Immigration, Part 2

Immigration, Part 2

…I was a stranger and you did not welcome me…Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. Matthew 25:43,45

The volatility of the issue of immigration into the United States (US) today is fueled by numerous factors: fear that we are providing safe harbor for criminals, fear that various resources needed by immigrants will become unavailable for citizens, and fear that immigrants will take our jobs or drive down wages by working for less than citizen workers. The common element in these factors is fear. And welcoming immigrants is not without risk – look at the fate of this land’s indigenous folks during the European invasion of the 16^th to 19^th centuries. Knowing the US is a nation of immigrants is not comforting when we consider what we believe is at risk. For me, my paternal and maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Germany and Ireland, respectively. While I have always considered myself American, I am still a descendant of immigrants in search of a better life – as are the vast majority of us.

For me, the question is not about the risks of welcoming immigrants but about what we fear we’re putting at risk. Is it our wealth? Our comfortable lifestyle? Our security? Particularly for those of us claiming to be followers of Jesus the Christ, those are not legitimate risks – at least not when others around the world so desperately need what we have in abundance. Frightening, difficult, and undesirable, yes, but not acceptable. Earthly wealth, comfort, and security are transient states and are not anything Jesus sought for himself or his followers. The wealth, comfort, and security offered in the Christian faith are not of the earth anyway. Who are we to believe we deserve resources beyond our need when other children of God suffer without them? Are we more deserving because we were lucky enough to be born in a land of copious resources? Are we fighting for a status quo that we have neither a right to demand nor the ability to retain?

We should not confuse the American Dream with the Christian life because they have little in common. Some believe America is the new Israel in the sense of its citizens being the modern-day chosen people of God. They consider the US land as the new Promised Land. One does not need to dig deeply into Jewish history to understand the ridiculousness of those fantasies. Much of the Bible tells of immigrants seeking asylum in a new, safer homeland that offers the opportunity for a better life. They settle and they move; they are oppressed and they are freed; they gather and they are dispersed. If there is a lesson in Jewish history for those of us in the US it is that the material stability of nations is transitory. All earthly kingdoms fall, as will our current one. Our very comforts and abundance will be our undoing, as has happened in every age preceding ours.

Realizing the American Dream involves accumulating earthly comforts, but the Christian life is about awakening to our oneness with God and all of creation, easing the suffering of others, and releasing our attachments to earthly comforts. Owning a single-family home or having food in abundance is not evil of itself – except when others are living unhoused and underfed. My wife and I live in a large home on a 5-acres – enough to house and support dozens of folks elsewhere, so I am not accusing anyone of something I am not guilty of myself. My hope is to make us all consciously aware of how much we have to spare without threat to our happy, self-sustaining existence. And it is that excess and our desperate attempts to retain it in the face of the desperate needs of others that will bring about our demise – maybe not in this generation, but soon.

We can learn from water which, in excess, flows to the lowest point. No obstacle, no matter how strong, stands for long against the patient power of water on the move. Like lightening traversing the shortest path to the ground, it is relentless. The poor, the homeless, the marginalized, the asylum-seekers are the rivers of today and make no mistake, they will gain in power as they grow in numbers, and every wall erected to separate them from the excess food in our freezers, the extra beds in our homes, and the trillions of idle dollars hoarded into banks and investment houses will crumble until the extra resources are united with the needs.  

The sooner we ease our grasp on our excesses and share generously, the sooner we will lessen the likelihood of their being forcibly removed from us in ways we would not choose. The power of the immigrant’s need is greater, physically and morally, than our power to hoard.

This is the 26^th in a series titled The New-Old Social Pandemic. The opinions expressed here are mine. To engage with me or to explore contemplative spiritual direction, contact me at ghildenbrand@sunflower.com.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s

Mass on the World

A Contemplative Audio-visual Experience

View at: https://youtu.be/m2EzRmZzCe0