What is a nation? A few fundamental principles define it. One of these is the existence of government, which is there to define and execute law. Certainly no nation has ever survived without law.

A second defining quality is culture: The glue that holds a nation together is its common language, culture and ideals. Without a unifying culture—without common values—the political and moral fiber of a nation is degraded.

A third requirement for a nation—but perhaps first in importance—is the establishment of borders. We identify a country on a map by where its borders lie. No one would consider establishing a country without clearly delineating its borders.

Let’s apply these principles to the debate over illegal immigration.

First, consider the idea that a nation enforces its laws. The truth is, the main reason illegal immigration hasn’t been curbed is that the government doesn’t respect its own laws enough to enforce them. Certainly the argument that it would be nearly impossible to deport every illegal immigrant is true. It is also true that it is impossible to catch and convict every rapist. The police cannot solve every murder. Would anyone argue that we should not even try?

If a nation does not even make the pretense of enforcing law, what kind of nation is it? On this first fundamental principle on which any nation is built, the United States fails the test. By debating the right of those that enter the country illegally to do so without penalty, we debate the very notion of law; the idea that someone has a fundamental right to illegally enter a country—the most powerful nation on Earth at that—is absurd.

Second, consider the fundamental principle that a country’s citizens share a common culture. Culture, as defined by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations, refers to “a people’s language, religious beliefs, social and political values, assumptions as to what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and to the objective institutions and behavioral patterns that reflect these subjective elements.” Unlike skin color or ethnic heritage, someone’s culture can change. People can convert to other religions or systems of values and beliefs. They can learn new languages.

Initially, this was the basis of U.S. immigration: There existed an American identity, and people of all creeds and races took on that identity. In other words, they could Americanize.

This Americanization process was given a metaphor in Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play The Melting Pot. In the play, a youthful Russian-Jewish composer in New York calls America a pot where everyone melds together and re-forms. Theodore Roosevelt, to whom the play was dedicated, called it a “great play”; he agreed with Zangwill’s concept. He, like presidents before him, welcomed large-scale immigration into the U.S., as long as those immigrants became Americans. “Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all,” Roosevelt famously proclaimed.

Another U.S. president, John Quincy Adams, said that for immigrants to succeed in this land, they had to “cast off the European skin, never to resume it.”

Until the 1960s, that is largely what immigrants did. The height of immigrant assimilation occurred between about 1870 and 1920. Almost every city with a large immigrant population had Americanization programs through local schools and businesses.

This latest wave of illegal immigrants represents a stark contrast to that historical ideal. In response to a proposal to provide government grants to those who want to learn English and U.S. history, the director of Immigration Policy and Research for La Raza—a Hispanic American group—complained that though the proposal “doesn’t overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities.” Most illegal immigrants have no intention of adopting American culture or values. Instead, they intend to form their own culture within U.S. borders. Certainly the illegal immigration debate fails the culture test as well.

Is it even necessary to address the question of borders? Consider how important national borders are; most ongoing military disputes involve some sort of conflict over a border. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inherently a border conflict. When wars ignite, it is typically because one nation decides to encroach on the territory of another. When citizens of one country encroach on another country’s territory without permission, it is trespassing—and in some cases, invasion.

Whether those people think they are invading, trespassing, or just crossing into a land of opportunity, though, is of less importance than the reality that the United States is absolutely unable to protect its own borders—the lines that define it as a nation. Is the U.S. really so weak? Clearly, the answer is yes—and Bible prophecy tells us why.

In our book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, we explain that the nations of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom comprise the modern-day descendants of biblical Israel. This is important to understand, because the Bible has specific prophecies concerning these nations. One of those prophecies discusses the problem that these nations would have with immigration.

God gave a dire warning to the Israelite peoples concerning immigrants from other cultures (the Bible uses the word strangers). He said that if the children of Israel were to rebel against His laws—to turn away from His commandments and embrace the practices of the heathen—they would suffer terribly (Deuteronomy 28:15-19). The curses included this prophecy: “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail” (verses 43-44). Lax immigration policies and weak borders are playing an instrumental role in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Consider how profound the effect of these prophecies is. As we watch illegal immigrants demonstrate for rights they do not have, consider the nature of the national debate. A fundamental disregard for law, the loss of a common culture, and the inability to even protect borders shows that the very things that define the United States of America as a nation are being chipped away one by one.