Getting my Story Straight (Immigration Series)
In 2012 I remember hearing that Obama might be the antichrist, and how the world would fall apart if he got elected again. That didn’t sit right with me. In 2015 I got some flack from connecting with #Black Lives Matter (when my husband and daughters are black), but I got whammed when I posted “We Welcome Refugees.” Some Christians took me to task about how unchristian I was being while my heart was breaking over a young boy named Alan who washed up on shore, drowned while trying to escape the war in Syria. It was then my heart knew something had changed in American political culture while I was in Brazil. Or maybe I had changed? That’s what they told me.
It felt like I was taught the rules were one way, and then when the political landscape changed—the rules became something else to fit their opinion. Maybe that is just what happens when one generation gets older, and the previous one thinks it all went to rot and isn’t ready to hand it off. Whatever it was, 2020 was something that hit everyone. Coming back to the states three days before the election—transitioning to live in the USA full-time for the first time in my adult life—it was a lot. Then January 6th happened. It didn’t bother me as much as it could have at the time, because I was carefully watching the responses of everyone. I was glad to see they were as horrified as I was. Finally, I thought, something we can all agree was a bad thing and move on with life. It wasn’t a fast change. Everyone kind of left it alone for awhile. But over the years I noticed the narrative around J6 change. By 2024 it had crystalized into being planned by the FBI with only a couple of really bad violent characters, and even they had already served their time. Everyone else was peaceful and well within their rights.
In the past, I could give the changes around me an excuse: “Oh, I was in Brazil.” “I wasn’t really here, so I don’t know…” but not for J6. I was here. Nothing else really surprised me until the September presidential debate: the “eating cats and dogs” thing. With my husband and his family being first generation immigrants, and my parents having met in and loved Haiti for my whole life, I was instantly horrified at Trump’s words. It woke me up to all of the other rhetoric he’d been using about immigrants, that I’d somehow overlooked (because he says so much—who can keep up?). But it wasn’t really him that bothered me—it was how I saw his words mirrored in so many others—Christians who I’d looked up to for years. People I generally thought to be sensible people were now speaking about immigrants in hateful, cruel ways: and they didn’t even realize it. They were following the mindset that they’d bought into.
It has taken me the whole election season to finally sit down and say: I need to study and know for myself what God says about Immigrants. I have a general idea…but there is suddenly a large group of Christians saying otherwise. If it were just the general public, I wouldn’t mind, but when it is people saying they are voting this way BECAUSE they love Jesus and follow Jesus, and I am voting differently BECAUSE I love Jesus and follow Jesus…I want to find the disconnect. I want to get my story straight. I want to center Jesus and only Him, not whatever culture war is going on. The narrative on Facebook is that pro-immigrant and refugee is a democrat, left issue. If I speak out for them, I am against all republicans and right-wing issues, perhaps even having people doubt my Christianity. For me, the issue is basic human dignity for all people, no matter their papers, because God gave me two rules: love Him, and love others. As a missionary, seeing the same people I’ve been called to serve degraded and sub-humanized by the very people who were so happy to support me is heartbreaking. My family is made up of immigrants, and so this is not just a political issue to me. Here is my journey into my Bible study on Immigrants:
Part 1: The (Biblical) Words Used for Immigrants
Part 2: The Bible Big Picture about Immigrants
Part 3: The Bible Verses about Immigrants that Feel Rough
Part 4: Practical Applications for Christians Thinking about Immigration