“Why Should I Care?”

“Why should I care? They broke the law. They shouldn’t be here. They’re ‘illegal.'” That’s the attitude I often encounter whenever the topic comes up regarding undocumented immigrants in this country. It’s been a key talking point in the latest presidential election, and the commander in chief is making good on his promise to crack down on undocumented immigrants, much to the delight of his political base.

As a Christian pastor, I’ve been taught to steer clear of political questions. My job is to focus on spiritual and religious things and to let politics play out in their own sphere. And it’s true that questions of immigration reform have a lot to do with a country’s economic policies and foreign policy. I agree that political questions like this should remain separated from questions of religion and belief.

But here is why I care: because the religion of Jesus Christ, which I claim to follow, teaches me that every human being is created in the image of God. That we have all been created equal. That men, women, children, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or African are all equally valuable in the sight of God. “God…hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” (Acts 17:26)

I believe that a nation does have a right to secure their borders and to determine who comes in. But the Bible teaches that every human being has an inherent worth and dignity–that we are all part of God’s family by creation, and brothers and sisters in Christ by His redemption. It pains me to see fellow Christians jumping onto the anti-immigrant bandwagon that a majority of our country, it seems, has joined.

True to his word, the new president has initiated a crackdown against undocumented immigrants here in the USA. Not only has he ordered the deportation of millions, he has declared a “national emergency” and mobilized troops to aid in the process of rounding up and deporting these men, women, and children who long to make this country their home.

Justice dictates that people are innocent until proven guilty. Yet ICE often detains lawful residents. A large portion of those detained do not have legal representation.

Here’s the catch: what if this crackdown against immigration isn’t about national security, so much as a thinly-veiled excuse for racism? Hispanic families immigrate to this country in search of a better life, and they set up communities where they speak their own language and practice their culture in little pockets of our cities and towns across the country.

We’re bothered by the fact that they’re here. We’re worried that their culture will infect our culture. We’re annoyed when people speak Spanish around us. We’re inconvenienced by having to find interpreters. We don’t trust them because their skin is a different color. We worry that they’re influencing our political process, and we chafe at laws requiring us to serve “them” as well as “us.”

The vast majority of Hispanic (or Indian or African or East Asian) immigrants to this country are here legally. Many are citizens, and many more are on a path towards naturalization. They own homes and businesses here, they’re part of our communities, and yes, they pay taxes like the rest of us.

This is what we don’t like. This country was founded on the premise that “all men are created equal,” yet since the founding of this nation we have wanted to treat people differently based on their race, their gender, or their religion. The slave trade allowed white men to build huge plantations and amass wealth on the backs of their slaves. By empowering black people and treating them with equality and dignity, the slave trade was broken.

Today, we have a new generation of exploitation in America. Immigrants come to this country and work hard to make a livelihood for their families. They are generally grateful for it, and frankly our economy relies on their cheap and reliable labor to power agricultural, hospitality, and even much of our manufacturing industries. Our laws guarantee their basic rights to wages, safety, education, and other benefits, as the principles of justice would demand. But we resent that. We want their labor, but we’d rather treat them as slaves. We don’t want their equality, because it affects our economy.

So we vote in leaders who crack down on “illegals” under the guise of making our country safer. Some people are deported–yes I expect many people will be deported. But not all ethnic minorities will be removed. Instead, they will be placed in fear. Fear of being picked up. Fear of being mistaken for an undocumented immigrant and rounded up into ICE detention centers. Fear of being abused by citizens whose racial hatred has been inflamed by the rhetoric of our politicians.

So they will stay away from places where they could face this abuse. They may avoid putting their children in schools with our children. They may avoid seeking medical care. They may avoid the justice system, or encounters with law enforcement, even when they live here legally. And that all allows us to exploit them further.

Until now, immigration enforcement largely avoided arrests in “sensitive” locations, such as schools and houses of worship. But now they have been instructed that no place is off limits. Is this not also designed to have a chilling effect on the very institutions that have the potential to bring support and encouragement–yes empowerment–to these marginalized people?

This is why, as a pastor and a follower of Christ, I must care. I must speak out. Because this isn’t just about a country’s foreign and domestic policy. This is an issue of racism and yes (dare I say it) slavery! This is about a systematic effort to disenfranchise an entire segment of our society–our church members, our professionals, our workers, our neighbors and our children. To persecute them because of their race, the place they were born and the language they speak. To turn the public against them; to cause them to live in fear. To tear apart their families and their livelihoods through deportations, denied visas, and red tape. To drive some of them from our land and force the rest to serve us quietly like the slaves of the 19th century.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is a law proposed recently in Mississippi that would pay “bounty hunters” to help ICE catch undocumented immigrants. In light of the racist connections already mentioned, this reminds me of the fugitive slave laws of the 19th century, when citizens were forbidden to aid runaway slaves in their flight to freedom. In the early days of the Second Advent Movement, the pioneers of our church were outspoken in their opposition to slavery, even advocating Christians to break the laws of the land by assisting God’s children in finding freedom. Should we take a different attitude today, simply because this is a “political” question?

So what can we do today? We can go back to the Bible and learn what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Learn Jesus’ answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor.” We can break down the “us” vs. “them” mentality. We can welcome our brothers and sisters into our churches and stand in solidarity with them when they come under persecution. We can stop spreading the popular rhetoric and instead call out racism when we see its ugly head.

What if our churches became safe havens for people of every race and nationality, regardless of their immigration status? While we are commanded in scripture to follow the laws of the land when it doesn’t contradict the laws of God, we aren’t commanded to make our churches the enforcers of secular laws. And when laws DO contradict the laws and principles of God, then we should and must obey God rather than men.

Not long ago, when our country was in the grips of a world-wide pandemic, many people opposed taking the vaccine that would ostensibly protect them from the dreaded disease of COVID-19. In some cases, the vaccine was required, yet they still refused, at the risk of their jobs and livelihoods. We didn’t call them “illegals” even if they broke the law. But their very presence as unvaccinated persons meant they were living “illegally!” In fact (for right or wrong), this group of “anti-vaxxers” and those who sympathized with them banded together. They took pride in saying, in a sense, “we are all unvaccinated.” They gained a voice, and changed the narrative around vaccines across the country.

What if we did this with the undocumented immigrants in this country? What if we erase the word “illegal” from our vocabulary, and never use this term to refer to a person? What if we start a movement of standing together with the undocumented immigrants by saying in a sense “we are all undocumented.”

If an immigration enforcement officer were to show up at our church and ask us to turn over any undocumented immigrants, would we rat out our brothers and sisters, or would we stand together, white and black, Asian and Hispanic together, and declare, “We are all undocumented.”

Imagine if it was your father, mother, uncle or daughter who was suddenly ripped from your home and community and taken to a land that hadn’t been your home in years? What if they were rotting in a prison cell, without bail, without a lawyer, and with a court date untold weeks or months in the future? You wouldn’t hesitate to open your wallet, to cross land and sea to help them. But Christ tells us to love our neighbors–even those who don’t look like us.

Imagine if we created a fund in our churches to pay for legal representation for those in ICE detention? What if we banded together to become the voice of the marginalized? What if we learned their language, told their stories, and became part of their families? What if they became our friends, and instead of looking at them as servants or foreigners, we treated them as part of the family of God?

If we did, I believe we would be just a little closer to the kingdom of God, in which “There is neither Jew nor Greek, [Mexican, Asian, Black, or White,] there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

(Please also read my follow-up post “One Way Flights” written the following Thursday evening)