Immigration—Legality, Justice, and Morality:

Comparing immigration in today’s world to the lived reality of Ancient Israel is a difficult exercise. There are so many aspects to the issues that make it almost impossible to equate the one to the other.

First of all, there is no equivalency for legal and illegal immigration in Ancient Israel and surrounding lands. Abraham was semi-nomadic. Deuteronomy calls him “a wandering Aramean.” He leaves the land of his birth with his father, then travels on far beyond where his father stopped to take up more permanent residence. There is no legal process for being allowed entry or exit from one region to the next. The closest we might get to legal permissions is in terms of Abraham’s purchase of land from the established residents. Indeed, that cave and attached field he buys as a burial place is the only land over which he ever takes ownership. For the rest, it is simply a case of working out access to water and fields for pasturing his herds.

Abraham is hardly the only migrant mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. Jacob wanders off from wherever he was living with Isaac to go live with Laban, then he returns and bypasses Esau as he heads beyond him into land Abraham had once journeyed through. Moses leaves Egypt and enters Midian, eventually marrying and settling there, but has no legal right to do so, nor is there any legal impediment to deal with. When the Hebrews attempt to cross through Moab en route to Palestine, they run up on opposition and are impeded. That, however, is the case of a people moving en masse, and Moab deemed them a threat as such. A few generations later, however, we have the story of Ruth in Moab, who marries an Israelite arriving during a famine in Israel. She then follows her mother-in-law to Israel and finds her own place in Israel.

There is Ruth, but there are also David, Elijah, Jonah, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus' disciples, the Ethiopian eunuch, Peter, Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Barnabas, all of whom travel from place to place, crossing what passes for borders and moving between cultures and language groups. Jesus never gets permission to enter Samaria. Joseph never got permission to leave Israel, nor to enter Egypt. The magi who journey to find Jesus simply showed up at Herod’s palace without permission and no advance warning.

Secondly, as many talk about immigration in terms of following established laws and being subject to government authorities a la Romans 13, the question of law needs to be addressed. We have Torah, Israel's official written law reportedly coming directly from Yahweh through Moses. We also have another sense of law, however, law which resides in the persons of those in power. Sometimes that is local law and at others it is the officials of a larger region. We will encounter the elders at a city’s gates, a king such as David or Herod, Roman governors, and the officials of a town appointed by Rome.

When Jesus speaks of obeying authorities, he does this in relation to the Sanhedrin, and then regarding Cesar. He does not, however, demand carte blanche obedience to human authority structures as some would posit. At one point, he sends word to Herod, “Tell that fox that I am casting out demons and performing cures…” as part of a harsh response to Herod’s desire to kill him (Luke 13:31-35). In so doing, he does not bow to the desires or demands made by the legal authority. He later places “rendering to Cesar” in connection to “render unto God” as separate and at times oppositional demands for obedience (Luke 20:20-26). Elsewhere, he tells his disciples that one cannot serve two masters, for one of the two will always win out (Matthew 6:24).

When we look at Paul’s comments in Romans 13, we must bear Jesus’ comments on the issue in mind. Paul’s comments are not a blanket requirement for complete obedience to any and all human authority. It is rather a general principle of following laws and legal authorities. This is the same Paul who hid from Jewish authorities, who was let down from a city wall in a basket to make his escape. These Jews seeking his death or imprisonment had written authorization for their actions from the Sanhedrin. This is also the same Paul who used Roman authorities to protect him from Jewish authorities, one legal authority posed against the other. He hardly applied his general principle from Romans 13 while pitting one set of authorities against another, for how could both be acting as God’s agents while acting contrary to each other?

In a more modern context, we recognize that when Corrie ten Boom hid Jews from the legal authorities in her land, she was doing Godly work. Her actions were illegal. They were also just, moral, righteous. Law, after all, is not always moral, just, and equitable. Law has at times specifically countered God’s purposes not only for Israel, but for all of its neighboring peoples, as well.

That brings us to another issue that generally comes up in arguments about immigration. God’s requirements for humanity are not limited to the actions of individuals. God’s requirements extend to nations and governments. After all, Amos, Ezekiel, and Isaiah would be reduced to nothing without their diatribes against kings and nations all around Israel. Those neighbors were being called out by Yahweh alongside Israel for failing to measure up in regard to justice for the vulnerable and ignoring Yahweh's demands for justice. Psalm 82 calls on Yahweh to call the gods of other nations and their kings to account for their injustices. In similar manner, Paul calls on governors and kings likewise to turn to the ways of Yahweh as expressed in Jesus.

Israel was not originally supposed to have a king. They were supposed to follow Yahweh's Torah under prophetic leadership. Under Moses, law was given that should have been sufficient for life in the land under their care. God’s instruction in Torah was not directed specifically to individuals, but was for the nation as a whole. It established parameters for community life, just as much as for the actions of individuals.

Torah established cities of refuge. It established parameters for the periodic redistribution of land so as to avoid generational poverty and generational wealth transfer. It established feast days at which those without land had access to ample food, including meat that was provided for the general welfare through required sacrifice and offerings by those holding animals and fields with crops. It established limitations on slavery (better referred to as indentured servitude). It decreed immigrants be included in the regular redistribution of land. It decreed the native and newcomer be treated alike, with access to equal benefits from food and water to a Sabbath rest. These are instructions that go much further than what we tend to consider religious requirements, for they are designed to ensure the needs of all are addressed with equity.

Israel was not supposed to have a standing army. David’s census for such purposes was deemed a huge error. Rather than a military, they were to depend on Yahweh for their national and economic security.

When it comes to Yahweh's instructions, government, kings, generals, and city rulers were not granted any kind of pass. They were all to be held to the very same standard as the individual, priest, prophet, commoner, immigrant, or stranger. This included concerns of hunger, shelter, hospitality, land rights, mercy, protection, and actions demonstrating love. Of special import to the prophets were always concerns of the economic well-being of vulnerable populations, as economics lays at the heart of justice.

Beyond government being responsible to Yahweh's instructions in Torah, there was also the consideration we hear repeatedly in the Psalms regarding the land as belonging to Yahweh. In fact, Yahweh is described as owning all land everywhere, right along with any and everything that land produces. The sun and sunlight belong to Yahweh, just as the rain, minerals, trees, animals, and crops. Government has no actual rights to land ownership, and neither does the individual, for it all belongs to Yahweh. Such an understanding extends to those things we call borders. For Israel, they were to respect the boundaries of fields, but the crops in those fields were always open for gleaning by any walking by, both native and immigrant alike. Land was held in trust, belonging to Yahweh, but existing for the benefit not only of landholders, but for all the community around them, as well. Humans and our political structures are never more than stewards of what belongs to Yahweh.

In practical terms, Israel never really embraced all of that. It is difficult to see that laws regarding Jubilee were ever put into effect. We often find evidence of people ignoring stewardship to claim ownership, instead. We see repeated critiques of rulers and communities failing to care for the vulnerable in their midst. The immigrants in their midst were to be cared for with the same degree of compassion and mercy given one’s children. All persons were to be treated as equals under Yahweh's Torah, though the people never fully rose to that charge.

Repeatedly, we hear throughout the Hebrew Scriptures something along the lines of “Remember you were slaves in Egypt, but Yahweh….” That slavery was understood as oppression, as injustice, as failing to treat one another as equal before Yahweh. These reminders tie right in with the prophets calling for justice, compassion, mercy, care, and protection for the most vulnerable among them. They refer to people who have become widows, orphans, blind, lame, poor, sick, immigrants, and injured as a single class, those for whom our justice, mercy, compassion, and love must be in greatest evidence.

Compassion for someone in difficulty is justice. The term for justice in the Hebrew Scriptures is the same term for righteous. Doing what is right is doing what is just. They are one and the same thing. God’s justice is designed and directed toward meeting the needs of all, at times intervening to rectify our injustices and so shift the direction of our living. The same is true for New Testament Greek, noting righteousness and justice are the very same thing, with the stress always on meeting the needs of all.

When Jesus says, “If you knew what ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ means, you would not have condemned the guiltless,” (Matthew 12:3-8) we should understand that everything legislated by Torah is in view, placing mercy or compassion in higher standing than the following of any legal code. In this case, Jesus applies compassion as superior to the legal code of Torah, as it is the underpinning of all else. God’s justice is love. Love and mercy are what justice look like.

Under this understanding of justice we find the often repeated requirement we treat the immigrant, stranger, foreigner, with mercy and compassion we would rather reserve for our closest loved ones. This is expected of both government and the individual.

Unfortunately, the United States has never treated new immigrants well. We have never treated native peoples well. We have continually abused those we have looked down on as less worthy or casting them as not-quite-human. Whether that was people of color or Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants or German immigrants or Jews or Asian peoples or Latino communities, we have a long-standing history of denigrating and dehumanizing the “other.” The US is hardly the only nation with this penchant for demeaning strangers.

Germany under Hitler did the very same with all sorts of categories and classes of people. Of course, other nations of Europe felt similarly about many of those people and refused asylum to people seeking to escape Nazi Germany. We refused asylum for many at the time, as well people we promised sanctuary for helping our troops in Afghanistan. We still allow vulnerable populations within our borders to be abused at sawmills, meat processing plants, peach orchards, factories, and in the construction industry. It’s the same all over the world.

We continually abuse those who are here without documentation by holding their status over them as justification to underpay them or even not pay them for work. We are currently holding more immigrants in detention without due process, without proper medical care, and in otherwise inhumane conditions than Germany had people in concentration camps at the end of 1938.

When Joseph took Jesus as a toddler to Egypt, he was evading Herod, the King. Herod was the law in his territory. Joseph fleeing to Egypt with Jesus and Mary was a moral good, though his flight was unlawful. He was fleeing the authorities, but he was also entering a sovereign land unannounced and without seeking permission to be there. Fleeing to protect the life of his family was a good thing, though it was illegal, as it ran counter to the express will of the authorities.

Elijah fled from Ahab, who wanted him killed. He left Israel and eventually entered Phoenicia, without permission from any authorities. He lived there for some time before returning to Israel to face off with Ahab and Jezebel’s prophets. He then fled for his life again, leaving Israel again. His story is similar to that of Moses in terms of migration, and these are the two most respected prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. Joseph’s flight with Jesus follows a similar pattern. In all three cases, there is recognition of a big difference between law and what was right, between the will and actions of legal authorities and Yahweh’s purposes. Questions about borders were simply irrelevant.

We want to pretend that because we have different legal norms which arose over the last two centuries, said norms are just and right and necessary and thus an objective good. In times past, we made the same arguments for burning witches or heretics at the stake, lynching black men, and giving native peoples blankets with smallpox and measles. If we want any kind of consistency in following the purposes and designs of Yahweh's standards, our norms run counter to Yahweh's central tenets.

The path Jesus set before us requires loving our neighbor. He specifically showed us that neighbor includes foreigners, strangers, and all sorts of vulnerable populations. He ministered love and justice without concern for borders, nationality, ethnicity, or religion. He healed the servant of a Roman Centurion, no questions asked, though we would rightly expect both him and his servant to be idol worshipers. He ministered to and healed people of Samaria, with whom the Jews had a running religious conflict over questions of purity and faithfulness to Torah. It mattered not to him that the Centurion was part of the Roman Occupation force, which the Jews all viewed as an illegal occupation in Yahweh's land.

All those things we trip over in responding with grace, compassion, and love to our immigrant neighbors as a whole fly in the face of Biblical definitions of justice. They fly in the face of the better practices we find among Yahweh's prophets. There is no justification for holding up established legal norms above the very basic requirements of Yahwist worship if we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus. Jesus showed us a much better way forward. It was anti-cultural in his day, too. It countered the norms of society all around him. At some point, we have to choose between Cesar and God. There is no serving both, for they are rarely in lock step.

For our immigration policies to be just and moral, they would need to respond to the immigrant community from the standpoint of seeking their best interest. Anything less is not love. Anything less is not in concert with the requirements Jesus highlighted and called us to follow.

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.” – Matthew 12:33