I wish to respond to Benjamin Cremer’s Facebook post “A Theological Response to Immigration Myths.” I will leave it to others to challenge his statistical claims, although not all that he claims to be myths are necessarily myths. I do, however, wish to offer a different perspective on some of what he says.
First, let me affirm that the Bible’s teachings on compassion for the immigrant are true. We should uphold them all, even though a large portion of them are located within a Mosaic Law that is popular to disregard unless it is considered useful. God passionately cares about and commands that we show justice and compassion to the immigrant, as I have discussed in my recent book Fun with Biblical Words, where I have also devoted chapters to subjects such as justice, oppression, lawlessness, hatred, and favoritism, all of which God cares passionately about as well.
In my chapter on “The Immigrant in the Hebrew Bible,” we examine the 93 times the Hebrew term gēr (immigrant, alien, sojourner) is used in the Hebrew Bible. We see that not all of them were poor, but all were in a legal position where they were vulnerable to abuse, like the widow and the orphan. What is often left out of the discussion about the Bible’s teaching on the immigrant is that God says that the immigrant must obey the law. The immigrant is exempted only from cultic holidays (except the Sabbath). There is to be “one law” for both the alien and the citizen. (Leviticus 24:22; see also Numbers 15:15–16; and 15:29.)
The real issue is not our willingness to welcome the immigrant. Let’s make it easier to immigrate legally. The one thing we have a right to expect is that immigrants obey the law. We are told these are just good, upstanding, law-abiding people who have broken only one unjust law. But
if a person willfully breaks our immigration laws, they are much more likely to break our traffic laws (Why do I need a license? Why can’t I drive drunk?), our tax laws (why pay them?), and our criminal laws (armed robbery, murder—try and stop me!).
Joseph and Mary are models of the law-abiding immigrant, not the illegal immigrant. Those who appeal to Joseph and Mary’s refugee status forget why they ever went to Bethlehem: they were obeying an inconvenient law they could have easily blown off. And they fled to Egypt (a move within the Roman Empire, like fleeing from California to Texas) for reasons already permitted under current immigration law: to escape the murder of their child. Sadly, the term “asylum” has been ruined beyond repair because of its shameless abuse by the previous US government.
Yes, God’s word clearly teaches that we must not “oppress” the immigrant. But it is purely a matter of opinion whether our current immigration laws are “oppressive.” How are our laws different from Mexico’s or China’s? If anything, our laws are far more generous and just. I reject the claim that our laws “perpetuate cruelty, tear apart families, or trap people in cycles of poverty and fear.” And if we wish to ask immigrants themselves, the most recent news is that a large majority of legal immigrants approve of how the current government is administering immigration law. The writer’s appeal to our need for illegal immigrant labor would also appear to endorse the desire for cheap, exploitable labor, exploitation that is condemned by the very Biblical texts that our writer loves to quote.
Some of the statements that the writer brands as myths, were never worthy arguments anyway. Some of those “myths” are overstatements, but are true if stated more precisely. Some, I would argue, are not myths at all. There is also plenty of political spin in his article that I reject. I also reject the writer’s rhetoric that anyone that disagrees with his claims about immigrants is guilty of “false witness.”
Truth matters, but reliable truth is hard to discern with all the cherry-picking of evidence going on at the moment. All we can do is carefully weigh the agenda-driven evidence we have, on both sides. There is room for honest disagreement about how much crime is attributable to illegal immigrants, how many pay their taxes, do they take our jobs, and whether our huge recent influx of undocumented aliens constitutes an “invasion.”
We are always on dangerous ground when we equate our opinion with God’s opinion. Unfortunately, many Catholics and evangelicals have used a Jesus with a “progressive” approach to immigration as an excuse to also vote in favor of many evils that flatly contradict what they otherwise claim to believe, and which the historical Jesus himself would have passionately rejected.
Let us embrace all that God says about the immigrant, but let us be careful not to canonize our own reading of the evidence about today’s immigration crisis as if our opinion were also part of God’s authoritative word.
