The need for a prolonged and in depth conversation and a Theology of Immigration in regards to the US Latino population has been consistently growing. Along with that need, a theology of immigration is also a growing need for the eyes and ears of Young Life staff and volunteers who are engaged either in direct ministry with immigrants or in circles where the conversation of immigration is had. This paper’s perspective comes from an author that is an Argentinean Latino immigrant who immigrated in 1990 as well as a Young Life staff; thus, considers to be part of the people group that has experienced first-hand the need that any unfamiliarity to the subject at hand be eradicated from people’s mind.
The Bible contains many passages that speak to how the Christian individual and the Christian community should treat immigrants and foreigners. But first, one must understand the context that our sovereign God placed us into. Humanity began in the mind of God; so, in humans being placed on a created Earth, we are already immigrants as we immigrated from God’s mind into the world.
From the beginning of the biblical narrative, we can see that humanity started in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2) and was expelled from this original earthly home through the fall (Genesis 3); thus, we started out a foreigner, a stranger, and an immigrant into the world as we know it. Through sin, we have been estranged from the presence of God in Eden, but within the sub-context of the world that we live in, this same sin has caused division within humanity itself so that we now are strangers amongst each other; quite the opposite of what Jesus prayed for in John – “that we may be brought to complete unity” (John 17: 23).
Soon after, in Genesis 12, YHWH tells Abram that he should leave his native country, relatives, and father’s family to go to the land that He will show him (Genesis 12:1). As Abram accepted that call from the LORD, he allowed God to place him as a foreigner from the beginning of his faith journey. Later, as we fast forward to the New Testament in the Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we can see that Paul takes our Christian understanding of “humanity as foreigners” a step further as he explains in Philippians 3:20 that we all have our citizenship in heaven.
Before the beginning, in the early times of Abram, through the Old and New Testaments, we can clearly see that God has sovereignly placed humanity as a whole into a journey that ends with us going back home again to be with our father. Consequently, our understanding of immigration needs to be paralleled with our own immigration into this world and how God choses to view us in our current state.
As we begin to discover and comprehend what our Christian response should be to immigration, we can see that the stranger and immigrant has had a special place in the heart of the Lord. In Exodus 22:21, YHWH begins to instruct His people to not mistreat or oppress foreigners as He reminds them that they too were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. Not too much later, the LORD institutes a mandate to the Hebrews by saying:
Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:33-34).
One can clearly see that foreigners are supposed to be treated the same way as anyone that is an Israelite citizen. It makes one wonder what the USA would look like if all non-USA citizens would be treated the same way as all USA citizens. Certainly, many documented resident immigrants as well as undocumented immigrants in the USA are not treated as citizens as this passage states. But a few short chapters later, God mandates that these immigrants and visitors be fully supported by the citizens of the country as if they were citizens themselves. The Bible states it like this, “If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and cannot support himself, support him as you would a foreigner or a temporary resident and allow him to live with you” (Leviticus 25:35). This verse is primarily speaking about citizens that support non-citizens, but the secondary mandate, yet equal in importance, here is that a foreigner and resident are supposed to be supported by the citizen of the country that they are in. The new information to the Hebrew listener when this mandate was first brought to them by Abraham was not how to treat a foreigner or a resident, but instead how to treat their brothers and fellow citizens. The verse is phrased in a way that tells the listener the new information first, followed by old information to be compared to in order to make sense. One can assume that God must have known that the natural bend of His creation in humanity would be to mistreat the foreigner before a brother and citizen is mistreated, so the earlier Exodus passages are set in stone first so that foreigners are not mistreated. But then, mandates on how a citizen was treated would also be needed.
Later in the Old Testament, the LORD talks about the judgment that will come on people groups that mistreat the foreigner. In Malachi 3:5, the LORD states:
Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts (emphasis added).
And, in Deuteronomy 27:19 the Pentateuch continues to speak of judgment, but the judgment is carried out as a curse. The LORD tells His people that anyone, “who denies justice to foreigners, orphans, or widows” will be cursed. This justice that is due to the immigrant is not only the sort of justice that one receives during and after a trial, but also of just treatment in all circumstances; including the previously mentioned treatment of aliens treated as citizens in Leviticus 19:33-34. Hence, the LORD goes from judgment to curse, which shows the rising intensity in the responsibility that people have to treat immigrants justly.
These mandates, judgments, and curses might seem a little extreme if not viewed under the lenses that we are all immigrants into this world and that the LORD holds us all as equals as shown in the beginning paragraphs of this paper. But we also can take a look at Ezekiel 47 where the LORD assigns the inheritance, and therefore fulfills His Abrahamic covenant, to the 12 tribes of Israel. In verse 13, we can see the LORD start by saying, “Divide the land in this way for the 12 tribes of Israel.” Then, in verses 22 – 23, the LORD states:
Distribute the land as an allotment for yourselves and for the foreigners who have joined you and are raising their families among you. They will be like native-born Israelites to you and will receive an allotment among the tribes. These foreigners are to be given land within the territory of the tribe with whom they now live. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken! – (emphasis added).
Once again, the LORD shows us through the Israelite faith journey that He regards all people as immigrants into the world and as equals amongst each other. This is clearly shown when the LORD says that, “foreigners who have joined you and are raising families among you,” will inherit the promise given to the Israelites and therefore receive land allotments. The phrase that describes immigrants as people that have, “…joined you and are raising their families among you,” can be directly correlated to current and past US documented and undocumented immigrants and makes one think of the current situation in the USA that do not seem to align to the mandate that the LORD has for us in these verses.
Ezekiel and Malachi are not the only prophets that tell us about how the LORD desires immigrants to be treated. Jeremiah 7:5 – 7 speaks of the LORD’s mercy only being present among the people of Israel if they, amongst other things, stop, “…stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows.” While this passage was a specific prophesy for the time of Jeremiah, we should ask ourselves if we, as a country a state, a community, are receiving the mercy of LORD if His commandments through Jeremiah are not being met today either.
The Old Testament concludes with two prophets: Zachariah and Malachi. Each book speaks of how the LORD wants His people to treat immigrants. Zachariah 7 shows a call to justice and mercy and how the LORD tells the Israelites that they have pretended to care about the holy festivals as people at to please themselves instead of as worship to God. Zachariah writes that God’s message was to, “…judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each other” (Zachariah 7:9b-10). But the LORD, however, states that they, “…refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing.” That they, “…made their hearts as hard as stone, so they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had sent them by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. That is why the Lord of Heaven’s Armies was so angry with them. Since they refused to listen when [He] called to them, [He] would not listen when they called to [Him]” (Zachariah 7:11-13). The LORD once again states the sin of the Israelite ancestors in not treating immigrants justly. And it is clear that as, “they refused to listen when [He] called them, [He] would not listen when they called [Him].” There was always judgment of various sorts throughout the biblical narrative when immigrants were not treated as the LORD commanded.
The New Testament continues the same theme of how the LORD sees people as foreigners, strangers, and immigrants from His promise and from His people Israel. Now, however, there was an added level of complexity since the culture was not a divided Hebrew group of Israelites, but instead was a divided Judeo Christian people group. This people group was now in a Hellenistic society that was trying to understand what it meant to be a non-citizen of Israel and yet still a co-inheritor and sibling of a promise given to Hebrews long ago.
The standard of treatment of immigrants in the New Testament was the same as that of the mandates given to the Israelites in the Old Testament. None of the mandates had gone away. In fact, it is interesting that as Hebrews accepted immigrants into the people of God in Israel as God commanded long ago, they now were reliving the need of another grafting of immigrants into the Judeo Christian society as non-Jews throughout the Roman Empire became citizens of Heaven as they heard the Gospel message.
Immediately from the beginning of the Gospel Message, Luke retells the time when Jesus stood up in the synagogue and read the Isaiah scroll thus making a direct link and bridge between the Old Testament mandates and the new life in Christ. One of the five things that Jesus said in his reading of the Isaiah scroll was that He was sent to declare that, “…the oppressed will be set free” (Luke 4:18). There are three messages that can be gleamed from that six-word phrase. One is that of the historical message of the prophet Isaiah to the Israelites in that God judges them and then provides redemption and hope. Another possible message is a present day message which was heard by Jews in the time of Jesus: the Israelites would be set free from the oppression of Roman rule. Thirdly, we can read a spirit-centric message in which the Jesus triumph over death and sin has and will liberate the people that are oppressed spiritually.
However, a correct interpretation of the message can also be one that includes all three messages to be combined into an understanding that the Gospel message brings freedom of oppression in all aspects of the person: spiritually, mentally, and physically. Therefore, when Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats being separated on judgment day in Matthew 25:31 – 46, we can read the passage understanding that Jesus was literally and figuratively speaking about strangers that were in need and were fed, given something to drink, and clothed. This passage talks about spiritual clothing and food, but also, as shown in Hebrews 13:2, this is talking about actual food and clothing. Hebrews 13:2 shows that if one gives hospitality to strangers, that hospitality is sometimes given to angels. And, logic leads us to assume that human beings cannot give spiritual food and clothing to beings that are currently in the presence of God. Hence, it is clear that the Old Testament mandates are expanded on in the Gospels as immigrants now should be fed and clothed spiritually and physically.
After the death of Jesus, Paul wrote Epistles that are covered with imagery of immigrants and citizenship. In Ephesians 2:11 – 22, Paul says that Jews and Gentiles are reconciled through Christ. Paul shows the Gentile Ephesian church that at one point they were, “… excluded from the citizenship of Israel and foreigners to the covenant of the promise” (Ephesians 2:12). Thus, showing the reader how they are supposed to treat an immigrant into their citizen group. This passage is directly dealing with how Christians in the era of the first church were separated by the race and now brought together as brothers and sister through the work of Christ. Therefore, an immigrant should again be treated as an equal, a brother, and a citizen of that same country or group regardless of their race, age, gender, or social class (Galatians 3:28). Coupled with our previous Old Testament inclusions passages, this applies to all people that accept Christ into their lives.
Throughout the Biblical narrative, we can clearly see that we as humans are all immigrants into this world, and that all non-Jews are immigrants into the family of God. And while the main point throughout is how to treat and regard an immigrant into the family of God, we can also extrapolate that since we are all immigrants into this world, any subgroup of this world is still a brother and sister of the rest of the world. And, while everyone is not willingly under the law of God, God’s laws are supreme and always above man’s laws and governments.
Romans 13:1 – 10 explicates how God has established all human authority on earth and thus humanity should obey laws that are written by man. However, this verse has been used to state that immigrants should not come to the USA undocumented. However, we continually see throughout the biblical narrative that the main and greatest commandment is to, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, Romans 13:9). What we can see is a hierarchy of laws. And, if a governmental immigration law prevents the greatest biblical commandment to be broken, than that governmental law is a law that was never meant by Christ to exist; hence, the love of a stranger is the greatest commandment that Christian or non-Christian people under the sovereign law of man should follow.
Throughout history, the church has had its share of immigration situations; one can be seen in the previous mentions of issues in the first church where Paul urges Jews to be accepting of their new Gentiles brothers and sisters that have been accepted into the Kingdom of God. Other more geographically relevant immigration situations were those of Irish Catholic immigrants as well as Dutch immigrants in the mid 1800’s. And, in every situation, the unity and inclusion that God spoke through the Old Testament prophets as well as the New Testament Gospels and Paulean Epistles were never the overall outcome. The results were always some sort of division in order to make the process easier. While proclaiming the same faith origin and the same God, the Irish identity could not be separated from their catholic roots. They created Irish-Catholic convents and parochial schools. The Dutch and Swedish, while experiencing a less violent welcome than the Irish, developed towns and cities that were a resemblance of their heritage as well as starting new Protestant denominations, the Christian Reformed Church, the Free Methodist Church, and the Covenant Church. The Dutch, Swedes and the Irish experienced rejection from the dominant American citizens for years, and that rejection helped to push them to establish something separate from what was already in the US; something that was separate yet still included slivers of US culture.
Over the last three decades, US culture has had strong opinions and reactions to immigration. During the 17th and 18th century, historians estimate that less that 1 million immigrants came to the United States, maybe even as few as 400,000. Later, in the mid-19th century, mostly Northern Europeans immigrated across the Atlantic while in the early twentieth-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia. Before 1820, immigration was a non-issue since less than 8,000 people immigrated per year (americanheritage.com). There were no immigration laws, but there was the 1790 Act that limited citizenship to “free white persons;” later amended to include blacks in the 1860’S and Asians in the 1950’s. From 1836 to 1914 over 30 million Europeans immigrated to the United States (Journal for Maritime Research) which led to the first US immigration law in 1875 (Washington Post, may 2).
As European immigration peaked in the early 1900’s, more legislation was passed like the 1924 Immigration Act that restricted European immigration. From 1965, immigration doubled twice over a span of 25 years which resulted in even more immigration laws. Since 1986, Congress has passed seven amnesties for undocumented immigrants. Public attitudes about immigration in the U.S. have been heavily influenced by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. After the attacks, 52% of Americans believed that immigration was a good thing overall for the U.S., down from 62% the year before, according to a Gallup poll. Half of Americans say tighter controls on immigration would do “a great deal” to enhance U.S. national security, according to a Public Agenda (publicagenda.org) survey.
The history of immigration to the United States is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in American Folklore, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to Neil Diamond’s “America” to the animated feature An American Tail (Rachel Rupin and Jeffrey Melnick, Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction – 2006). Recent movies that speak to immigration, race and culture are The Name Sake, The Visitor, Spanglish, A Day without a Mexican and others all which speak to the fact that there is a social awareness about issues with immigration that people want to dialogue about. Most movies and plays seem to have an overarching theme of sensitivity and amicability to racial differences and immigrant social justice issues that can be compared to God’s commandment to “love you neighbor as yourself,” but somehow these themes do not carry over in United States legislature with immigration laws.
Another cultural event after 9-11 that has raised the immigration conversation to another level is the current financial state and recession of the United States. As more and more US citizens lost their jobs, the hostility and anxiety level spiked. Consequently, some anger towards the financial problem was misdirected towards undocumented immigrants. And, since the biggest race immigrating into the United States was that of Latinos, most undocumented immigrant legislation and local community anger was directed towards that ethnic population. Everything from local hates crimes like the recently convicted Derrick M. Donchak and Brandon J. Piekarsky for fatally beating Luis Ramirez on a street in Shenandoah, PA to the Arizona Immigration State Law that was passed in April 2010 in which Arizona Latino residents or people that look Latino whether citizen, documented or undocumented need to present their documents to law enforcement when asked. However, like any other issue, there have been responses from individuals and faith-based and non-faith-based non-profits that have sprouted to aid the documented or undocumented immigrants. One can see that US culture recognizes that there is an issue with immigration, but the US is still trying to figure out how to best manage and deal with this big change of the growing number of the estimated 11 million undocumented Latinos live in the United States.
I was one of the 92,000 plus Argentineans and one of the 8.4 million Latinos that immigrated into the United States in 1989 (US Census). We settled in Santa Barbara County, CA where my mother’s uncle lived. My father had a job in Argentina as a well-paid Network Engineer, but due to the massive inflation fluctuation we had months when his paycheck would arrive late and sometimes not at all. My father came first in March 1989 and my mother, younger sister, and I came a few months later in June. There were no jobs available for an immigrant Network Engineer that knew only broken English, so the first two jobs that my father took were a Domino’s Pizza worker and a Newspaper delivery man.
We stayed with my mom’s uncle for a month until we had enough money scraped together from the months that my father had worked to afford the down payment of our first apartment. We were together again after months of either not seeing my dad at all or seeing him only on the weekends. I remember walking into the apartment with nothing but two luggage bags that we had brought from Argentina, yet we had people from the local Baptist church that we found and attended that had given us some lawn furniture for a dining table and a microwave to heat up some food. I did not mentally or emotionally process everything that happened at that all-White church until my mid-twenties, but that experience of how that church dealt with immigrants started to lay the foundation to how I viewed immigration and the church.
Two church communities that have had to forcefully deal with the increasing need of a Theology of immigration are the last two churches that I have attended. The importance in asking the local church community of two different states is because there are many different nationalities within the Latino race, 27 to be exact. And with each nationality, the needs vary.
In Chicago, I am currently living in a community that is mostly Puerto Rican: Humboldt Park. This Latino population is vastly different than that of the stereotype Latino since Puerto Ricans are born with a US citizenship. So, while there is a distinct Puerto Rican Latino culture that varies drastically from other Latino cultures, there is no deep interaction in the overall population of the church with Immigration. However, leaders in the church that I attend (Grace and Peace Community) have had a conversation as they have planned to expand the church into another neighborhood that has Mexican immigrants and Chicanos (second generation Mexicans born in the US). The conversations have not been in depth, so one can see that there is a lack of an immigration theology within the church and even the local Church in Humboldt Park as I have interacted with local pastors who, just like my local church, have mostly a Puerto Rican congregation.
However, the local church community that I was in from 2002 to 2009 in Santa Barbara was comprised of mostly Mexican undocumented immigrants with a few Central American Latino immigrants, both documented and undocumented. A theology of immigration was needed since the church had to deal with a Covenant Church Denomination that from its inception dealt with European immigration, but lacked the experience in dealing with Latino undocumented immigrants.
Fuente de Esperanza Covenant Church, after much thought, came to the conclusion that the stranger and foreigner needs to be cared for at any cost. They studied many of the verses previously mentioned above and labeled their ministry to undocumented immigrants a ministry of compassion for the poor. And, when asked why they were not supporting the laws against fake id’s, driver’s licenses and social security cards, as well as not turning people in that were undocumented and staying in the United States, they said that they did not support the activities, but that they were compelled by God to love the foreigner regardless of documentation yet they chose to not participate in the illegal activities, but walking life with them. The church asked US citizens questioning their theology and praxis what they would do if they could not feed their family in the USA; would they do whatever it took, including entering another country “illegally”, to protect and feed their children and spouses? Just about all of the people responded with a resounding, “Yes.” Others did not know how to respond.
Young Life is present in both of these church communities and the manner in which Young Life interacts with both Latino communities is different as well. In my own area in Northwest Chicago, I am the area director and my theology of immigration is trickled down to all volunteers and staff within our area. Since our ministry has historically been comprised mostly of Latino Puerto Rican citizens, there has not been a need for a theology of immigration. However, in thinking about what it means to minister to every kid everywhere within my area, it is clear that citizens and non-citizens alike need the Gospel. And, sometimes reaching non-citizen immigrant Latinos mean that ministry needs to occur only in Spanish. This language opportunity presents a problem to a historically US White non-profit that runs camps only in English. And, as I and other Latino staff members begin to push for change in the mentality and practice of Young Life as they start to reach Latinos that may or may not speak Spanish, I begin to think of other teens that are also immigrants and non-English speakers and how reaching a world of kids in the USA means that Young Life, if they really mean what they say in reaching every teens everywhere for eternity, will have to change their organization to a multi-cultural and multi-language organization in their staff and in how they run camps as well. There is always resistance from the dominant culture when foreigners enter their world and begin to change the makeup of what is known; Young Life and churches are no different.
