As I sit down to write about immigrants, I'm reminded of something I tend to forget—I am one. An illegal one, originally.
In 2000, I left my home in Canada and drifted across the border with nothing but a driver's license, a little cash, and a duffle bag of clothes. Ah, the things you could do before 9/11!
My older brother had moved to Portland, Oregon, a few years earlier, so that's where I headed, taking up residence on his futon. Months passed before I decided to do something about the fact that I was in the country without any documentation. Once I did, I found the process relatively easy, largely thanks to the fact that my mother was born in the U.S. There were no lawyers or legal fees. No test to pass. I just filled out a seven-page application and received a social security number a month later.
The cultural transition was even easier. Other than sounding a little funny to my new friends (people still chuckle whenever an "eh" escapes my lips), there was no language barrier. And I didn't look any different from the majority of people in the largely Caucasian Pacific Northwest.
How different from the experience of many other immigrants.
Most face formidable legal, financial, language, and cultural barriers. Life is especially difficult for the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the U.S. or those who have fled violence or persecution in their native countries.
The issue hit me hard this year when the nightly news routinely flashed images of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras flooding the southern border. Some of the detainees were as young as two years old. As I watched footage of children sleeping in cramped detention centers under Red Cross blankets, I looked over at my two-year-old son playing with his toy cars. The thought of him tired, scared, and thousands of miles from home was too much for this dad to bear.
Most Americans agree that our immigration system is broken. And there's a growing consensus among Christians that we must push for reform. In "I was a Stranger," Rev. Alexia Salvatierra points out that in 2007, 83 percent of white evangelicals opposed immigration reform, but by 2010 54 percent supported it. Meanwhile several coalitions of Christian leaders have formed to mobilize churches to urge state and federal leaders to enact more sensible and compassionate immigration policies.
Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, has called immigration one of the central civil rights issues of the 21st Century. Salvatierra predicts that the church may play as critical a role in this civil rights issue as it did in the civil rights movement of the 20th century.
Yet we must do more than push for reform. Wherever we fall on the political spectrum, as Christians, we must actively love the immigrants in our midst. Debating issues is easy. Loving neighbors is hard. But immigrants are our neighbors and we're commanded to love them. The good news: we'll have plenty of opportunities to obey that command. There are more than 40 million immigrants in the U.S., and many more on the way.
Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
