What Does the Bible Say About Immigration?

Introduction

Laura and I noticed that when the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) met a few weeks ago and voted to endorse a right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim (i.e. fascist) government, there was little discussion from a Christian perspective on the government policies, especially on immigration.

Some CDA members at the conference noted that the State choosing to shut down Muslim schools while funding Christian schools is not fair. This fits in with the CDA's traditional stance for religious schools, under the banner of 'religious freedom', as a key issue distinguishing them from the secular right-wing party, the VVD. Now it seems that the CDA either does not care or never really sufficiently cared for religious freedom, but merely cared about themselves. A person who wants one thing for himself, but thinks other humans are not fit for it should never be trusted in government. That way of thinking is both distinctly hypocritical and corrupt.

Yet, the CDA voted 68%-32% to join a government whose official agenda is to pass laws criminalizing wearing a burqa, niqab, and other face covering (Islamic) garments, to close Islamic schools, to fire people working in two government ministries who wear a headscarf, to make integration tests more difficult, to continue racial discrimination in immigration policies, to make immigrants pay for the full costs of their integration courses, to cut unemployment/social benefit if someone's 'clothing' prevents them from getting a job (i.e. employers discrimination on the basis of religion due to Islamic dress, a huge problem in The Netherlands, should be viewed as if it is the victim's fault), extend the stop and search policies which are used in minority communities where the constitution is deemed not to apply, cut any child tax credits to parents if their children do not 'speak Dutch properly', and revoke citizenship for (brown) people who commit serious crimes.

Once Laura and I noted this lack of any biblical of Christian ethical perspective in the discourse, we did finally hear the first CDA member address the issue from the perspective of Christian ethics. That was when 93.1 Radio Utrecht interviewed dissident CDA MP Kathleen Ferrier who opposed the government accord.

This topic is important because there is a fight over how the CDA will brand itself in the Dutch political spectrum, which has ran far to the right. Some leading figures are trying to hold on to a centrist party, but they are the minority. I have previously predicted that there is no specific brand or niche for them, and thus, they will cease to exist as a major party very soon. They have already dropped from 41 to 20 seats in the last election, and are now polling at around only 14 seats.

I want to focus just on immigration, but, first, I must briefly touch on the other CDA hypocrisies. From the Christian perspective, which endorses non-violent action and compassion for the poor, how can the following measures be morally justified: taking money allocated for foreign aid and giving it to a military organisation (NATO) and calling it part of the 'foreign aid' budget, buying a new fighter jet (which has the approval of 15% of the Dutch population), going back into Afghanistan, increasing aid/investment to Israel (a rich, non-Christian, country governed at the moment by less-than-peaceful leaders), cutting student grants, firing civil servants during an economic downturn, cutting the minimum wage and basic subsistence benefit, cutting childcare subsidy and cutting health subsidy. Also, how can a party like the CDA, who claims that 'the family is the cornerstone of society', reconcile that statement with their new stance against family-based migration and also pass policies to severely restrict it, as well as policies that are hurting the family budgets of so many people by cutting back the subsidies for childcare and mandatory health insurance.

Now, onto immigration. It seems to me that there are four approaches to immigration that the CDA might use. I list them below followed by their corresponding methodology(ies):

1. Christian: Biblical or Historical Revelational

2. Liberal: Cost-Benefit

3. Kantian Ethics: Right-Based or Universalist Imperative

4. Lizard Reasoning: Familiar Good and Unfamiliar Bad

I. A Christian Approach to Immigration Policy

Explaining the Methods

I see two two major methods within a Christian approach. The first would be a biblical method, which looks to what the Bible says about the issue. One could have varying levels of belief in the authority of the Bible (inerrant, inspired, etc) and could use a historical, literalist or any number of methods, but the basic approach is simply to ask what the Bible instructs one to do as a Christian. The second method would be a historical revelational method. This method looks at how Jesus would approach the issue. A historical revelational method is based on the belief that a specific historical character, for Christians, Jesus Christ, has revealed to us how we are to live our life. Thus, this approach puts not the Bible, but Christ at the center of Christianity. After all, it is called Christianity and is centered around a holy person, in contrast to Islam and Judaism which are text-centered religions. Thus, from this approach, the teachings and daily practices of Jesus are directly relevant for daily decisions and the primary source of guidance for one's moral decisions.

Application of Biblical Textual Method

So, what does the Bible say about immigration? Well, the Old Testament law repeatedly commands God's people to set aside a portion of their income for widows, orphans, and immigrants. If and when one does not, the punishment is death from God. God even commands equal treatment for non-citizens. Leviticus 19:33-34 commands: 'When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God,' and Exodus 22:1, 'You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.' This law applied not just to those passing by, but those resident aliens who live 'with you in your land'.

Now, if you still do not believe me about how God's punishment under Mosaic for mistreating immigrants, strangers, journeymen, 'others', etc. was a gruesome death, then we should go over the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the story of Sodom some wanderers come to the town of Sodom and approach a man named Lot. Lot provides shelter and food for them. Next, a group of men come to Lot's house and want to gang-rape the travelers. Lot protects the men and, in an act of graciousness and hospitality, would rather the men rape his two daughters than hurt the travelers. So, to punish the men, God destroys the entire town and tells Lot to flee. Lot's wife is destroyed just for looking back at the town.

The lesson is that a moral person should have no association with inhospitable people who exploit foreigners. Lot properly believes that the laws of morality protects all who come into the territory at least as much as the natives. Likely, the law of morality protects travelers even more because they are so particularly vulnerable, as exemplified by Lot offering his daughters instead of the travelers. Remember, there was no twenty-four hour McDonald's to stop at. If people were not hospitable, you died as a traveler. To make it even clearer, Ezekiel 16:49-50 sums up the lesson very clearly: 'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.'

When I looked at the CDA conference gathering in the papers, I saw it dominated by overfed (i.e. fat), White, older males. I did not see anything particularly Christian in the room or the people. Today, I also see nothing particularly Christian in their decisions, including to join a right-wing government that wishes to oppress and exploit foreigners.

Explanation of the Historical Revelational Method

The Historical Revelational method is based on the belief that a particular figure (or figures) in history has revealed how we should live as we seek to be moral people. People use this method when they address a moral question with the approach of: 'What would ______ do? What would he/she have to say about this particular situation?' For example, orthodox Marxists spend countless hours arguing about and trying to piece together that Karl Marx would say about a particular issue. This is also the approach used by the conservatives Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, at least when it is convenient for them. They essentially (pretend to) ask what the demi-god like Founding Fathers would have to say about a particular issue.

Now, for Christians, believing that Jesus has revealed to us/them a particular way of living is important. Christians follow Jesus as their model for living. Thus, the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and the practices of the First Century Church which was led by people who had the closest contact with Jesus, should be the strongest guidance as to how Christians should, who are supposed to put Jesus Christ at the center of the life. Thus, the approach used to answer difficult moral questions would be to ask, 'What would Jesus do?' Well, would Jesus vote to usher in a far right-wing anti-immigrant government?

Application of the Historical Revelational Model to Immigration to The Netherlands

So, just how did Jesus and the early church treat 'the Other'-- the foreigner, the traveler, the wanderer? Well, we know that Jesus and his disciples were themselves travelers who relied on the hospitality of others as they walked across different lands preaching and teaching. We also know that Jesus refused to degrade or stigmatize all the unclean and unpopular groups of his day -- tax collectors (Mk 2:16, Lk 19:9 Mt 9:9), Roman soldiers (very foreign), prostitutes (Mt 21:28-32), women with an irregular, painful and bloody menstrual cycle (Mt 9:20-22, Mk 5:25-34, Lk 8:43-48), lepers (Mt 8:1-4; Mk 1:40-45; Lk 5:12-15; 17:19), and so forth. On of his principle critique of the powerful governmental and religion institutions of his day is how they used the Jewish cleanliness system to oppress outsiders such as women, the poor and immigrants.

Let us take another example from the story of Jesus overturning the tables and condemning the money changers (Mark 11:15-19, 27-33; Mt 21:12-17, 23-27; Lk 19:45-48, 20:1-8; Jn 2:13-16). This is when Jesus is the angriest of all the stories in the Bible. He particularly directed his wrath against the money-changers selling doves. Under Mosaic law, one was to sacrifice their best cow when they visit the Temple on certain occasions. If one was poor, one could sacrifice a bird, such as a dove instead. Now, the money-changers at the Temple were oppressing poor travelers by ripping them off because the law required these travelers to buy at least a dove. Their price gouging hurt the poorest of the poor, and the travelers from the furthest away were the ones who could not bring any animal with them. Thus, they received Jesus' wrath for their inhospitality to the outsider, which is analogous to one of the clearest displays of God's wrath toward the people of Sodom and Gomorrah for their inhospitality.

These stories are not random, but central Biblical teachings in both the New and Old Testament. If I had to sum up Jesus' teachings it would be that he inverted the traditional hierarchies of his day of insiders and outsiders, propped up by the Jewish purity system and a politics of purity, and replaced it with a politics of compassion. He argued that showing empathy for 'the Other' was the true sign of godliness, not purity. Thus, those who seek to dye their hair whiter and set up a colonialist hierarchy where the more Dutch one is, the more rights they have, could not be further from Jesus' core teachings. This teaching is seen in key verses from the Bible, such as 'I tell you the truth, whatsoever you did to one of the least important of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!' (Mt 25:40). Further, in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7) / Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:17–49), the most important and central teaching of Jesus' career, he shows the importance of treating all fairly and justly: 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' (Mt. 5:44). Jesus goes on to emphasize that treating the Other, the foreigner, the stranger, even the (perceived) enemy fairly and justly is a sign of godliness because 'God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous' (Mt 5:45). The conclusion in Luke 6:36 is succinct: 'Be compassionate, as God is compassionate' (in some translations, 'merciful'). How much talk of compassion and mercy was there at the CDA conference as they charged ahead with ripping families apart and leaving asylum seekers to die on the streets and in the oceans?

Under the historical revelations approach, one should also look to the early Christian practices to see how those closest to Jesus interpreted his way of living. Here, Galatians 3:28 provides some guidance on whether dividing out rights based on race as the new right-wing government wants to do is just: 'There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female' Hmm, interesting. The traditional divisive distinction between Jew and Gentile is not seen as relevant. Yet, Geert Wilders wants to deny immigration requests from anyone from a Muslim country, even if they are Christian. To me, that seems inconsistent with the principles I have laid out.

II. A Liberal Approach

Here, I use Liberal to mean the classical enlightenment approach. The modern era brought the decline in religious thinking and replaced it with a worship of utility. Thus, an action does not have value based on any inherent properties or its accordance with certain values like hospitality, purity, charity, compassion, etc., but rather its value is determined in relation to universal and empirically measurable things like efficiency and productivity. Thus, to calculate whether an action is moral, one weighs the predicted costs incurred by doing the action against the benefits that will likely come from doing the action. If the benefits are higher, then doing it is moral. This is called a cost-benefit analysis, and is what is most commonly used by companies to decide which actions to take. It is what we were taught to do as children when we make lists of the pros and cons of doing something and decide whether to do it.

This approach is roughly what the UK, The Netherlands and other countries are trying to do under a 'modern immigration policy'. It basically uses language skills, savings, past income, and education level to calculate if an immigrant is likely to contribute well to the tax base, and lets the person in if a certain number of points are met.

Thus, there are no hard and fast simple rules, no values or appeal to tradition involved. If someone is rich enough (measured these days mostly by labor output potential, i.e. taxable income!), they are accepted.

This approach takes into account the fact that there is a huge shortage of labor in Europe. Over the coming decades, the EU-15 countries have a projected labor shortage of between sixty-eight million and one hundred and seventy million people, with The Netherlands as no exception (Katrin Bennhold, ‘Europe Faces Labor Shortage,’ International Herald Tribune, 26 Jan 2007 link; International Center for Peace and Development, Employment Trends in the 21st Century, link; EurActive, The EU's Labour-Shortage 'Time Bomb', 22 June 2007, link). Thus, rather than viewing a residence permit as a privilege reserved only for the best and most obedient immigrants, countries should see themselves as competitors in a global marketplace competing for very discrete number of workers (Migration Policy Institute, Top 10 Migration Issues of 2008 Issue #2 — The Recession-Proof Race for Highly Skilled Migrants, Dec 2008). It is a false assumption to believe that there are floods of immigrants wanting to get into rich countries, and from this pool we always have the option to let in a few more or less when we feel like it, under our own exact terms. Very few people are willing to leave their families, their culture, and region and live in a foreign place, even when given favorable conditions.

It is important to remember that the calculus is done based on the projected and most likely costs and the projected and most likely benefits. Many people stirring up nativist sentiment like to point to a single case of immigration going wrong in the form of reliance on welfare or crime and then think that means that the balance struck is too leniently and is off. There are always going to be situations where the likely result is not the actual result, but that does not mean that the initial calculus was wrong. What is interesting is that these same people do not use the same approach when setting education or welfare policy for White, Dutch children. If society spends tens of thousands of Euros educating a White Dutch person and that person ends up being a net economic drag on society, nobody argues that society should have never paid for his education. If a White Dutch person ends up on hard times and is on unemployment or welfare, nobody says that the State should be doing a stricter cost-benefit analysis so that more Dutch babies die at birth from starvation when first entering society so that they will learn the values of hard work and discipline.

The utilitarian response to the Kantian critique of utilitarianism (see below) may be that it is incorrect to say that one does do a balance between societal interests and individual interests in these cases. In reality, policy-makers and judges do a balance between two types of societal interests. It is not the particular individual in a Fourth Amendment case that has a privacy interest or has an interest in not being tortured, but rather society itself that has decided that privacy and bodily security are sufficiently serious interests such that people will not tolerate arbitrary invasions of privacy or the torturing of suspects in custody. Even when in the particular circumstances such action my be justified, one looks at the overall societal goodness in protecting privacy or bodily security, such that the Kantian critique of utilitarianism is actually only a critique of a misguided, unprincipled form of utilitarianism that ignores principled reasoning in utilitarianism's quest for the common good.

III. A Kantian Approach

The Kantian approach, based on the work of Immanuel Kant, aims to be more rationalist, universal and systematic that an approach based on a particular religion, while at the same time, rejecting the primary assumption of a cost-benefit analysis. It rejects a cost-benefit analysis because such an approach reduces human being to mere means to an end. Historically, it represents a compromise between axiomatic/religious ethics and a rationalist (yet non-utilitarian) approach to ethics developed by Kant in the context of the less radical, less anti-religion German (late) Enlightenment.

A Kantian approach tries to come up with a small number of universals to guide human behavior. The questions of whether something is moral is answered by asking whether one would want all persons to act that way. When people say, 'what if everyone did that' after you pick a flower on public property, one is using a Kantian approach. Under a Kantian approach, not killing and not lying have stood up as solid commands.

A Kantian approach, as applied to government immigration policy, would thus base the rules on the needs of all human beings. It would avoid pure cost-benefit analyses to answer the question of when someone has a right to do something because that approach is too State-ist and demeans that person's dignity and personal interests (i.e. freedom) in the matter. Instead, society should either balance society's interests versus the individual interest in the matter, or perhaps more accurate, set aside zones of control in which the individual has a very heavy legal presumption of being fully capable of making decisions without societal intervention. Among these areas, borrowing largely from the U.S. case law, I would identify the following: who to associate with (marry, form a family, form friendships), whether or not to have children and how many, control over the circumstances of one's death (euthanasia, right to have will enforced, etc.), right to physical security and control over one's body (protected from violence by others, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, freedom of movement and travel).

Thus, a virtuous Kantian policy-maker would make immigration rules based on the level of respect, decency, and dignity that they would want to be treated when they travel or end up in another country. So when a Dutch person travels to the US, would they expect to be discriminated against on the basis of nationality in the provision of basic public services? Put otherwise, would they expect for a police force or a hospital funded by money they are paying in tax dollars to not help them based on their nationality (as is being proposed in The Netherlands)? Would they find it unjust if a shop that provides services to the public charged them €12 for a coffee, and meanwhile they look around and everybody else in the store, including other non-citizens are being charged €1.62 (these numbers reflect Dutch discriminatory tuition rates).

Further, if a Dutch citizen were to take a job in Canada, would they expect that they would be able to bring their partner and their with them without excessive legal difficulty? Or, if The Netherlands was ripped apart by political violence and civil war, and your neighbor had threatened your life and already once kidnapped your children, and you talk to a lawyer and he tells you that because you have a reasonable fear for your life, you are allowed to apply for asylum in any country in the world based on the international community's shared interest in protecting life, yet when you take this advice and arrived in a new country, would that Dutch person be angry if the new country refuses to honor its binding legal obligations and locks you up for years like a criminal, denies you a right to work, takes your children away from you, and further traumatizes you?

All of these things are happening right now on Dutch soil. Dutch officials in the name of "the Dutch" are doing these things. They are ripping families apart. It is the only country in the EU where there is no residence permit for either marriage or engagement (there are additional requirement designed to undermine and restrict the right to family life and applied regardless of any actual government fear of the alleged State interests of protecting scarce resources or security being endangered).

IV. Lizard Reasoning

The final type of ethical reasoning goes as follows: 'those people are different. Therefore, they are bad'. That's it. That is all the 'reasoning' that goes into this.

Now, those operating under the assumptions of the post-Enlightenment Era might reassure us that this method of reasoning does not pass muster and that because it does not pass muster, surely, surely, only a small portion of the population uses it. George Lakoff has argued the opposite. He argues that large segments of the population use merely a lizard level of reasoning in making political choices. He also argues that the left loses elections because they continue to assume that humans makes political decisions based on logic, evidence, and enlightenment reasoning processes. The empirical evidence supports Lakoff. Other psychologists have studied the matter and concluded that about 70% of people use minimal lizard-based reasoning in making decisions which focuses on fear, sexual prowess, and self-preservation. An additional 20% use enlightenment / empirical type reasoning, and another 10% motivate their decision and behaviors based on altruistic principles.

Lakoff's point is that the left hires professor-like leaders and repeatedly fails to understand this and engages in detailed policy debates with the right thinking that that will win over a reasonable public. The right, on the other hand, understands this dynamic because they went to marketing and business schools. The result is that both in the Netherlands with the PVV and the VVD, and with the Republicans in the US, voters know exactly where these groups stand. They have a clear and consistent national message. That message may be based on fear and irrationality, but so are all the enormously successful advertising campaigns that sell us junk products because, like the lizards we are, we are scared we will lose our status or won't get laid.

So, what can we do? What is the conclusion to all this? Well, recent talks at the Royal Science Academy in the UK (link) (link) have identified several things. First, humans do have the ability to expand our zone of empathy; indeed, we are more interconnected than previously thought and we are soft-wired for empathic behavior. Second, there is a huge empathy gap in our world. This gap occurs throughout pretty much all of our major societal institutions (the state, education, workplace, etc). We should be training humans to be able to empathize with a wider range of conscious beings (not just for family and kin, not just for those of the same religion, not just for those of the same nationality, and even not just for those of the same species human, such that we can empathize with animals and the biosphere). And third, unless we overcome this empathy gap very quickly, we are all going to perish.

Related posts:

Immigration Purgatory

New Scheme for Highly Skilled Migrants to the Netherlands

Where is there left?

Letter to NRC Editor in Response to Idiotic VVD Immigration Editorial