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There was a recent debate in the comments section of the
Desert News that I think deserves an entire follow up. The article in question was about the
importance of building the wall from an expert, Tim
Ballard, fighting child sex trafficking. The comments section included a
long debate about the efficacy of walls in the Book of Mormon. But they failed to note significant points that
alter the debate and provide a better understanding. The key point is that the
walls were part of Nephite military strategy, not immigration strategy, and
people see what they want to see in the scriptures without understanding
immigration in the book.
It is tough to determine if any ancient power, or a people
described in the Book of Mormon even
had a coherent policy. Edward Luttwak’s description of Roman Grand Strategy
often falters as critiques point out that there was little chance that rulers
had little more than an ad hoc reactions to many frontier incursions, and not a
strategy planned and implemented over decades and centuries.[1]
But we might still look carefully for how the Nephite rulers
and ancient version of policy makers controlled the movement of people. We find
that the Nephites did little in most cases to forcibly control the movement of
people. In several cases, and moving chronologically through the text, the
moving groups received permission from the ruler.
The People of Limhi received
permission from the Lamanite King, though they were, to use modern language, eventually
exploited for up to half of their goods (Mosiah 9:5-7). The escaping Anti Nephi
Lehis received permission to enter Nephite lands. They even offered to be
slaves to the Nephites, but instead were granted land (Alma 27:8-9). Later in
their history, they provided both men and food to support the Nephite war
against the Lamanites which suggests a possible tributary relationship with the
Nephites where they give food and soldiers for protection and land. (In fact,
settling refugees in military colonies who then supported the mustered soldiers
was a strategy advocated by Chinese legalists like Lord Shang and Han Feizi.[2])
The Nephites under Moroni did adopt an immigrant program,
but it is hardly something most modern readers would approve. In Alma chapter
50 He took the soldiers and forcibly removed Lamanite settlers and seized the
lands in the East and West wilderness. I doubt he gave them 30 day notices, and
a flood of refugees entering other Lamanite lands likely helped galvanize
opposition to what Lamanite leaders could easily portray as aggressive Nephite
expansion. Moroni also used the army to
prevent the movement of Morianton under the guise of national security (Alma
50:32).
In the Book of Helaman the events are often described in
brief, but there are even more movements of people, and less control by the
government. The rise of the infamous Gadianton Robbers was connected to a
failure of government officials to effectively enforce its laws, and an
inability of the government to control the movement of their people and
maintain territorial integrity. The
autonomy of local officials increased.
The chaos created new frontiers and borderlands, and new leaders rose to
fill that gap. In addition to Helaman
chapter one, the Nephites faced other losses of territory. As a result of contention, many settlers left
for the far north (Helaman 3:3). This
pattern was repeated by separatists that later toppled the Nephite government
(3 Nephi 7:12). Shortly thereafter, the
Nephites lost all of their territory to the Lamanites, with only a part of it
being recovered (Helaman 4:10). Nephi was forced out of his position as chief
judge (Helaman 5:1-3). Their territory
was only recovered through miraculous means (Helaman 5:52) that I think was the
result of governing Lamanites converting in order to gain advantages
(such as a just war against the Gadianton Robbers, Helaman 6:20) similar to the
conversion pattern seen throughout European history (Helaman 6:3, 8-9).Later
armies explicitly “took possession” of the land suggesting more armed control
over men and material (Mormon 2:4; 4:2).
This is a cursory examination of the scriptures involving
movement of people. It doesn’t involve ideologies and needs much more study. We
can see that walls had some effect in security Nephite cities. But these were
explicitly military and the immigration policy was far more extemporaneous in
response to current events and the relative power of the ruling elites at the
time. Early in Nephite history the migrating groups asked for permission to
enter lands they entered. But both Nephites and Lamanites extracted
compensation from it. Under powerful leaders such as Captain Moroni, they
violently seized land and actually created refugees. This seems to go unnoticed
by many American conservatives, and confirms
that most people see what they want to see. Finally, throughout much of
the Book of Helaman people and groups move without any hints of government
intervention.
The conclusion I draw is that most people see what they want
to see regarding immigration. They see the word wall and naturally want to
argue that walls work. Or they read the book with their woke goggles and bemoan
the militaristic stud muffins like Moroni. But in reality, the ancient Nephites
didn’t have an organized immigration system like modern nation states, in many
cases they didn’t actively oppose it, and they did many things with which
modern readers would find morally disagreeable. The Book of Mormon has limited value in immigration debates and is not
a handbook on that debate, except in reminding us that we are all part of God’s
family.
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[1]
Peter Heather, “Holding the Line: Frontier Defense and the Later roman Empire,
in Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the
Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, Princeton University Press, 2009, 228.
[2] The Book of Lord Shang, JJL Duyvendak
trans., University of Chicago Press, 1928, 50.
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