A Refutation of the Good Samaritan Argument for Mass Immigration, By Peter West
Below is my refutation of the Good Samaritan argument for immigration, using the American Thinker article "Christian Morality, Migration, and the Good Samaritan" by Christopher Chantrill, as a starting point, supplemented by broader scriptural interpretation and philosophical and theological reasoning.
The Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37) is often cited by pro-immigration advocates, such as the Pope, to argue for open borders as a Christian moral duty, but my refutation challenges that interpretation on both Biblical and rational grounds, asserting it misapplies scripture and ignores practical limits.
The American Thinker article critiques the progressive Christian push for unrestricted immigration, spotlighting the Good Samaritan parable as a misused cornerstone. Chantrill argues that elites, politicians, clergy, NGOs, exploit this story to guilt-trip believers into supporting mass migration, framing it as a moral imperative rooted in love for the stranger. Yet, a closer look at Scripture and philosophy reveals this interpretation as a distortion, failing to justify open borders and risking harm to both host and migrant under a veneer of compassion.
The Good Samaritan parable, as recounted in Luke 10:25-37, involves a man beaten and left for dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, aided by a Samaritan who bandages him, pays for his lodging, and ensures his care. Pro-immigration advocates extrapolate this to demand nations accept all migrants, equating border restrictions with the indifference of the priest and Levite who passed by. Chantrill counters that this stretches the text beyond its intent, a view supported by Scriptural context.
First, the parable's scope is individual, not national. Jesus responds to a lawyer's question—"Who is my neighbour?"—with a personal call to mercy, not a policy mandate. The Samaritan acts alone, using his own resources, not commanding Jericho's gates be flung open. Leviticus 19:18, which the lawyer cites ("love your neighbour as yourself"), pairs with Leviticus 19:33-34—"love the foreigner as yourself"—but both address personal conduct within a community, not state-level immigration quotas. Chantrill notes Jesus never critiques Rome's borders, suggesting political structures aren't the target.Christ didn't say dissolve nations for charity.
Second, the Samaritan's aid is finite and practical, not boundless. He helps one man, meet immediate needs, and moves on, hardly a blueprint for absorbing millions. Scripture elsewhere balances compassion with order: Deuteronomy 23:3-6 restricts Ammonites and Moabites from Israel's assembly, and Nehemiah 13:23-27 expels foreigners to preserve identity. Chantrill highlights this tension—Israel welcomed strangers (Exodus 22:21) but guarded boundaries (Numbers 20:14-21), suggesting a nuanced ethic, not an open-door dogma. The Good Samaritan doesn't erase these limits; it models personal sacrifice within them.
Third, misapplying the parable ignores stewardship. Jesus praises the Samaritan's generosity, but other teachings, like the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), emphasise responsibility over reckless largesse. Chantrill argues that flooding nations with migrants strains resources, undermining the ability to care for citizens—"charity begins at home" (1 Timothy 5:8). Scripture doesn't demand self-destruction; it calls for discernment, not blind altruism.
Philosophically, the Good Samaritan argument for immigration falters under scrutiny of justice, reciprocity, and social contract theory, exposing its idealism as impractical and destructive.
First, justice demands fairness to all, not just migrants. Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative—"act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law"—tests this. If every nation opened borders unconditionally, as the parable is stretched to imply, resource depletion and cultural collapse would follow, as Musk's birth dearth warnings suggest (Zero Hedge, February 17, 2025). Chantrill notes the U.S.'s 8 million migrant surge under Biden, straining schools and hospitals (American Thinker, February 16, 2025), a burden citizens didn't consent to bear. Justice to taxpayers and natives, not just strangers, limits the Samaritan's scope.
Second, reciprocity underpins moral obligations, yet mass immigration often lacks it. The Samaritan aids a traveller with no expectation of return, a noble act, but nations aren't individuals. Thomas Hobbes' social contract (Leviathan, 1651) posits governance as a mutual pact: citizens surrender freedoms for protection. Chantrill critiques elites for imposing migrants, some criminal (Breitbart, February 2025), on communities without consent, breaching this contract. "Forced charity," unlike the Samaritan's voluntary act, in immigration policy coerces citizens, negating moral parity.
Third, practical consequences debunk utopianism. John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, greatest good for the greatest number, challenges the Good Samaritan ideal when scaled. Web analyses (e.g., Zero Hedge, March 14, 2025) warn of cultural dilution and economic drag from unchecked inflows, echoing Europe's migrant crime spikes (Breitbart, January 2025). Chantrill questions why elites don't live near migrant enclaves, exposing their hypocrisy. The parable's one-off mercy doesn't translate to millions; it risks harm, violence, poverty, outweighing benefits, a philosophical misstep.
The Good Samaritan argument for immigration collapses under Scriptural and philosophical weight. Biblically, it's a personal ethic, not a border policy, Jesus neither mandates nor models national dissolution, and Scripture balances welcome with boundaries. Philosophically, it fails tests of justice, reciprocity, and utility, prioritising abstract compassion over concrete duty to existing communities. Chantrill's critique rings true: elites weaponise the parable to virtue-signal, ignoring its limits and the ruin it invites. Civilisation, already fragile, per Musk, needs ordered stewardship, not a misread Samaritan's blank check.
"Much has been made about Pope Francis's recent comments criticizing the Trump Administration for opposing illegal immigration. He was not the only one, as UK commentator Rory Stewart also dueled with Vice-President JD Vance on X. The differing views on this issue can be explained as hierarchy versus universalism, a Christian debate that has its roots in St. Augustine. Understanding the doctrines reveals that Pope Francis, whether deliberately or accidentally, erred, while Vance got it right.
The hierarchical approach favors a more instinct-driven interpretation of the faith, whilst the latter relies on the tale of the Good Samaritan, emphasizing neighborly conduct. Yet what's interesting is that these two versions of morality have not always been incompatible; it's just that a recent misinterpretation of the universalist view has led to this being the case.
Some on the political right, especially nationalists, have strongly criticized Christianity for being too universalist and ignoring the necessity of tribal loyalties for a functioning society. That is too simplistic a view of both Christianity's universality and the importance of a hierarchy.
St. Augustine lamented his selfish secular ways in his early years, which he outlines with great clarity in his masterwork Confessions. His conversion to Christianity then leads to his adopting a universalist morality to some degree, but not completely. Even after praising the tale of the Good Samaritan, he still believed in a hierarchy of priorities that shaped his conduct in daily life. (Indeed, this tale is actually a good allegory for merit-based immigration, which I will explain later.)
St. Augustine acknowledged that worldly desires are secondary to the glory of God, which is known more commonly as the order of love (ordo amoris). But hierarchy also exists within what he describes as "temporal" things on earth, whether they be your spouse, pets, or even possessions.
In other words, love of God comes before earthly matters in order of importance, and those earthly matters also have a hierarchy of their own. This is why JD Vance responded to Rory Stewart on X by stating, "Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?"
Vance's post is very important because it not only exposes the current unrestrained universalism for what it is—madness—but also because it demonstrates how misinterpreted the concept now is. Whether the Pope actually believes in open borders is hard to tell. A cynic would argue that a man who lives in a walled city-state probably does care about borders quite a lot, at least when it comes to his own.
Yet, what's intriguing is Pope Francis's interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable and how it relates to modern politics. As a quick reminder, the passage in the New Testament refers to a Jewish traveler who is beaten and robbed on the road. Neither a fellow Jew nor a Levite assists him, but a Samaritan eventually comes to his aid.
Considering the Jews and Samaritans were at loggerheads at the time, the story is designed to instruct Jesus's followers to love those who show mercy, no matter what tribe they are from. Here, the outsider is the hero who is praised for helping somebody from another sect, whilst a man from the in-group sinned by ignoring his fellow Jewish brother on the roadside. However, the key point here is that while the outsider is praised for being good, it's not an argument that all outsiders are good.
Thus, Pope Francis wrongly understood the story. In a recent letter to America's Bishops, he referred to the Good Samaritan parable and stated that the true ordo amoris comes about by "meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."
The key phrase "open to all, without exception" betrays the Pope's political beliefs and scriptural confusion. His version of ordo amoris seems to be that love is simply given in equal measure to everybody, whether they deserve it or not.
The problem with this version of morality is that, eventually, everybody comes into conflict with it, even its strongest adherents. For example, are you really going to continue loving the violent criminal who causes so much harm? In a more pertinent example, Vance's critique can also be expanded. If your own child and a neighbor's child both get top grades in their final exams, and they're both equally good children, but there's only one place at college left available, are you really going to be happy if the neighbor's child gets the place? It's obviously natural for an infinite number of reasons to hope that your child will get the place.
The Pope's stance also fails to understand the problem of mass immigration. It's quite obvious that many arriving in the West, whether legally or not, are not culturally compatible and have committed serious crimes. Thus, they do not deserve to remain in the country they have arrived in.
Even from the more universalist version of ordo amoris, this hierarchical limitation is acceptable because only those in the outgroups who deserve love (the merciful, the righteous) should be prioritized. Nevertheless, a significant number of the modern clergy, along with the political class, simply cannot accept the idea of the 'bad migrant.' Indeed, even if they recognize that migrants commit crimes, they argue that law enforcement still shouldn't deport them.
In other words, the universalist spectrum has become so mindlessly expansive that even the story of the Good Samaritan is being misinterpreted—by the Pope!— to support a dangerous policy of mass and illegal immigration.
Again, the moral of the Good Samaritan is not that all outsiders are righteous and unselfish; it simply argues that outsiders can be righteous and unselfish. There is no explicit argument that every single Samaritan who walked down that road would have helped the injured Jew, and in terms of historical accuracy, this would have been highly unlikely.
Modern liberalism's failure to view any outgroup or individual objectively, based on merit, is a great failure of our times. There are good and bad people in every group. You might be helped by somebody from an outgroup, and indeed, you might help somebody from an outgroup as well. This isn't hard to understand, all of which makes the misinterpretation of the Good Samaritan parable so baffling.
The reality is that the two Christian beliefs—hierarchal and universal—must each have reasonable limits and, as limited, they are compatible with each other. It's perfectly okay to prioritize your family over a stranger 3000 miles away, but it's also perfectly fine to welcome a small number of talented migrants to plug an employment gap and to help a stranger in need if he's drowning in a lake. Even Christianity has checks and balances. It's just a shame the Vatican isn't interested in them at the moment.
It's a strange world when the Pope's interpretation of ordo amoris is manifestly wrong while the American Vice President's is correct. If anything, it proves that the taboo surrounding any criticism of migration is still strong among the clergy and will be difficult to change."
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