RELIGION UNPLUGGED
(ANALYSIS) The Religion Guy’s answer: Many Bible readings during Christmas services will recount that the infant Jesus escaped murder at the hands of paranoid King Herod because Egypt provided safe refuge to the fleeing Holy Family (per Matthew 2:13-15).
Given Christianity’s historic concern for exiles and immigrants, how do believers view Donald Trump’s pledge to immediately launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” no matter what the “price tag.”
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan says the incoming administration will first expel immigrants who pose threats to national security, are convicted criminals, or have already been set for deportation by federal courts. Beyond that are countless millions of “illegal” (conservative lingo) or “undocumented” (liberal lingo) U.S. residents subject to deportation as lawbreakers who entered the U.S. without authorization. Problems escalated under President Biden’s policies, a major factor in Trump’s win.
The political dynamics have shifted, and one remarkable sign of this was a June CBS poll in which a 53% majority of U.S. Hispanics now favor mass deportation, with 47% opposed. (Black respondents were 47% in favor, whites 67%). An April Axios poll found 45% of Hispanics backed such a program.
The practicalities
There’s intense debate over practicalities in Trump’s plan regarding the money required and whether Congress will appropriate it, how to track down persons living here illegally, conflict with Democratic “sanctuary” states and cities, the need for massive increases in immigration judges and detention housing, whether home nations will accept deported citizens, and related logistics.
Beyond calculations on what’s feasible or wise or popular, Christians are pondering what’s moral and immoral. People escaping violence or oppression, or who can’t obtain jobs that support their families, naturally rouse human sympathy. The clergy can quote numerous Bible verses on charity toward wayfarers. The United Methodist Church typifies feelings among “mainline” and liberal Protestants in advocating “legal status for all undocumented migrants currently in the United States, as well as for those arriving in the future.”
Fewer religious pronouncements emphasize enforcement of borders and immigration laws. But proponents believe it’s perfectly ethical to undergird the necessities of law and order, national sovereignty, and national security. The sad reality is that hard choices are inevitable when masses of people who’d like to move into the United States cannot possibly be absorbed.
Without specifying how to balance these competing interests, Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council in 1965 taught that duties to foster the “universal common good” of humanity include “to attend to the hardships of refugees scattered throughout the world, or to assist migrants and their families.”
In a September visit, Pope Francis characteristically praised Luxembourg for providing “a friendly home for those who knock at your door seeking help and hospitality.”
The 19th century
U.S. Catholicism, of course, has defended immigrants since they began expanding church rolls in the 19th Century (with significant support for “full” protection of immigrant rights from Republican Party founders under Lincoln). Similarly with Judaism and, in recent times, Islam.
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