Several months ago, I spoke at Antioch Church in Bend, Oregon on the topic of how I believe we might faithfully follow Christ as we think about the topic of immigration. After my talk, as they do every week at Antioch, we took some time for a Questions & Answers segment they call “Redux.”
One question that I was asked was on how the Church might respond to immigration policy questions without politicizing the issue. Here’s my response:
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This has been my mantra for some time that immigration issues are not partisan issues but human rights issues (and for Christians scriptural issues).
I think keeping the focus on it being a human rights/christian issue and refusing to allow any one party to claim it will help immensely in solving the problem. If we can get this away from the win/lose scenario of the political scene it will help.
For believers, the most effective way to de politicize the issue is to sacrifice. That is, when it can be shown (rarely, if at all) that liberalized quotas are detrimental to a domestic population we can offer to compensate them for any loss. We might imagine this working by instituting a two-stage quota. The first stage works the same as today, with similar numbers. The second stage allows a larger number to immigrate provided they post a bond against which any public service expenses can be charged. Christians can offer to post this bond for new immigrants.
I would gladly take personal financial responsibility for scores of Haitian immigrants so that they could escape the cunditions they are currently trapped within.