immigration

Last week, evangelical congregations across America began screening a documentary called The Stranger: Immigration, Scripture and the American Dream, produced by a group called the Evangelical Immigration Table. Among EIT's advocates are a host of uncommon bedfellows: Mathew Staver of the Liberty University School of Law and Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Leith Anderson of the National Association of Evangelicals and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and popular pastors Max Lucado and Wilfredo de Jesús.

Immigration reform has attracted such a spectrum of advocates that it shows how it is a fortuitous issue for American Protestants.

In our political climate, security enjoys a peculiar status: it’s an absolute priority, subject to little scrutiny or cost-benefit analysis.

If you happened upon the front page of the Wall Street Journal [today] you saw the headline, “Evangelicals Push Immigration Path.” It’s one of several recent articles focused on white evangelicals’ changing tune when it comes to legal paths to citizenship. Megachurch pastors are willing to lose members over the issue. The National Association of Evangelicals is organizing a campaign to educate and prod congregations to political action.

If the current bipartisan push leads to serious immigration reform, we'll all be the better for it. But what constitutes serious reform?

The question isn't whether the new provisions in the Senate VAWA bill are politically motivated. It's whether the provisions are good ones.

"I met an activist who said, 'You should go back to Virginia and start to organize.' It took me about three months to send out the first e-mail."

Newt Gingrich has suggested that undocumented immigrants who are family-loving, hardworking, tax-paying, churchgoing and deeply rooted should stay here. This is pretty much the typical immigrant.

When Vittorio De Sica helped craft the
cinematic movement known as neorealism, he was intent on finding lead
actors who lacked experience. If you didn't know that Demián Bichir was a star in Mexico, you might assume that director
Chris Weitz was following De
Sica's blueprint.

My ancestors wanted to own land and prosper on it, to see their children and their children's children thrive. They knew that they were loved by a God who does not see national boundaries.

Paul Ouderkirk was on retreat in Dubuque on May 12, 2008, when someone tapped him on the shoulder and asked him why he wasn’t 75 miles away in Postville. The Catholic priest did not know that earlier that day, federal authorities had launched the nation’s largest ever single-site immigration raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville and arrested 389 people. The Spanish-speaking Ouderkirk had served St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville—a quiet community of 2,400 people—before his retirement. When he heard about the government’s action, he returned immediately to Postville and resumed his role as parish pastor.