialist hand when they wrote, “Nevertheless, he [Pope John XXIII] stressed the obligation of sovereign states to promote the universal good where possible, including an obligation to accommodate migration flows. For more powerful nations, a stronger obligation exists.”^[64]

In the paragraph quoted above from Ecclesiastical Megalomania, a Catholic writer admitted that Rerum Novarum “appeared only to repeat in more orthodox language what Marx had said ten years earlier.”^[65] With this quote from SNL, the bishops continue the Church-State’s Marxist tradition by paraphrasing the famous Marxist dictum, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Christians would agree that nations should not oppress immigrants and asylees, but unlike Rome, we do not believe the Bible teaches that Americans should be forced by their government to pay for welfare benefits for immigrants and asylees.^[66]

Indeed, one of the principal problems with Rome’s theory of immigration is that it conflates private charity with government welfare. Christian charity is always the voluntary giving of one’s own things. Government welfare, on the other hand, is theft, a violation of the Eighth Commandment. Robbins puts it this way,

This is an axiom of giving: One cannot legally or morally give away that which one does not own. Giving is the voluntary transfer of a property title by one party to another, without receiving title to other property in return. (That is why government charity is a contradiction in terms: Government forces taxpayers to fund the welfare programs. There is no voluntary transfer of property titles.)^[67]

As there was no welfare state in ancient Israel, all the passages in the Old Testament that speak of caring for the poor and the stranger are to be understood as acts of private charity, not government welfare. We know they were considered acts of private charity because no civil penalty was attached to the commands. To ignore them was a sin, but it was not a crime.

By contrast, Americans are forced to pay taxes to the government, which then uses some of these tax revenues to fund welfare benefits for aliens, legal and illegal, living in the United States.^[68] There is nothing voluntary about paying these taxes. If you refuse, they send IRS agents after you, and you go to jail.

Nothing about the welfare state passes Biblical muster. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul wrote, "For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat." Further, in Romans 13, Paul tells us the role of civil government, and it doesn't involve the welfare state. The government's job is two-fold: punish those who practice evil and reward the good. Giving handouts to illegal aliens, legal immigrants, or refugees^[69] is not on this list and is, therefore, sinful. Specifically, it violates the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal.

The costs of feeding, housing, schooling, and providing medical treatment to immigrants is an enormous and growing problem. Since both legal^[70] and illegal aliens are receiving benefits at the expense of the American taxpayer, perhaps it would be better to speak of “socialist immigration” and “capitalist immigration” rather than “illegal” or “legal” immigration.

As Robbins noted, “Givingper se is not a virtue. Only giving to the glory of God is. That implies, among other things, that Christians should not support non-Christian charities. It also means that Christians should not vote for or advocate government welfare programs.”^[71]

Since this is the case, Christians must reject Rome’s calls for immigration socialism. In SNL, Rome argues that the American people have “a stronger obligation” “to promote the universal good”…“including an obligation to accommodate migration flows.” This is a figment of Antichrist’s imagination. No such obligations exist for the American people and teaching them that there are is sinful. The bishops who wrote SNL are like the Pharisees of old. As Jesus said, “[T]hey bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”

Immigration Vocabulary

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote about Newspeak, the language the Party used to control what people said and thought. In a similar fashion to the Party, the Roman Church-State attempts to control any discussion of immigration by imposing its vocabulary on the debate. There are at least three examples of this in SNL.

Newcomers

Three times in SNL, the bishops use the word “newcomers.” This word has found its way into the discussion of the illegal aliens that have flooded into America in recent years under the current presidential administration. One headline reads, “South Texas nun tries to restore humanity for ‘desperate’ newcomers amid anti-immigrant rhetoric.” Denver mayor Mike Johnston’s office, whose principal aim seems to be to destroy the city of Denver with illegal aliens, has gone so far as to issue a guide titled “Newcomers Playbook.” Said Johnson, “Over the last year and a half, despite the federal government failing to support our cities, Denver has led by building sustainable systems that help newcomers get back on their feet and turning a crisis into opportunity.”^[72]

Speaking about “newcomers” rather than “illegal aliens” helps the bishops and all those engaged in their treasonous, irredentist immigration assault on America make their destructive policies sound more appealing.

Root Causes

Four time in SNL, the bishops write about “addressing the root causes of migration.” The bishops are a bit vague about what the “root causes of migration” are, but they give us a clue when they write about “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico….”^[73] Given that there historically have been “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico” and likely will continue to be into the future, this root cause will never go away and thus will always provide the Church-State with an excuse to advocate for more socialist immigration policies.

It should come as no surprise that many leading American politicians are now talking about solving the “root causes of migration.” In July 2021, the current Jesuit-influenced presidential administration issued a paper titled “US Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America.”^[74] Did the writers of this document borrow their “root causes” language from the bishops writing in SNL?

Family Separation

The bishops complain about “family separation” several times in SNL. In one place, the bishops claim illegal aliens face one of two alternatives: “either honor their moral commitment to family and migrate to the United States without proper documentation or wait in the system and face indefinite separation from loved ones.”^[75]

This is a false choice. There is another alternative that the bishops don’t want to mention: trust in the Lord to provide and obey the law. Doubtless, there are people in desperate circumstances in many nations in the world. As Christians, we can sympathize with their situation, pray for them, and even donate our own time and money to help them. But this doesn’t mean it’s moral for such persons to violate American immigration law. The bishops’ moral teaching here seems to be related to Rome’s doctrine of the universal destination of all goods,^[76] a socialist teaching of Thomas Aquinas in which it is not sinful to take the property of another if one needs it. In like fashion, according to the bishops, one can violate American immigration law if there is a need to prevent family separation.

Preventing family separation has been a staple of the public pronouncements of the Roman Church-State for years. And there is no shortage of politicians within Rome’s orbit ready to hop on the bandwagon and condemn any and all attempts to stop illegal aliens from flooding into the United States by denouncing such attempts them as leading to family separation. Perhaps those who violate American immigration law should bear the blame for causing the separation of their families together with the bishops who encourage them to act thus.

Attacks on the Border Patrol

The bishops are more than happy to excuse illegal behavior when it helps their irredentist cause. In “Romanizing America through Illegal Immigration,” Ralph Ovadal notes SNL’s attack on American law enforcement.  Writes Ovadal, “They [the bishops] are also outraged that our border patrol would actually arrest individuals criminally crossing our borders. ‘Alarmingly, migrants often are treated as criminals.’”[77]

Church-State prelates want you to think that crossing into the United States isn’t a crime. And this same approach is taken by the media. If we take SNL and the newspapers at their word, America is filled with millions of law-abiding illegal aliens. This is obviously absurd as the fact that they came into the United States illegally proves that they are not law-abiding. 

Before writing this article, it had been some time since I had read SNL. And upon rereading it, I was struck by just how strident the bishops’ attacks on law enforcement were. The bishops complain extensively about the “physical abuse of migrants by US Border Patrol agents” while never condemning the illegal behavior of illegal aliens. It’s enough to remind one of the BLM riots in 2020, in which mostly peaceful protestors were praised while law enforcement was regularly blamed.

Rome also seeks to blame the Border Patrol and US policy for causing the deaths of those who choose to cross into the U.S. illegally. But the deaths of those attempting to cross into the US illegally are not the fault of the Border Patrol or US laws. Instead, the blame lies principally on the shoulders of the Roman Church-State. There are at least two reasons for this.

First, as noted above, the bishops like to speak of the root cause of migration as the “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico.” Ask yourself this question, what has been the dominant institution in Mexico and Latin America for over 500 years? Clearly, it is the Roman Church-State. Is it possible that the economic theory of the Church-State is the actual root cause of the “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico?”

In Ecclesiastical Megalomania, Robbins quoted economist Peter Bauer on two papal encyclicals dealing with economic issues. Wrote Bauer,

Populorum Progressioand Octogesima Adveniens are documents which are immoral on several levels. To begin with they are incompetent, and they are immoral because they are incompetent…. The documents are also immoral in that they give colour to the notion that envy can be legitimate; and they spread confusion about the meaning of charity.^[78]

If Bauer is right, and he is, then the reason Rome cites as the root cause of the problem of illegal immigration is the incompetent and immoral economic thought of the Church-State itself, not the activities of the US Border Patrol.  

Second, Rome continues to encourage illegal immigration into the U.S., knowing that some of those making the trip will die as a result. To shift the blame for the deaths of those attempting to cross into the US to the Border Patrol, when in fact it is Rome’s policies – both the Church-States incompetent and immoral economic thought its irredentist war on the American Republic – that are to blame for the migrants’ deaths along the border is profoundly dishonest and evil.