Is There a Christian View of Immigration?
In almost every part of the world, immigration is a burning issue!
It is a big topic in the USA with debates about open borders, deporting illegals, pathways to citizenship, and poisonous rhetoric.
In Australia, we’ve had painful debates about Australia’s refugee policy, temporary protection visas, turning away boats of refugees/economic migrants, and processing arrivals on islands in Oceania in indefinite detention.
Europe is massively divided on this topic with the rise of far-right parties in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere seeing the ascendency of anti-immigrant parties. Denmark now has some of the strictest immigration policies in Europe supported by centre-left and centre-right parties. Switzerland is considering capping its population at 10 million.
Even South Africa has seen anti-immigrant violence and incendiary political rhetoric against temporary workers and refugees.
Russia and Belarus have tried to weaponize immigration by corralling migrants towards the Polish border like cattle. Turkey too has threatened to send Syrian migrants into the EU if its demands are not met.
Add to the mix refugees, people smugglers, drug cartels, sex trafficking, terrorism, bio-hazards, and security threats, and the picture gets even more complicated.
I remember discussing the issue with a Hispanic seminary professor in Texas who said he felt morally conflicted about the immigration in the crisis in the USA. On the one hand, he wanted to love, help, and care for cross-border migrants, especially fellow-Christians. But on the other hand, mass migration has meant that limited government resources are now deployed towards migrants and taken away from the economically destitute black and brown communities. It has resulted too in increased competition for housing, healthcare, and jobs among the working poor. In other words, large-scale migration pauperizes already impoverished. For case in point, in Chicago, black community leaders protested a vote for $51 million in funding for new migrants when black suburbs are racked with poverty, gangs, drugs, a lack of housing, health-care, jobs, and an underfunded police force.
Many hot-takes in the media and on social media insinuate that the only options are open borders or xenophobic nationalism. Such an information cycle only serves to make people anxious, angry, and a little self-righteous.
The immigration and refugee challenges are different in every part of the world, so the solution is not the same everywhere. I do not want to over-generalize, but what is a Christian view of the world’s immigration crisis?