This Country is Not Your House, But What If It Was?

I have repeatedly read and heard the argument that having open borders is like having no locks on your house. Letting immigrants come in unfettered is like letting them squat in your house and eat all the food in your refrigerator. Sounds like a good analogy, right?

This country is not your house. It is not your private property. No immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, want access to your private property. And as they work, they are not taking your money.

But what if we play along with the analogy? If you are a home owner, you bought your house with your money and probably some of the bank’s money. The seller gave you a deed in exchange for that money. In giving you that deed the seller warranted that they actually own the property and it is theirs to sell to someone else. However, you, if you were wise, or if your lender insisted, bought title insurance. Before selling you the title insurance, the title company did an extensive search just to be sure that there were no defects in the title, because otherwise you could suddenly find that the house or some part of the property interest in the house is not yours after all.

If, somewhere back along the history of your property, a fraudulent deed got in the chain of title, that deed may be void. In other words, it never conveyed anything. It simply doesn’t exist as a legal document. And thus the first domino falls. Here’s how it happened:

The person who sold you your house did so in good faith and in all the usual ways. And the person that sold them the house did so as well. But several transactions ago, there was a small family that owned the house.

It had been in their family for many, many generations. One day another family showed up at the door. They’d traveled a long way and were hungry, so the little family helped them with some food. The new family needed shelter, so the small family let them stay.

Then the new family brought in some relatives. They took over more of the house. Being good Christians, they had a prayer meeting and felt that it was their God-given right to take over the house. And to be honest, the old family wasn’t using the house in a way that the new family thought was best.

In Christian charity, they let the original family stay in one room.  They insisted that the original family deed the house to them. When they refused, they took a few members of the family out back and shot them. They felt that it was what God wanted them to do because they felt threatened by the original family.

Soon the new family kept growing and they needed that bedroom, too, so they moved the original family at gun point and let them stay in a closet at the other end of the house.  A few protested and they were shot, too. They could stay there as long as they did exactly as they were told according to the new rules of the house.

The new family chose some of their number to come up with house rules from time to time and everyone in the new family agreed to follow them. And agreed that the old family would follow them as well. Or else.

All along, the new family would present the old family with new deeds to sign, sometimes with conditions the new family agreed to keep. After all, they were Christians and Christians are supposed to keep their promises. Sometimes the original family would sign at gunpoint, but the new family immediately violated all the terms of the deed each and every time.

Then the new family transferred the house to new owners generation by generation. Every once in a while the new owners would remember the family in the closet, but they didn’t bother with deeds anymore. Occasionally they’d decide to run new natural gas lines through the closet to keep new family members in another part of the house warm, but that’s another story.

The real problem is that fraudulent deed. Well, actually, as we have seen, multiple fraudulent deeds. Void ab initio we call it in the law. Null and void is term you might have heard in English. In other word, the deeds never actually conveyed anything. Thus, there was nothing to convey after that. After all, the law is the law. And it is part of the law the new family brought with them. By their own rules, if they were honest about it – and Christians are supposed to be honest – they don’t actually own anything.

If this country is like your house, you are living in stolen house to which you do not have a valid deed. As they say, “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” It’s not yours to keep anyone else out. If anyone has a right to say who can come in and use the fridge, it’s that family in the closet.

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