Yearning to Be Free

Immigration has been in the news a lot recently. I don't live in Arizona, and while everything I know about the recent law enacted there makes me nervous, I also am aware that my context is very different and therefore I am hesitant to judge my neighbors that live in border states. It seems to me that liberals and conservatives can agree on principle that a nation has a right to protect it's borders, even as we remember that we declare to the world that we want them to give us "their tired, their poor, their huddled masses yearning to be free." We want to be a land of opportunity for all because that defines who we are, and what is best about this nation. It seems to me naive to respond that people need to just get in line and do it "legally;" this takes no account of the politics that shape our immigration policy in the first place, and who is welcomed in and who is not.

I am proud of that American heritage to welcome the stranger, to make room for the one who is different and to recognize the gifts that each wave of immigrants brings to this country. But deeper still than that pride of country, I am a Christian. The story of my faith is rooted in the story of people who were strangers in a foreign land, a people called to remember what it was like to be slaves in Egypt. As they entered the Promised Land they were reminded that this experience must define them in each new generation as they related to the stranger in their midst: "You, too, must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19) That word is variously translated as sojourner or alien but the meaning is clear: to move beyond xenophobia (fear of the stranger) and toward love of the stranger. That doesn't require theory, but practice. And practice involves real people, and real life is messy.

Eric Baldaras is a rising sophomore at Harvard College. He came to this country - illegally - as a four-year old. I don't imagine he had a lot of say in that decision. Even so, after arriving here he did what immigrants have done in this country for over two hundred years, he did what we told him we wanted him to do. He worked hard and succeeded in high school, was admitted to Harvard, and seems to be thriving there. Now his immigration status has been discovered and he may be deported back to, well, where exactly? Could anyone seriously argue that Mexico is his "home?" What could he possibly remember about the town of his birth. This is his home, this is where his community is.

I don't for a moment pretend that the legal issues are easy to sort out here, or that immigration policy should be based on emotion. But in the end, immigration policy is about who WE are, not just about those we choose to let in or turn away. If we are to err, may it be on the side of hospitality and love of neighbor.