Thoughts on Immigration

This post represents an honest attempt to reconcile my personal responsibility as a Believer with what I believe our Federal policies should be, as it relates to immigration. These are muddy waters to be sure, but I am a huge fan of nuance and so this felt like a good time for a blogpost.

I simultaneous hold these two beliefs:

a) As Christians, we are called to love our neighbor, to care for and provide for the poor and for the widows among us (using the terminology of Scripture).

b) A sovereign nation must uphold border security laws as well as regulate Immigration because a nation with no borders (or border security) is not a nation at all. To be considered "sovereign" necessarily means that a country is enforcing border laws, because it implies that there is a border and not just an imaginary line.

What I'm For:

I am 100% in favor of legal immigration and I believe our country should absolutely support those who immigrate to the United States through legal channels. We should offer them all of the public assistance that we are able to, to aid their start here in America, especially those coming here to escape oppression and persecution. We are one of the most generous countries in the World and it is because our people are, by and large, very welcoming of immigrants in this country.

What I'm Against:

I'm categorically against illegal immigration, that is, immigration NOT through legal channels. I don't believe our country should offer illegal immigrants any social programs and if our government can find them, I think they should be deported (if you are deported, current US Law forbids you to return for 10 years). Additionally - if someone immigrates to this country legally but then commits a felony here, they should also be deported. Being given a visa or residency status in the United States is not right, but a privilege and requires something of the person receiving it, namely adhering to the laws of our land. I assume this is the case in every other country in the World.

Where this Clashes:

At my church, I'm involved a care ministry that ends up serving a number of immigrants. It wasn't necessarily something that we set out to do when we started the ministry, but because our area is a location where World Relief ends up housing many immigrants and asylum seekers, this is a subset of the community that comes to us for assistance. I love serving in this ministry and I have enjoyed getting to know people from this community as well as serving them on a monthly basis. Many of them have harrowing stories to tell about how they came to the United States, fleeing real horrors in the countries they came from.

In our last leadership meeting, a few people mentioned that this community is fearful right now, particularly of deportation. While the knee-jerk reaction might be to blame President Trump, it was actually President Biden that signed an executive order, on July 4th, 2024, which put an end to the legal process of seeking asylum. What IS different about President Trump's administration is that they are actually actively deporting illegal immigrants and this is the reason for the fear on the part of asylum communities. Regardless, this community is living in genuine fear of deportation at the moment.

Anyway - back to the meeting - it was raised in the meeting that we should have a plan for a) an immigration raid during a serve and/or b) what to do if someone shows up to the door of our church, looking to escape deportation (up until recently, ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was prohibited from entering schools and places of worship). We never actually got around to discussing the specifics of that, but it made me think about the clash between personal responsibility when a federal law/policy comes up against a personal belief.

Reconciling:

Jesus and the Pharisees argued alot about the clashes between personal responsibility and the Law, in Jewish tradition, this was called "halakha", which is essentially legal debate. Here are a couple of examples:

• The Pharisees accused Jesus and his followers, plenty of times, of breaking Sabbath laws. For picking heads of grain (Matthew 12), for healing on the Sabbath (Matthew 12, Mark 3, John 5), and casting out demons (again, Matthew 12). Jesus never once speaks out against the Sabbath, but rather he elevates someone's responsibility to do good, or to preserve life, if doing or or acting to preserve life is at odds with keeping the Sabbath.
• The parable of the Good Samaritan is, ultimately, an example of halakha. In the parable, the Levite and priest pass by the beaten and unconscious Samaritan and refrain from helping him because he appears to be dead, and touching a corpse would make someone ritually unclean and thus ineligible for temple service for seven days. Jesus says that helping someone, preserving life, is more important than temple laws when temple laws are at odds with acting to preserve life. For more on this, read my blogpost about it, or better yet, read Matthew Thiessen's book "Jesus and the Forces of Death". Again, Jesus never once suggests that the Law is unimportant or diminished in any way - rather, the argument is about the relative importance of laws when circumstance pit one law against another.

I believe something similar applies here. Our government has to uphold and enforce the laws of this country - without that, there might as well be no laws. This is as true of immigration as it is of any other class of law. Illegal immigration is a potential threat to national security and it is an incredible drain on the social systems of this country. As of 2022, the estimated population of illegal immigrants in this country was 11 million people.

That however, is the policy and role of government. The call on me, as an individual believer, is to care for the poor and the widow and to love my neighbor as myself. Though I am opposed to illegal immigration, I can still serve the illegal immigrant in my midst, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and rendering to God what is God's. In this way, my responsibility to care for the well-being of those around me to preserve life is not at odds with the policies of our government (which I even happen to agree with).