migration

Shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris in mid-November, Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz set off a flurry of controversy when he announced that he believed the federal government should bar Muslim refugees fleeing violence and civil war in Syria from resettling in the United States. He stated on Fox News, “on the other hand, Christians who are being targeted for genocide, for persecution, Christians who are being beheaded or crucified, we should be providing safe haven to them.”

After President Obama described these sentiments as “shameful” and “un-American,” Cruz doubled down.

A federal judge ruled recently that the three U.S. detention centers currently holding more than 2,000 women and children seeking asylum from Central America have three choices:

1. Release just the children, leaving their mothers incarcerated.
2. Entirely reform the detention center environment so that it’s not longer like a prison. 
3. Release everyone.

Two new books on immigration complement each other well. And where Todd Miller’s falls short, Deirdre Cornell’s shines most brightly.

The story of Pentecostalism and social change is now familiar. What's surprising is how closely it echoes trends in modern Islam.

An economic migrant—a desert nomad—leads his family toward a land of promise, believing he is following the will of his Creator. And so begins the great trek for new life, survival, redemption. He will find danger, so much danger that he plans to pass his wife off as his sister. It is a trek repeated today in the heat of the Sonoran desert, in boats from Africa running ashore in southern Europe, in the hulls of boats from Fujian province to the shores of Long Island.