Robert Chao Romero

The God of Abraham is the God of radical hospitality. He invites all to the banquet table of the Kingdom of God. Through the teachings and example of Jesus we know that, although God’s invitation comes to all, it goes especially to the poorest and most marginalized of society. Then, and only then, does it come to the rest of us. In the language of Latin American liberation theology, it cannot come to us without first going to them.

The radical hospitality of God is expressed by Jesus in the Parable of the Great Banquet. In this parable, Jesus tells of a certain man who invited many guests to a great celebration. The first guests, were those of economic means, who made excuses and rejected the invitation because offer materialistic reasons: they had just bought fields and oxen (Luke 14:18–19). The third guest likewise rejected the invitation because he was a newlywed. Jesus then tells us

Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.

“Sir,” the servant said, “what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.”

Then the master told his servant, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.” (Luke 14:21–23)

As this parable teaches, God invites many to the banquet table of the Kingdom of God, but it is especially the poor and disenfranchised who respond to his invitation. Indeed, God is such a gracious host that he desires that his “house be full.”

Expressing the hospitality of God, specifically to the “stranger,” or, “xenos,” Jesus says in Matthew 25 that when we welcome the stranger we are welcoming Jesus himself, and we when reject the stranger, we are rejecting Jesus himself.

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger [xenos] and you invited me in. . . .” Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in . . .” (Matt 25:34–35, 41–43)

To paraphrase Mother Teresa, “Jesus appears to us in the distressing disguise of the immigrant.” In the language of Latino theology: “Those whom society rejects, God welcomes and calls his very own.”

A broad review of Scripture reveals a further, more specific principle with respect to immigration: Migration is a source of grace both to migrants and their host country. Here, I define “grace” not in its limited sense of forgiveness, but in its broader biblical usage as God’s unmerited favor. So, to restate the previous principle in light of this definition: Migration is a source of God’s unmerited favor to both immigrants and their host countries.

Many biblical narratives bear out this spiritual principle. The call of Abraham is one primary example. God affected the salvation of the world through Abraham’s obedience in emigrating from Ur. Through Abraham’s faithful act of migration and the process which this set in motion, all the peoples of earth have been, and are being, blessed by him.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:1–3)

Abraham’s moniker, “The Hebrew,” found in Genesis 14:13, also reinforces the special nature of his migration call. As used in this passage, ivri, the root of the Hebrew word for “Hebrew” means literally “to cross over.” This appears to be a clear image of migration. Abraham is one who “crosses over.” He is the “crosser-over,” if you will.

The patriarch Joseph offers another example of God using, in this case a forced migrant, as a source of grace for many. Joseph was slave trafficked to Egypt by his jealous brothers and, through a series of divine interventions, rose to the rank of second in Egypt. Through this position, Joseph saved his whole family, Egypt, and Canaan, from famine. Joseph states as much to his brothers in Genesis 50.

“You intended to harm me [by forcing me to migrate through slave trafficking], but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50: 20)

Working in the other direction, the Scriptures also indicate that God provides for the immigrants’ food and other basic needs when host countries are faithful to notions of biblical hospitality. In Genesis 12:10, Abram (not yet called Abraham) flees to Egypt to find food and escape famine. In Exodus 2, Moses finds refuge for forty years in the land of Midian and the household of Reuel. In the book of Ruth, we are told that Elimelek and Naomi sought relief from famine in the country of Moab. Subsequently, Ruth emigrates from Moab with Naomi to Bethlehem in search of food, and in the process becomes a mother of the Jewish faith. As stated in Deuteronomy 10:18, “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.”

It is worth noting that hospitality to strangers is modeled biblically not only on an individual basis, but also on a systemic, or structural, level. Stated another way, God’s grace was extended to immigrants on a structural level through the legal requirements of the Mosaic law. Within an agrarian economy based upon land ownership and kinship networks, immigrants (or ger) were an extremely vulnerable population. Because of their sojourner status, the ger were excluded from owning land and meaningful participation in the agrarian sector. As a result, they were dependent upon the larger Israelite community for food, employment, and protection from discrimination. They worked in lowly positions as day laborers and in temple building/conscription. In times of drought, crop failure, or disease, immigrants were especially vulnerable because they did not own land and lacked a familial socio-economic net to supply their basic needs.

Divinely instituted, Mosaic law provided structural provision for the immigrants’ basic needs to the immigrants is reflected in the gleaning laws and special tithes divinely instituted in the Mosaic law. According to Old Testament law, landowners were to leave the grain along the edges of their fields, and the fallen remnants from harvesting, for the ger.

When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God. (Lev 23:22)

Moreover, every three years, the entire tithe of produce was to be given to the clergy, immigrants, orphans, and widows, “so they can eat in your cities until they are full.” (Deut 26:12 CEB)

Because of their susceptibility to societal discrimination, the Mosaic law also guarantees what might be labeled civil rights protections for the immigrant community.

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:33–34)

In striking similarity to modern U.S. constitutional law, the Mosaic law also required equitable treatment between immigrants and native Israelites, and prohibited applying the application of disparate legal codes for the two groups: “You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev 24:22)

These legal requirements bear a striking resemblance to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and represent one of its earliest historical precursors.

Returning to the theme of migration as grace, it is important to highlight that migrants often come to know the love of God through the habitually difficult, immigration process. This is born out in multitudinous biblical examples, including, as previously discussed, the lives of Abraham, Ruth, and Joseph. Others examples include Hagar, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, and Mary. In each instance, these biblical characters experienced God’s grace and provision through the migration process; and the end result was the deepening of their faith and relationship with God. The apostle Paul hints at this spiritually transformative aspect of migration in his famous sermon to the learned Areopagus.

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth [an implicit reference to migration]; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17: 26–27)

In as much as the Bible uplifts the spiritual principle of migration as grace, it also offers counterexamples in which migration is treated as “ungrace” and condemned by the Scriptural record. The Exodus narrative is particularly illustrative in this regard. Xenophobia in a time of war led the king of Egypt to cruelly enslave the Israelites and relegate them to forced labor.

He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. (Exod 1:9–11)

When the strategy of oppressive labor proved ineffective to subdue the imagined political threat of the Israelites, Pharaoh then turned to the even more insidious policy of male infanticide.

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites . . . The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” (Exod 1:12, 15–16)

As a consequence of its oppression of the Israelite community, Egypt experienced divine judgment in the form of the ten plagues and its miraculous military defeat in the Red Sea.

[Referring to the divine plagues] Pharaoh’s officials said to him, “How long shall this fellow be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the Lord their God; do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” . . . So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. (Exod 10:7; 14:27–28)

As reflected by the Exodus account, the Bible clearly condemns abusing of immigrant populations is clearly condemned by the biblical record. God takes it seriously when host countries exploit immigrant communities and treat them with “ungrace.”

Migration as Ungrace: U.S. Immigration History

Unfortunately, much of the U.S. immigration history over the past 150 years does not square with biblical understandings of migration as grace. Instead, U.S. immigration law and policy has more often reflected an attitude of migration as “ngrace.” Anti-Chinese xenophobia produced invidious legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which, for the first time in United States history, barred an entire ethnic group from immigration. Racism towards Italians and Eastern Europeans fueled passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, the Cable Act of 1922, and the Immigration Act of 1924. Together with the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924, and the Tydings-McDuffe Act (1934), these laws slowed immigration from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe to a trickle, and expanded migration flows from Northern and Western Europe. Between 1930 and 1935, repatriations and deportations of Mexicans totaled 345,839. Tragically, Mexican Americans were also not excluded from these deportations. In California, over 80% of the repatriates were citizens or legal residents of the U.S. Moreover, between 1947 and 1954 the Immigration and Nationalization Service boasted of apprehending more than 1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants as part of the notorious “Operation Wetback.” Racially discriminatory quotas favoring northern and western European immigrants and barring immigrants from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and southern and eastern Europe were not overturned until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965.

Regrettably, such mass deportations are not just a thing of the past. Since 2009, the presidential administration of Barack Obama has destroyed the family structures of untold numbers of immigrant families through the deportation of more than 2.5 million individuals. At this rate, President Obama is on pace to deport more people than the combined total of the 19 presidents who held office from 1892–2000. From January 2014 to October 2015, moreover, the United States government deported 83 El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran refugees to their deaths in violation of United Nations protocol.

Tragically, “ungraceful” anti-immigrant federal and state laws have also proliferated over the past two decades. Examples include California Proposition 187 (1994), the federal Sensenbrenner Immigration Bill (2005), the Hazleton “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” (2006), Arizona SB-1070 (2010), Alabama House Bill 56 (2011), and 162 other anti-immigrant laws passed by state legislatures in 2010 and 2011.

Although held to be largely unconstitutional and never implemented, Proposition 187, the so-called “Save Our State” initiative, barred undocumented immigrants in California from receiving health care, K-12 public education, and other public social services. It also required police, teachers, public school officials, and public healthcare providers to check the immigration status of individuals and report undocumented immigrants to the federal government for deportation.

The Sensenbrenner Bill, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2005, sought to construct a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, eliminate the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, categorize all forms of unlawful presence and visa overstays as felonies, and arguably made it a crime for churches to minister to undocumented immigrants. In passing the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” in 2006, the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania tried to take the issue of undocumented immigration into its own hands by fining landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and suspending the business licenses of people who hired them.

In its explicit terms, Arizona SB-1070 called for the goal of immigrant “attrition through enforcement.” SB-1070 requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained if they have “reasonable suspicion” that such individuals are undocumented. Civil rights organizations have criticized the law because of the severe danger it poses for racial profiling. Indeed, in May 2016, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found in contempt of the Federal District Court for his failure to limit racial profiling in the implementation of Arizona SB-1070.

In stark moral condemnation of Arizona SB-1070, Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared forcefully

I am saddened today at the prospect of a young Hispanic immigrant in Arizona going to the grocery store and forgetting to bring her passport and immigration documents with her. I cannot be dispassionate about the fact that the very act of her being in the grocery store will soon be a crime in the state she lives in.

Or that, should a policeman hear her accent and form a “reasonable suspicion” that she is an illegal immigrant, she can—and will—be taken into custody until someone sorts it out, while her children are at home waiting for their dinner . . .

But a solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution. A solution that fails to distinguish between a young child coming over the border in search of his mother and a drug smuggler is not a solution.

I am not speaking from an ivory tower. I lived in the South Africa that has now thankfully faded into history, where a black man or woman could be grabbed off the street and thrown in jail for not having his or her documents on their person.

Alabama House Bill 56 and Georgia House Bill 87 are like Arizona SB-1070 on steroids. Though partially invalidated by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Alabama HB-56 barred undocumented immigrants from attending college, criminalized the rental of residential property to undocumented immigrants, and prohibited them from applying for or soliciting work. It also required school officials to submit an annual tally of all suspected undocumented K-12 students to the state department of education. Georgia House Bill 87, signed into law by state governor Nathan Deal in May 2011, authorized police officers to question individuals about their immigration status in certain criminal investigations and threatened to fine undocumented immigrants $250,000, or send them to jail for 15 years, for using fake identifications in search of employment. In 2010, the Georgia Board of Regents also passed rules effectively barring undocumented students from all public universities in the state.

Political Scapegoats: Donald Trump, Tea Party

These various anti-immigrant laws and policies of the past decade have occurred within the context of political scapegoating. Since the economic downturn of 2008, undocumented immigrant labor has been scapegoated by the white working class population and opportunistic politicians eager for election.

Such anti-immigrant rhetoric has fueled the rise of the Tea Party movement. White workers have condemned immigrant workers as unfair labor competition and culturally inassimilable; politicians have seized upon this discontent among the electorate, adding that immigrants are also a drain upon state and local economic resources because of their use of social services such as education and healthcare. Campaigning on this anti-immigrant, restrictionist platform, many Tea Party politicians have been successfully elected to local, state, and federal office over the past decade. Most notably, reality TV personality Donald Trump has successfully ridden the tidal wave of anti-immigrant sentiment to the position of Republican presidential nominee. In his now notorious words

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

“Donald Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Migration as Grace: The Vast Economic Contributions of Undocumented Immigrants

Contrary to the claims of the loud chorus of anti-immigrant politicians such as Donald Trump, undocumented immigrants serve as an important source of grace to the United States through their vast economic contributions in the form of labor and taxes.

Undocumented immigrants account for 4.3% of the U.S. labor force—about 6.3 million workers out of 146 million. They are clustered in construction, agriculture, the service sector, and domestic work. Undocumented workers make up

27% of drywall/ceiling tile installers

21% of roofers

20% of construction laborers

26% of grounds maintenance workers

25% of butchers/meat and poultry workers

18% of cooks

23% of misc. agricultural workers

22% of maids and housekeepers

18% of sewing machine operators

Note that these are national statistics. In places like California, Texas, New York, and Florida, the percentages are much higher. In California, 1 in 10 workers is undocumented.

To fill our ravenous need for cheap labor, approximately 850,000 undocumented immigrants came to the U.S. on an annual basis from 2000–2005. It is estimated that more than 11 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States in 2014.

It is further estimated moreover, that undocumented immigrants contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. In 2006, unauthorized immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars to the nation’s $13.6 trillion gross domestic product.

Undocumented immigrants are viewed positively by the federal government because of their multi-billion dollar contributions to Social Security and Medicare. In order to secure employment, many undocumented immigrants provide false social security numbers to their employers. Billions of dollars in payroll taxes are in turn collected by the federal government based upon these false social security numbers—to the tune of $12 billion in 2007 alone. According to Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, unauthorized immigrants contributed up to $240 billion to the Social Security trust fund by 2007. Moreover, if not for these monumental tax contributions, the Social Security administration would have experienced payment shortfalls as early as 2009. Ironically, undocumented immigrants support the pensions of droves of Tea Party members who are of retirement age and yet who most vehemently support draconian immigration restrictions and deportations.

Unauthorized immigrants contribute in many significant ways to state economies and state and local tax revenues as well. Immigrants make large economic contributions not only in traditional immigration receiving states such as California and Texas, but even in southern and Midwestern states not typically associated with large Latino immigrant populations.

For example, in California, unauthorized immigrants constitute 10% of the total workforce and contribute $130 billion annually to the state Gross Domestic Product. A 2006 study by the Texas Comptroller found that undocumented immigrants contributed $17.7 billion dollars to state GDP and generated $1.58 billion in state revenues. The University of Chicago reported that undocumented immigrants spent $2.89 billion in the Chicago metropolitan area in 2001 and helped support more than 30,000 jobs through their spending.

Even in southern states such as Georgia and Virginia, undocumented immigrants supply hundreds of millions of dollars per year in income, payroll, and property taxes. In 2006, the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute reported that unauthorized immigrants contributed more than $215 million in the form of income and property tax and aggregated sales. The Commonwealth Institute, moreover, calculated that undocumented immigrants provide up to $450 million per year in tax revenue in Virginia and that they represent a critical source of labor in the construction, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality industries.

More recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010. These contributions varied state by state, with California receiving more than $2.2 billion and the state of Montana receiving less than $2 million. These state and local tax contributions derive from sales and excise taxes, personal income taxes, and property taxes.

The legalization of undocumented immigrants, moreover, would result in huge windfalls of state tax revenue. This increase in tax revenue would result, in part, from an increase in wages and taxable income for unauthorized workers. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda of the UCLA N.A.I.D. Center projects that legalization would increase state tax revenue by $5.3 billion in California, $540 million in Arizona, $297 million in Colorado, $1.13 billion in Florida, and $4.1 billion in Texas.

A “Mathematics of Injustice:” The “grace” provided to us by immigrants goes unrecognized by our broken immigration system

Although an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants supply upwards of 400 billion dollars per year to the national gross domestic product, and contribute hundreds of billions of dollars more to federal and state coffers through tax contributions, guess how many unskilled labor visas the United States granted to all immigrants from every country in the world in 2010? The answer is 4,762 unskilled labor visas. Moreover, even if the U.S. wished to grant more than that, it is limited to a maximum of 10,000 unskilled worker visas annually for all nations across the globe. On paper therefore, the U.S. government claims the nation has but a small shortage of unskilled labor that requires supplementation through the awarding of a miniscule number of unskilled labor visas. In reality, however, the U.S. depends upon, and exploits, the cheap, supplemental labor of more than 6 million undocumented immigrant workers.

Fairness, indeed, biblical justice, requires that the U.S. government recognize the manifold economic contributions of immigrants by granting them a concomitant number of work visas and/or legal residency status. To refuse to do so is biblical exploitation (Deut 10:17–19; Exod 23:9; Matt 25:35–40). Failure to provide immigration relief constitutes biblical oppression, for it perpetuates a system in which 11 million immigrants are exploited for their multi-billion dollar economic contributions but denied denies them basic civil and human rights. It is tantamount to slavery—benefiting from the human being’s labor of a human being but purposefully denying her or his fundamental humanity. Stated another way, although undocumented immigrants already participate as economic citizens of this nation, they have not been granted the concomitant rights of political citizenship. Even worse, despite their vast economic contributions, undocumented immigrants have been scapegoated for the economic woes of our nation and are being manipulated in the national discourse for short-term political gain.

Conclusion

The Christian community of the United States has a serious moral choice to make with respect to the 11 million undocumented immigrants that God has brought to live with us as neighbors. Will we model to them the radical hospitality of the God of Abraham, or will we reflect to them the oppression of Egypt? Will we be Pharaoh or Jesus? As a reflection of Pharaoh, will we continue to exploit their cheap labor in order to buttress our economy while at the same time scapegoating them as part of an imagined political threat and the “war on terror?” Or, in reflection of Jesus and his radical hospitality, will we humble ourselves to recognize the manifold expressions of grace we receive from them and reciprocate this grace through the compassionate reformation of our immigration laws?

If the Christian community continues in the historical trajectory of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, Operation Wetback, Proposition 187, and Arizona SB-1070, then we will be known as Egypt. We will also destroy the witness of Christ which is just now beginning to be rehabilitated through the important work of organizations such as the Evangelical Immigration Table, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and the Christian Community Development Association.

As our other alternative, we can choose to embody God’s grace to the immigrant community by drawing from the biblical examples of Abraham, Ruth, Naomi, and Jesus. It is interesting to me that Egypt got a second chance. Although it was condemned in the Exodus narrative for its exploitation of the Israelites, in the book of Matthew we are told

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” (Matt 2:13)

Egypt got a second chance to show hospitality—in this case to the refugee Christ-child and the holy family. Reversing course from the xenophobic pattern expressed in the Exodus account, Egypt lived out radical hospitality towards Jesus the Messiah, Joseph, and Mary.

If this biblical narrative were to take place in the United States today instead of in Egypt 2,000 years ago, would Jesus and his family be welcome? Or would we pass new immigration laws and policies to deport them? Indeed, this is the exact challenge posed to us by the spiritual principles of Matthew 25 and the various selections of Scripture which have been explored in this essay.

Jesus and his mother now appear to us in the distressing disguise of 11 million undocumented immigrants and refugees from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, China, the Philippines, and Syria, as well as from many other countries from throughout the globe. Like Jesus and Herod, many of them, especially those from Central America and Syria, are fleeing violence and bloodshed. Many others are fleeing poverty and social displacement caused by the forces of economic globalization and U.S. international economic policy. For the past 150 years, the United States has treated most immigrants from Mexico, Latin America, and Asia like Pharaoh and the Israelites.

Like Egypt and the holy family, the United States now has a second chance. Will we make it right by welcoming, with radical hospitality, the millions of immigrant neighbors who now live in our midst? Will we pass compassionate immigration reform which takes seriously the biblical principle of migration as grace? The choice is ours.