Protection of Life (immigrants)
Editor’s note: The is the fourth of six posts looking alternately at Republican and Democratic priorities that I believe Jesus probably supports. If you’re new to this blog, it would be helpful to start from the beginning. But regardless, recognize that the very predictable reactions of cheering for one and booing for the other are the reasons for the earlier material.
The irony of a topic like “protection of life” is that each party has parts of the picture, but neither party seems to do a very good job of seeing how all the pieces are part of the same puzzle.
The tragedy is that in America today, one can’t vote for a consistent ethic of life. (*1)
This is another Democratic section of the blog, and one of the donkey’s pro-life emphases has been concern for the lives of immigrants and refugees.
Having been an elephant most of my life, I’m quite familiar with the almost automatic knee-jerk reaction to this topic. Let’s play a quick game of word association.
Dear Mr. Elephant, What word comes to mind when you hear the word “immigration”?
Answer: Border security.
So let’s get a couple things out of the way right up front so that hopefully the rest of this section can be considered by the elephants in the house. I believe that nations have a right and responsibility to defend themselves against those who mean them harm. I do not believe that a Christian worldview has to equate to open borders. (*2) And I do believe that there are those who mean us harm, and so border security is a legitimate concern. There. Now, can we please talk about immigration? Border security and immigration need to be a both/and in public policy, not an either/or.
Jesus was a refugee! Much like refugees all over the world today, Jesus and his parents Mary and Joseph were forced to flee from Israel when Jesus was somewhere between one and two years old, because Herod sought to kill him. (*3) Refugees, in the technical sense of the word, are simply people seeking refuge in some other country because their homeland has become unsafe. Given their choice, they’d rather stay where they were, but that option has been removed from them. They are wholly dependent on some other nation’s hospitality in order to survive.
As we saw in the last section, Jesus equates welcoming the stranger with welcoming Himself. (*4) I did a little digging on the word Jesus used for “stranger,” and foreign or alien is part of the connotation. The Greek word is xenos, from which our English word xenophobia comes, defined as fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners. Thus, it doesn’t simply (or only) mean someone we don’t know, but implies someone from a foreign country. In a fascinating twist on language, the same word can be translated as “host, or one who extends hospitality.” (*5) I find it remarkable that the very word Jesus uses for stranger takes us directly to the need for hospitality. How we treat foreigners is how we treat Jesus – according to Jesus.
While national sovereignty is a position assumed and presumably validated by the Bible, that doesn’t equate to a worldview in which a person from one country is worth more than a person from another country. When patriotism bleeds over into discrimination or prejudice, it needs to be called out for what it is. The Bible does that repeatedly.
Welcoming the stranger (or foreigner or alien) is a major theme in the Old Testament, primarily because the Jews themselves were foreigners or strangers in Egypt and again later during the Exile. There are four Hebrew words that variously get translated as stranger, foreigner, alien, or immigrant. (*6) Gehr, the most common, refers to a permanent resident. The Hebrew word Gehr occurs 87 times and is always used positively. One example:
God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. (*7)
Image: skeeze/Pixabay
A related word Toshab refers to a more temporary foreigner, often a hired worker. Nacher literally means “not recognized” and is almost always used negatively, often synonymous with “idolater.” The fourth word, Zar, is similar to Nacher and can mean “unauthorized.” All of us are strangers and aliens, in a sense – the land is God’s and we are merely tenants passing through. (*8) Taken as a whole, “foreigners” just like everyone else are made up of those with positive character and those with negative. God expects us to welcome those in need of hospitality, but it’s appropriate to sift out those who might mean us harm.
God’s people were to receive refugees and immigrants with generosity. But they were not commanded to adopt and anoint the practices of neighboring kingdoms as their own. (*9)
America is a nation of immigrants. With the exception of Native Americans, all the rest of us (or our ancestors) immigrated to the country. The inscription below the Statue of Liberty states in part,
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (*10)
These words have encapsulated the nation’s attitude toward immigrants until recently, when the topic has become much more controversial. Part of the controversy comes from the fact that approximately 11 million people living in the United States either crossed the borders illegally, or came legally on a visa but stayed beyond the date authorized. (*11) So the immigration question in our country consists of two distinct sets of people: how to handle those who are already here without authorization, and how to handle those who wish (or need) to come.
The elephant news channel seems to find a way to report every instance of a heinous crime committed by someone here illegally, while the donkey news channel seems to pass on those stories. (*12) The fact that such stories exist is certainly cause for concern. But from a sheer numbers and percentage issue, the number of horrible crimes committed by legal residents of the country is significantly greater than the number committed by those here illegally, or by refugees who came through our legal system of immigration. Some of the negative news stories about crimes committed by people in our country without legal paperwork, and the ways some politicians have used those news stories, seem intent on fanning xenophobia into flame. Refugee isn’t an identity, it’s a condition, and one that ought to call forth empathy and compassion, not disdain and fear.
Perhaps the greatest travesty is that at a time when the number of refugees globally has never been greater, America is accepting the fewest in recent memory.
The US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) was set up in 1980, when Congress passed the Refugee Act. According to the New York Times, (President Trump’s announcement cutting the limit to 30k in 2019) represents the lowest ceiling any president has imposed on the programme since its creation. (*13)
At the same time, the United Nations estimates there are 25,000,000 refugees globally, with another 40 million displaced within their own countries. (*14) The vetting process for legal refugees is incredibly extensive, with the average wait time for refugees a minimum of 18 months and extending into decades. Only 1% of refugees are ever resettled, and those who are don’t get to choose the country they are sent to. There has never been an act of terrorism that resulted in death committed on our soil by someone who entered the country through the country’s refugee admissions program. If someone wants to enter our country to do us harm on our own soil, it’s inconceivable that they would choose the refugee resettlement program as the path to get here. Probably in part because we’re accepting so few refugees legally, the number of asylum seekers is exploding, with an estimated 280,000 processed in 2019 by the United States. Someone seeking asylum declares that intention upon entering the country.
A close contestant for “greatest travesty” is how families are split apart when a parent is deported (*15), as well as how the private prisons benefit financially by criminalizing those whose crime was entering the country illegally. (*16) The vast majority of people who entered the country illegally did so with what most of us would consider the best of intentions: to better provide and care for their families. Even if their lives weren’t at risk and they were forcibly removed, it’s hard to fault someone for wanting food and education. Numerous documentaries have been produced on the risks of getting to the border, let alone crossing it; conditions would have to be quite dire for most parents to take such risks. (*17) Those here without legal papers live in the shadows, constantly in fear of being deported. As such, they are easy targets for financial and physical abuse by Americans looking for someone to take advantage of. Employers can decide not to pay illegal migrant workers for the work they just did, and the pressure to not report harassment or other crimes is even more enormous for those here with little protection.
America can do better than this. We must do better than this. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and there needs to be a will for immigration reform. A bipartisan group of Christians known as Evangelical Immigration Table has proposed a set of principles that seem like a great starting place to me. They are calling for immigration reform that:
Respects the God-given dignity of every person.
Protects the unity of the immediate family.
Respects the rule of law.
Guarantees secure national borders.
Ensures fairness to taxpayers.
Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents. (*18)
An additional tremendous resource is Tucson Refugee Ministry, where background material can be found on the refugee vetting process, as well as a series of steps we can take to make a difference in the lives of these vulnerable ones already in our country. (*19) All life matters to God – from womb to tomb – regardless of which side of the border that life is lived.
Jim Wallis, God’s Politics, p. 301.
The Bible is filled with stories of nations, and nowhere is it implied that they can’t or shouldn’t defend themselves. Furthermore, specific land (and hence, borders) is attributed to specific nations in the Bible.
Bauer-Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 548. The Greek word is xenos, from which our English word xenophobia comes, defined as fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners. It’s translated as host or hospitality in Romans 16:23, where Paul is passing along greeting from Gaius, the “xenon”.
Thanks to Pastor Dan Johnson for his unpublished research on this topic, from which much of this paragraph is drawn.
1 Chronicles 29:14, Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 2:11 and many others.
Peter Greer, Rooting for Rivals, p. 183.
https://www.nycinsiderguide.com/statue-of-liberty-inscription
I know because I make it a habit at least daily to read both Fox News and CNN’s websites.
BBC News, September 18, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45555357
Ibid.
https://immigrationimpact.com/2018/11/14/immigrant-parents-deported-family-suffers/#.XhkaGUdKi70
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/prisons-immigration-detention.html
As one such example, a group of us in Tucson went to see “Who is Dayani Cristal?” together.