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G92, Immigration Reform, and a Letter from a Birmingham Jail

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Last week was the last full week of Black History Month. I ended the month pressing for Immigration Reform in the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.

When I landed in Birmingham, Alabama last Wednesday night, it struck me that I was on my way to Samford University—the flagship University of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). It struck me that the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest evangelical denomination in the country and among the most conservative. It struck me that Alabama used to boast that it had the harshest Jim Crow laws and law enforcement during the Civil Rights era. Now it boasts the harshest anti-immigrant law in the nation.

Passed into law on June 9, 2011, HB56 criminalizes Alabamans’ daily associations with immigrants who cannot prove their legal status. Giving an undocumented immigrant a ride can result in criminal arrest. The legislation also prohibited all businesses (including schools, the water company, and the telephone company among others) from conducting business transactions on any level with anyone who could not prove their legal status. Tens of thousands of Latino families fled Alabama within weeks of the law’s passage. Businesses closed, schools lost huge percentages of their students, and vegetables were left to rot in the fields.

 I was in Birmingham to speak at the G92 South Conference, a one-day conference for students and pastor hosted on Samford’s sprawling campus. G92 is a reference to the 92 times the Hebrew word Ger is used in the Bible. Ger means stranger or sojourner. The conference began last autumn at Cedarville University in Ohio. It is now being replicated on Christian college campuses across the country. Samford University was the second campus to agree to host the conference.

The night before the conference convocation, several of us conference planners and speakers went to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner. Our blonde waiter took our dinner orders as we downed chips, salsa and quacamole. As he walked away from the table it hit me—all of the waiters in this Mexican restaurant were white—with blonde hair. I wasn’t the only one to notice. We looked back toward the kitchen and saw that all the cooks were white, too. We scanned the restaurant. There was only one Latino couple in the entire restaurant. HB56 happened here.

Over the course of G92 South Southern Baptist students and pastors and other attendees were  challenged by the example of immigrants in the Bible; such as Abram, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, and Paul, among others. They were challenged by the commands of God concerning immigrants, such as Leviticus 19: “When a sojourner resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the sojourner. The sojourner who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the sojourner as yourself, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” In light of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13, which call for obedience to governing authorities, and Romans 12 which calls believers not to be conformed to the ways of this world, students were called to ask the first and most important question about laws: “Is it a good law?” “Does this law conform to world or does it conform to the mandate of God to love God and love your neighbor as yourself?” Students dialogued with two student immigrants; one documented, one undocumented and, as a result, were exposed to details about our broken immigration system that set some back on their heels.

For example, many did not know the reason so many Mexicans have flowed across our southern border since 1985 is because of policies put in place by President Reagan and exacerbated by President Clinton’s NAFTA agreement which increased trade between the U.S. and Mexico. Increased trade would have been good, but America’s highly subsidized corn put corn farmers in Mexico out of business. They couldn’t compete with America’s artificially low prices. Thousands of farmers and their families lost everything, moved to the cities where there was an already weak safety net. The bottom fell out and people could no long afford to eat. Our government policies are a large part of the reason why Mexico’s economy has tanked over the past 30 years.

I was the last speaker in the Student Track. My session was titled “What Next? Mobilizing for Immigration Reform.” By the end of the training students’ heads were bowed and their first act toward social change was personal repentance. Students and faculty prayed prayers of repentance for seeing immigrants as people created to serve them. They repented for satisfaction with apathetic hearts. They repented for not reaching out to see how they could serve their immigrant neighbors in this great time of need. It was beautiful.

500 Samford Students experienced G92 last week. They witnessed the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Richard Land, as he read through the Southern Baptists’ resolution to call for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to legal status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who currently reside in the U.S. They heard him compare the current HB56 law to similar proposals made in congress in 2007, during the Bush Administration’s push for reform. They heard Dr. Land compare the 2007 proposals to the Fugitive Slave Laws of the antibellum south.

And as a result of it all, the students and faculty of Samford University are now mobilizing for Immigration Reform. They are planning to bring me back to conduct a longer training for their students and possibly to speak in chapel.

I am flashing back, once again, on the last day of Black History Month. I recall the days of the Civil Rights movement. How amazing would it have been if Samford’s Southern Baptist students had joined the little black children who filled the Birmingham jails back in 1963? How beautiful would it have been if Samford’s faculty and students answered Dr. King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail and it’s apology for why the Black community can’t wait for justice any longer, with the resolute reply: “We can’t wait either!”

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Perhaps then the Samford students and faculty and those from other Christian colleges across the country who will host G92 between now and then will finally be able to answer King’s call. Perhaps after a year of local trainings and community-based mobilizing, they will be able to join their voices with the chorus of immigrants, who used to be their neighbors. And perhaps they will offer this resolute reply: “We can’t wait for comprehensive immigration reform either!”

Let it be so.

From Principle to Policy: Navigating the Moral Terrain of Immigration Reform

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If there is one debate in American politics where an “alternative political conversation” is most needed, it is the debate over immigration reform.  Perhaps because we are a nation of immigrants, perhaps because the debate connects with so many other sensitive policy issues, or perhaps because of deeply-felt but poorly-articulated fears concerning those who are different, the rhetoric that opponents level at each other—and at immigrants themselves—has been the opposite of what anyone would call Christian.   Indeed, our lack of progress on the issue can be explained to a great extent by the way we talk about it.  

Christians in particular should be troubled by this, whatever their positions might be on the various issues at stake.  Remarkably, however, there exists considerable agreement when it comes to identifying underlying moral principles.  Here, I suggest three, though no doubt there are more:

  • First, states have the authority—and indeed the responsibility—to police their borders.  As no country can admit simply everyone who wants to enter, states need to make decisions concerning the number of immigrants they can accept.  Moreover, states need to be concerned about cross-border criminal activity, including human trafficking.
  • Second, the desire of persons to migrate when they cannot find employment or other opportunities in their home country is legitimate, and even praiseworthy.  While migration may not be possible in all cases, states everywhere have a responsibility to facilitate migration flows, both for the sake of the countries involved and for the migrants themselves.
  • Third, the responsibility of states to do justice extends to all: citizens and non-citizens, legal and illegal residents alike.  Justice may not mean treating everyone alike, but it will require the recognition that all persons have dignity, and that this dignity comes not from the possession of a passport. Any number of implications may follow from this, but chief among them are responsibilities concerning hospitality and respect.

Now we can agree on the principles that should be brought to bear on a situation, and yet disagree as to where a reasonable balance of these principles might lead.  It’s entirely possible for people of good will to disagree with each other, for good reasons.  As I seek a balance of these principles, I can describe at least three possible conclusions:

  • Refugees have a special status in immigration policy.  Our commitment to justice for all implies that the right to asylum for those who suffer intolerable oppression cannot be denied.
  • A commitment to the rule of law implies that it is appropriate for governments to set limits on numbers of immigrants that can be admitted.  Moreover, when it does set limits, it is appropriate and responsible to enforce those laws, even through deportation if necessary and appropriate.
  • One result of our unwillingness to establish a comprehensive immigration policy has been a backlog of millions of undocumented residents, here partly because of failures to enforce the law at the border and at the places that hire them.  Our commitment to justice and our recognition of the legitimate desire of persons to improve their situations means that we share responsibility.  Even if it were possible to deport all those who are undocumented, it would wrong to do so.    

From here we can begin to develop policy guidelines.  For example:

  • While the distinction is often overlooked in popular political rhetoric, the situations of legal and illegal immigrants are so different that they require different treatments in terms of policy.  A debate over the precise number of immigrants admitted to the US, for example, is an entirely different topic than the debate over amnesty for those here illegally.  Similarly, popular frustration with undocumented residents gaining access to public services should not lead to restrictions on such services for immigrants who are here legally.
  • The state’s interest in protecting the weak as part of its justice mandate requires that it take special steps to protect the most vulnerable.  For that reason, children of illegal immigrants require special protection. Something like the DREAM act is likely to be an important step in this regard. 
  • For those undocumented who have long been here, working and contributing to society, we should establish the opportunity for legalization and citizenship.  Theirs is not the preferred path, and indeed we should endeavor to close it for others, but our unwillingness to enforce our own laws, our failure to facilitate migration for those who most seek it, and their demonstrated willingness to participate in American society all suggest in favor of moving in this direction.

These points together do not come close to a program for comprehensive reform.  But my hope is that as we disagree on these policy points, or as we see to contribute others, our policy disagreements might not be seen to indicate disagreement “all the way down”.  Immigration is indeed an issue where vital moral principles are at stake: let’s continue to affirm those basic principles while we debate the policy solutions.