RESIDENT ALIENS…3/8/08
by SteveOne of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits followed our government’s decision to return some Native American archaelogical findings to the tribes from which they came rather than put them in a museum. The SNL newscaster, after announcing this gesture of ungovernment-like magnanimity, noted that, “As for the rest of North America, we’ll be keeping that.”
Did you ever stop to think that unless you are a Native American (we used to call them “Indians”) you are not a native American? It’s hard to think of us as aliens in our own homeland, but it is the truth, though seldom pointed out. That’s why all this debate on illegal immigration kind of grates on my nerves. We are a nation of immigrants, and the truth is that the way we obtained our homeland, more often than not, was not a pretty picture.
In these days of political primaries, immigration is a very important issue for a lot of people, with lots of heated debate about “kicking them all out” or letting some stay but sending them to the back of the line. Is there guidance from the Scriptures about where we should come down on the issue? Yes. Exodus 22:21 says, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” In addition, there’s Deuteronomy 27:19, with an even stronger warning: “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.”
I’m worried about talk of separating families, requiring employers to do the work of immigration agents, building border fences, and snatching the foundation from underneath industries that depend so much on migrant workers. In Old Testament times, the law of hospitality, with its insistence that the alien was always to be treated with dignity and respect, was one of the most important in the Book. Maybe we ought to read that part again.
RSS
Amen. Sometimes we forget the part in the Bible that says, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Thanks for being a faithful reader and commenter! You’re right…our reading of the Bible and our implementation of what it says can be very selective, as well as revealing of our prejudices and blindspots. If we could just remember the two that Jesus said were most important, loving God and our neighbors, that would solve just about every problem the world has.
I can’t think of any place on the earth which hasn’t been fought over, one group pushing another off of it. As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we can afford to be a bit more tolerant. Particularly when we have our own history as an example – protestants, run out of Europe, as the American frontier was more hospitable; Africans, bound into slavery, treated worse than the livestock; Chinese, escaping the intense competition brought by overpopulation, to be treated almost as poorly as blacks, Irish, run out of Ireland by famine, pressed into service in a war they had no place in; the Germans, calling themselves Dutch to avoid the backlash of WWII; Polish, Russian, Pakistani, Indian, all looked down upon by the people who’s ancestors faced the same persecutions. Who will we find to abuse after we’re done with the Hispanics? When will we learn to love our neighbors, as ourselves?
Right…and the interesting thing about prejudice is that it comes from our need to feel superior to another person or group, which means that prejudiced people really feel inately inferior, and their inferiority complex manifests itself in behavior that proves the very thing they most hotly deny!
Will we always need a target? I like to be optimistic, but what I see is that the prejudices of today are meaner than those of yesteryear. Maybe there is a bit less of it, but if that is so, it seems even more deadly.