Loving Foreigners is Hard for Former Foreigners (Re-Post)

In light of the new law allowing police officers to ask anyone they suspect may be in the U.S. illegally for proof of citizenship or residency, Stephen Colbert from Comedy Central got on his soapbox saying:

“My great grandfather didn’t travel 4000 miles across the ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants. It was because he killed a man in Ireland!”

In 2007 all chaos broke loose at a rally in downtown Los Angeles in support of immigrants’ rights. This year there wasn’t any rubber bullets or batons used on the crowds (as far as I have heard). As you can imagine, in a city like Los Angeles where 50% of the workforce includes immigrants, immigration is an important issue to many of our friends and neighbors.

As I wrote in Peppermint-Filled Pinatas

“We should consider this issue beyond party lines and think in terms of what would be the more godly response. We should “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). Or for those with European ethnic backgrounds who seem to be more outspoken proponents of deporting undocumented immigrants perhaps, “do to others what we would have others do to our great -great-grandparents.” According to Thomas Sowell in Race and Culture, “Of the 70 million people who emigrated from Europe over the past few centuries, nearly 50 million went to the United States—and 35 million of these arrived in just one century, from 1830 to 1930 (p. 33).” When we choose to love the foreigner in our own land we are thanking those who accepted our ancestors. The Scriptures can inform and even complicate our politics, leaving honest and good people on both sides of the political aisle.”

For more on the subject of immigration, check out previous posts on “Don’t Come But If You Do We’ll Pay You,” “Kidnapping Muslims,” and Colin Powell’s thoughts on the “Greatest Threat to the USA.”