The Bible and Immigration

Religion has taken center stage in the debate over immigration enforcement. Earlier this week, a reporter asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to respond criticisms that Pope Leo XIV made of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. You can watch Pope Leo’s comments here, and Speaker Johnson’s reply here.

The Pope urged the authorities to respect the religious freedoms of detainees and allow religious workers to visit them while in detention. Citing Matthew 25, the Pope noted that when we meet our Maker, we will have to answer the question, “How did you receive the foreigner?” He called for deep reflection on what’s happening in the United States, especially with respect to people who have lived in the country for years without causing problems.

The Speaker countered that borders are biblical. Immigrants should be welcomed and loved, but the command to love one’s neighbor applies to individuals, not to the government. The role of the state is to maintain order and bring wrath on the wrongdoer, he said, citing Romans 13. He argued that we should uphold sovereign borders out of love for those inside the border, not hatred for those outside.

I appreciate the Speaker’s attempt to think through a thorny public policy matter from a biblical and theological viewpoint. But the Pope has the better of the argument.

ICE and CBP officers are not executing wrath on wrongdoers alone. They are harassing, detaining, and even killing U.S. citizens, non-citizens who are in the country legally, and people whose only wrong is being in the country without documentation, which is a civil, not a criminal offense.

In fact, the Bible holds the civil authority as well as individuals to a high standard of neighborly love. One of many examples is when the prophet Jeremiah declared to the King, “Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.”

Borders and boundaries are necessary to maintain the integrity of any entity, but sound borders are semi-permeable. Cellular membranes allow nutrients in, waste to go out, and cells to communicate with each other. Family boundaries are rather tight, but even families admit individuals from the outside. If we only married our closest kin, that would be disastrous! National borders exist to keep invading armies out while allowing trade, tourists, and immigrants to move between nations.

In the book of Ruth, when a famine broke out in Bethlehem, an Israelite family crossed the border into Moab looking for food. When the famine ended, some of them returned along with a Moabite woman named Ruth. She became the great-grandmother of King David. If the border between Israel and Moab had been less porous, Israel’s history and ours might have turned out very differently.

There are many details about immigration policy that can’t be read straight off the pages of Bible, such as how many refugees to admit every year, or how to reform the byzantine regulations governing the issuance of visas. But here is my list of first principles that I think all people of goodwill should ascribe to:

1. State wrath should target only the wrathful and should be deployed sparingly.
2. God calls the civil authority to a positive mission of protecting the vulnerable, and that includes the foreigner and their religious liberty and economic welfare.
3. The immigrant is Jesus Christ in disguise. Immigrants should be welcomed as the spiritual and material blessings they are.
4. Prudence should dictate the finer points of immigration policy, not fear or resentment.

Yours in Christ,
Marvin

Photo credit: Rio Grande Bend near Boquillas Canyon (Big Bend National Park, TX), author Glysiak