Should We Welcome the Stranger?

Maryada Vallet of Tucson, Ariz., is an evangelical Christian whose faith led her to serve the poor after graduating from college last year. But if some of her fellow evangelicals in Congress get their way, her work will soon become a federal crime.

 

That’s because in scorching summer months, Vallet rides the desert in a pickup truck, stopping to feed and wash the feet of migrants on the run from border patrol guards. Such a ministry of collaboration with undocumented immigrants would become illegal under a House-passed bill that’s expected to reach the Senate floor this week.

 

For lawmakers and outreach workers alike, immigration isn’t just a political issue. It’s a moral one as well. But that isn’t making this year’s debate a simple one to settle. If anything, the moral dimension is adding a difficult layer of complexity to an already complex issue.

 

 

And it's an issue that is attracting strong feelings on both sides. On March 26, an estimated half-million demonstrators took to the streets in Los Angeles to show support for undocumented aliens and oppose the legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. In addition to the LA march, which surprised even its organizers with its size, there were similar marches in Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta, and other U.S. cities. Some immigrant advocates dubbed the grassroots outpouring a new civil-rights movement.

 

“Anyone who believes” in the biblical story of the gentile who stopped to help a wounded man, Vallet says, “should be outraged that… the government is making it a crime to be a Good Samaritan.”

 

But other people of faith, including some evangelicals, don’t see the dilemmas surrounding immigration reform as being quite so cut and dried. The Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, hasn’t taken a position on immigration reform because there’s no denominational consensus on how to handle the justice question, according to Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which articulates Southern Baptist views on contemporary issues.

 

Many Baptists “are not comfortable with a government that doesn’t enforce the law,” Land says. He cites Romans 13:1-7 as warrant to say: “God forgives and forgets. Governments can’t… Government has a responsibility to punish that I [as an individual] don’t have.” Yet because mass deportation “isn’t realistic” and could be devastating to several regional economies, Land supports President Bush’s proposed guest-worker program, yet with penalties attached so it’s “not a complete rewarding of people who have broken the law.”

 

Thorny as the issue is, more than a dozen states are expected to join Congress this year in passing new immigration-related laws. Local and state governments say they’re sinking in expenses associated with an estimated 11 million undocumented residents. Yet many observers, including Land, say American businesses and homeowners can’t get by without their labor.