First let me say that I have no romantic ideas that Jesus would be interested in everything that interests me or you for that matter but I do think many of the things we talk, write and read about today would be of interest to Jesus.  The question is do we really care what he would think.  I personally do.  Here are a few reasons why:

1. He was at the very least a great leader of men (oops that should have been poeple in order to be politically correct).
2. He was an ethical man.
3. He was a moral man.
4. Even with his great charisma and ability to work a crowd it never appears that he took advantage of that for his own good (unless you call being crucified for your cause in order to go down in history as a cool dude somehow selfish?).
5. It has been my personal experience that when I listen to his teachings and do my best to put them into practice that it always benefits others as well as myself.

I could go on but I hope you get the point by now.  I am not proposing to say that there are always "easy answers from Jesus" on every question we face today. In fact it may even complicate things to ask ourselves what he may have thought or taught on a particular issue.

Take the immigration issue for instance.  If Jesus is in fact the Son of God and therefore the creator of this world would he be as concerned with borders as we are?  I seriously doubt it.  However he did talk about obeying your local laws and paying taxes and dealing ethically with your employer and your employees.  All of those things come into play when your discussing the immigration issue.  Jesus seldom talked about rights but he often talked blessings and privileges.  He talked about fairness but I must say his sense of fairness tends to be much more gracious than mine is typically.

Since the issue is immigration and everyone knows our economy would collapse without our fine migrant farm workers lets look at what he had to say on this issue as it relates to fairness, free market economy practices, wages in a capitalist society.

¹"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. ²He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.  ³"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' ⁵So they went.  "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. ⁶About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'  ⁷" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.  "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'  ⁸"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'  ⁹"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' ¹³"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'  ¹⁶"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Matthew+20&version=31

Now lets look at how these things may apply to our national crisis in immigration and free trade.  I have lived in an area of our country that has been dependant upon agriculture for its economy most of my adult life.  I have actually worked in the fields, barns and sorting houses along side many US citizens and foreign born migrant farm workers.  Most of these were good folks who just wanted to take care of their families but who did not feel like the they had the luxury of worry about whether or not they got into the country by legal means or not.  Some were bad guys who just used that particular method to position themselves for the next big score with absolutely no care for others.  That is really not the issue however.  The issue has many layers to it.  One might argue that America needs them to survive.  Another would say that if they weren’t here the average wage in the US would rise and we could all live above the poverty level more easily.  One might say that it even if no illegal’s were here we would still have poverty because many people live a life devoid of personal responsibility and thereby choose poverty for themselves and their offspring.  One might say that we should make it easier for others to come into our country legally while doing a better job of enforcing the laws we have and deporting the bad guys.  I think the truth lies in the midst of those statements yet none of them fix the problem or necessarily deal with the problem from a Jesus ethic.

If you pull some of the issues out of Jesus story and place them into our context they might look something like this;

A man needed some workers so he put out an advertisement and got a few folks to do some of the work.  Soon learning that his crew was not capable or perhaps willing to do all that needed to be done he recruited more people but this time we realized that he might have to pay them more to get the desired productivity from them.  Yet still lacking the total productivity he needed to survive and get the crop in and then back out to market before it became useless he hired even more.  Now the most tenured employees began to grumble because they saw low productivity as a job security and the influx of new labor as a threat to there present way of living.  But they did not understand that if the farmer down the road was producing a crop as good or better in a more timely fashion it would put their farmer out of business and they would have no job at all.

The point of my story is that Jesus wasn't concerned with one mans idea of what was fair, nor was he a capitalist although I do think he understood the principles of a capitalist society and approved of them as long as ethical behavior ruled the day. 

I wish the immigration thing was simple but it is not.  We need some foreign labor.  Some foreign labor deserves a chance at creating a better life for themselves and hopefully spreading the positive ideals of a free market economy around the world.  We also need laws and owe it the men and women that risked so much to create this wonderful place to protect a way of life that allows anyone, no matter how poor, or how poor an example he has been given to thrive in this society.  Quite frankly, I have never met a person who worked hard and had a stellar ethical and moral value system that did not succeed way beyond his peers without those things.