{"id":1469,"date":"2009-06-10T17:44:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T17:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm.php"},"modified":"2009-06-10T17:44:24","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T17:44:24","slug":"christian-leaders-push-for-imm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm","title":{"rendered":"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Christian leaders, including three members of President Obama&#8217;s faith advisory council, on Wednesday (June 10) pushed the president to make good on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform.<br \/>\nThe Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Noel Castellanos, the Rev. Vashti McKenzie and the Rev. Jim Wallis of the group Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) said immigration reform must have the same high-level priority as the government&#8217;s focus on banks, auto companies and healthcare.<br \/>\n&#8220;Whether we came to this country by choice, by chance, by capture, we have to proceed. This is the urgency of the now,&#8221; said McKenzie, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.<br \/>\nWallis, Castellanos and McKenzie all hold seats on the White House&#8217;s faith advisory council. Rodriguez is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.<br \/>\nCCIR released a statement asking the president to back legislation that would reduce waiting times for immigrants separated from their families; to provide a process for foreign-born workers and their families already in the U.S. to earn citizenship; to expand legal avenues for workers and families to enter the U.S.; and to examine solutions to the root causes of migration.<br \/>\nWallis, founder of the progressive evangelical group Sojourners, said immigration enforcement must comply with humanitarian values.<br \/>\n&#8220;Those principles will guide the process,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nWallis said he supported safe sanctuary of immigrants who use houses of worship as asylum from deportation, saying &#8220;the church has a history of not waiting for legislation.&#8221;<br \/>\nCastellanos, CEO of the Christian Community Development Association agreed that &#8220;Christians are going to do whatever it takes to help their neighbor. I think it pushes us to look at what our national laws are.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>By Lindsay Perna<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Christian leaders, including three members of President Obama&#8217;s faith advisory council, on Wednesday (June 10) pushed the president to make good on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Noel Castellanos, the Rev. Vashti McKenzie and the Rev. Jim Wallis of the group Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) said&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) Christian leaders, including three members of President Obama&#8217;s faith advisory council, on Wednesday (June 10) pushed the president to make good on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Noel Castellanos, the Rev. Vashti McKenzie and the Rev. Jim Wallis of the group Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) said&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-10T17:44:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) Christian leaders, including three members of President Obama&#8217;s faith advisory council, on Wednesday (June 10) pushed the president to make good on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Noel Castellanos, the Rev. Vashti McKenzie and the Rev. Jim Wallis of the group Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) said&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-06-10T17:44:24+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm","name":"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-10T17:44:24+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-10T17:44:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/christian-leaders-push-for-imm#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Christian Leaders Push for Immigration Law"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}