As I write this, the National Association of Evangelicals has just passed a resolution urging Congressional reform of immigration laws invoking the ideals of respect and mercy and emphasizing the importance of family reunification.
But not everyone agrees. Just this week I attended a panel discussion devoted to the religious basis for arguments against reform at the National Press Club in Washington DC entitled “Religious Perspectives on Immigration.” It was sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which bills itself as an independent nonpartisan think tank on the impact of immigration on the United States.
The announcement of this panel caught my attention because none of the panelists seemed to represent the views of the nationwide Interfaith Immigration Coalition, the major collection of religious organizations dealing with immigration today, or of any of the many religious denominations that have spoken out on immigration issues. So whose perspectives were these?
I was aware that the Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized CIS as a nativist organization that advocates for drastic reductions in immigration. So I decided to attend to hear what they had to say, and to try to figure out if there are any points on which we could ever agree.
Panelists were Fr. Dominique Peridans, associate pastor of a Baltimore Roman Catholic parish, CIS Fellow James R. Edwards Jr., and CIS Senior Policy Analyst Stephen Steinlight. Each presented a paper explicating scriptural and other religious teachings as they bear on immigration—from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish viewpoints, respectively.
The theme of all three papers was that leaders of all the mainstream religious groups are misinterpreting scripture and religious traditions when they issue policy statements that urge compassion and welcome for immigrants, or support comprehensive immigration reform (mischaracterized as advocacy for “open borders”), and that faithful parishioners should not be misled.
Edwards argued that religious leaders are, in effect, railroading their flocks, saying that the “self-described ‘compassion’ among religious elites differs from the perspective of most rank-and-file Christians.” And he names the National Association of Evangelicals in particular, knowing that they were on the verge of making the statement they made today, suggesting that their position on this issue is counter to that of the laity, which “generally opposes legalization and supports enforcement of immigration laws.”
Steinlight agreed, arguing that “in terms of simple willingness to recognize the danger of mass immigration by anti-Semitic groups [which he identifies as ‘Muslims and foreign-born Hispanics’], the gulf between ordinary American Jews and the Establishment is chasm-like.”
And, perhaps most strikingly, Fr. Peridans produced theological support for tighter border control :
A seemingly simplistic passage is made from the mandate to love (which, of course, includes the mandate to “welcome the stranger”) to public policy, as though “catholicity of heart” immediately translates into open borders. The statement gives no tools for discernment, because the important distinctions between philosophical perspective and a theological perspective are not made.
The concepts derived from scriptural admonitions to “render unto Caesar” (Matt. 22:21) and to submit to governing authorities (Romans 13) were emphasized throughout.
Just Plain Mean
I came away from the event feeling that these analysts and I live in very different worlds. I read scripture as teaching love, welcome, inclusion, hospitality. I know personally many immigrants who are suffering under our current immigration system’s inflexible and categorical laws with no allowance for individual circumstances. I believe that my faith calls me to work to change those laws, stop unjust deportations, give those worthy would-be Americans a chance. Those realities simply don’t match the realities seen by the CIS panelists. They call my version naïve; I think their version is too often just plain mean. Yet we all claim the same Abrahamic faiths.
All this got me wondering whether people of faith can ever reach a consensus on immigration. What follows are some reflections on that possibility—my religious perspectives on this critical issue for our nation right now:
Consensus is possible if we avoid false dichotomies.
We might be able to agree if we move out of the land of false dichotomies into a land of multiple problems, realistic caring, and mutual give-and-take. Both “sides” will have to give a little. Actually, there is no such thing as both sides. Most people use a cafeteria approach to the morality of the immigration issue. We pick and choose. The first step towards consensus would be to stop thinking in that binary way and to start thinking expansively and extravagantly and realistically. Extravagant creative realists will own the future of this debate.
Those who want to welcome immigrants will have to understand the legitimate concerns that many people have about the nation’s borders. But we all have to recognize that the welcoming people are not anti-law, nor are law-and-order people anti-welcome. Respecting the law does not automatically mean that you are racist or mean; nor does a concern for a broken legal system mean you are naïve.
Consensus can come in agreeing to be kind, not mean-spirited.
It can also come when we start taking seriously the scriptural command about loving the other as yourself. Of course we can love people and still deport them, just like we can love a friend and disagree with her. Limits are necessary. We limit our love all the time. But we can’t argue that Scripture does not command love, which surely involves kindness as well.
Both sides might agree that the rhetoric of the Lou Dobbs and Glenn Becks of the world is too mean—and that it leads too quickly to an objectification of human beings, which no religion wants. That objectification begets the kind of violence we are increasingly seeing. People of faith agree that such violence is to be avoided at all costs. You don’t have to be pro-immigrant to be anti-sneer. We could come to consensus around the need to change hate-language to love-language.
As the country creates a just and humane immigration policy (with reasonable limits), we could actually have an apology in our voice, as opposed to a sneer. “We are sorry we can’t let everyone in. We welcome you as a human being. We see your plight and your pain. We would love to enjoy your gifts because we know you have them. But only (pick your number) Mexicans or Ecuadorians or whoever can be welcomed this year.” Rereading the Scripture and changing our tone of voice will go a long way.
“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33 – 34)
Consensus could come around the need to deal with the immediate human crisis.
There is a human reality right in front of our noses. There are thousands of children of undocmented immigrants who don’t sleep at night because they are afraid of losing their father or mother; other thousands have already lost their father or mother. Someday heroic books will be written about them. Right now, they are hurting and hurting, at a developmental moment which keeps on hurting them. They are children. Jesus had a way of being present to real people. He was especially concerned about the children.
Tags: catholic church, immigration, national association of evangelicals, sanctuary
Dr. Schaper, I am President of the 920,000-member NumbersUSA.com, largely filled with Christians taking a different immigration stance than you advocate in your essay.
The vast majority of U.S. Christians oppose amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens NOT because they are unwelcoming but because they recognize complex ethical problems. Historically high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) are contributing to great economic injustice against our most vulnerable citizens (by flooding various labor occupations). And the numbers are driving massive U.S. population growth, making it impossible to create an environmentally sustainable America (with grave consequences for the rest of the world).
When reasonable people wrestle with those economic and environmental issues honestly, they either agree with groups like my own that there is a moral imperative to reduce immigration, or they recognize that they must choose the "good" of humanitarian concern for foreign citizens wanting to enter this country over the "good" of caring for the most vulnerable parts of our own society (disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans, and the plants and animals entrusted in our nation's stewardship). But they have to acknowledge that there are tradeoffs.
Here are some inconvenient truths of the immigration efforts of the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Mainline Protestant national agencies, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:
(1) They are working to force a growth in the hyper-consuming U.S. population by more than 100 million over the next 40 years. It is likely that every effort to decrease U.S. per capita carbon and other environmental footprints will be largely or wholly negated by that population growth.
(2) They are working against the Americans who are counted in the nearly 20% unemployment rate (counting active searchers, recently discouraged searchers and those who have involuntarily be forced into part-time work). Most of those Americans are less-educated and seeking jobs in exactly the same occupations that are daily engorged by arrivals of mostly less-educated immigrants (legal and illegal).
Hard and unavoidable numbers are at the heart of the immigration issues -- not whether U.S. Christians like or love immigrants.
Where Americans' concerns about immigration veer into demonizing by word and deed the immigrants themselves, all of us are right in trying to correct that reaction.
But working for economic justice for our own national community's most vulnerable and for environmental sustainability is not an activity of the people in the pews that should be condemned by their clergy.
I have to note that your relaying the epithet of "nativist" at the Center for Immigration Studies comes close to bearing false witness. I am not aware that CIS, nor my own organization, has ever advocated a single nativist action. Groups like ours advocate for lower immigration admissions. "Nativism" is about advocating discriminatory treatment of immigrants once they are allowed into a society, not about picking the numbers. (I'm glad to see you say that all nations have to limit the numbers.) Once immigrants legally arrive in this country, we call for them to be treated under the same rules as those who are U.S. born.
I do appreciate your restrained approach and I do sense that you are sincere about interest in dialogue. I have attempted to dialogue about immigration with religious leaders in Washington for years and been rebuffed in nearly every instance. We have surveyed our 920,000 activist members and found that their denominational and faith affiliations are very similar to the breakdown of Americans in general. Thus, most of our members are Christians who believe their work for reduced immigration is answering the biblical calls for love, justice and stewardship.
From the SPLC, offered without comment (emphasis mine):
NumbersUSA
Arlington, Va.
www.numbersusa.com/home.html
Directed by Roy Beck, who has written extensively on environmental and financial issues, NumbersUSA is the most reasoned of the anti-immigration groups, offering information on the relationship between immigration and the environment.
In fact, Beck makes a statement on his web site that NumbersUSA is not intended to bash immigrants or have racial overtones. Still, his group supports the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the American Immigration Control Foundation in their immigrant-bashing billboard campaign.
Beck also is the Washington editor of The Social Contract, a quarterly journal that has published articles by "white nationalists" like Samuel Francis, who was fired from the conservative Washington Times after writing a racially inflammatory column, and James Lubinskas, a contributing editor for the racist American Renaissance magazine.
Beck's web site includes an extensive listing of other anti-immigration groups.
With all due respect, the SPLC is a private fund raising group. It has no mandate and no peer review or external oversight.
The SPLC's pronouncements are purely arbitrary.
On page 85 of his 1991 autobiography, "A Season for Justice," SPLC founder, Morris Dees, brags about accepting $5,000 from the Montgomery Ku Klux Klan to represent one of its members, Claude Henley, in federal court.
In May, 1961, Henley led a mob of klansman in an attack on a busload of Freedom Riders in Montgomery. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,872446,00.html)
Dees reports that photos of Henley attacking the photographers following the Freedom Riders appeared in LIFE magazine.
Apparently, the Klan's money was well spent, as Henley walked away scott-free and Morris Dees cashed the Klan's $5,000 check (roughly $33,000 in 2009 dollars. Dees had already made his first million in private business at that time, and did not need to work for the Klan).
Morris Dees has gotten more Klansmen OUT of prison than he's ever sent there.
Opposing immigration is not illegal, regardless of Mo Dees' or anyone else's ideology. American citizens have every right to be for or against immigration laws as they see fit. Dees and his group prefer to stifle the debate by smearing those who do not agree with him.
There are many legitimate reasons to be concerned about America's immigration problems, but quoting a Klan lawyer and his $200 million donor dollar fund raising machine is not the best way to document them.
Also, while Leviticus 19 speaks of "loving the alien," Leviticus 20 and 21 advocate killing gays, stoning women and burning "fortunetellers" alive. Again, perhaps not the most open minded sources of information on this serious debate.
Evan, your SPLC quote is full of errors. I have contacted the SPLC many times about this, but it has refused to correct its text. For example, NumbersUSA never participated in any billboard campaigns. Plus, I am not an editor with the Social Contract Journal. After serving as Associate Editor of the national United Methodist Reporter and then Chief Washington Correspondent for the Booth Newspapers of Michigan in the 1980s, I was active as the Washington Editor of the Social Contract 1991-93, during which time I saw no evidence whatsoever of white nationalist writing among the wide spectrum of articles from socialist, liberal, moderate and conservative writers.
A respectful dialogue on immigration issues should not engage the logical fallacy of guilt-by-association -- especially when filled with inaccuracies -- which is the SPLC main tool in advancing its primary goal of amnesty and higher immigration. Nonetheless, I am pleased that the SPLC has always stated NumbersUSA to be a reasonable and responsible opponent.
The federal government has the prospect in proving to the American workers and legal population that they are wrong in thinking that politicians are catering to the open border parasites? Two laws could be imposed, that would assign employment to elderly citizens and others, as a vanguard in inspecting I-9's auditing forms for use with the E-Verify, computer verification software. Thousands of jobs could be created as an interior illegal immigration force, giving ICE more backing in investigating businesses hiring foreign labor? In all regions of the country these interior inspectors would listen to Whistle blowers and then investigate companies, such as with the apparel company in Los Angeles who had to jettison 1800 foreign nationals. To me it's very questionable that a company the size of that clothing company could be completely ignorant of its workers, specifically in a SANCTUARY CITY AND STATE like CALIFORNIA?
Another idea is in the commencing voting season next year? Instead of just taking the incumbents and clean faced lawmakers by their word? That when they swear an oath that they will protect and defend the American people, we should hold them to it? We should ensure their honesty by having them sign an agreement executed under perjury, that he/she will defend us from foreign and domestic enemies? Let's face it if you study the immigration enforcement grading at NUMBERSUSA, a highly regarded pro-sovereignty website, you will observe Sen. Harry Reid has a C- ? He and Nancy Pelosi, Janet Napolitano, Sen.Chuck Schumer (F- ) Diane Feinstein ( F ) and countless others have used their political influence to under fund, create obstacles and otherwise use Senate-House laws to collapse any worthwhile enforcement laws such as 287 G and the No-Match letter? Ask yourself? What do these politicians have to gain from keeping our border fence wide open? Even the church is approving the BLANKET AMNESTY, when the 1986 was just a facade of fraud. Perhaps the churches would like to open their coffers, homes and bring in illegal alien families to squat there, instead of dumping it in the lap of the taxpayers yet again? My Baptist church has very few passionate people, when it means feeding their own families?
Just type into Google each name followed by illegal immigration as many are brought and sold once they get to Washington, as out from the sleazy woodwork comes the lobbyists with bags of money. For an example type in Pelosi--illegal immigration--corruption. One headline reads--NANCY PELOSI CULTURE OF CORRUPTION! Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein Appropriated Federal Funds for San Francisco DA's Program that Expunged & Kept Illegal’s Criminal Records from the Feds: The diseased lists of political sleaze goes on and on. The rumors that Pelosi has vineyards in Central California have an abundant illegal alien labor? If you really want to know the--TRUTH--about the next path to citizenship for the 20 to 30 million foreign nationals, just surf the net.
GOOGLE--JUDICIAL WATCH and learn what your financial future has in store for you. Ordinary people have been crippled by financing illegal immigration? That's right! They bleed you for more and more taxes to supplement the poorly paid income of illegal workers? Remember it’s not the US government who pays for free health care, education for the millions of illegal kids brought over here. Removing the chance of a decent education for our kids? It's the US taxpayer who can hardly afford to balance their own budgetary needs. The only people who benefit from cut rate labor are the dishonest business owners. That's why we need mandatory E-Verify, to disrupt their hiring of cheap labor. Even our kids cannot get summer jobs any more, because fast food employers hire illegal workers?
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