In my religion seminar class "Paul as Contemporary Cultural Theory," we are reading the book by Alain Badiou. Badiou himself is French, and he speaks from his own vantage point, but I find what he says in the early pages of the book to be particularly relevant to regarding immigration in the US.
Badiou says:
Moreover, this is the norm that illuminates a paradox few have pointed out: in the hour of generalized circulation and the phantasm of instantaneious cultural communication, laws and regulations forbidding the circulation of persons are being multiplied everywhere.1
In other words, in an era when global travel, trade, and communication is soaring, our need to stamp down on immigration becomes heightened. Badiou later says, " put it perfectly: capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization."2 Now, here's the kicker:
How clearly Paul's statement rings out under these conditions! A genuinely stupefying statement when one knows the rules of the ancient world: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Gal. 3.28)!3
And all of this from a self-proclaimed atheist.