An Opening Case
We call ourselves in the United States a nation of immigrants. But just how welcoming should we continue to be? A student group at your campus is arguing for the DREAM Act. This bill offers to some of those brought to the United States as undocumented minors a legal path to permanent residency and potentially to citizenship, given their fulfillment of either educational or military service requirements. A friend of yours asks you to join them at a campus rally in support of the legislation tomorrow. You are torn. You empathize with those who discover themselves to be undocumented. It was not their choice to immigrate without papers. In many cases this is the only home they have known. Why should they be punished for decisions their parents made? But you wonder whether this legislation will simply encourage more parents to bring their undocumented children into the country. Border security is important, isn’t it? Won’t it affect our unemployment rate and national debt? You wonder how fair this is to the thousands of parents and children who wait for the opportunity to immigrate in accordance with the rule of law. What do you decide to do? Why?
No one has yet erased the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” However, the issue of immigration and whether in fact the Untied States ought to continue to welcome immigrants became a hot-button issue in the 2008 national election and has remained so in the years since.
Given the recent upsurge in immigration in recent decades, about thirty-seven million immigrants live in the United States and approximately one-third of them are undocumented. Most of these immigrants to the United States are Christians, but they do not come from Western Europe. This will produce dramatic cultural changes. Peter Brimelow projects that by the year 2050 the percentage of Euro-Americans in the United States will be 53 percent. Others have argued that there will be no majority ethnic group as early as 2040.
Despite this upsurge in immigration having slowed to a trickle in recent years, anti-immigration groups are arguing that undocumented immigrants take jobs away from citizens of the United States. At the same time, other groups (like seasonal growers) are complaining, because it is difficult to get workers to harvest their fields. Some say that immigrants are overwhelming public schools and social service agencies. Even those states that have benefited the most from low-cost labor—for example, California—are complaining about the costs of this immigration to state government. Other states—for example, Texas—have anti-immigration movements that pit settled populations against newer arrivals. (It is estimated that 65 to 75 percent of the immigrants from Mexico are, in fact, legally documented.)
The DREAM Act is one of a number of legislative reforms that would enable persons brought to this country as children of undocumented immigrants to go to college or serve in the military, and participate in the work force. The specter of a twenty-four-year-old woman, who was brought to the States as an infant, who has done well in medical school, but cannot take her licensing exam because she (and her parents) are still undocumented encapsulates this dilemma. Many other issues are at stake. One deals with immigrants who are already here: a variety of Republican and Democratic Congresspersons agree that undocumented workers need to be given a path to citizenship. Mass deportation is impractical; the cost alone of arresting and sending “home” nearly twelve million people should give us pause. Consider the other costs associated with the practice of raiding workplaces or accosting people because they are suspected of “being illegal” (as in Arizona). The key is to develop a policy that reinforces the importance of the rule of law that is not inhumane or expensive.
The other big issue is how to secure the border between Latin America and the United States. Its growing militarization has proven to be expensive, unworkable, and dangerous for those who are immigrating. Nevertheless, absolutely open borders are not feasible either. One suggestion is that we need to approach reform from a human rights perspective that values the unity of the family and respects the dignity of people. Multilateral negotiations and working together to devise a mutual answer to the difficulties of this question seems feasible.
One topic that we have chosen not to deal with is that of immigration for political reasons and refugees. This is because a humanitarian approach to such aid seems squarely in both the Christian and the civil value systems. Though some, notably nativist groups, might oppose such aid, they do not seem to be in the majority, nor do those issues appear as complicated as immigration from south of the border.
This chapter offers four different perspectives on the issue. The first essay, by John Savant, pits the humanity of the immigrant against the legality of a controlled border admission or path to citizenship (two of the four perspectives). Thus he attacks head-on the argument that many immigrants are not in the United States legally. While many view respect for law as a trump card, Savant, to the contrary, believes that “social and economic circumstances significantly alter the normal civic context” and that many immigrants would prefer to live in their homeland. He argues we need to become a “nation of imagination” where we can identify with immigrants so as to “render their desperation our own.” The second essay, by Loida Martell-Otero, demonstrates the use of biblical concepts and their illuminative power in the present context. She argues for the creation of a sacred space, an iglesia evangélica response to global homelessness. Her essay argues that global dislocation has occurred as the result of a number of factors. Into the social dynamics of corporate immigration (military and neocolonial incursions), Martell-Otero asks us to read the Old Testament, which calls the stranger a neighbor, or familia. Such revisioning will mean that the stranger is no longer strange, but has become hermana y hermano in the evangelical church.
The third of our essays reveals just how difficult this question is by arguing, on explicitly Christian grounds, that genuine immigration reform must also foster respect for the rule of law and support for national security. The “stranger” that the Scriptures invite us to treat with love, Carol Swain argues, was a law-abiding, resident alien—not an illegal (as she refers to them) alien. Christians are called to obey civil authorities as well as to compassion. She argues further that the economic impact on already vulnerable citizens of plans to integrate the undocumented must be studied. She concludes her argument with a list of fifteen proposals constitutive of what she contends would be truly comprehensive immigration reform.
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Great detectives, we are told, are able to think like criminals. Similarly, effective therapists learn to enter into the fantasies of their patients. These behaviors are a function of that supreme and godlike faculty we call imagination. Unlike daydream or fancy—a centrifugal spinning away from reality, the mind on holiday—imagination is centripetal, a disciplined contemplation of reality that takes us beneath appearances and into the essence of what we contemplate. Imagination, therefore, can lead to moral clarification. In issues where law and morality seem to clash, as in the current debate over undocumented immigrants, imagination (which speaks to both heart and mind) can lead to right action.
Law and morality are not always commensurate; a law that is just in one context may be inappropriate in another, because laws function more often to allow a workable social order than to represent absolute moral imperatives. We hear it argued, for example, that granting amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens encourages disrespect for the law—a legitimate concern within the context of normal civic life. What this argument does not address, however, are the social and economic circumstances that significantly alter the normal civic context—for example, the abnormal circumstances that lie at the heart of major migration movements.
Even in very modest circumstances, people prefer their home turf and the comforts of custom to the trauma of dislocation and the uncertainty of the unfamiliar. There will always be adventurers who are at home anywhere in the world, but when populations begin to cross borders in significant numbers, it is almost always out of dire economic necessity or because of severe political persecution. In light of our common humanity—a familial bond with its own intuitions and responsibilities—we cannot make the moral urgings of this bond subservient to the civil proscriptions of law.
Against the compelling urgency of the plight of immigrants, therefore, the claims of legal compliance must give way to the more fundamental claims of our common humanity. If numerous immigrants are here because their families would otherwise live in abject poverty, the issue boils down to legal conformity versus possible starvation. Here is where abstractions must give way to concrete reality. But as any poet or artist will tell you, the concrete is the realm of the imagination. In attempting to understand what is just, we have to imagine real persons and their concrete situations.
Let’s imagine a man named Eusebio. If deported as an illegal alien and thus deprived of an income, he could likely witness the decline of a sickly daughter whose medicines he can no longer purchase, or he might have to face the possibility that her despondent older sister will opt for whatever income prostitution might provide. Ironically, a few miles across the border, some of his countrymen are earning more in a day than he does in a month. He sees his tired wife scrubbing one of her three dresses, his pretty daughter staring glumly at nothing and the streets outside bleak and empty of promise. He does not think, at this moment, of breaking laws. He thinks of his paternal duty and acts not out of greed but out of desperation.
Or imagine a woman named Marta, whose husband has been “disappeared” by a rival faction. Possessing only domestic skills, she tries to support her mother and children by selling gum and postcards to tourists. It is not enough. She leaves her two youngest children and her meager savings with her mother and makes the harrowing journey with her son across the Rio Grande, more desperate than hopeful, driven more by a primal affirmation of life and the panic of love than by any plan. In our concern for “respect for law,” can we demote these and many similar tragedies to a category of lesser urgency, considering them the “collateral effects” of market forces?
America was at one time described as a “City upon a Hill,” the “New Zion,” a beacon to the world. Many in the mid-nineteenth century would have agreed with the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, who proclaimed that our nation represented God’s plan for humankind, its freedoms guaranteeing a nobler, more resilient and more just society. He said this, of course, not long before we engaged in one of history’s bloodiest civil wars, a war that jarred our self-perception of national innocence and historical exception. Now, with the closing of the frontier and the unparalleled opportunities it made possible for the rugged individual, we have been snatched out of our timeless dream and back into history. The world now watches to see how well our behavior will match our lofty rhetoric.
What America has been is largely the product of a historical windfall—the confluence of revolutionary European theory, geographical separation from centers of control, the necessity of (and gradual education in) self-governance and an unimaginable expanse of continent in which to carry out our democratic experiment. What America can become will be the result of the new culture we form in the far more restricted (and realistic) circumstances of a closed frontier. Will we continue to manifest the daring, idealism, generosity and openness to the new and the difficult that marked our frontier forebears at their best? Or will we respond to challenges like the current influx of immigrants with a narrow sense of proprietorship and a very un-American fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar? If we reduce justice to legality and culture to security, we take the first steps toward a state driven not by enthusiasm but by caution, not by daring but by fear. We will prove that our vaunted magnanimity has been not the natural and characteristic expression of a free and democratic people, but the specious (and transient) product of a magnificent frontier blessed with material plenty.
The American dream has run headlong into a historical crunch time. If we are not to betray the dream, we simply must imagine better. Just as we imagined our dogged pilgrim pioneers and our daring frontier ancestors in creating a heroic mythology and a resourceful and generous self image, so too does the bond of our common humanity require that we imagine today the blood ties with our immigrant population that render their desperation our own. Historically, humankind finds this a supremely difficult challenge, for our loyalties to family, clan and nation are the schools of our first imaginings in culture, ritual and governance. We tend to resist other ways of living, other cultures, despite the fact that, as cultural historians will affirm, travel, trade, and periodic immigrations have ever tended to enrich their host cultures. In the matter of our growing immigrant population, then, can we not imagine better than to build fences and expand border patrols?
The world is rapidly growing smaller, more intimate and more dangerous. Gerald Vann, O.P., in The Heart of Man, writes that in true love, “the lover becomes the beloved.” Such becoming is truly an act of the imagination. Can we imagine the immigrant in our midst? Can we become the third world citizen whose longings, not unlike our own, still appear so remote? Such becoming can lead to a moral imagination that gives primacy to radical human need over legal compliance. The survival and growth of our own civilization may well depend upon our imagining better.
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To engage in respectful theological dialogue about immigration is often difficult in the current socioeconomic and political climate, where demagogic claims seem to sway general popular conceptions and legislative decisions.[1] In this article, I do not claim to engage it with “disinterest” or “objectivity.” Rather, I approach the topic as a Puerto Rican bicoastal, bilingual theologian with over 15 years of pastoral experience in an evangélica church. I engage in the dialogue as part of the 47 million Latinas/os that are estimated to reside in the United States.[2] The unwieldy term Latina/o is meant to identify Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and the various other cultural/ethnic groups including Cubans, Dominicans, and Central and South Americans who currently reside in the United States. Almost 60 percent of us were born in this country, and contrary to common stereotypes are thus legal residents or citizens.[3]
While my experience as a citizen of the United States and as an evangélica pastor residing in the Northeast may be somewhat different than those who live in the “borderlands” of the Southwest, I am not immured to the impact of immigration in our churches and communities. I am fully cognizant that regardless of the geographical space we occupy, Latina/o experiences of migration arise from similar causes: the imperial and military incursions of the United States into the lands of our originating nation-homes. Orlando E. Costas observed that Puerto Rico is “one of the last overt colonies” in the Western Hemisphere.[4] As a Puerto Rican who has resided on the island as well as in the continental United States, I certainly can attest to the pain of being treated as foreigners and nonpersons regardless of where we reside, simply due to our Latinidad. Like our brothers and sisters in the Southwest, we too live a “borderland” existence between nonbeing and disenfranchisement.[5]
To say that I am evangélica does not identify me with what traditionally has been defined as “evangelical” in this country—with its attendant theological, sociopolitical, and religious characteristics.[6] Rather, evangélica denotes those who are Protestant in the Spanish-speaking Americas. Protestantism in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean arose when North Atlantic missionaries sought to “evangelize” a deeply religious Latin American Catholic people whose own religious inheritance was a mix of Iberian, indigenous and African practices and beliefs. Thus evangélica denotes a mestizo/sata popular Protestantism with its own distinctive expressions within the larger denominational structures present in the United States.[7] It is estimated that as much as 25 percent of the Latina/o community is evangélica.[8]
From this geographical, cultural/linguistic, and theological location, it is my contention that the contemporary “problem of immigration” is really an expression of global dislocation that has led to migratory patterns of “homelessness.” While the myriad causes of global dislocation are certainly beyond the scope of this presentation, I want to suggest that insofar as the Latina/o community is concerned, one important cause (though by no means the only one) is the exportation, and therefore immigration, of U.S. expansionist policies into Latin America and the Caribbean. If I am right in this understanding, the church needs to re-vision the im/migrant, itself and God in order to respond adequately to the globally displaced. . . .
Intentional dislocation creates a global class of people that I believe can best be described using the biblical concept of “stranger.” The First Testament (Hebrew Bible) uses various terms to convey this idea. One such term is gēr, often translated as “resident alien” or “sojourner.”[9] Both translations leave something to be desired: the first because “alien” seems more a reflection of a (post)modern worldview than a biblical one; and the second because it falls short of the implications of gēr as one who has taken up residence among the general population.[10] Frank Crüsemann captures well the spirit of its meaning when he notes that gēr “denotes people who have neither family nor land where they are living, and who live as those seeking protection in a foreign country.” It also can apply to those living among their own people but in territories where they are strangers such that “one is not at home and has no social roots.”[11] There are other concepts for “stranger” in the biblical texts. M. Daniel Carroll R. mentions those who seem to be passing through (zār) and those denoted as tôšab. This latter designation closely parallels those considered “day laborers” in the modern discussions about immigration.[12] Carroll considers nokrî to be “recent arrivals.” However, the term also can mean “foreigner” with the implication that they have no familial ties to Israel, and therefore very little legal rights.[13] Regardless of their designation, strangers are classed with those such as widows and orphans who are deprived of the normative land tenure rights practiced in Israel.[14] Thus they are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life.
Given this context of being a stranger, with its implications of vulnerability, homelessness and lack of kinship, one can better comprehend the scriptural mandates throughout the priestly texts. For example, Exodus 23:9 exhorts the people of Israel to refrain from oppressing the gēr because they know the nephesh (heart) of the haggēr. Deuteronomy 10:19 adds that one is to love the stranger. Israel once lived as gērīm in Egypt and was to live as such in the world. To know the stranger as your own is to treat her/him as kin—in Spanish, the word is familia. The command to love is linked to loving and fearing God. Israel knows and loves God precisely because as a persecuted gērīm they encountered God (cf. Deut 10:21–22). Isaiah 58:7 articulates this command even more poignantly. Those who oppress workers blithely while practicing a religiosity of false piety are challenged to “share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin.” If one truly loves God, one is obligated to treat and love strangers as familia.
The biblical call to love the stranger is not limited to the First Testament. Matthew 25 holds Christians accountable for how they treat others, particularly those who are vulnerable and marginalized. It is no surprise that the injunction includes welcoming strangers and taking them into one’s home (Mt 25:35b). Hebrews 13:2 admonishes to “not neglect to show hospitality to the stranger.” The passage parallels philadelphia (love of brother and sister) in verse 1 with philoxenia (love for the stranger) in verse 2.[15] If this passage is an echo of Abraham’s granting hospitality to three messengers of God (Gen 18), then the juxtaposition of Sodom and Gomorrah—who sought to abuse them—is a shorthand warning about the Christian obligation towards itinerant people.[16] This injunction is particularly striking when parallels are made to verses 12 and 13: “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured” (Heb 13:12–13, NRSV). As we contemplate such efforts as Operation Gatekeeper—which intentionally forces men, women, and children to cross the southwestern borders through the most inhospitable terrain, leading to possibly thousands of deaths—and the abusive actions of law enforcement agents against so many im/migrants, let us remember that Christ waits outside of the gates of our borders. Indeed, if Jesus is “outside the gate,” can we not claim, along with de la Torre, that “the miracle of the incarnation” is that in Jesus “God became an alien?”[17] This is a God who knows how the undocumented are treated. This is the God of Jesus who demands justice and love for the stranger standing outside the camps, where the dislocated homeless are abused daily. From that location, God challenges us to join them in a common cause for their humanity. They are our kin and we are called to respond to their cries for justice.
For the evangélica community, salvation for too long was viewed in spiritualized and dichotomous categories: it meant “going to heaven.” While not wishing here to denigrate the importance of understanding salvation in transcendental terms, or the subversive role it plays among the oppressed, I do believe that it is important to balance this transcendental emphasis with a view of salvation as concrete historical manifestation in order to revision effectively a different world from the one that daily dehumanizes them. What then does salvation mean for the evangélica community today—a community that includes a large number of displaced im/migrants? Who is the God who claims to save them? More to the point how are the answers to these questions relevant to the immediate discussion on immigration and the church?
In returning to the emphasis of God as Triune, contemporary Christian theology has reaffirmed the communal nature of God and allowed for a rearticulation of salvation. God, who is community—Parent, Child and Spirit—has created all things to enter into communal relations with all of creation. Thus God’s ultimate and therefore eschatological purpose for creation is to create a community that is intimately linked with each other and with God. To be in this relationship of love with God, humankind, and creation is to be “home.” This is salvation. That is why Jesus, who is divinity in intimate relationship with humanity, is precisely an expression of God’s salvific purpose for humankind. Scripture refers to this integration of creation, salvation, and eschatological fulfillment under the rubric of “Reign of God.”
The community that God created is by necessity a diverse one, called to unity through perichoretic (that is, intimate or interpenetrating) relations with God and with each other. I would posit that Genesis 1 refers to the imago Dei after describing all of creation as a diverse and coherent whole. Such a view allows us then to re-vision humanity’s worth in all its diversity and to re-vision each of us as familia. This re-visioning of humankind allows us to reject any treatment of another as sobraja (leftovers): that in some form or fashion someone has no intrinsic worth in the human family.[18]
Re-visioning community as the Triune God’s ultimate telos for all also allows us to re-vision creation as a sacred space, a place in which all come together. Creation as a sacred space is the scriptural affirmation that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Ps 24:1). Such a revisioning implies, on the one hand, a rejection of the unrestricted immigration of corporate structures and of the coercive forces that provide automatic legitimation for the appropriation of lands and goods, which leads to the displacement of millions in God’s oikonomia (household). The earth indeed is the Lord’s; it is not the sovereign property of multinational companies nor is it the plaything of despotic warlords. On the other hand, such a revisioning rejects the construction of barreras (barriers) that destroy livelihoods and families. Rather, it calls for the creation of barrios (neighborhoods)—sacred spaces where one is neither gēr nor nokrî. Here, all are neighbor, kin, familia.
Though we are a sinful, sinning, broken people who fall short of that salvific vision, Christian hope lies in the fact that the vision will be fulfilled in a kairos (eschatological time). According to Ephesians 4, God’s Spirit is poured out as an expression of loving grace not to “dislocate” but to heal that which has been dislocated. The Greek verb katartismos, so often translated as “equip,” can mean “to heal a broken bone.”[19] The meaning of the term is better captured in Spanish translation of the text: perfeccionar. To perfect in a biblical sense is “to make whole.” The Reign comes near whenever there is a healing of the fractures that tear apart our community, and when “estrangement” is overcome. It comes near when the global homeless are given a home and the wound of dislocation is sōtēria (healed). This too is salvation. When we begin to live such a vision we can joyfully say that “the Reign of God has drawn near” (Mark 1:15). For the millions of women, men, and children who find themselves as dislocated homeless today, it is indeed a poignantly healing and saving word to hear “In my Parent’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2).
Christian tradition acknowledges the church as ekklesia, a people called by God as a witness of the Reign of God in human history. This statement implies two important theological affirmations. First, the church must be committed to serve the God that called it into being, realizing that its own precarious existence is always as gērīm on earth. Second, as a historical institution it is simultaneously peccatore et iustus, and therefore can never be the Reign to which it witnesses in human history. Nevertheless, it is called to proclaim the Reign in word and deed. These two dimensions—serving God and proclaiming God’s Reign—are not separate commitments but sides of the same proverbial coin.
The church witnesses to the Reign in a two-fold manner: by serving as a safe haven for all in the community; and fulfilling its prophetic obligation by denouncing sinful social structures—including an acknowledgement of its own sin. Therefore, the church is called to be a sacred space where God’s purpose can be experienced in incarnated ways in human history.
How has the evangélica church responded to this call to be an incarnated sacred space in human history? Even though it is always gērīm on U.S. soil, the iglesia evangélica is not necessarily an immigrant church in a more traditional understanding of that word. Its very composition is a fluid blend of various Latin American cultures, ranging from recent arrivals to generational daughters and sons, from the Spanish-speaking monolingual to the Spanglish mestizo/sata to the English-speaking monolingual. Amid the alelúyas are co-mingled “praise the Lords.” Yet, whatever their background, what is clear is that any who enters with a need is enveloped as hermana/hermano (sister/brother). It is not necessarily an immigrant church, but it is always familia.
Familia transcends dominant notions of nuclear family. Instead, it is a wide-ranging network of relationships that provide life-giving connectivity, thus safeguarding the community from becoming “estranged.” In Puerto Rico, the concept of hijalo de crianza embodies this cultural trait.[20] Families take in children, often through informal networks, not because they are blood relations but simply because they need a home. Such children are never treated as gērīm or nokrī, but have the rights and privileges of familia. While some non-Latina/o churches have acted prophetically through an intentional network of “sanctuary movements,” the evangélica church has always been familia to whoever entered its doors. We acknowledge that through God’s saving grace, we are all hijaslos de crianza of God, and therefore brothers and sisters to each other. Daniel Ramírez and others have noted this ability of the evangélica church to receive the dislocated in this distinctive way. “A church of the poor and marginalized, they unconditionally received the fellow poor, shared their good news with them, bound up their wounds, sheltered, fed, and oriented them, and invited them along in a pilgrimage laden with significance.” Ramírez has called this an “intuitive ethic of the marginalized Good Samaritan.”[21]
Evangélica churches often reflect a praxis that is encapsulated in the common proverb hoy por ti, mañana por mi (today for you, tomorrow for me). It is not a statement about quid pro quo, but rather an acknowledgement that all resources come from God and are there for the provision for all. Today, they are there for someone in need, and tomorrow they provide for someone else. It is the praxeological echo of “the earth is the Lord’s.” Given this reality, any attempt to take unfair ownership of what is essentially God’s provision for all is resisted. This functional ethic emboldens evangélica churches to resist any collusion with present immigration policies. They seem to have an intuitive wisdom that allows them to perceive, and therefore denounce with actions, that laws that seek to be punitive of globally dislocated people are the same ones that tacitly support corporate immigration. It seems to me that Ramírez’ quote of a pastor’s cry “¡Esta no es oficina de immigración; es casa de Dios y puerta del cielo!” gives voice to this prophetic resistance.[22] It is an acknowledgment that the church is a sacred space, not the theological underpinning or juridical arm of corporate greed and unjust laws.
If the Reign of God is a sacred kairos of wholeness, then the evangélica church must be a living sacrament of a ministry of katartismos. Many evangélica churches are also charismatic; as such they must re-vision the purpose and presence of the charisms in their midst. The Spirit is present not just for praise but also as an eschatological in-breaking of God’s healing ministry. To re-vision their ministry in such a framework is to challenge evangélica communities to grapple with the wounding nature of the dislocated homeless of the world. The church must be a place where healing can take place. In a society that has denied im/migrants such basic needs as educational opportunities and proper health care, the church becomes a place of loving provision. It is common to find evangélicas/os crying out to God for healing, interceding for those without health care access. Very often, their prayers are answered, leading them to testify, “Lo que es imposible para los seres humanos, posible es para Dios” (What is impossible for human beings is possible for God; cf. Luke 18:27).
The evangélica church must also be a sacred place of healing in a more existential way. The im/migrant experience is wounding precisely because it is a dehumanizing. The dislocated are forced to inhabit “dis-forming” spaces of constant deception. The evangélica church’s call to metanoia is an opportunity to allow both the congregation and their dislocated kin to re-vision their relationships with the world, with one another, and within themselves. It is theosis—a salvific process of humanization to re-vision ourselves in accordance with God’s purpose for our lives. It is a call to be not “con-formed” to the dehumanizing structures of oppression, but rather to be transformed in the world. They are thus the just who live as a sacrament of God’s justice and fidelity in the world (Hab 2:4). The evangélica church must take seriously its call to be a prophetic space: to help wounded im/migrants to live with transparency and love in their midst. In this space, there are no coyotes to take advantage of them. Rather it is truly home: a familial sacred space that provides rest and dignity to all who enter its doors.
The church is challenged to change the discourse about im/migration to spotlight the plight of those who have been globally dislocated by myriad causes, chief of which is that of corporate immigration. We must be firm in understanding that the movement of such dislocated people to find safe places of haven for their well-being is a human right, and not a legislative privilege. The church is also called to denounce the corporate interests that clamor for borders to be sealed against the dislocated, even as they obliterate the borders that restrict their financial and sociopolitical interests. It is called to publically resist any legislation that would criminalize or harass those who provide hospitality to modern day gērīm and nokrî. The church is in the world, but it should not be complicit with unjust structures of the world. Furthermore, we are to remember our calling as a “sacred space” that witnesses to the Reign of God. As such, we are challenged to be a home for the world’s displaced homeless, a healing haven for the dehumanized, and familia for those whose vital ties have been broken. They are neither gērīm nor nokrî but hermana y hermano. As a church, we need to remember that we are indeed casa de Dios y puerta del cielo. When we lift our hands to sing our songs, and proclaim our love for Jesus, the cosmic gēr par excellence, it will serve us well to remember the prophetic admonishment to love the stranger, not hide from our homeless familia, and provide for them precisely because they are our kin.
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The debate over comprehensive immigration reform is complex, and Jews and Christians hold varying opinions on how to treat foreigners, both legal and illegal.[23] An authentic Judeo-Christian approach to reform should recognize the context of the scriptures, respect the rule of law, and reassess what is meant by the word “comprehensive.”
Jews and Christians often look to the scriptures for guidance on what immigration policy should look like. Advocates of amnesty and open borders often quote certain scriptures in a manner that suggests a “proof-text” for their point of view. For example, some will cite Leviticus 19:33-34: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”[24] Another popular verse is Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” However, the overall ethics of scripture are complex, as are the practical realities of the contemporary crisis of illegal immigration. We should not draw a straight line from select scripture verses to highly problematic definitions of “comprehensive” immigration reform.
When I began to speak on immigration issues, people frequently lectured me about my “uncharitable” outlook on illegal immigration. The Bible’s position, they said, supported only one policy toward all the strangers in the land: open embrace. I was silent for a time while I grappled honestly with the complex issue of immigration; then I re-emerged to speak with conviction. In 2007, Cambridge published my edited book Debating Immigration. It presents original essays written by some of the world’s leading experts and scholars, who collectively explore the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship issues affecting the United States and Europe.[25]
Christians and Jews should be careful how they interpret the word “stranger” as it appears in the Old Testament and the Torah. What is meant by “stranger” in that context? Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of Clal, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, says that the “stranger” of the Hebrew Bible is best understood as a resident alien, a non-citizen who agrees to abide by the laws of the community into which he or she has come. Using that definition, many, if not most, illegal aliens in this country “would not qualify,” Hirschfield writes.[26] In the Old Testament societal context, strangers were expected to observe the laws and customs of the Israelites, including their worship practices.
In this article, I use the term “illegal alien” to describe foreigners who enter the country without authorization. In making my choice of terminology, I reject the politically correct term “undocumented person.” Under U.S. law, an alien is “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”[27] And they are “illegal” in the very straightforward sense that they have entered or stayed in the country illegally; they have not observed the law of the United States. In 2010, an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants—no one really knows how many are here because they are undocumented—lived and worked in the United States.
For Christians, the New Testament is clear that everyone—citizens as well as non-citizens—are obliged to live in subjection to the governing authorities. Romans 13:1-4 states:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.[28]
Christians must obey the civil authorities. Churches can show compassion on illegal aliens but they must encourage their congregants to obey the laws of the land.
Moreover, boundaries provide protection and demarcate the places where particular laws control. Without boundaries and a strong security system, a nation cannot stand. Scripture affirms the importance of boundaries; it refers to the borders of Israel and other nations numerous times, speaking of boundaries as inviolable. God has “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.”[29] Instructions to the Israelites said, “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.”[30]
Any Christian approach to immigration reform must respect the rule of law. The idea that nations need predictable and enforceable rules and regulations that apply equally to all individuals is fundamental to the rule of law. It is the rule of law that separates civilized countries from uncivilized ones. In The Leviathan, seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes warns that life without law is necessarily “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”[31] Plato wrote:
Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state . . . is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.[32]
The rule of law separates trustworthy governments from abusive and terroristic regimes. This idea is ancient, dating back to Plato and the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments and the Levitical laws distinguished the Israelites from the pagan nations surrounding them. When the Israelites repeatedly broke their own covenant laws, terrible, but predictable, consequences ensued. Judges 21:25 speaks of rampant lawlessness after the deaths of Moses and Joshua. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes,”[33] with consequent national decline.
In the United States, the U.S. Constitution forms the foundation for the rule of law. Our founding fathers established a government in which all governing officials—including the president, members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, military officials, and political appointees—are subject to the law, which they affirm by taking a standard oath before they can assume office. No one is above the law. America’s sovereignty and its standing in the world suffer damage when its leaders fail to abide by constitutional principles and values that have guided previous generations and which they have bound themselves to follow. Failure to enforce our laws and statutes undermines their authority and the constitutional protections that we expect to frame our interactions with fellow citizens and others throughout the world. And illegal aliens who have entered our country without our consent have broken our laws and diminished respect for the rule of law.
Jurisprudence scholar and political theorist Brian Tamanaha has observed that the rule of law has suffered a “marked deterioration” in the West even as it takes root in other parts of the world. Activist judges, lawyers, and other liberal elites have been catalysts of this deterioration, one of the main signs of which is the contemporary lack of immigration enforcement.[34]
The immigration debate is replete with buzzwords. Proponents of “comprehensive’ ” immigration reform would bring immigrants “out of the shadows” and offer them an “earned path to legalization.” I suspect that such slogans have emerged from focus-group testing to see which phrases resonate with the American public. But do these buzzwords tell the truth? The word “comprehensive” implies “everything.” Hence one should not speak of comprehensive immigration reform without addressing a host of issues including birthright, citizenship, and family reunification. Likewise, one should not discuss an “earned path to legalization” without asking what signal this would send to legal immigrants who have respected and followed the country’s rules. The failure to enforce our laws heretofore should not stop us from taking corrective measures in the present to restore the rule of law.
Until immigration is comprehensively reformed, the federal government—with state and local assistance—should increase enforcement of existing immigration laws and procedures. If Congress is unable to do so, the president should establish a commission of scholars and religious leaders that is bipartisan, ideologically balanced, and autonomous—not beholden to existing ethnocentric interest groups such as National Council of La Raza[35]—to craft a reform package on which members of Congress can vote up or down. The model already exists for such a commission. In 1990, Congress created the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which it dissolved in 1997. Its members included Representative Barbara Jordan (D-TX), Brandeis University Professor Lawrence Fuchs, and Dallas MorningNews editor Richard Estrada. Unfortunately, Congress never acted on the Commission’s recommendations.
Before any steps are taken toward legalizing currently illegal aliens, Congress must commission studies of how legalization would affect vulnerable populations in the U.S. workforce, such as low-skilled blacks, poor whites, and native-born Hispanics. Policy makers also need to assess the impact legalization would have on social welfare services and the tax burden of state and local governments. Some reports indicate that the legalization of illegal aliens would greatly increase poverty, stimulate population growth to astronomical proportions, and could add considerably to state and local governments’ unfunded mandates.[36]
In conclusion, here are suggestions for a truly comprehensive immigration policy. These are presented in more detail in my recent book Be the People: A Call to Reclaim America’s Faith and Promise.[37]