Connecting Dots

I heard this week that Spain plans to recognize half a million undocumented immigrants. From one news outlet: “Spain’s Socialist-led government is preparing to grant legal status to roughly half a million people now living and working in the country without documentation.” Part of the reasoning for this decision relates to economic needs in Spain. The same article reads, “Spain’s decision was partly in response to fears that the ageing native-born population won’t be capable of sustaining the kind of workforce the country needs to thrive.” The article goes onto explain that the reason why Spain needs more workers arises from Spain’s low fertility rate. Their citizens aren’t having enough babies to fund their social security program, so they must look for human capital among immigrants.

What’s missing from Spain’s approach is what I find very interesting. Instead of granting residential status to the immigrants, why doesn’t the nation incentivize marriage and childbearing? With these new initiatives, rather than highlighting the importance of the family, they move to incentivize people from poorer countries moving to their own. The long-term impact this has is to marginalize the family and fundamentally change Spain as a nation. For those family-centered citizens of Spain who love the history of their country, this move by the government serves as a serious misstep.

The breakdown of the family—increased singleness, homosexual “marriage,” hook-up culture, low birth rates—has consequences for society as a whole. The consequences impact entire nations, as we see with this story from Spain. With its emphasis on pleasure over duty and sexual identity over fidelity, secularism has done great harm to the family and the world. Secularism digs in their heels when its representatives prioritize the desires of immigrants over the validity of their nation’s families. Weak families equal weak borders, and strong families equal strong borders. They rise and fall together.

Pastor Chance Sumner