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| Anna Rodell |
What do you see as the mission and the vision of The Immigration Coalition?
The immigration
Coalition provides biblically-balanced resources on immigration that show
compassion to immigrants and respect for the rule of law. Showing compassion to
immigrants doesn’t require us to eliminate all immigration policy or throw
safety out the window (especially because crime rates are lower among
immigrants than native-born Americans[1]).
Compassion does require us to reframe the way we think about immigration
issues. As TiC often shares, immigrants are people to love, not problems to
solve. This means that our first line of thought regarding immigration issues
should be “How does God call me to act towards immigrants?” – and our political
response should emerge from the answers to that question. Here’s the beauty of
living in a democracy: if our government’s response to immigrants doesn’t align
with God’s ethic of love, welcome, shelter, and provision for foreigners and
travelers, then we have the political power, and I would argue the obligation, to
use our voices and votes to change that.
Could you talk
a bit about the importance of TIC’s Water for Immigrants project? (Water for
Immigrants serves 500 migrant families living in a tent-city near the border in
Matamoros, Mexico, as well as another 3,000 individuals living in slums around
the same city).
When Jesus
ministered to people, He started by meeting their immediate needs. He fed the
hungry (Matthew 14-Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6-Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9-Luke 9:12-17;
John 6-John 6:1-14), healed the sick (Matthew 9:20-22, Matthew 9:35, Mark
2:9-12, Luke 17:12-16, John 9:6-7, ), befriended the outcast (Luke 5: 12-16, Luke
5:27-32, Luke 7:36-50, Luke 19:1-10, John 4:4-42), and protected those in
danger (John 8:1-11). He cared for their bodies as well as their souls.
The families in
the tent city and the Matamoros slums have been disregarded by governments on
both sides of the border and left vulnerable and thirsty. Without clean water,
people suffer from dehydration and disease, and this is particularly dangerous
in a pandemic. If we’re going to minister to people as Jesus did, we have to
care about their physical safety and wellbeing.
In late October
The Immigration Coalition held its first national conference. Can you tell us
why TIC decided to hold a conference at this time? What did you hope to
accomplish?
Particularly in a
time of such extreme political and social polarization, followers of Jesus
should be leading efforts at justice, compassion, and understanding. There’s an
amazing range of Jesus-followers doing this work across the United States and
around the world, and the conference allowed us to bring a handful of these
leaders together to share their experiences and their perspectives on
immigration with hundreds of people seeking to develop a Biblically-balanced, Jesus-centered
outlook. It’s entirely possible to respect law and democracy while doing
justice and showing compassion to immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and
that’s what we wanted to share.
TiC has actually
worked with many of our speakers before and connected with others through their
social media platforms and organizations. Our conference topics ranged from
ministry to political engagement to immigrant experiences to Biblical ethics,
and the strongest through-line of all our speakers was their commitment to a
Jesus-centered, Biblically-based approach to issues of faith, culture, and
politics related to immigration.
In your
estimation, did the TIC’s conference fulfill its goals? Looking back on it,
what lessons did you learn? What would you change or improve upon for next
year?
We’re humbled that
nearly 1,000 people tuned in to watch the conference! We saw beautiful and
fruitful conversations take place in the breakout sessions and afterwards on
social media, and that tells me that we met our goal to develop renewed
perspectives on immigration issues. Moving forward, we’re planning to host
smaller, more frequent conferences and workshops in the hopes that people with
restrictive schedules can more easily attend. Smaller speaker lineups will also
allow us to highlight more specific topics within immigration. We also hope to
open the annual conference to in-person attendance, public health circumstances
permitting!
Is there anything
else you’d like to mention?
When I was working
in immigration aid, I had the opportunity to provide legal services for women
and children at a detention center who were seeking asylum from Central
America. I met with more than 20 women who told me about the horrible suffering
they’d escaped from and endured on their journeys to the United States, but so
many of them told me that their faith in God sustained them and gave them hope.
They were desperately clinging to that faith as they waited for justice from a
prison they should never have been sent to in the first place. I grow more
certain every day that one of the greatest failings of U.S. Christianity is its
narrow vision of who holds the truth about God and who can evangelize whom.
When we imprison or turn away our brothers and sisters from outside of the
U.S., we are closing our eyes to the image of God that they embody and shutting
out the voice of God that speaks through them.
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