Theology Christian Ethics

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is invoked. For example, there are compassion and fairness considerations for legal immigrants who have followed the law, competing compassion for native workers who have more difficulty finding jobs, not to mention compassion for taxpayers who contribute to the safety net provisions for immigrants and refugees.

Immigration and Public Policy

What follows for public policy from the biblical discussion of immigration is a whole different set of questions. How should biblical morality shape immigration law? What role does the Bible play in the specifics of public policy? What biblical principles should have a bearing on the law, in addition to pragmatic concerns? Hopefully, by the time this book goes to print, the United States will have enacted more comprehensive immigration reform, and many of these questions will be settled. However, it may be more likely that immigration law will change gradually and incrementally, with the result that some of the issues discussed here will still require resolution in the future.

To be clear, the Bible does not generally give detailed policy prescriptions. Simply because the Mosaic law handled an issue in a particular and even detailed fashion, nothing necessarily follows from that for two reasons. First, as we’ve dis- cussed, the people of God, not to mention any specific nation, are not under the law as a rule of life today. No country is a theocracy in which the law of God is automatically the law of the land. Second, the culture of Old Testament Israel, particularly its economic life, was so different from the cultures of the developed world today that drawing direct application of Old Testament law without taking those differences into account can be interpretively perilous. The Bible gives broad, general moral principles that provide frameworks, parameters, and ideals for spe- cific policy alternatives, but rarely, if at all, does the Bible provide policy specifics that are authoritative for today.

Whereas the Bible gives moral ideals with which to measure a culture, in a fallen and broken world, public policy is the arena of reality, and compromises and limited objectives are part of the landscape. Often in public policy, difficult choices must be made between competing obligations, responsibilities, and priorities, and the ideal is not often possible to accomplish. In some areas, it must be recognized that the competing goals are often incompatible, giving further rationale for the notion that difficult choices must be made. It would seem that in immigration policy, this is precisely the case, and as a result difficult choices must be made. For example, here are some of the goals of any immigration policy (in no particular order of priority):

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1. Insure that a country controls its borders and can set limits on who and how many immigrants enter the country.

2. Provide opportunities for as many immigrants and refugees as possible to support themselves and their families.

3. Meet the immediate needs of desperate refugees, forced to leave their homes with little ability to care for themselves.

4. Insure, as best as possible, that the immigrants who are allowed to enter and remain in the country are not dangerous to the community.

5. Insure that the public services needed to serve immigrants are not exhausted to the detriment of other important services to citizens.

6. Insure that the process of status normalization is fair to all of those who are seeking to enter the country.

7. Protect the integrity of the family by keeping immediate families intact wherever possible.

Building a Border Wall? With the 2016 election of US President Donald Trump, immigrant communities were on

high alert since he had campaigned on stopping the flow of undocumented immigrants

in to the United States. He had vowed to build a border wall encompassing the entire

border with Mexico, roughly 2,000 miles, and maintained that Mexico would, at the least,

share the cost. Many dismissed that claim as a fantasy, and the Mexican government

indicated that they had no intention of contributing to any border wall. The Department

of Homeland Security estimates it would take roughly $20 billion to build a border wall

and approximately $150 million annually to maintain. There are significant questions

about who owns the border land, as most of the land on which the wall would be built is

owned by private citizens, many of whom are reluctant to relinquish their property for

this purpose. The administration has vowed to utilize the right of what is called “eminent

domain,” which gives government the right to obtain land at fair market value for essential

government services. A second, and more pressing question, is whether the border wall will

actually prevent illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America into the United States.

Jan, Tracy. “Trump’s Border Wall Faces Contracting Delays, a Limited Budget and a September Deadline.” Washington Post, June 27, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/ 06/ 27/ construction- on- trumps- border- wall- to- begin- by- september/?utm_term=.2f904f79ff ee.

Timm, Jane C. “Donald Trump’s Border Wall: A ‘Progress’ Report.” NBC News, May 30, 2017. http:// www .nbcnews.com/politics/donald- trump/donald- trump- s- border- wall- progress- report- n764726.

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No immigration public policy can maximize all of these goals at the same time. For example, it is not possible for any one country to accommodate all the refugees that are currently seeking resettlement. Even though many countries, particularly in Europe, are currently stretched to their limits, the number of refugees and immi- grants seeking entrance to the developed world continues to increase. In addition, keeping the process fair will, at times, conflict with the goal of keeping immediate families intact. As a result, any immigration system will likely be imperfect, which is to be expected in constructing policy in a fallen, broken world.

The biblical principles that are fundamental to any immigration policy should include the following:

1. All human beings, regardless of immigration status, are made in God’s image and therefore have intrinsic dignity and worth. As a result, they ought to be treated humanely.

2. Communities are called to care for the most vulnerable in society, including the poor, marginalized, and immigrants/refugees.

3. Communities should treat the immigrant with the same dignity that they would treat their citizens. Immigrants are not to be victimized, oppressed, or otherwise taken advantage of.

4. All residents in a particular country are responsible to follow the laws of that country. There can be exceptions to this in cases in which the law of the land is clearly unjust or otherwise violates the law of God, which can justify civil disobedience.

5. Governments are obliged to maintain order and enforce justice and fairness for all within its borders. They are also obligated to defend its citizens from harm that would come from those outside its borders.

6. The nuclear family is the fundamental unit of any society and critical for its stability.

Any immigration policy would need to address the most common concerns about the costs and benefits of immigration. In addition, any policy should rec- ognize that many countries, the United States chiefly, are nations of immigrants. The United States was founded as a country of immigrants and has had generous provisions throughout its history for immigrants from a variety of countries around the world. However, that does not mean that the borders historically were open to anyone. There was selection based on potential contribution as well as limits that were enforced by the law. That is not to say that all groups of immigrants and

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refugees have always been treated well, as the experience of many ethnic groups coming to the United States will attest. Take, for example, Chinese immigrants in the mid- nineteenth century, who came to the country lured by jobs in the railroad industry, or Italian immigrants in the early part of the twentieth century, who were discriminated against. Or take the Japanese- Americans, who were interned in camps during World War II. There is currently a growing skepticism, especially in Europe, about Muslim immigrants, particularly given the connection between radical Islam and terrorism. At present, estimates are that there are roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and the rate at which they attempt to enter the country is dependent on economic conditions and the availability of jobs in the United States. The history of US immigration and how different groups were integrated and treated varied considerably throughout the country’s history, though integration was normally seen as the goal for immigrants.

There are several significant concerns about immigration that must be addressed in order for any public policy to be widely accepted. Some question whether undocumented immigrants should be entitled to any public services at all since they are in the country illegally and pay no taxes to support those services. But denial of services to immigrants is shortsighted at the least and in some cases downright inhumane. For example, denying health care services to immigrants is a public health threat to the community, and even though in some communities immigrants are severely taxing the health care system, the community as a whole would suffer harm if medical conditions (especially communicable diseases) were left untreated. In addition, it would be inhumane to deny all public services to undocumented immigrants, which most countries do not do. There can be debate over which specific services could be available, such as higher education or nones- sential medical treatments.

A second major concern about immigration has to do with the costs involved with these public services and the jobs that are lost to immigrants willing to work for lower wages and fewer, if any, benefits. There is considerable debate over the net costs to any given state or locality. In Europe, the net cost to the countries is clear as the influx of refugees in recent years is clearly a drain on the social support system. In the United States, most immigrants are good and hardworking people who desire only to support their families adequately. Many undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, though they will never have access to social security, even though they have paid into it. Though there are some who take unfair advantage of a generous safety net in many developed countries, most desire to earn their own way. However, there is concern about remittances, the money earned that is sent

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back to the person’s home country to support family members who remain there. An obvious benefit to normalizing those in the country undocumented is that they can come “above ground” and pay taxes to help support the services they utilize. Though nationally, in any given country, the cost and benefits may be roughly equal, it is undeniable that in some regions, there are disproportionate costs vis- à- vis other parts of the country. For example, in the United States, the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California bear a much heavier burden than other states, because of their proximity to the Mexican border. It is also clear that the net costs in many Western European countries are burdensome and unsustainable. Job losses, especially at entry level jobs, must be considered as well, though some, and perhaps many, of the jobs that immigrants gravitate toward are those that many native- born are unwilling to do, though historically this has been the norm when it comes to immigrants and refugees.

Other costs often mentioned that must be addressed include the diluting of the national identity in the host countries that receive immigrants and concerns about threats to national security. The concern about national identity and immi- gration is more acute in Europe, which has had significant immigration from the Middle East and Africa in recent years. Some suggest that European immigration policy is contributing to a decline in the dominant culture of many European countries, bringing in people whose backgrounds cannot be adequately vetted, making it hard to know if these immigrants pose a terrorist threat. They point out that some of the most egregious acts of European terrorism in recent years comes from Middle Eastern immigrants who have settled in western European countries. Some have even suggested that Europe is “committing suicide” by its immigration policies.20

In the United States, national identity, whatever is meant by that term, is constantly evolving and has more to do with a fundamental set of ideas than the ethnic makeup of the population. The concern about Europe and immigration is that the vast movement of Middle Eastern and African peoples into Europe has brought into the continent a worldview and set of ideas that seem foreign to the ideas so central to Western civilization (such as democracy, free markets, rule of law, private property, and individual rights). The tendency of some groups to integrate more easily than others should be recognized, and it should be clear that some ethnicities, with their corresponding cultural values, are more inclined to integrate and are more compatible with the values of the country into which they come. However, the diversity that immigrants bring to their new countries is often a benefit to the country, which brings changes that enhance the common good of

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the communities they inhabit, though the experience of this in Europe is quite different than in the United States.

A further concern is a logistical one— what to do about immigrants who are already settled in the host country and undocumented. Some have been in the country for many years and are getting along sufficiently well that there is no incentive for normalizing their status. Deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants is simply not logistically feasible, especially since it might involve forc- ibly separating parents from their young children. Yet it seems blatantly unfair to those who have obeyed the law and gone through proper channels to legally obtain residence, for those who are here illegally to somehow get ahead of them in the process of normalization. What is commonly proposed is that they are liable for a fine for violating the law, and must leave the country, go to the back of the line and follow the same processes as everyone else attempting to enter the country. Yet the legal process can take years, during which time parents might be forcibly apart from their children.

A final logistical concern is how exactly to proceed with immigration reform. Some advocates of reform insist on securing the border as the first priority. They maintain that until the border is secured, nothing else matters and no other immi- gration reform should be undertaken. They argue that unless the flow of immigrants can be controlled, other reforms will be futile and possibly counterproductive. Others suggest that reform can effectively move forward on several fronts simultane- ously and that policies can be crafted to coordinate efforts at comprehensive reform.

At the risk of attempting to go further than providing biblical principles, here are two specific suggestions for what should be included or changed in US immigra- tion law. First, take the US law that mandates that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen of the country, and by extension, can bring immediate family into the country. This short cut to citizenship is a holdover from decades ago and is both out of date and subject to widespread abuse. It would appear that this part of US law could be changed to allow for more control of the border without harming people who are already here. By contrast, any immigration law that forci- bly separates families is a substantial hardship and violates the biblical notion of the importance of the family for the well- being of children. It is difficult to imagine a church being family friendly and at the same time supporting immigration policies that separate parents from children. It is financially challenging in many of the developed countries that have significant safety nets for the poor (what some would call welfare states), to have generous immigration policies and generous benefits for the poor at the same time. There are limits to what any country can provide,

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