It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country which God had promised to give him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going … ” Hebrews 11:8-10 (Good News Bible)

Migration is one of the most important topics on the current worldwide agenda. Politicians, sociologists, economists, theologians, Bible scholars, news reporters, and citizens are all interested in what is happening with the migration of peoples and national immigration policies around the world.

The Bible offers a wide spectrum of migration examples — individuals, families, and large groups. Migration is frequently portrayed as an act of faith of the people of God. Adam and Eve are forced to migrate as a result of their disobedience. Cain was condemned to migrate and be a foreigner and a wanderer as punishment for the murder of his brother Abel. Abraham was called to migrate to receive the promise of God for him and his descendants. The Jews migrated to Egypt looking for economic prosperity and survival. Joseph in Egypt was an immigrant serving as a high political leader; the same happened to Daniel in Babylon and Esther in Persia. Moses, who was born in Egypt from Hebrew parents, was educated to oppress the people of his own blood, but God transformed him into the leader who led the most famous migration of the Bible, the Exodus. Some of the prophets were political refugees migrating from one place to the next when they were persecuted by the political and religious powers. The Lord Jesus experienced during his life the painful process of migration. Immediately after his birth his family migrated to Egypt fleeing from Herod’s persecution. During his life, Samaritans criticized him because he was a Jew and Jews criticized him because he was Galilean. His situation was the same experience as immigrants’ today in many areas of the world.

The Bible is the Book of Migrants.

But, where are the immigration regulations in the Bible? The Bible doesn’t address the process these individuals and groups had to go through in order to migrate to another country. Individuals in the Bible move from one country to another without any explanation about border policies, as though there were no laws or policies to follow. What types of rules or processes did those people have to follow if they were interested in migrating to another country? What about families? What kind of regulations applied to large groups of people? The Bible is silent about this. If we interpret the silence as approval of the actions, we may be tempted to believe and affirm that the borders are not obstacles and everybody is entitled to cross borders any time they wish. That is not true and is not correct.

Borders in the modern world have economic connotations. If the Tsar of Russia had known the value of oil reserves in Alaska, he never would have sold this piece of land for such a bargain. Borders in the modern world also have political and cultural connotations. Recently two countries of Latin America were close to a war because one country, Colombia, crossed the borderline of Ecuador to pursue a guerrilla force camping on Ecuadorian territory. Apart of accusations and justifications, it is a dispute over a piece of jungle territory that cannot be controlled by either of the two countries involved in the conflict. Yes, borders are important!

The majority of Latin American countries face border litigations and confrontations. In the border between Brazil and Uruguay and Paraguay there is a particular situation. Farm owners from Brazil, who own land on the border with those countries, have been buying lands on the other side of the border. In effect the result has been the elimination of the border because those private properties overlap the national boundaries. People in the border area live the life of the border ruled by collaboration and peaceful relationships, but certainly governments and countries have different patterns.

Migration is no longer a simple problem that may be solved by applying the practices and traditions of the Bible. Migration today has economic, political, cultural, and social implications that complicate the solutions and force us to think in more realistic and less romantic ways. I think the solution cannot be a reproduction of biblical practice because there were a lot of things possible in biblical times than we cannot do in today’s world. We cannot affirm that because of Joseph’s migration of his family to Egypt, we have the right to do the same with our families — crossing the borders of any country to settle there avoiding border regulations and controls. It is not correct for any country to close its borders and prohibit the entrance of people from other countries in order to enjoy job opportunities and prosperity within the new country. We have to find a fair balance for this problem of world migration.

A Holistic Approach to the Migration Problem

On May 10-14, 2008, the 13th Regional Conference on Migration was held in Honduras. The Conference denounced the terrible situation on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. The most commented-on situation during the Conference was the “Oaxaca Operation” of March 31, 2008, when a trainload including 200 migrants was stopped on the border with Guatemala and migrants were brutally beaten by the police. The incident was made known thanks to an American reporter who was traveling the route with the undocumented immigrants trying to cross the border into the USA.1

Here on the Mexican/USA border, we know about deaths, the stories of families separated, testimonies of agricultural and construction workers who are exploited and abused and live crowded together in a small apartment or in huts in the countryside near to big cities. Most these people cross the border with the dream of a better life for themselves and their families. Most of them are not terrorists; the majority of them never perpetrated a single act of felony against property or individuals. We all know that the wall the U.S. government is building along the border is an insult to friendship, dialog, and peaceful relationships in a civilized world. And what is worse, we know the wall will never solve the problem.

We also know there are “human traffickers” who use the dreams and hopes of innocent people to increase their profits. These human traffickers charge the immigrants enormous amounts of money to the point that many of them have to work several years in the U.S. to pay back the cost of their “trips.” Sometimes these innocent undocumented immigrants are abandoned in the desert or are sold as sex slaves (women) or farm workers (men).

The solution for the illegal crossing of the Mexico/USA border will come when we address the roots of the problem. If the people don’t have better job opportunities in their own countries, it will be impossible to dissuade anyone from migrating. This is the# kind of alternative governments need to offer to their citizens. Transparent policies are also needed because the immigrants are now used as national investments in the economies of highly developed countries. It is easier to “export” immigrants to other countries, who will generate millions of dollars, than to grow their own economy. This is another factor that defines the problem of migration. Governments are involved, as well as private industry, the churches, and the cultural and social institutions.

Changing the ethical patterns

While we cannot follow the traditions and practices of biblical times to solve the migration problem, we can indeed promote the ethical pattern of the Gospel to solve contemporary problems. We also have to work in the re-education of our society to eliminate the philosophy of individual accumulation that destroys and eliminates the common wealth. The only way to reach this goal is changing the ethical patterns of our societies.

In the global world with the global economy, the market has been transformed into a kind of god that controls lives and properties of everyone. The market is also in control of the legal system to protect profits and capital. If we use this principle it will be very easy to understand that the wall between Mexico and the USA not only tries to stop the arrival of new waves of undocumented immigrants, but also is protecting money, resources, and goods that every year go to different countries as a result of the presence of immigrants in the U.S. The small “help” immigrants are sending back home to their families represents millions of dollars and in many countries is an important line of the national budget. But this is only the surface of the problem; the real purpose for the wall is protecting the profits of mega-companies that are the only beneficiaries of the system.

The fact that the U.S. government restricts the access of people to its territory, but gives free access to merchandise across the border confirms this as the wall’s purpose. The Free Trade Agreements that reduce expenses, paperwork, and time to facilitate free access of merchandise between the countries contradicts the restrictions and controls we are putting on people. This is the ethic of accumulation.  

One of the fundamental questions is, “How do we change the ethic of accumulation that rules in our society?” The Bible gives us an example with the incident between Jesus and his disciples collecting heads of wheat on the Sabbath and a group of Pharisees (Matthew 12:1-8 – Good News Bible.)

The ethical pattern proposed by Jesus in this incident is the only way to produce this multilateral dialog that will solve the problem of migration. The Jewish Law in Jesus’ day had lost its human side. It was not important if a human being was hungry, as long as the Law was honored and respected. This is very similar to the rules of the modern market. For instance, look at the solution to solve the high price of gasoline. The market is saying let us find cheaper energy, so let us sacrifice foods like corn, sugar, or rice to produce ethanol. Alternative energy is produced by sacrificing the needs of human beings. These experiments have generated numerous protests around the world, but big corporations and the market are interested in profits, not in persons. As an old proverb says “Free access to merchandise not people.”2

We need to understand the ethical pattern of Jesus and apply it to our daily life. For Jesus, humankind is more important than Jewish Law. In the Bible passage we used at the beginning, the ethical pattern of Abraham rests in the promise of a collective welfare for his people. In the same way the ethical pattern of Jesus didn’t rest in the letter of the Jewish Law but in its applicability to solve the essential needs of the society and peoples of his time.

Action and commitment of the church    

With this complicated scenario, what is our role as Christian churches? I believe we have two areas of action:

1. The Ministry of Prophetic Presence.

Different churches around the country, members of the “Santuario Movement,” represent this ministry. The Movement challenges the legal system of the country, but we are missing the real target. Certainly this is a way to be present and take a prophetic stand. But for the sake of the efficacy on what the church does, we need to invest our energy in a different direction. We need a type of national crusade challenging churches to be present in the political life of the country playing the role of social and moral conscience of the country. We need to be present in those places where we make policy and determine the future of the country. The church must be the voice of the voiceless in the places that the voiceless cannot access.

The church is called to facilitate a national dialog about migration. The real danger we have before us is not the building of a wall of separation between Mexico and the U.S. The real danger is the ideological wall of separation we are building in our cities, towns, and communities, creating distrust, planting hatred and bigotry, segregating people by the color of their skin or by the accent or culture they represent. We need to have a real dialog in which we have to recognize honestly that the United States of America is a country with open hearts to the immigrants. We need to share with our modern immigrants the same generosity demonstrated by the real owners of this land, the American Indians, when they welcomed the pilgrims and offered them a piece of their land to work in peace.

We need to reaffirm the soul of America.                  

The former president of the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A., Bishop Thomas L. Hoyt, addressing the Annual Assembly of the Texas Conference of Churches in 2004 said: “All of us arrived to this country in different ships, but now we are in the same boat and if we want to do something we need to be together around the table and participate.”3 Maybe its time for the church to convene a wide coalition to find concrete solutions to a problem that cannot be solved with a wall, deportations, and a rigid application of the Law. These actions have generated more injustice, creating concerns around the world about the efficacy of our democracy.

2. Ministry of Compassion and Accompaniment

The church also holds and keeps the memory of the Gospel of Compassion in a practical way. The church in the United States has the responsibility to assist those who suffer the persecution of the law that forgets the human being and focuses on the “Sabbath.” The Ministry of Compassion of the church cannot be subordinated to any human law.

We are called to be in solidarity with those who cry waiting for deportation, with the families that are tragically separated even when some of the children are American citizens. We have to be in solidarity with those who are hidden, not because they are murderers or thieves or terrorists, but because they don’t have papers to stay legally in this country. We have to be a church that knows how it feels to be separated from one’s own family, roots, cultures, and countries. That church believes in the human being.

The famous poet of the Spanish exile, León Felipe, wrote a beautiful and touching poem that describes the vacuum of national and cultural identity connected with migration processes. Condemned to leave Spain, fleeing from the dictatorship, he wrote several works that reflect the agony of the immigrant and the sadness of those “who are not from this place, but neither from that place.” He says:

It’s a pity that I don’t have

   a homeland!

Where I can sing always with

   the same tune,

to the same river that carries always  

   the same water,

to the same sky, the same fields

   or the same house.

It’s a pity that I don’t have a house!

How I will sing if I am an outcast that

   only has a cloak! 4

How important would it be for León Felipe to count on the presence of a church reminding him with the voice of solidarity of Jesus’ saying: And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak too. Matthew 5:40 – King James Version.

This is the challenge of migration to the Christian conscience.

Jose Luis Casal is general missioner of Tres Rios presbytery, Odessa/Midland, Texas. This article is based on a presentation in the VII Meeting of the Synod of El Noroeste of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico, gathered in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico on May 26-29, 2008, where he was representing the Synod of The Sun of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

1Latin American Agency News (ALN) – Nicaragua May 14, 2008 – “Migration Network denounces violations in the migrant route”

2Quoted by Leopoldo Cervantes in the article “Migration, Globalization and Bible Faith” – World Student Christian Federation in Latin America (FUMEC) Newsletter – April 2008

3Texas Conference of Churches – Documents of General Assembly 2004

4León Felipe – Antología de Poesía – México FCE, 1993, p.27 (translated by José L. Casal)

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