On dealing with “scum” who’ve entered our country illegally

Last updated on: August 20, 2025 at 5:05 pm by Dan Peterson

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On dealing with “scum” who’ve entered our country illegally 2025-08-20T17:05:40-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The 1940 theatrical poster for an earlier, non-Interpreter film about Brigham Young (Wikimedia Commons public domain image). Don’t miss Vincent Price as Joseph Smith!

For whatever it may be worth, a video recording of my presentation at the recent 2025 FAIR Conference, which was entitled “Brigham Young and Slavery,” is now available for viewing on the FAIR website. A transcript of the presentation is also available, here. I haven’t read through the transcript yet, but I expect that it’s a bit rough — as such things often are. (I’ve already, for example, noticed Cameron Bagley Fox for our Camrey Bagley Fox.) However, it should be enough even now to be serviceable.

On a somewhat related note: I spent a couple of hours today talking about Brigham Young and about our forthcoming series of Becoming Brigham short-video documentary features with Professor Christopher Blythe of Brigham Young University for his podcast. The bulk of our conversation will go up in a single podcast episode. (I’ll try to call attention to that when it happens, knowing that at least my small cadre of weirdly obsessive critics will want to listen to it.) Snippets from the remainder of our conversation, he tells me, will probably go into other episodes. Part of our conversation was off the record, deliberately not recorded.

At the border of the United States of America and Mexico (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

I was saddened to have a post brought to my attention from a site that calls itself the “LDS Freedom Forum.” I don’t know how large a following it has, but I presume that at least most of those who comment on it consider themselves to be believing and communicant Latter-day Saints.

Here’s the relevant portion of the post to which I refer:

Keep in mind that ALL illegal aliens are criminals. While some imbeciles may think that they come here for a better life, Duh! You mean like a bank robber wants a better life? Or anyone that steals papers to get welfare and food stamps wants a better life? These people are criminals.

There are 40 million of these scum in this country. They take housing that could be used by law abiding citizens. They take jobs that could be taken by honest people. They also create crime.

When Russia and China complained to Biden that it was too difficult to get a ship, plane, or missile across the ocean without being detected in order to obliterate the United States, Biden said that he would open the borders so that the militants would already be here when they decided to fight. Remember that all illegals are not latinos.

The best way to rid our country of these criminals would be to have a bounty and an 800 number. You call , ICE shows up and hands you a voucher for $500 and takes the criminal into custody. This would save the US billions in undeserved freebies, and allow disabled vets and homeless to earn an extra thousand dollars a day.

I want to offer some commentary on the paragraphs above. First, though, I need to state my own position clearly enough that there is no confusion about it: I believe in borders, I believe in secure borders, and I believe that the federal government of the United States of America has failed the states and the people of the United States by not controlling our borders. I favor orderly and generous rules for necessary non-citizen agricultural workers, and so forth, but I also favor strong border enforcement. (As things stand, almost anybody could be coming across the Rio Grande, including Hispanic-looking Arab terrorists transporting biological or chemical bombs or, for that matter, components for tactical nuclear weapons — which is not only dangerous but ridiculous.)

However, contrary to the paragraphs above, illegal aliens are not necessarily criminals. While, obviously, some undocumented immigrants may commit crimes, simply being in the United States without legal permission is, I’m informed, a civil violation, not a criminal one.

And illegal aliens don’t necessarily commit crimes otherwise. It’s surely false to suggest that all or even most undocumented aliens are criminals, beyond their being present in the country illegally (which, as I’ve just pointed out, is not criminal). Most are not. Most are working on construction crews, or as hotel housecleaners, agricultural laborers, resort maintenance workers, restaurant dishwashers, gardeners and landscapers, maids, and the like. Many of them, in fact, are trying desperately not to call attention to themselves, to keep a low and inoffensive profile in hopes of not drawing the notice of immigration officers. They want to keep their jobs. The available statistics simply don’t bear out the suggestion that they are responsible for a massive national crime wave — as shown even in this article in the conservative-leaning City Journal, which supports immigration control: “Do Illegal Aliens Have High Crime Rates? High enough, from what we know, to take measures to secure our borders.”

Moreover, I reject the silly conspiratorial fantasy, in the third paragraph above, that Joe Biden deliberately opened the gates to illegal immigration so that a fifth column would be present within our borders for a planned war “to obliterate the United States.” Come on. I’m reminded of the accusation leveled by Robert Welch, the founder of the once-famous John Birch Society, that President Dwight D. Eisenhower — formerly Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and the five-star General of the Army — was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” Which drew a famous response from the great conservative writer and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.: “Eisenhower’s not a Communist. He’s a golfer.” President Biden’s record on border and immigration issues is execrable, but the conspiracy thing is just too much.

Further, I voice my objection to the notion that ordinary citizens — and particularly “disabled vets” and the homeless! — should earn healthy annual incomes by becoming bounty hunters, continually spying on their neighbors and regularly turning people in to the authorities. What a horrible society that would be! Can you imagine living in such a community? I wouldn’t want to. It sounds like the kind of thing that was encouraged under the Third Reich and in the former Soviet Union. Does anybody admire the neighbor in Amsterdam who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the German occupation? Does anybody really wish that anything even remotely resembling such a system were in place in the United States?

Finally, I vigorously object to describing people who are in the United States illegally as “scum.” Such dehumanizing language — used to describe millions of people who, overwhelmingly, are just trying to provide food and lodging and a better future for their children and families — has no place in the mind or mouth of a believing Latter-day Saint. And I plead guilty to the charge of being what “Fred,” with his characteristic kindness and charity, describes as an “imbecile.” I do indeed believe most of those who enter the United States illegally do so in quest of a better life. It’s easy to look down on them from our relatively comfortable and privileged positions, but, if I were a husband and a father trapped in the poverty, violence, dysfunction, and hopelessness that exists in some of our neighboring countries to the south, I myself might try to enter the United States illegally.

Happily, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has provided guidance on this matter in an Official Statement: “Church Reaffirms Immigration Principles: Love, Law and Family Unity”

Decent people of good will can and do disagree, often vigorously, about border and immigration policies and about how those policies should be enforced. That’s fine. But we cannot plausibly claim to be disciples of Christ while choosing attitudes of contempt, hatred, cruelty, and lack of charity.

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