Why Christians Need a Better Response to Immigration

[00:00:00] Hello friends. Asher Witmer here. I'm doing something new. I'm not, I've never done this before, but I'm testing whether I can go live across multiple social media channels at the same time using my podcast recording software, Riverside. So we will see. Yeah, I'm just testing a few things out here to see if it's up and running or not, but I, I, I will. If not, I at least can record this and we'll drop it later. But I have spoken a fair amount via social media, sharing posts and so forth about immigrants basically since March. The end of February is when I started being more active on social media again. And very quickly Trump started instigating deportations at a higher rate than ever before. And so I, I've published or posted, I haven't written at length about this, haven't even done a podcast on it, but I just thought it might be helpful to share and just for some context sake, I have Facebook, author page and then a personal profile. And I tend to share a little bit more on the personal profile just with friends. [00:01:22] Um, tend to share a little bit more of the, what you might call extreme perspective as I just think just for some context, like this is fairly personal to my wife and I. We, we've spent most of our married life, most of my, all of my adult life living among and working with cross culturally, but specifically with immigrants. And so we have a feel like we have a level of experience with it, not, not at all claiming to have the expertise on it. It was just kind of everyday life. [00:01:56] And so that's, that's part of what burdens me about it, but also just seeing how Christians respond in this moment. I think with every era, every year, we have new challenges to what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully. And it's okay to talk about the ways we're challenged in our current moment. And sometimes I get a little exasperated by, like, well, why weren't you talking about, you know, abortion when Biden was, I didn't, I was not circling in churches where Christians were starting to get abortions. And so to raise up my voice, I had fellow Christians. I, my wife and I have been involved in, whether financial supporting or just indirect care of people, that very, our perspective is, it's very, this is part of what it means to combat abortion and that is helping women at risk who are vulnerable for abortions or maybe it's helping with pregnancy centers and so forth. [00:02:58] There's a variety of things that we have supported, participated in, but I don't necessarily feel the need to speak up publicly about it, because everybody in my world is on the same page. If I were in a different setting, then 100%, that would be an issue that would astound me. If there are Christians promoting abortion, um, I think one, as it pertains to the abortion conversation, and this comes from some experience with, with young mothers who are in that position, it's that there's way more that goes into somebody getting an abortion or, or choosing not to get an abortion than just whether or not it's legally allowed. And I think sometimes we can get so caught up in the political jargon and the conversation that we don't actually care for those more fundamental reasons, areas of need that people have in their life so that they can have a baby and, and bring it to fruition. [00:04:02] My wife and I are pregnant with our sixth child, so we wholeheartedly support life and love children, love babies, and we do not want to see them aborted. [00:04:12] So it, it bothers me that we, we kind of gaslight each other a little bit with this. It's like, well, you didn't say anything about Biden's abortion, so why are you saying anything about Trump's immigration, the way he's relating to immigrants? Quite frankly, it's very simple. [00:04:29] Those of you saying that weren't out committing abortions, you weren't taking on a mindset. I didn't have anybody in my life who was taking on a mindset that, like, you know, I think abortion's okay. [00:04:42] If there were people in my life who, who were that way, then I was vocal with them. I, I don't know personally anybody who's okay with abortion. I think more of kind of the sexual ethics and the, the laws around transgender identities and surgeries and, and so forth, the LGBTQ rights, those are the areas. I, I do have some people who, who, who have, who either identify as transgender, who identify as gay, who would support same sex marriage. And, and those are areas, again, the vast majority of the Christian world I circled in was not embracing that mindset. So I didn't sense a need to be talking about it publicly, addressing it from the standpoint of, like, marriage is between one man and one woman for life. I think if you, if anybody has followed my work for any length of time, I think it's quite clear that, that I embrace a historically Christian view of marriage, do not support a same sex marriage or even transgender transitioning and so forth. You probably do see me wading in with a little bit more nuance of trying to help us understand the fundamental issues lying underneath someone wrestling with same sex attraction specifically. That's something I've talked about. [00:06:01] But again, I, my, my whole public Persona, what I kind of became known for was talking about sexual freedom and sexual healing. And that's very close to my heart. And the people in my life who, who are wrestling with gender identity or embracing same sex marriage, I'm having very frank conversations with them. Again, those are things that I think are best done face to face. [00:06:30] They are best done within the context of relationship. And there are some people in my life who I haven't had the relationship with to say things as bluntly as maybe I would like to. And honestly, I don't think it's mine to go in and police them now just because I saw they, they shared some article or espoused some belief that I disagree with. So again, it kind of comes back to the majority of the world that I have circled in is not embracing same sex marriage. I do think that's, that's an issue to address and I have addressed it. So it's, it's again, a little bit feels like gaslighting when people who really only interact with my stuff when I'm talking about immigration want to say, well, where were you when all of this, you know, when all of this was happening, when Biden was doing all this? And it's like the question that I could spin on you is where were you when I was writing about that stuff? [00:07:26] Excuse me, think about alive as I can't cut out my, my coughing and other things. [00:07:35] So the, the reason I feel an extra burden to address things such as immigration is because the majority of the world I circle in is taking on a very similar view toward immigrants as that of the current administration. And I guess I will say I don't think anybody is overtly dehumanizing of immigrants. I think if, if I were to ask probably everybody that has taken issue with me talking about this issue, or everybody who sees it differently than me, if I were to ask them directly, like, do you care about immigrants? [00:08:14] Every one of them would. Or the foreigner, do you care about the foreigner? Every one of them would probably say yes, 100%. We need to be in missions, mission work. But rather what I'm trying to help us sort through is how we've been discipled by our politics as opposed to, is our discipleship to Jesus shaping the way we're navigating our current time. [00:08:39] And so I would like to just share a few things. I'm already good 10 minutes in here, and I'd like to keep it under 20. But I, again, I just want to give some context for, from my experience, just because I think telling stories and telling experiences help us gain understanding. So a couple things that I will say up front. Yeah, the reason I emphasize that I'm speaking from my experience is because I'm not trying to speak as like an expert of I know all the nuances and all the whatever. Rather, I am a disciple of Jesus, care very deeply about obeying the teachings of Jesus in every regard. And that includes sexual ethics. That includes the way we view the human life. And because of my view of human life, it includes the way I treat and interact with the foreigner wherever I am, whether I am a foreigner, I have been a foreign foreigner in foreign lands, or whether I'm interacting with people who are, who have immigrated to my land. [00:09:46] So a couple things right up front that I notice kind of become common whenever somebody speaks up and is critical of how the current administration is deporting people. [00:09:58] There's one of two responses. Either there's like wholesale support. It's like, yes, this is evil, or it's like, what, you're okay with people just coming into our land illegally. [00:10:10] And so I think it's. It's very natural to have those responses, especially in, in times of inflammatory, like when our emotions get raged fairly quickly and so forth. [00:10:21] So I understand why people tend to have one of those two responses, But I did just want to say that I think that's a very. There's so much more we need to explore and understand with one another before we, before we think that we can understand one's view of immigration just from a couple of sentences or a couple of posts even. So, one of the first things is I 100% support legal immigration. [00:10:50] I think people should come in to any country legally. [00:10:56] When we lived in Thailand, we. [00:10:59] I was going to say abode by their laws. I don't know if that's the right word. We abided by their laws. We went through the process and it was hectic. It was not fun. And when, when time came to renew your visas and go through that paperwork, you were often treated very rudely. At least it felt there's some cultural differences at place at play there as well. But I think it's absolutely important that we abide by the laws. [00:11:26] I do think with that, though, that, like, we're very judgmental of immigrants whether or not they came in legally and kind of turn a blind eye to all the ways we interact within our Towns, our counties, our country, in illegal ways. Some of us will do construction projects without getting certain permitting, and that is a very similar form of being illegal. Some of us back in 2020 were very adamant about not following certain laws when it came to Covid regulations and so forth. And, and so I think just the, just the fact that something is legal or illegal, we. We need to kind of detach this sense of like, are you a criminal, first of all? And I'm going to get into that a little bit further, like this sort of nefarious criminal, heinous criminal. [00:12:20] Are you breaking the law? Yeah, you're breaking the law. But then we also have to look introspectively on our own selves and see how are we breaking the law. Because when we talk about illegal immigrants as though they're like criminals, that's when we start to dehumanize them. And all of a sudden we think murders, rapists, people just vandalizing things and all of this. We don't think of ourselves who are just, you know, we don't get why that law is in place. And so we're going to do this construction project without obtaining the proper permit. And so how would we feel about somebody in that situation calling us a criminal? [00:12:54] And so I think, I think we need to think about that, be honest that we too, in that situation are breaking the law. [00:13:02] They too are breaking the law. [00:13:04] It is a different category. [00:13:07] I'm not saying it's okay. I'm just saying let's be honest about the type of people we are as opposed to. Just because I choose, I don't do this, I try not to do it. But just because somebody has chosen to not obtain proper licensing and permitting for a construction project, actually, just in full transparency, I did wrestle with this when we lived in la. I did handyman work and construction work. And the laws around what you can do as a handyman or not are very difficult and challenging. And there were projects because contractors would not want to do the projects. But it was technically above my scope as a handyman and between the homeowner and so forth that they were, they just wanted somebody to do the work. And so there's, there's, there's a lot of stuff like that in the United States bureaucracy. All of this. I think every one of us listening to this, if you've been in construction, you understand the pain point of bureaucracy in getting the proper licensing and permitting in order to get a project to move forward. [00:14:10] And so if we can understand that context, we can better be framed to understand the complexity in a deeper way of the whole immigration crisis because it's very bureaucratic and you multiply it by 10 or maybe even 50 in order to get the complexity of what it's like to try to enter the US Legally. I'm not really going to touch on, I'm not going to touch on the reasons people come to the U.S. there's a lot of reasons that are have to do with security and safety. [00:14:45] The US has been a safe haven for people. There's also reasons such as making a better life for yourself. I failed to look this up before I started. Let me see if I can quickly do it here. So just for some context, if we're comparing strictly to Mexico, and this is just a very brief lookup on Google, but this is stuff you can look up yourself as well. [00:15:07] You know, the, the regular Mexican labor skilled laborer is going to make around 7 to $8 per hour. [00:15:16] This is a father skilled labor. So you're looking at roughly $58 per day for an eight hour workday. Excuse me, just to put that in context to myself, that is less than a fourth of what I make in a day. I got a cough. Again, further, to put further context to this, the cartels kind of run a lot of the local communities in Mexico. And so you either pay them or if you own a business, give them portion of the profits and so forth, or you're going to face hostility and violence from them. [00:15:52] And so there's a lot of reasons that lead people to want to better their life if they can get to the US now obviously, unfortunately a, a Mexican immigrant is not going to make $32 an hour in the U.S. but even if they can get up to 20 or 25, which speaking of doing handyman work in LA, that was kind of the going rate, you know that that's already about three times more than what they would have made back home. And so a lot of them will come to make a better life for themselves. And that's not an, a nefarious reason to come to the U.S. that's something historically the U.S. has been proud about, is that you can come to the US and, and fulfill dreams, make a better life for yourself and so forth. [00:16:41] So just I'm not going to go into more detail around that, but rather what I'd like to focus on is just a, the idea of criminality around immigrants. And first of all, we use illegal immigrants and undocumented immigrants interchangeably as though they're one and the same thing. They're Not. [00:17:02] And so as I said, I'm very supportive of proper documentation. Entering legally. That was something that we helped people with. Our church and people who are still in LA are still helping people with is getting proper citizenship. [00:17:20] It's an excruciatingly long process to get proper documentation. [00:17:26] And I think what can often be misunderstood is that it's possible to legally come to the city or to come to the country. The US but especially sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, Denver, I think Portland is one, New York, Chicago, there's 15. [00:17:44] I think there's 15 sanctuary cities in the U.S. i could be wrong about that. But it's possible to legally come to those places and start your documentation process that has historically been in place throughout the U.S. and so you have people who are not yet documented but can come to the U.S. [00:18:04] they could come anywhere in the U.S. but especially in sanctuary cities and start the process of documentation. I, I don't know of anybody who has actively worked at getting proper documentation where it, where it happened less than five years, I could be wrong, I could be forgetting somebody. [00:18:25] But you're, you're talking about a five to ten year process and it's expensive and none of that's refundable. So there are times I can remember this, this was before the people actually came to the U.S. but when we were living in Thailand, there was family working on getting their documentation down. And this was back when Obama was president. [00:18:45] But then they, they had invested, there were, there were four of them. So they had paid in. [00:18:52] I think it was $4,800. I think the visas were $1,200 a piece. So $4,800. [00:19:01] Or it happened November of 2015, I believe, or 2016, I think it was 2016. And the, the, the shooting in San Bernardino, California where a Muslim man walked into a church and shot up a church happened and they locked down all immigration from Arab countries and these people were coming from Pakistan. [00:19:28] And so immediately there no refund of their money, nothing. Like it was immediately canceled. They couldn't, they couldn't make it. And so that's just kind of an example of the process. And, and you get so far and then something. There's, there's always things that you have to get in order. You also have to understand people. [00:19:49] Like maybe, maybe people came for security reasons and so they didn't have time to have all their documentation in order or, and this is something that I want to make a distinction between. An illegal immigrant is someone who avoids inspection, someone who avoids the going through customs, and that Happens. I know people where that has happened. They hidden the floorboards of vehicles in order to get through. That is illegal. And our work as Christians, part of our ministry, can be helping people make that right. Helping people. You're here. Okay, let's, let's get you legal. Let's get you through the process of legal citizenship and so forth. And so I think that's. Somebody asked me once, like, why do I. What's more humane? Why do I think these deportations are inhumane? Well, there's a variety of reasons they're inhumane, but one of them is simply that how would do to others as you would have done to you if you were in the US and you wanted to be in the US Wouldn't you like somebody to come up and say, hey, let's, let's go through the process, let's get, let's get you legal? Well, that would be more humane treating people the way you want to be treated as a human being. And so that process is a long, sticky process. But there are people who came illegally. And so then if they did come illegally, there's again, in a very similar way as people who came for security reasons, for safety reasons, they didn't have all their documentation in order, necessarily. And so that's a long process, sometimes requires them going back home in order to find certain documents which then would prevent them from being able to come back in. And so there's a bunch of different sticky situations that exist when trying to help someone in this process. But I think it's important to understand the difference between an illegal immigrant and an undocumented immigrant. [00:21:41] And there are many, many reasons why someone could be an undocumented immigrant in the US where they came to the US Leg, but now they're an undocumented immigrant. One of them is simply the fact that they may have, they may, they may have been given asylum. [00:22:01] The word was slipping my mind. [00:22:03] Asylum is often somewhat temporary. It's a temporary card, but. Or a temporary status. [00:22:10] And so they're supposed to start their legal process, but it kind of just allows you to jump start, jump the line as a, in a way because of a specific situation. [00:22:21] And then, and then that process, as I said, takes a lot longer. And so it, they can't go back to their homeland because of the situation that's going on there. But then they're not legal, their status isn't legal here. That's part of what's been so sad and saddening by what's happening with the Trump administration is the ICE is going to people who are showing up to their immigration hearings and arresting them. There they are in the process of trying to get legal documentation, and they're being arrested right there and deported from there. And so this isn't about, like, entering legally. It's specifically about keeping particular immigrants away. [00:23:04] And I'm not going to say any more on that. The point that I want to draw out is the complexity of being an undocumented immigrant. [00:23:12] So someone may have come on a student visa or a tourist visa or work visa and maybe misunderstanding the terms of the visa or not having the money to leave to be able to fly back home. [00:23:31] There's a lot of reasons why people end up being here in the US without legitimate documentation. A lot of visas, you can come back on the same visa, but you have to leave. And so if people don't have enough money, that immediately kind of makes it hard because they're going to have to travel somewhere in order to leave the country. [00:23:54] The bureaucratic delays, like, I can't tell you how many times I have, I've known people who, like, showed up at a hearing and there was some delay on the government side, and six months later, they're going to have another hearing, and the six months comes and that hearing gets delayed another two and a half months. And just stuff like that happens all the time. Again, I would just appeal. If you're in the construction world trying to do things legally, you know, you know enough about American bureaucracy that you just multiply that by 10 or by 50. And, and that's what it's like for an immigrant to come. Asylum seekers, waiting decision so they can get, they can get to the US Immediately. I already talked about that. But then our waiting decision, needing to show their proper documentation and so forth, very common. There's mistakes, miscommunications that happen. You're working with language barriers, you're working with cultural differences. All of those things play into these things. Brought, bought, excuse me, children brought by parents. Many undocumented immigrants were brought to the US as children and had no choice or awareness of their legal status. And so now they're trying to make it right. [00:25:08] There is such a thing as birthright citizenship, where if you were born in the US Then you are automatically a citizen. [00:25:14] And even that Trump is trying to make illegal, trying to revoke legal citizenship. So that's another thing that we need to be aware of, is that there's active. Trump is actively trying to overturn and is overturning. [00:25:28] There are a few examples. I'm not going to make it sound like it's happening on a mass level yet, but there are a few examples where they, where they annulled somebody's legal status and then deported them because of that. So yeah, denied refuge. Like people were denied their, their documentation. So they can't be in the US but they're here on asylum and they can't return home because of, it's not safe there. So these things just are not easy just to be like, go back where you came from, come in legally. Like that expo, when people use that, it exposes how privileged of a life you have, that first of all you don't have to flee your home country. And then secondly, that you're so unaware of what most of the rest of the world is like and that there are a lot of very non nefarious reasons why people would want to go to a certain country. And again, the US has hailed themselves as a place for people to come. That's why people are doing it. [00:26:30] And now people are, you know, suddenly it's, it's being overturned. Just for some clarification, like, yes, every US President has deported undocumented illegal immigrants. Trump is doing it at a much higher rate. I think last I checked, he'll pass Biden's what Biden did in four years, he should pass him in like November of this year if they keep it up at the pace. So, so if you're just comparing the raw numbers, you're going to look, yeah, Biden still has more right now because Trump was actively deporting people at a typical rate. Some of the bigger things that Trump did in his first term were like froze immigration and, and that's what I was concerned about the first, because you had the ISIS crisis, excuse me, the ISIS crisis happening right at the time and people fleeing, trying to come to safety. [00:27:20] But yeah, he's, he's deporting at least right now at a pace to far surpass what Biden did. The other thing, I already touched on this, but let's avoid using the word criminal when we're talking about immigrants. [00:27:35] Are there criminals? Are there undocumented immigrants that are criminals that have committed murder and rape? Yeah, there, there are some. [00:27:43] The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are hardworking, family centered people. Ironically, a lot of immigrants support Trump because they're so bothered and concerned by the family values and the morality of the progressive left. And so even though they're terrified, appalled at what's happening and deportations, their values kind of line up a little bit more with the Republican than than with Democrats. [00:28:14] Excuse me. And so you're talking about people that many of us would love to have in our nation as far as moral, ethical people, even just I'll share this link, but this is from this is data from National Institute of Justice. [00:28:29] Docs.house.gov has a graph showing the criminal rates per 100,000 persons. The criminal rates of US born citizens of so three three entities. US born citizens or three groups of people. Sorry, US born citizens, documented immigrants and undocumented immigrants and US born citizens are by far the commit the highest rate of crime in the US over a thousand. And in the last eight years or so, almost about 1100 crimes per 100,000 persons. Compare that to undocumented immigrants, they're hovering around 400. [00:29:14] So it's US born citizens are committing crimes at two and a half times the rate that undocumented immigrants are. [00:29:26] That's violent felony crimes. Trying to see if I can get more specific detail on what kinds of crimes, total felony crimes. So yeah, it's just this again, I come at it from the experience of I think of the people like I have faces that I that come to my mind when I hear about undocumented immigrants. It's not just like this vague term. And those people are good, ethical, moral people. And they're trying to some of them aren't. Maybe they've lost hope and it's like nobody was really checking up on them. And it's just, it's a lot of money and a lot of time you go spend for an immigration court hearing. Like that's pretty much a whole day. You're not going to get work in that day. And sometimes it spans more than a day. Every now and then you can have a meetup that doesn't take that long and so forth. But again, just to remember some context of this process, what all it's like and the challenges with it. And I think it behooves us. [00:30:31] I'm seeing so many people in the churches I circle in who have this kind of like these are criminals. They need to come in legally and kind of it's like, no, no, it's a simple fix. Just come in legally and that's all fine. And it's like it's not. And I don't think that embodies the character of Jesus to have that mindset where we are told to treat the foreigner as if they're one of our own. We're to bring them in and to care for them. And yes, yes, let's help them get legal. Let's help them get their status cleared so they have nothing to hide, just like you and I have. That's part of treating us like one of our own. If they commit a crime, let's walk with them in facing the consequences and making restitution for that. Anyways, I hope that's helpful. Just kind of just wanted to share some of these things. As you see me post things or say things about immigrants. Maybe this can be be helpful, at least from my vantage point, to keep in mind as we learn what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus in a way that is theologically anchored, emotionally and spiritually healthy and loving others well.