The Christian Faith and Immigration – Providence
This is an interesting piece that articulates that the immigration issue is more complex than many evangelicals are willing to admit (KSchaal).
I got interested in the immigration issue when the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) issued a short, two-page resolution in 2009 that, among other things, concluded that the US government wasn’t issuing enough visas to meet the demands for workers and for family unification. The problem of unauthorized migration, according to the documents’ drafters, was thus a failure of government policy—one that could be remedied by establishing a more generous, flexible system. When I began looking into this issue, it was clear that other Christian denominations were also calling for immigration reforms that would, among other things, strengthen due process protections for migrants, facilitate and increase family reunification, and provide legal status to the large group of unauthorized aliens living in the country. I had no problem with these and other recommendations being advanced by evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Roman Catholics. My concern was that these groups were failing to provide a compelling biblical and moral analysis of the challenges posed by contemporary migration. Most troubling, some evangelicals—under the banner of welcoming the stranger—went to great lengths to use scripture to call for specific immigration reforms.
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