A Christian Response to Refugees

In his first epistle, John spotlights the love of God. For him, love is not a vague, fluffy feeling; it is raw, radical, and dominating in a Christian’s life. Love is objectively measurable in human actions: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?"(I Jn 3:17). And a Christian’s love for God is objectively measurable by his love by his for his Christian family: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (I John 4:20). If this seems like a harsh distinction, it is. And nowhere in this book does John qualify it or water it down. He truly seemed to believe that if someone’s actions are hateful towards a brother or sister, they lack the love of God.  If we express our love for our brothers and sisters by our actions and truth, what actions should Christians take when our brothers and sisters experience the worst forms of human suffering?

In 2011, civil war broke out in Syria between the government and the radical Islamic State (IS). Caught in the middle were 2 million Christians who the government was not particularly invested in protecting and the Islamic State were actively trying to exterminate. By 2019, more than two thirds of those Christians have disappeared--- displaced, killed, or forcibly converted. The armies on all sides raped, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of these Christians, devastating Christian communities that are two thousand years old. Tens of thousands more of these Syrian Christians are huddled in refugee settlements where they face hunger, disease, and inhuman living conditions. If ever there was a time for Christians in America to love the brotherhood and come to their brothers and sisters’ aid by demanding international action and advocating their country to open their doors to refugees, it is now.

          Initially, that is what America did. As the war intensified in 2014, 15, and 16, the numbers of Syrian refugees the United States admitted ticked up to a high point of over fifteen thousand in 2016. Then came the executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” aka “the Muslim Ban.” This blocked the entry of all immigrants from six Muslim majority nations (including Syria) --- none of which had ever had a citizen commit an act of terrorism in the United States. The number of Syrian refugees admitted in 2017 dropped to three thousand (most of them already in process at the time of the order), and only forty-one Syrian refugees were admitted in 2018. At a time when the Syrian church needed their American brothers the most, almost half of Americans surveyed did not believe the United States should admit refugees from Syria. If we demonstrate our love for God by loving our suffering brothers and sister, what are we demonstrating when we support government policies that enable the persecution of the church, the martyrdom of our Christian family members, and subhuman treatment if they are fortunate enough to escape those?

          John is specifically speaking about a Christian’s duty to a fellow Christian, but this principle of lived-out love is found throughout the Bible as an expectation for Christians to give to all people (Lev. 19:18; Mt 19:19; Mt 5:43). What could the relationship between Christians and Muslims be if Muslims knew that when they were experiencing persecution, homelessness, and hunger, they could count on their Christian neighbors to throw open their doors, feed and clothe them, and offer them protection (see Rom 12:20)? By welcoming refugees, a country is declaring that these lives made in the image of God have value. These lives that forces in their own country want to destroy, America will not let be destroyed. It is pro-life in its truest form.

The modern American refugee program was formed in 1980 and admitted more than two hundred thousand refugees that year. During the economic booms of the Regan administration, America admitted more than a hundred thousand refugees a year. After 9/11, refugee admittances took a temporary dip to just over 45,000, but by the time Bush left office, it was back up to almost one hundred thousand. In the past three years, the United States has annually set a new record for low admissions--- 33,000, 23,000, and 18,000. For first time in modern history, America does not lead the world in refugee compassion.  

          There is no moral argument against admitting several hundred thousand refugees a year into the United States--- only an economic and a “safety” one. Ignoring the selfishness of Christians saying that it is acceptable to condemn any people to starvation, torture, and death because it might affect our pocketbooks, there is no evidence that refugees are a drain on the economy. On average, by the time, they have been in our country for two decades, refugees have paid more than double the cost of resettling them in taxes; within eight years, they use welfare services at or below the national rate; they create small businesses at higher rates than the general population; and at six years in the United States they have lower unemployment rates than native population. Multiple studies have shown that refugees’ net effect on jobs is to create more than they take, and they pick up languages and job skills faster than other immigrant groups.

The “safety argument” I put in quotes because it is not an argument. An argument must have supporting evidence of some kind. There is zero evidence theoretical, statistical, or incidental that refugees are at all dangerous to the United States. One study completed over ten years, on the cities that had received the most refugees in that time saw their crime rates drop, not rise. As for the terrorist threat? A refugee has never been implicated in any terrorist act in the United States. Refugees undergo an extensive vetting and screening process. Only a person blinded by fear or anger could claim that refugees are dangerous.     

Many Christians may respond, “it’s not that we hate these people; it’s that we do not see this suffering. There is too much news; too much noise; too many issues. We are so busy with our own national/ familial/ personal issues.” It is not hated; it is ignorance. Does the Bible have a special exemption for those who do not hate; they simply do not care? In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats where the people who claim to follow him are divided into two groups--- those who did to the least of these as they would to Christ and those who did not. The defense of those who did not treat the least of these--- the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, the homeless--- as Christ is not “we evaluated the situation and chose not to.” Their defense is that “we didn’t see you.” --- “when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison?” (Mt 25:44). If we love our brothers and sister, we will love them enough to learn about their situations even on the other side of the world. And once we see them--- and Christ reflected in them--- sick, hungry, wandering, and imprisoned, we should act with all the love that I John believes a Christian to be capable of.

Sources

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/syria/

https://www.churchinneed.org/christians-disappearing-from-syria-iraq-a-call-for-global-intervention/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/07/key-facts-about-refugees-to-the-u-s/

https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/spotlights/Make-America-Great-Again-Admit-More-Refugees-to-the-US.cfm

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/what-s-the-real-link-between-crime-and-immigration