Last November Americans elected a presidential candidate who promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. The candidate demonized certain kinds of immigrants and flagrantly lied about them to whip up his rabid base. He was careful, mind you, not to demonize immigrants from predominantly white European countries and a plurality of American voters flocked to the polls to put him in the White House (again). 

 

It’s true that previous administrations did little to halt the surge of undocumented immigrants crossing our southern border with Mexico. That is a fact, and I acknowledge that such laxity is unsustainable. We needed a plan to deal with the millions of migrants who already were here and a broader plan to deal with millions more who would try to come. 

 

It was obvious then, as it is now, that our two deeply divided political parties couldn’t sit down and formulate a plan for what has come to be known as  “comprehensive immigration reform.” 

 

So here we are, having failed to come up with a sensible, humane and politically viable way to manage the crisis – the “huddled masses” desperate to come here versus America’s legitimate need to control its borders. The vitriolic loathing that many Americans have for darker-skinned foreigners didn’t help matters. 

 

The Trump administration, in its usual bull-in-a-china-shop manner, wouldn’t  trouble itself with the nuances of sorting out such a complex dilemma. It chose a simpler solution, albeit one that was cruel, inhumane and outright mean: Round ‘em up, get ‘em out of here. No due process. Tough luck for families torn apart. And selfishly, no consideration for our country’s need for workers who do jobs Americans won’t do. 

 

Let’s look at a couple of things that got us here. 

 

First, why are migrants so desperate to leave their home countries? They do it to escape grinding poverty and endemic violence, both political and criminal. No one who is knowledgeable about conditions in a place like Haiti, for example, can blame a Haitian for risking life and limb to escape the horror of life there. The same is true for Venezuelans who have seen their country descend into chaos and autocracy under Presidente Nicolas Maduro. In choosing to leave their countries, immigrants are making rational decisions for themselves and their families. Demonizing them as criminals is not only factually wrong but morally repugnant. Yet half our country and the leaders they’ve elected don’t seem to understand this — either that or they conveniently ignore it. 

 

Second, why do so many people from Mexico, Central and South America come to this particular country? The big reason is that for the past four or five decades America has depended on them to be the backbone of a labor force that’s integral to businesses such as poultry and meat processing, construction, agriculture, landscaping, hospitality, house cleaning, child care and nursing care for the elderly. Despite growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the US, the needs of business trumped xenophobia. Migrants continued to cross the border and remain here because business needed them to harvest vegetables, lay sod, build houses, cut-up dead chickens, and care for grandparents in nursing homes. Our message to the world was come one, come all; do the jobs we won’t do. People suffering in Latin America heard the message and acted. Who among us wouldn’t do the same? 

 

Had Republicans and Democrats been willing to do the work necessary to reform our immigration policy, things could be different now. The millions of law-abiding immigrants already here could have been offered a quicker path to citizenship. Simultaneously, our political leaders could have enacted laws for the border and for workplaces that would have discouraged would-be immigrants from illegally crossing the border for jobs they’d be ineligible for.

 

Would such measures ensure perfect border control? No, but they would make illegally crossing less rewarding than it has been, so we shouldn’t give up. Progress will come if we force our politicians to buckle down. Politicians, ever mindful of the next election, react to the mood of their constituents. So doesn’t it follow that if enough voters can be persuaded to treat immigrants more charitably, lawmakers will come around, too?

 

Which brings me to this: A good deal of the blame for the situation we’re in lies with Christians who have forgotten the very teachings they claim to follow. They might benefit from reading a recent piece by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and spiritual writer, titled “Welcoming Strangers in Scripture.” A link is below. (I recommend Rohr’s meditations to anyone of any religion, or none)

 

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/welcoming-strangers-in-scripture/ 

 

I once taught a course in the Deacons’ School of the Diocese of Rhode Island entitled Christianity and Poverty. It required a deep dive into the covenant codes of the Jewish scriptures (meaning the Old Testament or the Torah). These scriptures are full of admonitions about how we should treat the “stranger in our midst.” They’re based on the fact that the Jews themselves were strangers (sojourners) in Egypt. So the Torah admonishes the Jewish people not to be hypocrites but to welcome the stranger. In some translations the word “alien” is used to designate those laboring in the fields who are to be cared for. But regardless of what they’re called, the law was the same: Welcome them and treat them as you would want to be treated. 

 

In the New Testament, we learn that Jesus was even more insistent on how his followers should treat others — not only strangers but also society’s most despised, people like lepers, Samaritans, and tax collectors. Jesus made common cause with them all. He destroyed any notion of “the other” by being homeless and stateless himself, as Fr. Rohr points out. How can one read the oft-quoted passage from Matthew 25 (verses 31-46) and reconcile it with being in favor of mass deportation? You can’t. Not if you are a practicing Christian, or for that matter a Jew. Emphasis on the word practicing as opposed to self-identifying.

 

So how did this “Christian” nation put in office a man like Trump, who openly despises migrants and wants to deport them en masse? People like J.D. Vance would have you believe that Trump’s so-called Christian supporters are devout. Vance very publically converted to a right-wing version of Roman Catholicism, one that ignores what the Catholic Bishops say about treating immigrants decently. Can you be any kind of Christian and tell vicious lies about Haitian migrants living peacefully and legally in Springfield, Ohio? And then repeat those lies long after they’re proven false?  Can you be any kind of Christian and support someone who does such things? 

 

Well, yes, you can if you’re the kind of Christian who thinks that attending church occasionally or even regularly gives you some sort of magic “Get Out of Hell Free” card. You can be the kind of Christian who believes that having made some sort of public confession of faith, perhaps in answer to the evangelizing preacher’s altar call, makes you an example of Christ-like living. You can be the kind of Christian who believes a charismatic pastor who tells you that God wants you to have that Lexus or that God has chosen the US to be his special spearhead on Earth. You can be the kind of Christian who believes it’s OK to put corporate profits ahead of living wages for workers since you believe that Jesus would have loved unfettered capitalism.

 

Thankfully, we all know people who identify as Christians but don’t buy into any of such self-deluding nonsense. They are good people who do their best to live a life of constant conversion knowing that they will always fall short but keeping the goal in mind. They don’t spend their time wondering who is “saved” and who isn’t. These people haven’t forgotten the message of either the Jewish scriptures or the New Testament. And they know it’s evil to demonize immigrants and to champion  leaders who do.

 

What would have happened in last November’s election if the majority of people who call themselves Christians really led Christian lives and advocated Christian values?  I don’t think Trump would have been elected. But huge swaths of what we call the “Christian community” simply chose to ignore the teachings of the prophets and the gospel of Jesus so that they could support an amoral charlatan who they admired for his wealth. Of course they had plenty of company. Not all Trump supporters say that they are Christians. But MAGA is not possible without its white evangelical Christian base. So, it is fair to say that their rejection of the core tenets of the Christian gospel — the part about loving your neighbor — made Trump/Musk/Vance possible. 

 

Next time you see the face of Stephen Miller (Trump’s Immigrant Demonizer in Chief) please don’t give him all the blame for our hateful immigration policies. No, he is merely the tip of the spear of a mighty army of “Christians” who have rejected the very gospel they claim as their lodestar. Instead, they champion something called “Christian nationalism,” a scandalous oxymoron if ever there was one. They have gotten the leaders they deserve.

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