As the Trump administration has begun deportations and more rigorous enforcement of our immigration laws, many have wondered what the Bible says about this topic. Some argue that it is empathetic and compassionate to care for the foreigners in our country, so it is wrong to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. Others believe that protecting our country is biblical, and arrests and deportations are helpful means to ensuring the safety of our people.
So what does the Bible say about illegal immigration? As Trump’s deportation efforts ramp up, we are starting to see virtue signaling from people who say that the truly Christian thing to do is to welcome these ‘refugees’, as they’re so-often called. The refrain “Jesus was an illegal immigrant” has become the go-to phrase among those advocating that we allow these thousands of illegal immigrants into the United States.
Christians, particularly in the U.S., are divided on the issue of illegal immigration. A Pew survey discovered that 51% of Evangelicals and 47% of Catholics agreed that the increased number of deportations of illegal immigrants has been a good thing. On the other side, the Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition of Southern Baptist leaders, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, was formed a couple of years ago to lobby Congress for pro-amnesty immigration law.
The current immigration crisis and Trump’s strong stance on illegal immigration has of course served only to intensify this polarized Christian reaction. If Christians are going to have a consistent response to illegal immigration, we of course have to confer as to what the Bible actually has to say on this issue.
The most definitive study on illegal immigration and the Bible comes from Old Testament scholar James K. Hoffmeier, who provides tremendous clarity on this issue. Hoffmeier makes an argument that the Old Testament passages appealed to by the Christians who want to justify their advocacy for embracing illegal immigration, actually don’t help them in the least. That is because these Scripture texts actually speak of something very different than illegal immigration.
Each and every passage that they appeal to, such as Deuteronomy 10, actually refers to Israel’s treatment of immigrants who have been granted permission to stay in the land of Israel (Deut. 10:18-19). The immigrants were there legally, with the permission of the government, very much like our passport and visa systems. Hoffmeier notes that the Bible uses three Hebrew terms that are of relevance here: ‘ger,’ ‘nekhar,’ and ‘zar.’
The term ‘ger’ is generally translated as ‘alien’ in our English Bibles, while ‘nekhar’ and ‘zar’ are translated as ‘foreigner.’ But sometimes they can all be translated as foreigner or stranger. The important point that Hoffmeier makes is that the terms are used differently in Scripture. While ‘nekhar’ and ‘zar’ refer to people passing through a foreign land with no intention of staying, ‘ger’ refers to foreign residents who by permission stay for an extended period.
Hoffmeier gives the example of biblical figure Joseph, who in Genesis 45:16-18 asks permission from Pharaoh for his family to settle in Egypt. In response to Joseph’s request, Pharaoh gave Joseph’s family the land of Goshen, which is in Genesis 47. The law of Moses which is based on the creational and redemptive ordinances in Genesis in turn commands the Hebrews to treat the foreigner who dwells in their land for extended period of time, in a just and compassionate manner, with full access to all the social structures and rights of being an Israeli. But an intrinsic part of this is that the ‘ger’ is also obligated to live according to the laws of Israel.
However, Hoffmeier observes that no such provisions are extended to the ‘nekhar’ and ‘zar,’ the foreigners who are simply passing through. They are not necessarily extended all the rights and privileges of being an Israeli, because they are not citizens of the land. Their stay is temporary and they can, by implication, be kicked out at any time and really for any reason.
Hoffmeier concludes that well-meaning Christians are therefore committing the informal fallacy of equivocation by mistakenly applying biblical passages that specifically address legal immigrants, those in Israel by permission, to illegal immigrants. There is a clear difference between the immigrants who have been given permission to stay in the land of Israel permanently and those who are merely passing through. The former has all the rights and privileges of being a citizen of Israel while the other doesn’t.
The key takeaway here is that the immigrant in Scripture is obliged to follow the laws of Israel. If we want to try to apply that obligation to illegal immigrants, we have to ask: how on earth does a person follow the laws of the land who is here illegally? How does an illegal immigrant follow the laws of the land? By definition, he or she can’t, and so they are legitimately either refused entry or legitimately deported.
In a similar vein, it’s just as problematic to refer to Jesus as an illegal immigrant when his family resettled in Egypt. This is because Egypt was under the same political administrative unit as was Judea, Galilee and Samaria, which was the Roman Empire. This argument ignores the radical difference between the United States’ political relationship to Latin America and Rome’s administrative relationship to Egypt. Given the threat they were under from Herod, it would be better I think to say that Jesus and his family sought some kind of political asylum from their own ethnarch and sought safety under the confines of another administration that nevertheless was still under the same imperial administration.
The Bible never eliminates borders. It certainly redefines them, but there are no unfettered open entrances in Scripture. This is especially true of Israel, but it is also true of the church. Paul’s letters evidence very clear boundaries between Christian life, pagan life, and Jewish life. When it comes to national borders, the issue is biblically and historically one of national security, which the church has historically affirmed as right and good. The protection of a nation’s own citizens, particularly the weak and the infirm, is the moral duty of any nation.
A relevant analogy is that most people lock their doors at night not because they hate the people outside, but because they love the people inside. That’s the church’s historic position on borders and national security. It is the duty of every government and every able bodied citizen to protect the weak and the infirm within our boundaries and our care. JD Vance articulated this very well to the media this week:
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