Will Willimon is a Bishop in the United Methodist Church. He has noticed a negative impact on Spanish language Methodist churches in Alabama ever since the law HB56 was implemented. He wrote a post to his people informing them of this sad news. This is the opening paragraph:
“The fastest growing ethnic group in United Methodism are Spanish-speaking Methodists. North Alabama Methodists have invested huge resources in establishing nearly a dozen new congregations in the past few years. These new churches have become spiritual dynamos of our conference, leading our conference in baptisms and professions of faith – until HB56, our state’s notorious immigration law.”
I recommend reading the rest of “Our Spanish Speaking Churches in the Aftermath of HB56”.
We Christians in the United States need to think about allegiances. I know people will say, “They broke the law.” Yes, yes, but there are times when the laws are not just and when we need to try to enact change. I am convinced that immigration laws in this country need much reform. It is sad to think that people who share our citizenship in the Kingdom of God are being harmed because they don’t share out citizenship in our country.
the archives near Emmaus 
“I am convinced that immigration laws in this country need much reform.”
Um…I’m concerned that many of our Southern states will be de facto extensions of Latin America in another two generations if we continue not to enforce our immigration laws. Californians on the West Coast who have experienced one demographic overhaul after the next may not be bothered by such things but other regions who’ve developed a more historically rooted culture and don’t want to see it swept away or blended into oblivion (e.g. Alabama) will try to enforce immigration laws.
Citizenship in the kingdom is something determined by God, not US immigration law. Spanish language Methodism may be grown by missionaries going out, just as well as immigrants coming in.
The US federal government has a legal right to set immigration law, and the Christian precept is to honour earthly authority which has been ordained in heaven.
Correcting our lack of evangelism, is where our efforts should be amended. Amending immigration law merely achieves a political purpose, whereas amending our approach to evangelism achieves a kingdom purpose.
NW
I think the infusion of Latino culture into the southern United States will make a better nation not a worse one. For instance, my future children will be part Latino. I think they’d make fine citizens of the not so great state of Alabama if they chose to move there.
Andrew
This is not merely a discussion of whether or not it hurts/helps evangelism, but whether the lives of our siblings in Christ are harmed because of unjust laws. I don’t know where you live Andrew (you still comment under a mere first name, last initial with no bibliographical information), but the United States has become the nation that it has become in part because we’ve opened the door to the immigrant. We harm ourselves in the long term by making it difficult for people to become citizens. The United States will face the consequence of our misguided, selfish, self-preserving agenda.
That said, we should have a gut check when someone has a child in our nation and we are OK with splitting up families of sending U.S. born citizens into another country because their parents are from there.
LePort,
For the record, I live in Texas. Here’s the deal, a generation ago South Texas was an interesting mix of the Anglo-Texan culture and that of Northern Mexico (roughly half and half) but now the region is mostly dominated by the latter thanks to a generational lack of enforcement of our immigration laws both in the workplace and on the border. Now, according to the latest estimates, on present trends such will also be the case for the greater part of West Texas and for the greater part of the state South of Dallas within a generation and for the rest of the state within two generations. In sum, on present trends we are looking at the cultural dissolution of the largest Southern state within (roughly) two generations and the kind of demographic overhaul not seen by the region since the middle of the 19th century.
More importantly, this kind of cultural revolution (i.e. de facto colonization) inevitably brings with it political revolution as well (e.g. Kosovo in the 90s, Texas in the 19th century, the “New World” in the 17th century, etc.) and all the social upheaval that comes with that, which the begs the question: How is the kingdom of God advanced by all this?
“I think the infusion of Latino culture into the southern United States will make a better nation not a worse one. For instance, my future children will be part Latino. I think they’d make fine citizens of the not so great state of Alabama if they chose to move there.”
So, the cultural dissolution of states like Texas will “make a better nation not a worse one” because “my children will be part Latino” and “I think they’d make fine citizens.” Huh?
I don’t mean to come off as rude but I fail to see how the future ethnic composition of your children is relevant to this discussion.
NW:
I struggle for find pity considering Texas is the land of their ancestors. That Latinos would move into Texas, become a majority there, and influence the culture there is a good thing. I don’t think you have much room to use the word “colonization” considering the fact that our very presence on this content is that very thing.
That you “fail” (yes, good word) to see my point is odd. You are saying that this influx of Latino culture is a bad thing. I am saying my children will be part of that culture. What doesn’t make sense? I see your words as a direct afront to a culture that I share, into which I’ve married, into which I will father children.
Maybe instead of trying to preserve your “culture” you should ask if God is bringing these people your direction so that the Gospel may be further advanced among Latinos. We know the Euro-centric form of Christianity is slowly dying and our siblings elsewhere will soon be the majority of Christianity. I find this exciting and if God brings them this direction as we “pass the baton” that is even better.
@Brian: “This is not merely a discussion of whether or not it hurts/helps evangelism, but whether the lives of our siblings in Christ are harmed because of unjust laws.” …. In other words, there is a political component to your comments here. Since I’m not American, I’ll not comment on the politics themselves; that’s for you Americans to sort out.
However, I will point out that Christian converts who immigrate by any method save for the legal channels are hypocrites, and suspect in the sincerity of their faith, since they are picking and choosing which biblical precepts they honour. Likewise I’ll point out that not all illegal immigrants to the United States are God honouring Christians. The vast majority may not in fact be!
Are you willing to ‘tolerate’ illegal immigration if, in fact, the vast majority pose problems for the preservation of traditional Christian values in the United States? Are you willing to tolerate the illegal immigration of say 99 bad ones for the sake of one good one (whereby illegal immigration may be posing problems for the long term sustenance of faith)?
Andrew:
I don’t think you have any right to call people hypocrites who (A) aim to give their families a better life, (B) roam in the area of land from which their ancestors came, and (C) work for our nation doing jobs that are essential to our economic well-being. Your words are a bit gross. I’d rethink them.
And yes, yes, yes I am willing to tolerate, even promote, illegal immigration as long as the laws remain unfair and they’re asked to come here to do our dirty work only to be told to leave again.
LePort,
I think it would be unfortunate for Texas to become a de facto extension of Latin America because the culture of the latter is (seemingly) hopelessly dysfunctional. It’s hard for me to imagine how the kingdom of God would be advanced by replacing a flawed by functional cultural matrix with a dysfunctional one.
“I struggle for find pity considering Texas is the land of their ancestors.”
This is false, practically none of the migrants that come here from Latin America have even the slightest ancestral connection with the land. In truth, the land of Texas was almost entirely an unpopulated wilderness before it was settled by Americans in contrast with the Eastern seaboard and the Great Plains.
“I am saying my children will be part of that culture. What doesn’t make sense?”
What doesn’t make sense is the idea that your children must contribute to the advance of Latin American culture merely by virtue of the fact that part of their ethnic heritage will have originated from the region.
“I see your words as a direct af[f]ront to a culture that I share, into which I’ve married, into which I will father children.”
To the extent that you feel passionate about this issue my advice is that you spend some time in regions like South Texas (maybe get a Methodist pastorate there?) and ask yourself if that’s the kind of America that you wouldn’t mind leaving to your children. If after doing something like this the answer is “yes” then we have an honest disagreement, but if you only come at this issue in the abstract, and that after reducing the matter in terms of ethnicity and morality, then you won’t really understand where I’m coming from.
LePort,
“I see your words as a direct af[f]ront to a culture that I share, into which I’ve married, into which I will father children.
Maybe instead of trying to preserve your ‘culture’…”
Wait a minute, you’re allowed to consider my (relatively) dispassionate rejoinders as an “affront” to a culture “into which [you] will father children” but it is wrong for me to care about the slow-motion dissolution of my own Anglo-Texas culture in my own state and into which I am currently fathering children? Methinks you need to consider these issues more carefully.
NW
I don’t think it is Latino culture that is dysfunctional as much as it is the political structures of the countries from which they come. I lived in California most of my life and Latino culture made it a better place, not a dysfunctional one. In fact, it was people like Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger who ruined California, not Latinos.
In fact, as a Texas you may want to examine the success of San Antonio whose Mayor Julian Castro (a Latino) is doing as good a job as mayor of a major city as anyone in this nation. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles isn’t too shabby either. Again, he is a Latino. So far, their “dysfunctional culture” has shown itself to be quite competent.
You’re comment about the land mass of Texas as “unpopulated wilderness” misses the point and you know it. The arbitrary lines that make “Texas” are secondary to the overall landmass from which, yes, many Latinos find their descendants.
Why doesn’t it make sense that my children would contribute to the advancement of their culture? That is an odd statement.
So you know, my wife’s family lives in south Texas. I know the area and yes, I’d rather share my country with people like them than people like you.
NW
Me thinks you should use your real name instead of hiding behind NW like some Spam Bot.
@Brian: To be clear, I’m not necessarily calling those who (A) aim to give their families a better life, (B) roam in the area of land from which their ancestors came, and (C) work for our nation doing jobs that are essential to our economic well-being.
WRT (A) I concede, it is reasonable for people to want to give their family a better life. I’m not sure what you mean by (B) however, for if someone’s ancestors came from a particular region, how are they immigrants, since it is immigration we’re talking here?
WRT point (C), the American Barry R. Chiswick, University of Illinois at Chicago (and others) have shown (i.e. policy paper No. 12) that this idea (the fallacy of labour scarcity) about U.S. immigration is in fact the most common myth about American immigration. The idea that within the United States immigration is needed to do the three ‘D’ jobs, native born Americans will not (Dirty, Dangerous, Difficult) is simplistic and incorrect.
He showed that this argument is patently untrue (statistically) by comparing the national percentage of non-native born Americans in the US, against the percentage of immigrants filling these rolls across a large selection of professions, distributed more or less evenly across all 50 states. He found, for example, that in 2009, the number of immigrants filling these rolls actually under represented the national average of non-native born American immigrants. Furthermore, he also showed that this statistic holds even though low-skilled immigrants are more likely to fill these roles simply because they are low-skilled. So even though immigration to the U.S. tends to be overly represented by low-skilled labour, it is not necessarily true immigrants will do jobs native born Americans will not.
Likewise, the economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe also showed (controversially), that from the perspective of economic theory, free Immigration (in any country) resulted in state-caused economic crisis (Journal of Libertarian Studies: Vol 16, No 1 (Winter 2002), pp 75-97). Therefore I believe your point (C) is actually a political position; the idea that immigration is necessary for American well-being, is an implicit presupposition of your politics, so I’ll not argue that point.
However I would call those people hypocrites who profess to love Christ, yet who ignore national laws. If there are two ways to enter the US, legally and illegally and an immigrant does so illegally they are not abiding by Christ’s directive to us to respect earthly authority. I could be wrong, but I believe the U.S. has a legal avenue for becoming an immigrant. Therefore, any professing Christian should seek to enter the U.S. by this avenue first and foremost, whether or not your perspective sees the process as ‘fair’. Lawlessness, is lawlessness.
I would also call ‘hypocrites’ those who simply expect their adopted country to provide them with an easier life as an entitlement if they themselves are not willing to work for it. There exists a vast difference between an immigrant and a pioneer. The first pioneers who came to N. American did not have social security, welfare, critical infrastructure, and safety nets. The same is not true today.
Finally, I think both you and I are showing our presuppositions here WRT the nature of immigration. You say you are willing to tolerate, even promote, illegal immigration, but you do not address the possibility of illegal immigration posing a threat to the free exercise of your faith. I’d point out that your own position advocates for lawlessness. The way to fix ‘unfair’ laws in a democracy is not to ignore them, since every man does what is right in his own eyes, and this is not God honouring [Pro 21:2][Deut 12:8]. Do you support illegal immigration in a de facto manner? What if US immigrants were primarily Muslims such that it began to effect U.S. politics? The U.S. is a democratic state (as Germany was in the 1930’s). It is possible for a democracy to vote itself out of existence (as Germany did). Would you still support illegal immigration?
Andrew:
Do you live here? Have you lived among immigrants in the United States? Yes or no? Have you seen the jobs they do?
I have lived amongst immigrants, but not in the U.S. So, yes, to answer your question – I have personal experience with this.
Even so, the points made above are true whether or not I have. Care to tell us, if the US were having millions of illegal Muslim immigrants flowing into it annually, you’d still profess the same position?
Andrew
That isn’t my question though. I don’t pretend to know what is best for European immigration policy because I don’t have first hand experience with how immigrants from Africa and Asia impact your country. I don’t expect you to know how Latino immigrants impact our country and that isn’t your fault because you don’t live here. I think we must be careful applying broad principles to two situations that I think may be very different (again, I haven’t lived in Europe so I don’t know what countries should do there).
In the U.S. Latinos bring family based values. They are often Christians. They already work for us. I was raised in northern California in the Napa Valley. Without Latinos working way too hard for too little pay living in shacks there is no wine industry for tourists.
Someone could argue that it is a fair exchange, but I think my country can do better than that because we have done better than that in the past. We’ve been a home for immigrants and it made us a better nation, not a worse one.
Brian;
I live on the other coast (like that’s not obvious from my manner), but I spent some time North of San Francisco a couple of years ago (including Napa) and just loved the beauty of the coastline and the redwoods and everything. And the hippie communities were a bit out of a time warp, but they produce some excellent baked goods.
I don’t have a dog in the immigration topic, living in a state that is probably the most diverse place on earth and few having much of a problem with it, but it is totally amazing how the issue dominated some of the recent presidential debates. It’s really a non-problem in terms of the overall economy (in fact, illegal immigration declines when the economy goes into recession because there are no jobs, duh), but to hear the intensity of the candidates and the crowd is disturbing. Some people have a desperate need to find a scapegoat, something or someone simple to blame and immigrants (or strangers as the bible might put it) have been a convenient source of ire as long as people have formed themselves into communities.
Bond:
You are correct. I find great frustration in that I have known many immigrants who work so very hard and do jobs so many people I know would never do. I know their stories. I’ve met their families. I think they’ve contributed beautifully to our culture. Then as you say, people portray them as criminals. Politicians demonize them to gain standing with political conservatives. The same people who pay them less than minimum wage to work in a field cry when they use our hospitals. It is sad and I find myself unable to address the matter without emotional involvement.
@Brian: I recognize demographically, that immigration from Mexico (by individual country) is the largest contributor to the US immigrant pool, but in 2011 Latin American was not the largest contributor by region; Asia was. {This information is available from a number of sources including but limited to (US Census Bureau and the Immigration Policy Institute).
This means that although Mexican Latin Americans may represented the largest recognizable demographic group in the southern US states, they are not the largest group demographically federally by ethnic type.
For example, in 2010, Asia sent just about the same number of immigrants to the US as Central American (including Mexico), with China being the largest country represented in the Asian migrant community (at 70,863). This means that the US is experience the single largest migration in its history of person acknowledging atheism as their world view, hailing from countries where totalitarian communism was the system of governance. After Mexico and China, the third largest demographic entering the US is from India, with only about 0.89% professing to be Christian (which is far less than Indian’s national percentage of Christians incidentally, at 4%).
The point is this, you make the case for a political change to US immigration laws on the grounds strict US immigration laws are hurting the evangelical goals of the Church, but you haven’t even shown legal immigration (let alone illegal immigration) is helping to further the Gospel (where it appears to be hurting it). You advocate for ‘illegal immigration’ though ‘legal’ immigration also appears to be hurting the efforts of the church. Before you make the case that immigration in general helps further the Gospel, you must show that it isn’t actually hurting the spread of the Gospel (which seems to be the case since only a fraction of those entering the US profess Christianity, and fewer evangelical Christianity).
Looking at the impact of immigration on France, another nation with open immigration (and a nation whose ‘revolution’ gave the US it’s idea of ‘liberty’), this ex-colonial country spread Roman Catholicism (by force) to all of it’s ex-colony’s yet modern immigration to France has resulted in approximately 10% of it’s population being Muslim. Within France the Muslim population has the highest birth-rate (out stripping Catholics). There is massive pressure to over throw native French law in favour of sharia law as a consequence.
It’s hard to see how an open immigration policy can benefit the spread of the Gospel, unless it can show that the bulk of those entering the country are believers already, or apt to be. This is not the case. A study entitled Immigration and Religion, by Wendy Cadge and Elaine Howard Ecklund (Brandeis University, Massachusetts / University of Buffalo) on post-1965 immigration to the US has shown that 2nd, 3rd, and subsequent generations of immigrants retain their religion. So if immigration to the US sees the decrease of Christian’s migrants (as appears to be the case, since at least 1965) immigration is in fact hurting the efforts of the Church to evangelise.
At most the effects of open immigration are political, so it’s benefits are as well (if there are such benefits). If you support open immigration then, you should do this on political grounds rather than religious ones.
LePort,
“I don’t think it is Latino culture that is dysfunctional as much as it is the political structures of the countries from which they come.”
Sorry, but you can’t separate the culture of a people from their politics. If the politics of Latin America, as a cultural region, is generally dysfunctional then it’s almost certainly a reflection of the culture itself. Once again, I fail to see how your experience rubbing shoulders with Latinos in California, which are a minority of the state, refutes this observation of mine.
“So you know, my wife’s family lives in south Texas. I know the area and yes, I’d rather share my country with people like them than people like you.”
So then I take it that you wouldn’t mind raising your family in characteristic South Texas cities like Laredo, El Paso, Edinburg, and Brownsville? Or were you talking about the nicer parts of San Antonio and tourist hot spots like Corpus Christi (somehow I think this is closer to the mark)? Because if we’re talking about the latter then, heck, even I could do that, but if it’s the former that you wouldn’t mind living in then I’ll grant you the point.
“You’re comment about the land mass of Texas as ‘unpopulated wilderness’ misses the point and you know it. The arbitrary lines that make ‘Texas’ are secondary to the overall landmass from which, yes, many Latinos find their descendants.”
If we’re talking about the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples from which much of the ancestry of Mexico and Central America is derived then, yes, the geographical region that we now call Texas was for them a largely unpopulated wilderness. That the current boundaries of Texas occupy a landmass that also happens to be contiguous with the ancestral stomping grounds of Mesoamerican peoples seems completely beside the point to me. Mutatis mutandis, it would be like saying that I have an ancestral claim on Greece because my ancestors were mostly from Germany and, after all, the former is part of the same European landmass, which doesn’t seem right.
“Me thinks you should use your real name instead of hiding behind NW like some Spam Bot.”
I’m sorry if you find my counterarguments upsetting, but I’m certainly no troll.
– Dave T.
Dave
I am sorry you feel this way about Latino culture. I’ve had a completely different experience with Latinos. I’ve found them to be great neighbors. I’ve found them to be very giving. I’ve found them to be hard workers. Every place I’ve lived has been a better place when Latinos live in the neighborhood, not a worse place. In fact, I dislike Portland, OR, because it is so monochromatic and monocultural.
We are different people apparently with different lens through which we see the world. I pray you’ll find some Latinos that will soften your heart toward their people. It is a better world when we share it with them.
LePort,
I’m well aware that many Latinos are great people, for what it’s worth I consider it a real tragedy that their communities in Texas aren’t better than they are. It would be nice for me to think that their growing cultural influence bodes well for the state. Unfortunately, it does not, I’ve seen the changes with my own eyes and what I’ve seen cannot be unseen nor am I willing to pretend otherwise.
Perhaps the real problem here is our culture’s underlying assumption that the technologically advanced modern civilization developed by Westerners is the ideal society for all peoples. It’s certainly the most glitzy and offers the most creature comforts but maybe it’s not the right model for everyone else. To wit, as I type this comment China is using our technology and economic model to pollute themselves into oblivion and run a real risk of exhausting their natural water resources to the point of not having their drinkable water of their own within a generation, when that happens (God forbid) the Chinese people will pine for the agrarian preindustrial lifestyle that served their ancestors so well for many centuries and will rue they day they sought to imitate us. Is it really so bad to think that the kind of egalitarianism that says that all peoples are equally capable at making Western society work must just be false?
Brian, I think you would enjoy this:
“…Going that far can also carry a man, such as Romney, into the realm of self-parody. His self-deportation idea is both deadly serious and an old joke. The phrase was apparently coined in 1994 by two Chicano satirists, Lalo Alcaraz and Esteban Zul, for the purpose of mocking an anti-immigrant California ballot initiative. Alcaraz played, brilliantly, a “militant self-deportationist” and right-wing Latino called Daniel D. Portado, and he stayed in character even while being interviewed on TV. A new group, Patriots for Self-Deportation, recently launched a Web site urging Americans to investigate their family trees for illegal immigrants and “anchor babies” and then, if they find anything suspicious, to do the right thing and self-deport. The site is now filling up with anguished testimonials from conscience-stricken young white people heading off to Italy and Poland to atone for their ancestors’ misdeeds…”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/02/illegal-immigration.html#ixzz1mMjszLA8
@Bond:
Thank you for sharing! I will take a look.
I find it hard to believe that people who vigorously argue for the rights of the unborn (note: I am pro-life myself) will also throw around a term as degrading as “anchor babies.”