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| Local Time: 4:58 PM February 8, 2010 |
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| Local Time: 4:58 PM February 8, 2010 |
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No Biblical Mandate for Amnesty Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The National Association of Evangelicals has created quite the controversy this month for its 40 member denominations and for the evangelicals in their pews by lobbying Congress to legalize some seven million illegal foreign workers (plus perhaps five million illegal-immigrant dependents). Further fueling dissatisfaction among the nation’s evangelicals, the NAE told the Senate it wants big increases in legal foreign labor importation because of supposed labor shortages in the United States. It was as if the NAE had not heard of the jobs depression that has swept the United States, or as if the people in their churches have been untouched by it. The federal U-6 Unemployment Rate is nearly 20% (people actively looking for jobs, discouraged workers who recently gave up looking, and people seeking full-time jobs who have had to settle for part-time work). The NAE’s plunge into the amnesty debate stirred an immediate torrent of phone calls, faxes, emails and letters to the NAE member denominations. Many of the denominations have already posted disavowals on their websites, stating that they did not sign on to the NAE immigration document that was presented to the U.S. Senate by the NAE president, and that they have no intention of getting involved in the political amnesty debate. It now appears that the image of overwhelming evangelical endorsement that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) celebrated at his immigration hearing is crumbling. Sen. Schumer had called the hearing primarily to show a large national evangelical support for the “comprehensive immigration bill” that he plans to introduce later this year. The key witness was Rev. Leith Anderson, NAE president and pastor of a large independent church in Minnesota. After Rev. Anderson introduced himself as representing 40 evangelical denominations, Sen. Schumer asked him how much support there was for the NAE call to turn most illegal aliens into U.S. citizens. Rev. Anderson gave the strong impression that the 40 denominations were unanimous when he answered: “We actually had a vote today on this resolution with leaders in the National Association of Evangelicals and there was no dissent . . . On the board, there are 75 who represent the heads of denominations.” The NAE further contributed to the image of evangelical unanimity with a press release to the nation’s media that began: “The Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), representing 40 denominations, scores of evangelical organizations and millions of American evangelicals, today approved a resolution calling for action on immigration reform.” The key legislative action items in the NAE resolution and recommendations to the Senate are: • Provide legal status for most illegal immigrants that will lead to U.S. citizenship. • Reduce future illegal immigration by creating a much larger flow of legal foreign labor into the country. • A big increase in chain migration categories through which each new immigrant eventually opens a path for immigration for a wide extended family. In fact, though, 29 of the 40 NAE member denominations have refused to sign the immigration document. Consider that nearly 75% abstention rate with the NAE with the fact that the majority of evangelical denominations are not in the NAE and not supporting Sen. Schumer ( including the nation’s largest, the Southern Baptist Convention). That adds up to an overwhelming LACK of support by evangelical leaders for the Senator’s plans. That won’t be in the official record, though, because Sen. Schumer only invited evangelical leaders who endorse him. Opposition to the NAE proposals, however, is far stronger than that among individual evangelical Christians, according to several public opinion polls in recent years. According to the NAE document, these majority of evangelicals in the pews are violating the message of the Bible by refusing legal status and citizenship to the officially estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. The constant thread in the NAE argument is that the Bible calls on Christians to treat foreigners in their country in a humane manner. The underlying tone of the NAE document and those of most Mainline Protestant Churches is that American Christians oppose amnesty because they don’t like foreigners. But the vast majority of U.S. Christians oppose amnesty NOT because they are unwelcoming but because they recognize complex ethical problems. Historically high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) are contributing to great economic injustice against our most vulnerable citizens (by flooding various labor occupations). And the numbers are driving massive U.S. population growth, making it impossible to create an environmentally sustainable America (with grave consequences for the rest of the world). When reasonable people wrestle with those economic and environmental issues honestly, they either agree with groups like my own that there is a moral imperative to reduce immigration, or they recognize that they must choose the "good" of humanitarian concern for foreign citizens wanting to enter this country over the "good" of caring for the most vulnerable parts of our own society (disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans, and the plants and animals entrusted in our nation's stewardship). But they have to acknowledge that there are tradeoffs. I believe most American Christians agree with my group that increasing foreign labor importation and giving permanent work permits to illegal aliens is working against jobless Americans, mainly Americans who are less-educated and seeking jobs in exactly the same occupations that are daily engorged by arrivals of mostly less-educated immigrants (legal and illegal). Hard and unavoidable numbers are at the heart of the immigration issues -- not whether U.S. Christians like or love immigrants. Where Americans' concerns about immigration veer into demonizing by word and deed the immigrants themselves, all of us are right in trying to correct that reaction. Most of the denominations distancing themselves from the NAE position are clear that they will continue to provide pastoral and other help to illegal aliens but do not see a biblical mandate to make them U.S. citizens. Author and journalist Roy Beck is CEO of NumbersUSA, the nation’s largest grass roots immigration-reduction organization with 900,000 registered online activists. For 20 years he has led research on the effects of mass immigration on quality of life issues in the United States. Beck founded NumbersUSA in 1996 to carry out the official recommendations of two federal commissions. Author of four public policy books, Beck has appeared on numerous national radio programs and regularly briefs members of Congress. A leader in his local church's youth mission projects to help poor Americans, he was associate editor of the national United Methodist Reporter in the 1980s.
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