Immigration

An old adage says “Distant fields look greener.” Perhaps that is the principal reason humans have migrated for as long as we have lived on this earth. Uncounted multitudes have fled homelands due to war, persecution, rejection, disease, famine and other natural disasters. That is migration from necessity. Today we call such people refugees and reserve the terms emigrant and immigrant for those who choose voluntarily to uproot themselves and make a new beginning in a foreign land.

Patterns of Immigration

It is not always a greener field, usually an economic one, that motivates the emigrant. It may be plain old human curiosity. What is on the other side of the mountain or plain? Today that curiosity has taken us into space, although it has yet to make us immigrants there. Perhaps that will occur in the twenty-first century.

Curiosity involves risk. We test ourselves against formidable barriers in order to prove to others—and to ourselves—that we can do it! The reasons for emigration are seemingly exhaustless. We are looking for new resources for our talents or interests; we have a new political allegiance, a new faith or a marriage (compare Ruth 1:16-17 RSV). For the earliest men and women it would seem that migration was an ongoing way of life. Perhaps “wandering” would be a better term (Fairchild, pp. 1-4). They were nomads. No place was home.

The first emigration recorded in the Bible was not voluntary. Adam and Eve left their true home because they were no longer worthy of it. Perhaps humans ever since have been on a search for home—certainly God’s ancient people have been. At least in part the “wandering” Jews have preserved their identity because God had called a time holy long before a place was called holy. In all their exiles they preserved that holy day—the sabbath—and it preserved them.

Significant migrations in history came about because of a spiritual vision. People wanted space in which they would be free to develop a community life consistent with their deepest convictions. To a degree that was the origin of the American colonies and the basis of many later migrations to America. The “emptiness” of the New World was a vacuum that sucked out the restless and oppressed of the crowded Old World. Today the exploding populations of the Third World still see the United States, Canada and Australia as open space, opportunity and freedom.

At the center of the biblical story is the specific call to Abram to journey toward a land where he would be free to worship God and to father a new nation through whom the whole earth would be blessed. When Abram set out, he did not know the land to which he was being drawn. He simply knew God’s call and obeyed (Genesis 12:1-4; Hebrews 11:8). A later form of such a spiritual vision stemmed from the call to share the gospel, beginning with Paul, continuing through the years and flowering in the great missionary movement of recent centuries. Thousands upon thousands of Christians have left home and security for an unknown future because of their love of the one who emigrated from heaven to earth out of love for us. None of our emigrations can compare with his. He gave up all that we might have all (2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:5-8).

Problems Created by Immigration

Though humans have been emigrating since they first left Eden, there are significant differences and new problems today. In past history immigrants rarely had a clear picture of the world to which they were moving. Reaching it involved a perilous and uncertain journey that might take months or years. In today’s global village with its bewildering cafeteria of information—movies, radio, television, newspapers, journals, libraries—people often have a very detailed picture of the place of their new dreams. Increasingly, they are even able to purchase a home, secure a business and arrange schooling before they leave for their new home. Getting there has also changed to a matter of hours, even from the other side of the globe. But these possibilities create new problems. The immigrant’s picture of the new homeland may be too dependent on distorted images presented in movies and TV.

Perhaps more importantly, the very swiftness of the journey produces a severe culture shock and an inability to adjust to new circumstances. The former long journey with its hardships weaned emigrants from the old land and prepared them for the difficulties of the new. How important were the long, hard days in the wilderness to the preparation of the Israelites for their new land (Numbers 11:1-6; Numbers 13:25-33; Numbers 14:1-3)?

The sheer numbers involved in modern immigrations are now posing cultural, ideological and economic crises for the accepting countries. This is precipitated not only by the extraordinary floods of refugees but also by people choosing a new country when they might have remained in their homeland. France, with its deep-seated desire to preserve the French “fact” in language, social concept, government and the secular state, is now struggling with increasing numbers of Muslims, who do not separate religion and politics. Similarly in the Canadian province of British Columbia, which eagerly seized the influx of Asiatic money coming in with wealthy immigrants from the East, now finds the Asiatic “tail” wagging the old Canadian “dog”—and the clock cannot be turned back. In the United States, newer states like California, which was partly built on immigrant labor, now feel overwhelmed by the alleged drain on public money and institutions by the influx of people from south of the border.

These problems are multiplied many times over if immigrants of necessity are added to immigrants of choice. Countries bordering on nations shaken by civil war and anarchy find themselves inundated by waves of desperate refugees with no desire to be immigrants and few resources to establish a new life. Threatening the economic stability of the host countries creates deep resentments, feeds racism and fosters social instability.

Issues for Christians

Immigration raises distressing and profound issues for Christians, especially those who serve in government and must often help make decisions seemingly contradictory to their deepest spiritual instincts and convictions. What does the good Samaritan do in these circumstances? How many immigrants and refugees should a nation attempt to absorb? Should the measure applied be the ability to preserve the lifestyle of the average citizen in the host country? But what if the desperate conditions in the country from which the immigrants are coming have been created in part by the greed, racism, political interference and economic imperialism that have made possible the host country’s lifestyle? In a world of such enormous disparities in health, safety and economic well-being, how can true Christians refuse to extend a welcome even if it means their own hurt? While there is no simple answer, there is a call to deep soul searching.

The example of Israel is a rebuke to other Western countries. In the years 1990 to 1994 Israel absorbed 550,000 new immigrants, equivalent to one and a half million in Ohio or Ontario. It is true that their immigration was and is largely an ethnic and religious movement without parallel. Nevertheless, the problems of absorption are if anything far more acute than in the established economies and cultures of the West. Further, the welcome was extended to Muslims trapped in a war-torn Bosnia. Resolving this issue, while not easy, depends on the values held by the host nation.

In addition to immigrants by choice and refugees by necessity, there have always been immigrants without choice—slaves and deportees. America was in part founded by the former, Australia by the latter. In the case of America the social sore of slavery was seriously aggravated by the prejudices of racist laws after emancipation (Bennett, pp. 192, 225-26). It has resulted in a seemingly unending tragedy that not only is an enormous burden on the United States but also saps its moral influence as a superpower in the eyes of the world (Brzezinski, p. 101). Forced immigration followed by unaccepted emancipation casts its shadow over succeeding generations. Christians whose contemporary privileges are rooted in such a past cannot simply dismiss the shadow of today as not of their making. Their privileges were bought at the price of those past prejudices.

Again, when immigrants come in such numbers that they begin to form a sizable minority in the host country, can their demands for recognition of their traditions and their religion be denied? Should Muslim girls be allowed to wear hijabs (head coverings) in the public school? Should the public school system recognize the sacred holidays of Jews, Muslims or Sikhs? Should Christmas carols be banned in schools for fear of offense to those of other faiths? In Canada a storm broke out over the permission given to Sikhs joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear their turbans rather than the image-laden, broad-brimmed Stetsons. Instead should an attempt be made to have the immigrants accept the traditions and convictions of the host country?

Impact on Countries with Christian Traditions

Eventually a country experiencing such immigration begins to redefine itself. A country rooted in Judeo-Christian origins with strong Christian traditions and a tacit recognition of the Christian faith finds it profoundly disturbing to ask if it can any longer be considered, even nominally, a “Christian” country. This problem is even more acute in those countries where there is still a state church.

On the other hand, if a country relinquishes its links to the Christian faith in its public traditions, such as the oath of citizenship and the public role of the churches on formal occasions, does that deliver people to a religious and moral relativism that privatizes faith? Will its new secularism be a religion antagonistic to all transcendental values and to any conviction of ultimate truths?

This is not the problem of the Christian minority in a secular state such as France or in a Muslim state such as Pakistan, where, like the early Christians, it must learn how to fit in yet still graciously and appropriately challenge the received ideology and values. This is a post-Christian problem. This is the problem of a country whose public values have to a considerable degree been shaped by the Christian faith even though they have often been overridden by the values of imperialism and the marketplace. Is the tide of immigration leading us to a more honest recognition of a truth that has always been—that such societies are not Christian countries? If so, what does it mean to give Christian leadership in such a society, which is now pluralist but has a historic Christian tradition?

So far the influx into our Western countries of great numbers of people of different ethnic backgrounds, including visible minorities and foreign faiths, is largely the experience of our metropolitan areas. For the most part small towns and rural areas remain less disturbed. That in itself creates new tensions between the increasingly liberal cities and the generally conservative nonurban areas. But the writing is on the wall for them too as immigrants settle, find their political voices and secure economic clout. In the United States, California most possibly typifies the future of this trend.

Christians as Spiritual Immigrants

The man or woman of faith has always been called, like our Savior, to live in a world largely indifferent or antagonistic to a true life of spiritual pilgrimage and vision. This call has often been obscured by our attempts to establish a culture influenced by Judeo-Christian values. Perhaps the tragedy of Christendom (echoed in the later social gospel) was that we were deceived into thinking that we could create a Christian state and culture. But Christendom has collapsed. Perhaps now with the ebb and flow of immigration around the global village mixing old and new, the familiar and the strange, we are also seeing the collapse of that which in part flowed from it—Western civilization.

One of the results of the globalization of our countries through immigration may be the realization that Christians have always to a degree been immigrants, even in their own countries. Ever since Eden men and women of faith, like Abraham of old, have looked for “the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10 RSV, emphasis added). The book of Revelation gives us a vision of a city let down out of heaven by whose light the nations shall walk and into which the kings of the earth will bring their glory and the honor of their nations (Rev. 21:2, 22-26). But we must never forget that the city is not of our making. No, we are immigrants always looking for the promise, looking for home.

But the sureness and nature of the vision may both sustain and guide us as we realize that we are called now to being immigrants in a special way: not to leave for another land or culture where we think we may be able to create a Christian society but to understand that we are on a spiritual journey that will never really be accepted by our society wherever we may be. At the same time, like the Israelites in exile in Babylon, we are called to work for the well-being of the city where we live and to influence it for God as far as we have opportunity (Jeremiah 29:7).

Such influence for a Christian must surely deeply involve the ministry of reconciliation and justice. It is those who truly know in the depths of their spirits that they are forgiven who are able both to forgive and to open the doorway for others to forgive (Matthew 18:23-35). As immigration accelerates and both old prejudices and new and uncomfortable changes in society increase frictions, surely Christians should be able to exercise a healing ministry in the name of Christ the reconciler. At the same time we, who know that the Spirit is not bound by time and space, may be able to recognize and honor the work of the Spirit wherever we find it (John 3:8; compare Malachi 1:10-11; Acts 10-11). It is the Spirit who reconciles us and frees us to live whole-heartedly within our times even while we look beyond our times.

Being such an immigrant may give us a new relationship with our new immigrant-citizens, “strangers and afraid in a world they have not made” (Housman, 12:111). We have much to learn from them and much to share. Being such an immigrant is at the very heart of our faith. Being a Christian is being an immigrant in the steps of our incarnate, crucified and risen Lord and looking for his return.

» See also: Citizenship

» See also: Culture

» See also: Ethnocentrism

» See also: Global Village

» See also: Multiculturalism

» See also: Nationalism

» See also: Racism

» See also: Traveling

References and Resources

L. Bennett Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1969); R. W. Bibby, Mosaic Madness (Toronto: Stoddard Publishing, 1943); L. F. Bouvier, Peaceful Invasions: Immigration and Changing America (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992); Z. Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New York: Scribner, 1993); H. Butterfield, Christianity and History (London: Fontana Books, 1957); The Changing Course of International Migration (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1993); J. Dawson, Healing America’s Wounds (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1994); H. P. Fairchild, Immigration: A World Movement and Its American Significance (rev. ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1925); A. E. Housman, Complete Poems: Last Poems (New York: Henry Holt, 1959); A. Meier, The Making of Black America (New York: Atheneum, 1969); C. H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

—Wilber Sutherland