Immigration and "Welcoming the Stranger"

An interesting exchange at The Corner, National Review's blog.  Ramesh Ponnuru writes:

I think there is a legitimate charitable element to immigration. We don't offer asylum to persecuted foreigners primarily to help ourselves, although that may sometimes be a happy side-effect. We should "welcome the stranger," as the Catholic bishops say.

John Derbyshire responds:

In a lot of issues like this there is surely a difference between the injunctions religion places on us as persons, and those (if any) it places on us as nations.

In a lot of ways, the things I would (A) hope to be myself (and hope for the people around me to be), and the things I would (B) wish for my nation to be, are actually opposite. Generosity, for example, is a fine thing in a person, but not necessarily in a nation, since the only way a nation can be generous is by disbursing the money of its taxpayers. Similarly, I prefer trusting people to suspicious ones: but I don't think a nation should be trusting. I'd prefer my nation to be deeply suspicious of other nations, and of people who show up asking for admittance, and of citizens, or corporations, who make claims on the public fisc.

And even these arguments are imbedded in a larger one: If, as a nation, we act out Christian teachings (or Hindu teachings, or Muslim teachings), aren't we favoring an establishment of religion?

Aren't religious injunctions better understood as strictly personal--as injunctions on us, individual human beings? I can't say I've thought this through, and I'm sure there is a mass of theology on it. Surely any religion not completely other-worldly must acknowledge raison d'etat?

Ponnuru replies:

I certainly agree . . . that we have many moral duties that we must perform as individuals, not through the state. But offering asylum for the persecuted is a charitable act that only states can do. I don't think it amounts to establishing a religion--or, rather, establishing the several religions that agree that it is right and good to offer asylum (or charity in general). I don't think you reach the point of establishment until you require church attendance, require oaths of agreement with theological points, grant special subsidies to certain religious bodies--that sort of thing. . . .

Interesting.