I Was A Stranger, And You Welcomed Me

In this post, I want to talk about current events, namely the treatment of undocumented immigrants and those seeking asylum in the United States today.  I don't pretend to have all of the policy answers, but I do have something to say about our priorities and the general way we approach dealing with these people trying to come to our country in ways that many Americans oppose.  Whatever our ultimate policy solutions, the way we treat one another is paramount and goes straight to the heart of God.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes humanity’s final judgement:

When the Son of Man [he commonly referred to himself this way] comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.  Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”  Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

“As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

What does it mean to welcome the stranger in our public life?  And who are some of the least among us?  Some of the least among us these days are the undocumented immigrant and the asylum seeker.  In the United States today, there are approximately 11 million immigrants living without legal authorization to do so.  Who are these undocumented immigrants?

While the majority (around 6 million) are from Mexico, large numbers also come from Central America, China, India, the Philippines, and elsewhere.  Some have come to work and send money back home to their families, others come to join family members already living in the United States (many of whom are citizens or legal residents), some simply overstay tourist, student, or other visas, and a growing number in recent years are refugees from gang violence in Central America.  For some the United States is a land of economic opportunity, for others it is a place to escape violence and death at home.

So why don’t they just get in line?  For many undocumented workers, there is no line.  Getting a U.S. work visa requires one to already have a job lined up before applying, something that’s nearly impossible for the jobs those immigrants do.  For others, the lines are prohibitively long.  The people at the front of some lines first applied for visas in the 1990s. And for asylum seekers, there is no time at all to wait before coming.

And what are we currently doing with these would-be Americans?  

One of our policies, which has intensified in recent months, is to separate families at the border, taking children from their parents or other caregivers with whom they may quite possibly never be reunited.  The emotional impact on families, especially children, is devastating.  

Immigration attorney Katie Annand writes about representing these children, some of whose parents and caregivers had already been deported without them. She describes working with children who are terrified, in shock, and crying and begging to be with their families. The vulnerability of the children and the cruelty and emotional toll of the ordeal on them are hard to fathom.

Many of these families are not simply economic migrants but those fleeing violence and persecution for whom coming to the United States is a matter of life and death.  And as if all of this isn’t bad enough, as of June 11, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided that the United States will make it much harder for those fleeing gang violence or domestic abuse to seek asylum in the first place, affecting tens of thousands of people.

Why this cruelty?

Will Christ say to us, “My family came seeking asylum, and you tore me from my parents.  We needed refuge, and you took my children away from me forever.  I fled for my life, and you hurled me back into the jaws of death”?

In an earlier post, I referenced historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson’s formulation of nations and nationalism in terms of “imagined communities”.  For Anderson national communities are not “imagined” in the sense of being fake or unreal, per se.  They are imagined in that the vast majority of their members do not know or interact with one another on a personal level, but rather understand one another to share a common national identity on a conceptual level.  We may not know each other, but we share a common sense that we are “all” Americans in a way that provides us with a meaningful individual and collective identity.  And our nations often become nation-states with membership in our imagined communities enforced with borders and fences and immigration laws.

But nations are not the only imagined communities to which we can and do belong.  In that post, I suggested three of the imagined communities in which we as American Christians find ourselves:

1.    The Church broadly conceived; the great body of Christians throughout the world, whatever their theology, practice, or denomination; the Body of Christ

2.    Humanity as a whole; the community of every single person on earth

3.    Our nation-state; the United States of America

Which ones are the most important to us?  Given the need to choose, in what order will we prioritize them?  I firmly believe that the biblical answer, the one after God’s own heart, is the order I have given above.

But can we as a country afford to handle these undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers?

A frequent trope in anti-immigration rhetoric is that these immigrants are a drain on our social safety net, taking benefits that should go to “real” Americans, but that narrative doesn’t fit the facts.  For example, while the labor of undocumented immigrants is a cornerstone of the American economy, they also pay taxes, including contributing billions of dollars every year into Social Security without being able to reap its benefits.

But even if migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers cost us to take them in, don’t we still have some duty of love and compassion?  Aren’t we supposed to “love our neighbors as ourselves” as Jesus says in Matthew 22:39?  He likens it to the very act of loving God Himself.  And this love is more than a warm fuzzy feeling, it’s a prioritization of a person’s needs and wellbeing, sacrificially if necessary.

But should Christ’s words really be applied to the national community? After all, maybe they’re just for individuals, although I question this assumption made by many conservatives. Our democratic polity is made up of individuals come together.  If ours is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, then the actions and priorities of individuals come together to become in some sense those of the state itself.  Many Americans believe strongly that their values (read “culturally conservative Christianity”) should inform public policy and are even referred to as “values voters”.  So why not these values, these very Christian values?  

When it comes to the use of resources, St Basil the Great* doesn’t pull any punches:

Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief?  And those who do not clothe the naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same?  The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy.  You are thus guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not.

Those are hard words, especially on the level of personal self-examination, but they should give us pause to consider how we apportion our many blessings.

After all, are we a poor country?  You may say, “We should take care of our own people first.”  Of course we should take care of them, but why stop there?  The statement assumes a scarcity of our capacity for aid that simply does not reflect the great resources we possess.  Our problem is not a lack of resources but a lack of social and political will to use those resources for the common good.

If the appeal from Christ’s love doesn’t sway you, then at least remember the ideals of our own national community.  After all, there is a poem on the Statue of Liberty that concludes with these words:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost [sic] to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

* St Basil was a fourth-century bishop of Caesarea and one of Christianity’s most influential theologians, helping to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity.  He was also known for his self-sacrificial passion for social justice and the fight against poverty.