The rationale behind the conference was to gauge conservative Christian responses to what Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC) calls, "the immigration crisis" and to apply a "Judeo-Christian worldview" to public policy issues.  

The panelists included Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado. Representative Tancredo chairs the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, and he is a hero to groups like the Minutemen Project, an anti-immigration citizen group that patrols the borders to deter illegal immigrants.   According to Tancredo,

We send troops thousands of miles away to fight terrorists, but we refuse to put them on our own border to keep them out.  We will never be able to win in the clash of civilizations, if we don't know who we are. If Western civilization succumbs to the siren song of multiculturalism, I believe we're finished.

The panelists also included Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Jr., the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an evangelical group with fifteen million members.  Their mission statement reads,

To lead the Hispanic Evangelical Church in America for the purpose of transforming our culture, preserving our Judeo Christian Value System and building the spiritual, intellectual and social/political capital within the Hispanic American Community.

In his talk at the Family Research Council conference, Rodriguez reminded listeners that his organization had supported the Family Research Council on gay marriage issues.  It was the Family Research Council's turn, he argued, to publicly endorse laws that would put illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship.  "We are the gatekeepers and the loudest oracles of family values, and you can't be consistently pro-family value and then on an issue that impacts 12 million families, not be there." At the same time, Rodriguez claimed that the U.S. should immediately stop all illegal immigration and increase border protection in order to protect the exploitation of workers attempting to enter the U.S. illegally.  

The Family Research Council also recently posted results from their Value Voters Immigration Survey.  The FRC designed the internet survey to ascertain how "values voters" view the immigration debate.  Most respondents rated the importance level of immigration below judicial activism, "protecting man-woman marriage" and "protecting human life from abortion."  On the question:

My view of the requirements of Christian discipleship accords best with the following statement about illegal immigrants

 Ninety percent agreed,

Illegal immigrants should be treated humanely, but they are breaking properly enacted laws and they should be detected, arrested, and returned to their country of origin.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,  Joan M. Maruskin of the Church World Service - Immigration and Refugee Program,  John O'Sullivan of the Hudson Institute, and Brent A. Wilkes from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)  also participated in the conference.  

According to Tony Perkins, the conference sought to balance Christian respect for the rule of law with a biblical mandate to welcome aliens and strangers.  Richard Land's remarks illustrated the tension conservative Christian organizations are experiencing between these two ideas:

As citizens of the United States, we have an obligation to support the government and its laws (Rom. 13:7). We also have a right to expect the government to fulfill its divinely ordained mandate to punish those who break the laws and reward those who do not (Rom. 13:1-7). As Christians, we also have a divine mandate to act compassionately toward those in need. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do unto others as we would have them do unto us (Matt. 22:39; 7:12).

The Southern Baptist Convention represents the largest Protestant group in the United States with more than 16.3 million members.   Richard Land actively promotes the idea of the Christian citizen:

Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians who are American citizens have responsibilities in two realms: as citizens of the nation and as citizens of the heavenly Kingdom (Phil. 3:20; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9

Richard Land and Tony Perkins realize that what is at stake in immigration policy is more than a debate about biblical values.   The Family Research Council has been reluctant to take a stance on immigration because Perkins realizes that the majority of the protestors on Monday were Latinos, many of whom are members of evangelical churches that represent a key constituency.  How the Family Research Council stands on immigration now will undoubtedly have long-term repercussions.  The future growth of the Christian Right depends on whether it can mobilize African-American and Latino conservative Christians around policy issues, especially as the mid-term elections approach.