As a group of people composed of migrants who decided to settle in this continent, the U.S has always been a land of immigrants. Thus, any debates in America over legalizing immigrants always has special resonance.
In light of the on-going debate over this issue, evangelical Christians seem to be undergoing a deepening split over this issue as reported in the
Washington Post, Apr 5, 2006Since Christians are called show God's love to all people regardless of friend or enemy, walking in the footsteps of Jesus, are Christians responding to this issue rightly in the spirit of God's love or dividing over race, politics, class and economics? Because this issue is far more complex than most people can hope to provide simple answers to, there are some key pointers and principles at stake that I hope that all involved in this issue - not just Christians, but non-Christians alike, will find helpful in thoughtful engagement and action that affects not just the nature of national security but most importantly, of people.
A ministry that engages in helping immigrants must begin with simple friendship first.
Socially, friendship, fellowship and hospitality are inseparably linked. If friendship ceased to exist, so would fellowship. Without fellowship, there’s no need for hospitality. We often think of fellowship as “having a good time with Christians/people” (i.e. a trinity of “food, fun and fellowship”). We use fellowship and hospitality as a means to an end, i.e. “we need to be hospitable/have good fellowship to draw people to our church.” Interestingly, the Biblical picture of fellowship or koininia in Scripture is much wider. Koinonia is frequently linked to the sharing and giving of money (e.g. Acts 2:42; 2 Cor 8:4; Gal 2:9,10; Phil 4:15), not merely a simple “get-together.” True Biblical fellowship involves not just fun and games but a profound sharing of one’s resources – our time, goods and money to each other in Christian love.
How is fellowship linked to hospitality biblically? As God’s people, we’re called to walk in the fellowship of the light, not darkness (1 Jn 1:6-7). To walk in the light is to let it shine before all people (Matt 5:16). Christian hospitality allows that shining to occur as God’s people (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 5:10; 1 Pet 4:9). We associate hospitality as a social act of welcoming people into our church or home. Food and place are prepared as acts of common courtesy and social grace. However, Biblical hospitality is much bigger than that. It’s not just opening our homes or church but the opening of our heart. Hospitality is not a means to an end to evangelism or friendship but the end itself because it is actually rooted in God’s heart. God took us in while we were yet aliens and strangers. He did this by opening his heart to us – by being hospitable. Hospitality is the Gospel precisely because it involves God opening himself to invite the stranger, the alien and the lost into his midst, all the way from Old Testament Israel to the Gentiles and to the present. (Lev 19:33-34; Eph 2:12,19). We were once aliens before God too.
As a Chinese this shocks and rebukes my cultural pride. In the past, I often compared myself favorably against Americans whom I considered hospitality ignoramuses. “Hah, I thought, what do they know about hospitality compared to the Chinese?” Against Scripture however, I came up short. While I could easily show hospitality to friends, it’s another thing to do so to a stranger! But this is what Scripture exhorts us to do (Heb 13:2). No matter how much I considered myself “hospitable” unless I could open up my life to people (and strangers at that) to enter into my midst, I truly did not understand what Biblical hospitality or the Gospel was all about.
So what can we as God’s people do? Pray for the strangers in our midst but don’t stop there. Invite them into our midst and our heart as an agent of the Gospel. However, an invitation to join in our privileges comes with their obligation to responsibilities also. Just as the strangers in the land had privileges, they had to obey the laws of the land (Deut 24). If amnesty and legalization of the 11 million plus immigrants were to be viable, it must be joined with their full support and compliance of obeying the laws of the land - including an affirmation of border security (ref. Victor Davis Hansen, Chicago Tribune, 4/28/2006). However, it cannot stop there as well. Para-church and missions organizations specializing in immigration and rescue missions can work in tandem with churches and government to also highlight the role of trafficking in persons as a matter of national security and criminal prosecution. Legalization advocates must see this as an important part of the puzzle to solve the illegal crossing of peoples as well. No vested parties or interests can support the humans as chattel and preyed by criminal organizations. On a larger level, the same para-church and missions organizations can coordinate efforts across borders with sister organizations to raise this issue over the border as well for foreign governments must be held accountable for allowing such trafficking to occur as well. No matter how imporverished a country, international human rights apply over any other need to unload one's economic burdens of one's burgeoning unemployed population over to another country's.
For the immigrants drawn to come to richer countries such as U.S. or Europe, Christians must acknowledge that the globalzation of business by the off-shoring of jobs and manic drive for ever increasing profits by corporations is also a large source of the allure for the mass migrations of people and business across borders. In this case, the church must act as a prophetic voice of conscience for both her people and also against busineses that would force workers to lower their wages against the hiring of illegal immigrants or threat of moving jobs overseas. Unfortunately we all are complicit in this cycle of profits and off-shoring of jobs in our ever increasing lust of cheaper goods and sales. Unless we engage with our own consumer-capitalist mentality of shopping for the lowest prices at the Wal-Marts of the world, we only feed the beast that drives off-shoring in search of ever cheaper manufacturing processes and wages. The church must also be a prophetic voice to shareholders (currently over 20% of most Americans own stocks) who have influential power over business practices that favor capitalist profits over sustainability, stability and shalom in local economies. When companies drive the political and economic agenda in the name of "profits" only, the broader notion of community rights and decent wages for people working both locally and overseas are undercut as freely moving capital can move across the world in search of cheaper places to build and work.
Finally, Christians can mobilize across the country to encourage and ministry in friendship and hospitality to immigrants to help their adjustment to the country, with ESL centers, home visitations and community ambassadors. In such ways the church can find its significant role in the world as not being beholden to corporate interests nor selfish human tendencies but as the body of Christ that truly ministers to all in holistic fashion. This is the true example of not just God's love but also justice in action. Love without justice is sentimentalism and justice without love is cruelty but love with justice is transformative.
So while the immigration debate still rages on, let’s do our small part – starting with our heart and resources where possible. The Gospel is at stake. If we do otherwise, we are poor strangers and pilgrims on this earth (Heb 11:13).
