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A college friend once asked, “What right do we have to seal our borders and tell people they cannot enter our country? We all equally inhabit the Earth, and we just happened to be born in this land, so we cannot morally keep people out of a land that we have no right to possess.” This line of thinking is becoming more and more prevalent which each passing day, and immigration has quietly become one of the most defining issues of our time. There are myriad questions surrounding this topic of immigration, but most can be easily answered by simply viewing our country as we would our home.

The analogy: America is the house where the American family lives. When only Americans are in the house, there is an established order of house rules which are generally followed for the most part. (Sure there are the occasional disturbances of the peace, but by and large America was clearly a functional household leading up to the 1960s as we produced the most successful and most rich nation that the world has ever known.) Occasionally, the head of a household will decide to throw a party and invite friends from other households over. On other occasions, things in the household need fixed, and members of other households are called in to help fix the problem. These two examples are analogous to immigration.

No one would reasonably argue that the head of a household has a moral obligation to keep his doors open day and night to anyone who wishes to come in. Every logical person would agree that the head of a household has every right to decide if he wants to invite people over or not. Curiously, even the college friend who wanted open borders kept his room closed and off limits unless a fellow roommate had a good reason to enter the premises. But getting back to our analogies for immigration, what is the problem? Why does such a straightforward scenario cause so much contention today?

The problem with immigration is that it cannot continue indefinitely without the eventual destruction of the country receiving the immigrants. Our household cannot host a continuous party with loads of new guests constantly arriving every single day. The head of the household eventually looses control of his household, and it turns into a mob rule. There has to be in-between periods of sobriety where the aftermath of the party is cleaned up, new party supplies are purchased, and members of the household return to work. Immigration is not a bad thing per se, but immigration without moderation is a death sentence for any country. And just as it is the prerogative of every head of every household to decide when to invite guests, the head of our American household has every right to restrict immigration as he sees fit.

Are these analogies in accord with American history? Absolutely. After the initial wave of immigrants came to America and the country was well-established, our government made the correct decision to severely restrict immigration. It wasn’t until the immigration act of the late 1960s did immigration begin again in earnest. Prior to the 1960s immigration push, Americans had rightly decided to halt immigration to allow for the necessary period of assimilation. The period of assimilation is what made us the great nation the world now knows. When a people are united as one, many things can be accomplished. When a people are not united, well, America circa 2015 gives testimony of the problems that entails.

Unity is one of the most essential traits of a successful country. Picture any dysfunctional household and the cause of the dysfunction is always the discord between members of the household. Conversely, members of a functional household are almost always in accord with one another. A people has to be one if it wishes to be successful in any endeavor. Teddy Roosevelt had it right when he said that there is no room in our country for hyphenated Americans. Unfortunately, we have gone from simply Americans to not only hyphenated Americans, but now many people living in America don’t even identify as Americans at all. If a friend is invited over every single day, eventually they will begin to treat the house as their home. Europe is fast becoming “Eurabia” in the words of Mark Steyn, and we cannot deny that America is too far behind.

This immigration question naturally leads to the closely-related question of refugees. Does America have a moral obligation to help those poor souls seeking refuge from their own war-torn nations? Again, it is helpful and enlightening to stick with the analogy of America as our house and home, and then view the question in this light. Rephrased, does the head of a household have a moral obligation to a member of another household who is fleeing harm? Clearly, there are a thousand  qualifying questions to be asked here before determining the answer.

How many refugees are seeking asylum in the safe and secure household? If it is more than the house can handle, of course it is not wrong to turn some away. Can we be certain these are actually refugees, or are they actually seeking to steal from our abundance? America is a house full of riches, and we would be fools to give the spare bedroom to any random stranger who knocks on our door claiming to be seeking refuge from harm. It would be immoral not to thoroughly examine the motives of every outsider who wishes to come into our house and stay awhile. Another question centers around the family first rule. If a household already has a house full of sick family members and can barely take of them, then of course it has to regretfully decide not to help strangers in need. Obviously, America will always have members of its household who are sick, but if the choice is between Americans and non-Americans, it would be immoral to choose non-family over family. There are countless more questions to ask before determining whether or not to admit refugees into our home, but the family first idea is perhaps the most important issue to weigh. And this idea actually leads to another important point regarding immigration.

In our country with severe unemployment, it is wrong to continuously encourage non-family members to come into our home and take jobs that would otherwise go to our own family members. One step worse is to encourage those who aren’t even invited to sneak into our homes and literally steal jobs and benefits that do not belong to them. It is absolutely traitorous for any American business operating in our country to hire an employee who has sneaked into our home with the intention of stealing our belongings.

To protect against even tempting businesses to hire illegal immigrants, it is imperative that we secure, protect, and defend our borders. This idea seems harsh, xenophobic, and isolationist to many, but those same people will lock their doors at night, build fences around their yards, and install security systems. Our country as a whole should be no different. Just as we would never want anyone coming into our home without an invitation, we should and must do everything in our power to prevent uninvited guests from entering our country. There is nothing mean or cruel about that simple fact.

Clearly, immigration is a weighty issue and an important one. Ann Coulter states she has become a “single issue voter”, and her point is well taken. If we cannot control immigration, both legal and illegal, what other issues even matter? If we are a nation of unrestricted and unrestrained immigration, then we are no nation at all. Nations are defined by their cultures, and cultures by definition sprout from a grouping together of like-minded people who worship the same ideals. Cult leads to culture. If there is no like-minded people, there is no culture. If there is no culture, there is no nation. America was known as the great melting pot because we successfully melded all of our vast differences into one homogeneous culture. Today, however, with the multiculturalism movement we have eschewed the melting pot idea in favor of creating a giant hodgepodge. The idea doesn’t work. If a people are not one, they will quickly become a third-world country embedded in unceasing civil wars where mob rule is the status quo. If any of us truly love our American home, we must begin again to view our nation as we would our home. Immigration is perhaps our defining issue, and we must all start viewing it as such.