Missionaries and Immigrants

I grew up on the mission field. I was two years old when we moved to Brazil. After several months of moving, visiting relatives, going to missionary orientations, and speaking in churches, we finally landed at the airport in São Paulo. I asked my mother, “Are we home now?” She answered, “Yes, Chris. We are home now.”

That is what a two-year-old needed to know. He needed to know that he was at a place where he belonged. He needed to know that there was some kind of security in being in a place he could accept and be accepted as being his. Growing up, that was always his understanding. Brazil was where he belonged. It was the place that had accepted him and in which he did not feel like an outsider, even when he had been born elsewhere, spoke a language on top of the local language, and carried a passport that was not issued by the Brazilian government. He even carried an alien registration card with him at all times, even if that did not communicate a message of any impending deportation.

We entered Brazil legally with permanent visas, but those visas did not allow for us to earn money in the Brazilian economy. I belonged, or felt that I did, even though I had a vague understanding that once I returned to the US for college, I would only return to Brazil to visit or again as a missionary.

Culturally, I only partway belonged. I was reared by parents who were immigrants and went to school with mainly immigrants like myself. I lived in a third culture with influences from the US, Brazil, Canada, Korea, Germany, Holland, Japan, Argentina, Bolivia, Scotland, England, and France. It was not until I left Brazil to go to college that I came to realize just how much I did not belong in my country of birth. On returning to Brazil as a missionary, I understood that I did not belong to Brazil, either, even if I was comfortable there.

Physically, I was an obvious outsider. That gave me permission to be different. I was also from the world superpower, which lent me a special status. I had the language skills of a native, which gave me greater credibility, but my outsider status was one of privilege. It meant that my voice carried more weight than that of many of the people with whom I worked. I had better educational opportunities than most, I had status as an American, and I had status as a missionary among Brazilian Baptists.

In Brazil, we pretty much followed the law of the land in regard to immigration. We filed all the correct paperwork, grumbled at all the necessary hoops and obstacles, and complied with the regulations imposed by our host country. We were in so many ways model immigrants. Well, except for the ways we exchanged currency, how we worked around the letter of the law to make our lives easier and more comfortable by bringing in contraband goods, and the like. It was normative, expected, and there were institutionalized ways to get around the law.

Between college and returning to Brazil, however, my wife and I also served as missionaries in Mexico. Again, we crossed the border legally, getting a tourist visa when we landed in Mexico City. Except that we were not tourists. Mexico did not allow missionary visas. They did allow tourists, so we just entered as tourists, stayed 90 days, requested an extension of 90 days, and then crossed the border to re-enter again as tourists. Was it legal? Not really. It was the legal work-around practiced by our mission board and others, as well. The Mexican government knew that we were actually living and working in Mexico. They could have kicked us out at any time. That was the rationale we used to say that we were in Mexico legally. Truth be told, we weren't.

The thing is, nobody cared. We were not causing harm. We spent US dollars in Mexico, which was a help to the local economy. We payed sales taxes, but had no Mexican income to report and on which to pay taxes. The mission board payed our rent. As foreigners, we were not allowed to purchase property, so trusts were set up to allow the mission board to purchase property in all but name. While our presence was not a detriment to Mexico in any way, our presence was technically illegal. No one in the mission agency, however, was perturbed by that. The evaluation was that the greater good had little to do with laws that weren't really being enforced, anyway.

Then we went to Missionary Learning Center with couples heading to “closed countries.” They were not supposed to be there as missionaries. If the government found out that they were there as missionaries, they could be kicked out or imprisoned. There was a stigma surrounding those missionaries, as though they were placing themselves in danger for a greater cause. Truth be told, the governments of those countries well knew that they were receiving missionaries. The mission board was not nearly skilled enough in espionage to be able to effectively send in missionaries not known to be missionaries. They just got away with it because they followed prescribed rules.

I was an immigrant and well received in Mexico and Brazil. Mainly, I was well-received because of my status as being from a world superpower. I had status. I was breaking certain laws, but everyone turned a blind eye, just as the US has done for decades with our own immigrants. The difference, however, could not be more striking.

My presence in Mexico was viewed by most Mexicans as positive. I had left the assumed comfort of my First World life to live among an underprivileged people. I was setting privilege aside to live among them and become their friend, acquaintance, mentor, pastor, or neighbor.

My presence in Brazil was viewed in much the same way. Especially when my wife and I began wearing the traditional clothing of the Gauchos of southern Brazil. We were becoming as they, setting aside privilege to live among and accept them as they are.

My own country of birth, however, has a very different history with immigrants to its own shores. We don't even deign to call the missionaries we send around the world immigrants. That is what they are, but we refuse to call them that. We refuse to call our business community living overseas immigrants, as well. We call them ex-pats. We refuse to accept that while they are living overseas they are immigrants, strangers, foreigners, and do not belong any more than the immigrants on our own shores.

We don't call our citizens immigrants, because we don't think well of immigrants. We look down on them, even when they are responsible for many advances, economic endeavors, and the increase of knowledge in our own nation. We are a nation of immigrants, yet we refuse to recognize that we do not belong here anymore than any other.

We stole the land we call ours from the people who lived here before we arrived. We continue to take land from those original peoples. They in turn took land from others, who took land from others before them. In southern Brazil, when people asked where I was from, USA was not an answer. They wanted to know where my family was from 500 years ago. The problem, is that I don't even have an answer for that. Most of us don't. We don't really know where we are from, and we don't have a clear title to the land, apart from declarations of current law.

I am part Chickasaw. I am part Irish. I am part English. I am part Scottish. I am probably part Russian. Without doing a DNA test, there is no telling what other national origins I should claim. One this is for sure, if I treat immigrants poorly because they do not belong here, it is only due to my own ignorance, racism, and prejudices.

If I claim immigrants should follow the laws to come here legally, I have to ask why it is OK to send missionaries illegally into other countries. If I claim that my ancestors came legally, I need to look at just how different the immigration laws were when they were coming. The Mayflower was an illegal vessel from a standpoint of immigration. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were, as well. Large swaths our our country were simply taken over by political fiat and military force. The legal process for immigration in the 1800's and 1900's was very different from that of 2017.

Southerners left the failed Confederacy and moved to Brazil in the latter 1800's. They established a town called Americana in the state of São Paulo. They did not have proper visas. They just went. That has often been our history. You see, we might talk about laws in regard to people we don't want to be here, but we brush them aside when similar laws would apply to ourselves. We blame immigrants for being here without proper paperwork, but them we hire them to save wage money.

And maybe that's why we don't call our own people immigrants when they move overseas. We don't want people to despise us the way we are wont to do with those we call immigrants.

 Maybe it would help if we just started calling them neighbors and friends. After all, our borders are artificial. Walls don't keep people out, and languages are changing all the time. To open our borders and arms, however, we have to take a little bit of risk. We have to risk the fact that as we get to know people who are not quite like us we might be transformed. We might be changed. We might have to take a fresh look at ourselves and quit believing that we are superior to the rest of the world.

—©Copyright 2017 Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/