The Fact and Fluidity of Borders

Nevertheless, the concept of borders is a perpetual sociopolitical fact with an awful history of abuse and suffering designed to protect the welfare of geographically, racially, or ethnically defined nation-states. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first time in the US that a “federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.” This law not only placed requirements on Chinese people trying to immigrate to the US but also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already arrived. Before this, Chinese were received as laborers and even as neighbors, being a “touch of color which gave to the life of the country.” But, as economic competition and struggle increased, anti-Chinese animosity became the scapegoat for moneymaking and political gains.

Geopolitical boundaries also change over time. The US-Mexican border was not always where it is today. In 1821, the year Mexico declared its independence from Spain, its territory included California, Texas, and the land in between. However, after the Mexican-American War in 1848, 55 percent of Mexico’s territory was ceded to the United States. Mexico had ended slavery by 1830; nevertheless, when white Americans formed the independent Republic of Texas, they reinstated slavery. “By the time the US annexed the territory,” journalist Becky Little explains, “its enslaved population had grown from 5,000 to 30,000.” Given the geographical proximity of Mexico, previously many enslaved people had escaped south rather than to the free states in the North. However, the land transfer in 1848 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 became another “open wound,” as Mexican American scholar Gloria Anzaldúa would say, for African enslaved people and African diaspora communities today. Being an immigrant is not an objective status; it’s a fluid designation that changes when territories change.

A Call that Predates Countries

Concern over the reception of migrants, especially the most vulnerable, precedes the political constitution of nations.Concern over the reception of migrants, especially the most vulnerable, precedes the political constitution of nations. In ancient Israel, the people rescued from Egypt by God are called to live with generous hospitality toward the migrant and foreigner, thereby emulating how God, the Liberator, has welcomed them with compassion. This compassionate hospitality became an imperative that superseded political tribal loyalties.[2] It was an issue of the human dignity of image-bearers. We also find this theological and social ethic extended through the social concerns of Jesus and the Messianic community, the church. The Christian call is the human call to welcome and protect the most vulnerable: migrants, orphans, and widows.

New Testament scholar Joshua Jipp, in his important work Saved by Faith and Hospitality, traces the plight of the immigrants from the legislations in the Torah through Jesus and the Gospels. He rightly asserts: “The commandment to show justice and hospitality to the immigrant is obvious in the following exhortations, but we must also pay close attention to the sanctions that provide motivation.” The texts in question are Exodus 23:9, Leviticus 19:33–34, Deuteronomy 10:17–21, and Deuteronomy 27:19. We can also agree with Jipp that, in the New Testament, especially in Luke and Acts, “this divine hospitality comes to us in the person of Jesus, the divine host who extends God’s hospitality to sinners, outcasts, and strangers and thereby draws them—and us—into friendship with God.” The practice of hospitality within biblical history culminates in an all-merciful God opening Godself in Christ to a humanity in existential distress.

Furthermore, biblical hospitality is a testimony of a covenantal faith. Receiving every person in the name of Christ is believing that it is Christ himself whom we welcome in our midst (John 13:20). In hospitality we can say that we show the love that God has for all his children.

Migration Necessitates Change--for All of Us

Currently, there are more than 272 million international migrants in the world. Contemporary migration patterns have been called “the human face of globalization.”[3]  Migration plays a major role in the economy, politics, and social structure of the majority of countries in the world. This also involves the convergences of cultures, traditions, aesthetics, art, music, values, food, and human needs. The increased interconnectivity caused by migration to and from geographical and digital lands facilitates the need for—and catalyzes—the innovation of ideas, culture, and technology.

In recent times, the dramatic reality of the plight of refugees has come to the forefront of international human rights discussions. Our planet now has more than 82 million displaced individuals who have been forced to leave their homes due to armed conflict, widespread violence, or natural disaster. These discussions have launched companies and NGOs that create products and services that provide refugees with access to rights, information, health, education, employment, and social inclusion. Migrants not only influence the questions we ask, but they also determine the way we perceive meaning, truth, and reality.

US immigration policy, which has not been significantly updated in thirty-five years, is an area in which innovation is sorely needed. Over 10 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States right now. Authorized immigration to the US is generally limited to three different routes: employment (where, in most cases, an employer must petition for the worker); family reunification; or humanitarian protection. Unfortunately, many aspiring residents are not eligible for any of these options, despite the fact that most immigrants to the US have left their homeland, family, and friends due to severe economic hardship, violence, and dangerous political instability. In past times, migration was a natural respite for such conditions.

What Migration Means for Christians

Faced with this reality, what is the significance of the immigrant for Christian thinking? As Vietnamese-born theologian Peter C. Phan, proposes, the very existence of the immigrant entails “a particular way of perceiving and interpreting reality; that is, oneself, others (in particular, the dominant others and fellow groups of immigrants), the cosmos, and ultimately, God.”[4] Migrants not only influence the questions we ask, but they also determine the way we perceive meaning, truth, and reality.

As Christians, we cannot reduce immigrants to geopolitical conceptions. We commit atrocities and dehumanize those who are our neighbors when we see migrant foreigners as a threat, a risk, or an unknown to our “sacred” political, economic, geographical, and cultural realities and traditions.

A more humane and theological approach centers the plight of those who suffer a forced disconnection from their family, the deprived who transit to another land, and those who come seeking relationships that enhance their capacity to flourish. Informed by testimony in sacred Scripture, Christians need a practice aimed at emulating God's mission as God's people.

The church universal today should continue to think critically and missionally about reasonable, necessary immigration policies for democratic societies in the industrialized West. It should do the same for migrants moving through different migration corridors: from developing countries to high-income countries and vice-versa; from the Global South to the South; and from the Global North to the North. Still, the ethical imperatives in the Bible should be the primary framework to inform our notions of compassion, service, and hospitality. God loves and rewards the hospitable because they reflect divine compassion and justice. But God judges those who abuse and reject the vulnerable, for they deny divine compassion, which is what makes us truly human.

Through migration, our values, faith, and churches are renewed. The reality of the migrant experience challenges us as Christians to be more just and charitable. We come to realize that “in the beginning was mercy,” as Jesuit priest Jon Sobrino beautifully states. This mercy for the foreigner compels us to embody Jesus, announce the kingdom of God, and denounce everything that harms the vulnerable as anti-kingdom. This is achieved only when the suffering of others is internalized and becomes a joyful orthopathos, a passioned identification with the other for whom God’s love is extended through us. Through migration, God changes our hearts. This mercy for the foreigner compels us to embody Jesus, announce the kingdom of God, and denounce everything that harms the vulnerable as anti-kingdom.

During this time of accelerating global migration, Christians are called to sacrificially love our neighbors, to extend compassion and hospitality to the vulnerable. We are called to fight xenophobia in the name of Christ, to diligently heed his word: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matt. 25:35-36, NIV). This sacred word has moved countless of Christians through the centuries not only to extend love to other humans, but to enter into the kind of praxis and compassion that makes us human.

This is our pre-political call, which precedes nation-states and geopolitical realities—our call to love from ancient times until today.

_{1 Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2020), 70.
2 See chapter two in Daniel Carrol’s The Bible and Borders: Hearing God's Word on Immigration (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020).
3 Julio L. Martínez, Citizenship, Migrations and Religion: An Ethical Dialogue Based on the Christian Faith (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2007), 51.
4 Peter Phan, "The Experience of Migration in the United States as a Source of Intercultural Theology," in E. Padilla E. and P.C. Phan (eds.) Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 148.}