By Rev. Matt Koerber
I met Ashur* when I visited Iraq five years ago. He is friendly and quick to make newcomers feel welcome. We were almost complete strangers when he invited me to his house for dinner with his family. I am thankful that we could stay in touch (mostly through mutual friends). Ashur is part of a minority ethnic group in Iraq that is historically Christian. He lives in the United States now and hopes to work for the US Army. I initially interviewed him about what it was like to be a refugee, but we talked so much about the complexities of being a Christian in a Muslim majority country that it made sense to publish the interview this week. When I called Ashur to ask if I could interview him for the blog he responded with characteristic enthusiasm. He assured me, “I’m gonna answer with the only truth that I know. Be prepared!” He is quick to smile and invite you into his confidence. The outwardly friendly persona can initially hide the fact that he has had a very difficult life. “My family was born in Baghdad, but because of being Christian you cannot stay at the same place for all of your life. It depends on the political situation, and your religion can affect the place where you live. My father and mother grew up in Mosul, which is the ancient city of Nineveh. My father was an engineer and worked for a private company outside of Baghdad. After his work project ended, we moved back to Mosul where he lived with family. At that time the government started to harass people who were not part of Saddam’s Baath (political) party.” Ashur loves the history of Iraq and used the occasion to launch into a discussion about the social fabric of the region. He continued, “The thing that you need to understand is that in Iraq there are inhabitants from different ethnic groups: Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Izidis. In all of the cities of Iraq, you can find Christians. They were there before the Arabs.” I knew from my brief visit to Iraq that in that part of the world there is no distinction between religion and ethnicity. To be Kurdish or Arabic is to be a Muslim. And to be Assyrian or Chaldean is to be a Christian. One Iraqi friend once told me that he spoke “the Christian language.” What he meant was that he spoke Assyrian. But that is how people talk about it. It is how they think about the entwined nature of religion and ethnicity. Most of the Assyrians have connections to the Orthodox Church. It is the part of the world close to where the Biblical adventures of Jonah and Daniel occurred, and where some of the earliest Christian monasteries and chapels were built. Not far from where Ashur lived, was the hometown of the prophet Nahum. For years, the local Jewish community had maintained what they believed to be his tomb. However, the Jewish inhabitants of Iraq have mostly been driven from the area and now the ancient synagogue housing Nahum’s grave lies in ruins. Ashur is proud of his people’s history and eager to share its importance. “The language of our people is called Assyrian, but it is – as far as I know – very similar to the Aramaic which Jesus would have spoken,” he told me. In a world dominated by Arabic, it is often hard to keep the language in use. He continued, “Growing up, the only place that I retained my language was in church. Some people go to church to be religious, but many go to retain their language.” I asked him what it was like to grow up as a Christian in Iraq. “I grew up in a Catholic school in Nineveh. It was a very good school, and at that time in the 80’s many rich and politically important families sent their kids to these schools. They believed it was the best education… But there were challenges for my family – my father couldn’t find a job. Being a Christian and not having family connections made it really hard. It is not like in America where you just apply for a job. You have to know someone. My uncle was part of an opposition party, which was under government investigation. That made it even harder for my father. They took him to the police station to be interrogated. They wanted him to be an informer, but he refused. The police told my father, ‘as long as Saddam lives you will go hungry.’ After that, the only jobs he could get were under the table.” But political and religious ties are not the only relationships which mattered in Iraq. Their Muslims neighbors felt a responsibility to help out. In spite of ethnic and religious differences, members of the community reached out. This is the complex web of life in the Middle East. “Our neighbors would help us to get a job (with under the table pay). The Arab neighbors had connections,” Ashur said. This is another difference between the Middle East and America; “In Iraq, neighbors see each other in their gardens and greet each other. We will invite each other to eat. Connections are more strong there.” But as the political situation grew more tense, life got even more difficult for Ashur’s family. “They took my father for 40 days in the late 1980’s. He was tortured and then released. After 1991 (and the First Gulf War), it started to get really dangerous for Christians of Syrian origin. (Other Christians from different tribes were not persecuted.) Then, my family moved to the Kurdish region, to the city of Zakho. After ‘91 they started to declare their own government in the Kurdish region. In those days there were only a couple of hundred families in Zakho. Now it is a bigger city.” I asked him how things were different in Zakho. He told me, “In Zakho, it was a very different story. These people were Kurds. They still live with a tribal mentality. They are not radical Muslims.” I know from experience that the Kurds have a strong sense of ethnic identity. They have been persecuted by many Arab groups over the years and are generally very tolerant. They had felt the heavy hand of Saddam. There are museums which enshrine the memory of Kurdish civilians killed in a gas attack by Saddam’s army. In my experience, the Kurds were delighted by the outcome of the Second Gulf War as it solidified their semi-autonomous position and further shielded them from the attacks of their neighbors. To this day, the question of Kurdish independence haunts all geopolitical debates in the region. Ashur told me how things again changed after the Second Gulf War. He said that Kurdistan (the informal name for the Kurdish region of Iraq) was quick to embrace the Americans and they began to see job growth. After finishing college, Ashur began to work for the US Army as a translator. He spent 2 years in Mosul and after the occupation returned to Kurdistan where he began to teach at an English language school. But while things were looking up for Kurdistan, things were getting harder for Ashur in his personal life. After his father died from cancer, Ashur felt the burden of caring for his family. He decided that his best opportunity for work was to try to emigrate to the United States. There is a special immigration visa for people who had worked in the army and who were experiencing persecution. Ashur applied for the visa and came to the U.S. in 2014, where he lived for a time with his former army captain. He struggled to find a job and after a traumatic bout of appendicitis he returned to Iraq. Back in Iraq, his options grew dim and hope faded. Ashur began to despair of life itself. In the depth of despair, Ashur encountered his faith in a new and vibrant way. “When I was young, my family went to church. I always had a feeling that God was with me. But I didn’t know Jesus until my father died. I knew him in my head, but not his presence. Because we lived in a Muslim society – where they don’t believe in the Trinity – there were times in my life that I did not really want to pray to Jesus. But he touched me and changed my life. At my lowest point, I was sitting on the roof of a building looking off the edge of the third story. I honestly began to think about jumping. But Jesus met me in that place. I felt as if he grabbed me. I knew that he was real. And everything good happened after that.” After that crisis point, Ashur made a personal commitment to read the Bible every day. In the midst of great personal turmoil he has kept that commitment and found it to be a source of spiritual life. He returned to America where he stayed with a friend that he knew from Iraq. He has worked hard in a variety of low paying jobs but has finally been received into an army training program and the promise of a solid career. I asked him to reflect on the complexities of his life in Iraq. He told me, “I love my Kurdish neighbors.” But he was also wary of the wide range of interactions that were possible. “There is a spectrum of ways that my Muslim neighbors might interact with me. Since Saddam fell, Kurdistan has become more religiously observant. Some people can start off friendly – religiously moderate – and then they change. Some people get drawn towards radicalization. There are a lot of signals that help me determine if a person is safe. How they dress, how they talk to women. Ashur expressed concerns about processes that shifted some people towards radicalization. Often, people who feel like they have few options and little hope can be easily swayed. He has concerns about what might be taught in a particular mosque and expressed a belief that some housed recruiters for more radical expressions of Islam. He described his perception of how this might play out. “There are people that you know in the community that will disappear for a period of time. You know that they are doing something wrong. Someone came to him and recruited him to do something violent. Poverty is a big factor. A lot of these people who are poor are the ones who disappear.” The varied experiences that Ashur has with Islam are not easily reconciled. On one hand, he summarized the experience of Christians in the Middle East as being very difficult. “If you are a Christian, you are still a second-level citizen.” On the other hand, he is thankful for the hospitality of many Muslim neighbors and misses the communal nature of Middle-Eastern life. Perhaps it would be best summarized by an observation he made about daily life back in Iraq. “You have to take each person one by one,” he said. “You have to get to know people.” *Ashur’s name and personal information have been changed for the safety of his family still in Iraq. By Kevin
This is the most difficult piece I have had to write for this blog. I have split it into two halves. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the experience of growing up in an Islamic country. Today, I will write about growing up as a Christian amongst Muslims. I hope to distinguish between Islam as a system on one hand, and Muslims as individuals on the other. While the relationship between the two is complex, it is my belief that we too easily conflate the two. If there are things in one of these posts that conflict with your views, I ask for your patience, and suggest that you read the other half. There are things about the Malaysian Islamic authorities and government that I have purposefully left out, because even expressing the views I have may put my family and friends back in Malaysia under scrutiny and at risk. You may notice, in addition, that we have removed my last name from the blog to protect my family’s identity. My wife invites you to share a drink with me if you want to hear more. My views of Islam as a system (discussed in my last post) have evolved since I was a child, for two reasons. First, my perspective is informed by having inhabited multiple cultures, something I gained from having lived in the West in more recent years. Second, I believe the increasing Islamization of Malaysia has sped up – it is a much bigger factor now than it was when I was growing up. But deeper than those views, and more impervious to time, has been the deep affection for individual Muslims borne out of first-hand experiences I have shared with them while growing up. My deepest affinities for Muslims got rooted deep within me before the present wave of Islamization hit Malaysia. It takes a village I grew up in a racially (and consequently, a religiously) diverse neighborhood. The Muslim Mak Ciks (literally, Sister-Mothers; the Malay equivalent for Aunty. In Malaysia, every adult acquaintance is an Uncle or Aunty) helped raise me. My parents tell me that when I was a baby, our Muslim next-door neighbor would rub my belly with an herbal ointment if I was crying to help me sleep. A different Mak Cik would walk me home from school when my parents needed someone to get me. The Mak Cik across the street was my third grade math teacher. When any of my family were sick (especially my dad, who had long bouts with cancer), they would be ready to drive us to the hospital or provide meals if we needed. Last summer, many of them came to my wedding reception in Malaysia and shared in our joy, generously giving us traditional Malay gifts of glassware and linens. Every Eid al-Fitr (the festival marking the end of Ramadan), there were at least 4 or 5 Muslim neighbors I would be expected to visit and share a meal with. Sometimes, there would be so many invitations my family would have to strategically send me to some on my own. I would be welcomed like a nephew. These families would show up at my family’s home at Christmas. When I moved to the US, I found the relatively insular family celebrations of holidays an oddity. The Muslims I grew up amongst embodied what it meant to be a good neighbor. They loved me, a Christian, as themselves. This did not change even as the public sphere in Malaysia faced the pressures of Islamization. While Islamist leaders and politicians in Malaysia have warned Muslims against sharing in the religious celebrations of non-Muslims (for fear of tarnishing their faith), our neighbors seem to view sharing life with us as central to their faith, even if (maybe especially because) we are not Muslim ourselves. When I visit home, I meet these Muslim Uncles and Aunties. We reminisce and catch up, and they are proud of me and how my life has gone, as Uncles and Aunts are with their own nephews and nieces. On our last trip, several of them had the chance to meet Evelyn. They welcomed her into the neighborhood, unconcerned with her otherness. One Mak Cik handmade and delivered her special chicken pot pie for us to eat on Christmas Day, even though she was weak from her own cancer battle. Muslim brothers I attended a public school in Malaysia, with a racially and religiously diverse student body. I am ethnically Chinese, while almost all Muslims are ethnically Malay. Friendships across religious and ethnic lines were common as I grew up, but are becoming less common with Malaysia’s creeping Islamization polarizing people and sowing seeds of suspicion and fear. I weep for future generations of Malaysians who may never know the deep friendships I have shared with my Muslim friends. These are people I have played countless hours of soccer with, shared meals with, and even talked about my faith with. In a country where sharing one’s faith with Muslims is illegal, the likeliest way they will encounter the Gospel is through friendships with Christians. In turn, I have learned much about Islam through my friendships with them. Friendship made us willing to listen to each other. I don’t know if any of my Muslim friends will ever come to believe in the God revealed in Jesus the way I do. I don’t know how any of our conversations will have affected their beliefs. But I think these friendships still matter because they are not merely means to an end of conversion. There have been periods of racial violence in Malaysia’s past, primarily between the Malay Muslims and the ethnic Chinese. I have no doubt that many of my Muslim friends would have given their lives to protect me, a non-Muslim, if violence of that sort were to return to Malaysia. Would I, a Christian, lay my life down for them? It’s a question I have asked myself this past week. Love thy neighbor Why have I told you about these friendships? I view these friendships as forms of resistance against the fear and resentment that can fester between different communities (particularly between non-Muslims and Muslims). I view them as the means by which Christians love their neighbors as themselves. In my last years in Malaysia before moving to the US, this became more difficult. The creeping Islamization made it harder to distinguish between the system of Islam that I grew fearful of on one hand, with the Muslim friends I knew and loved on the other. I began to wonder if my Muslim friends even recognized the erosion of religious freedom that I felt due to the actions of an Islamist-leaning government. Though our friendships went deep, it was hard to resist being conditioned to fear Muslims – had they become my enemies? I will never know how I could or should have overcome my fear in order to move towards them. My increasing awareness of the effects of Islamization in Malaysia should not have made me fear; it should have driven me to deeper compassion and friendships with them. It is easy to demonize and fear a group when we do not have friendships with individuals from that group. Even with the personal knowledge I have of my Muslim friends, this fear is hard to shake. How much greater is the fear when it is bolstered by a lack of knowing individual Muslims? Does our fear prevent us from seeing individual Muslims as the image-bearers they are? Does this fear prevent us from moving towards the Muslims in our neighborhoods with open arms and friendship? Are we more concerned with our own safety than the safety of refugees and displaced peoples from Islamic countries? In my last post, I suggested that an awareness of Islam as a system was necessary for informing our engagement with Muslims: we need to be aware of how it can influence individual Muslims. However, no knowledge or perspective about this system changes the call to love them as neighbors, even at great personal cost. I’m convinced that our Muslim neighbors here in the US need the friendship of the church. This friendship may be uncomfortable. In addition to crossing cultural barriers, some may worry that befriending Muslims may imply a tacit endorsement of Islam as a system. To this, I would say two things. First, we cannot properly understand Islam as a system separate from individual Muslims. Second, if we place preconditions on our love for others, we fail to understand the power of the Gospel. In fact, this friendship may be costly. I can attest to how much it costs the Malaysian church to love Muslims. Even if the system and structure of Islam in Malaysia exerts great power against the church, the church is not exempt from loving its neighbors, some of whom may in fact be enemies. I believe the same call of Jesus to lay down our lives applies to us in the US, for we are part of the same church he has called. By Kevin
This is the most difficult piece I have had to write for this blog. I have split it into two halves. In today’s post, I write about the experience of growing up in an Islamic country. Tomorrow, I will write about growing up as a Christian amongst Muslims. I hope to distinguish between Islam as a system on one hand, and Muslims as individuals on the other. While the relationship between the two is complex, it is my belief that we too easily conflate the two. If there are things in one of these posts that conflict with your views, I ask for your patience, and suggest that you read the other half. There are things about the Malaysian Islamic authorities and government that I have purposefully left out, because even expressing the views I have may put my family and friends back in Malaysia under scrutiny and at risk. You may notice, in addition, that we have removed my last name from the blog to protect my family’s identity. My wife invites you to share a drink with me if you want to hear more. I’m woken up at 5:39 a.m. by the local mosque’s muezzin (the person appointed to read public prayers) reciting the Adhan. Every neighborhood in Malaysia has several mosques, and each broadcasts its prayers via loudspeakers. Allāhu akbar (God is great), they begin each morning, heard by all. The nation’s Muslims (who are mostly ethnic-Malay and make up over 60% of the population) are called to begin their day in prayer. The non-Muslims (consisting mostly of ethnic Indian and Chinese Malaysians) are woken up with them, even if they are not called to the same prayers. Life in Malaysia is punctuated and driven by the rhythms of Islam. It has been this way for generations. Malaysia is a former British colony. When (then) British-Malaya gained independence in 1957, the nascent constitution left the country with a mixed religious identity. Freedom of religion is a right, but only for non-Muslims, as proselytizing Muslims is against the law. In addition, Muslims cannot renounce their faith without incurring consequences from the state. Due to the large number of Muslims and Islam’s historical roots in the region, Islam has always had a strong influence on public life. Growing up, I took Islam’s influence as a fact of life. Some of it was positive; we got many more days off school due to various Islamic holidays. Some of it was common sense; during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast during the day, non-Muslims were told to eat discreetly. To me, this was simply being a good neighbor. Some of it seemed necessary due to the population’s composition; various jobs and positions in society, particularly within the government, were out of reach for non-Muslims (e.g. in 9 of Malaysia’s 13 states, the state government’s head must be a Muslim, by law). For the most part, I grew up loving my country’s social fabric. Muslims were just another community of faith worshipping alongside Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians. It wasn’t merely coexistence; the diversity enriched our culture. I grew up joining neighbors and friends celebrating their religious holidays. Celebrating Eid al-Fitr (the festival marking the end of Ramadan) at my friends’ homes – and having them over to celebrate Christmas at mine – remains a precious memory. Malaysia has long boasted of its cultural diversity and harmony. Over the past 20 years, there has been a gradual shift in how Islam’s influence in Malaysian public life was expressed. The public sphere in Malaysia is increasingly controlled by Islamists: Muslims who believe that Islamic principles should dictate legal, public, and political activity within a state.* While “revolutionary” Islamists may use violence to achieve this, those in Malaysia consist mainly of “reformist” Islamists who seek to Islamize the nation using democratically gained political power. The historical reasons for the creeping Islamization are complex.** In its simplest form, it has been driven by Islamist groups and individuals courting a Muslim-majority electorate by promising to secure Islam’s position of power within the country. This has taken on multiple forms. For non-Muslims, there has been increased scrutiny and (dare I say it) persecution. Here are some examples:
The Islamists involved in some of the examples above may be individual Muslims, but I am concerned mainly with their use of Islam as a system to wield power over non-Muslims in the public sphere. However, the same system and power can be used on Muslims. It is vital to recognize that Muslims are a diverse group, many of whom do not seek to wield power in the service of Islam as a system (as Islamists do). As challenging as things have become for non-Muslims, I believe the creeping Islamization in Malaysia has oppressed my Muslim neighbors most of all. Some examples:
Understanding and engaging with Islam is extremely complex. My experience and history in Malaysia enables me to make the distinction between Islam as a system and Muslims as individuals. This allows me to see that it is not a matter of Us vs. Them, because Christians are not the only ones who face difficulties within a Muslim-dominated society; Muslims are often severely oppressed, and stopped from hearing the Gospel. How can we serve these people in need if we do not see them as individuals? At the same time, I do not believe we will be equipped to engage with and serve them if we do not recognize that Muslims in Muslim-dominated societies are often embedded within a system of Islam influences the way they think about and practice their faith. Here in the US, many barriers have been removed (e.g. there is no law prohibiting sharing our faith with Muslims), and Islam as a system does not have the same power in the public sphere. Engaging with Muslims demands wisdom to discern how each individual Muslim relates to Islam as a system. But more than anything else, it requires us to see Muslims as neighbors we are called to love. Here in the US, I am not woken up by the Adhan. Some mornings, I wake up half-expecting to hear it. I sometimes miss it, along with the Muslim friends I have left behind in Malaysia. * I make no claims about whether it is due to a particular (correct or incorrect) interpretation of Islam’s teachings (as Matt Koerber said, only Muslims are in a position to judge what constitutes “true Islam”). I am simply describing what is observable: that these groups and individuals have sought political power with the stated goal of securing Islam’s influence over society (and by extension, securing the security of Muslims). ** See Islamization in Malaysia: processes and dynamics by Abbott and Gregorios-Pippas (2010) for a comprehensive analysis of the historical factors that led to this. *** Allah is simply the generic Arabic word for God, which has been used by followers of all the Abrahamic faiths for centuries. By Rev. Matt Koerber
We had anticipated from the beginning that the fifth week of the blog would be its most challenging. We reserved this week for a discussion on “Engaging with Islam.” After a one week break from the blog, we returned to find that the topic is more challenging than ever. The newspaper headlines remind us that this topic is relevant for all of the wrong reasons. On Monday, May 22, a suicide bomber killed 22 civilians at a concert in Manchester, England. The bomber had been reported to the authorities as a suspected terrorist when he previously expressed the views that "he was supporting terrorism" and "being a suicide bomber was okay". The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the truth is unclear. The alleged bomber was a British citizen, born in England to Libyan parents who came to the country as refugees. Classmates reported that he had become increasingly religious and that he had traveled to Libya on several occasions. At some point, he became radicalized. On Friday, May 26, ISIS gunmen attacked a tour bus full of Coptic Christians, leaving 29 dead. Coptic Christians represent about 10% of Egypt’s population and have been targeted for violent persecution with increasing regularity during recent years. To quote a director from human rights group Amnesty International, “This terrifying wave of attacks has seen Coptic Christians in North Sinai hunted down and murdered by armed groups. No one should face discrimination – let alone violent and deadly attacks – because of their religious beliefs.” These particular incidents are part of an ongoing trend of violence associated with Islam. Many Muslims condemn such attacks, but the backlash can make life difficult for Muslims living in the West. For example, the Manchester police reported a spike in threats against Muslims in their community after Monday’s bombing. Also on Friday, May 26, in Portland, Oregon, two men were killed while defending a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf. It appears that the attacks may have been motivated by animosity towards the religion of the two Muslim women. (It is unclear whether the attacker was mentally competent.) Closer to home, personal friends of mine have expressed the increasing difficulties that they experience as Muslims living in Pittsburgh. These challenges are particularly relevant to our political dialogue about refugees. This past Fall, there were heightened concerns about Syrian refugees being resettled in the United States because many of the refugees are Muslims. As a candidate, Donald Trump highlighted the fears of some Americans when he called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. Since becoming President, his executive order travel bans have created controversy and legal uncertainties. Beneath the challenging questions of political policy lie more important questions, ones that strike close to the central purpose of this blog. How should Christians think about Islam and Muslims? How should this affect our views on refugees and immigration?Over the course of the next week, we will include a number of different voices from people who are deeply involved in this issue. But for both Kevin and me, this topic is deeply personal. I have been privileged to travel to both Iraq and Turkey, and last summer my family and I spent two months working with Middle-eastern refugees in Athens, Greece. I have close friendships with many Muslims and I am privileged to have many Muslim neighbors. But the situation is even more personal for Kevin. His home country of Malaysia is predominantly Muslim. He knows first hand the challenges of living as a religious minority in an Islamic country while also enjoying rich friendships with many Muslims. Like many of the other issues that we have faced, it is worth saying at the outset that this is complicated. It is our conviction that many of the predominant approaches towards Islam are fundamentally flawed. Westerners often find the issue to be foreign and confusing, thus gravitating towards simplistic approaches of understanding. These simplistic approaches for understanding Islam and our engagement with it are inadequate for the task at hand. Let’s consider two competing approaches and then try to sketch a third approach which better represents the facts. Simple Approach #1: “All Muslims are Terrorists” In light of the claims of ISIS to be the representatives of true Islam, and in light of the expressed religious convictions of many high profile terrorists, it seems like a short step to draw a one-to-one connection between Islam and religious violence. People who take this interpretation typically assume all Muslims are inherently violent. It may even be assumed that they are under-cover agents who are committed to religious conquest. What this view fails to regard is that Muslims are not a monolithic group. Throughout the world, many different expressions of Islam are found with different views of religious violence. Individual Muslims believe a wide range of things, and I am thankful to have many personal friends who are both Muslim and committed to peaceful coexistence. Simple Approach #2: “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I want to be clear: I do not believe that it is simplistic for a professing Muslim to say that their religious system is committed to peace and nonviolence. I am thankful for the many who do so. What I am thinking of here is the propensity for (well-intentioned) non-Muslim Westerners to offer their assessment of what constitutes “true Islam.” I believe it is only appropriate for a Muslim to speak about “true Islam.” An outsider is not in a position to make those claims. We can only speak of “true Islam” if we believe that Islam is true. What we can know is this: just as there are many Muslims in the world who affirm the peaceful coexistence of different religions, there are also many people who affirm the necessity of religious violence in the name of Islam. I certainly have a strong preference for the practice of peace-loving moderate Islam over hardline Islam. But it seems that many Westerners are tempted to turn a blind eye towards expressions of religious violence associated with Islam in the name of being “inclusive.” This sort of wishful thinking does not allow us to think carefully about the real-world challenges that that we are facing. A Third Way Rather than make blanket statements about the true nature of islam, or claim the ability to judge the true intentions of every Muslim, it is far better to think about the issue in a different way. We can move forward by distinguishing between systems of thought and the individual people who associate with a particular religion. First, Islam is a religion that has a history and a central book (the Quran). We can examine this history and we can read the book. There are varied approaches to interpreting the Quran and we can talk with people about their approach. We can also make observations about the nature of government and individual freedom in Islamic-dominated countries. These sorts of questions are essential as we seek better understanding between Islam and the West. When we start with presumptions about the true nature of Islam, we short circuit this process. To put myself on record, I believe that there is significant reason for concern in regard to basic human freedoms found in many Muslim-majority countries. Second, individual Muslims are unique persons, made in God’s image, with dignity and value. Each person may have differing beliefs about religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and other important matters. Experientially, I have found it easy find common ground with many Muslims. In many cases, I have found shared commitments to religious nonviolence and towards safeguarding the dignity of all people. To share a specific example, two years ago I wore a shirt commemorating the Christian victims of ISIS. Since I play soccer with many Muslim friends, I was slightly uncertain of how I would be received. Not only did my friends express deep concern and sympathy towards the victims, as well as a deep hatred towards ISIS, many wanted to buy a similar shirt to express solidarity. I want to go on record to say that I have had a large number of deep relationships with Muslim friends. I cannot write about this topic without recognizing the admirable qualities these friends of mine possess. My life would be impoverished without these friendships. I am also reminded that throughout the world, religious violence takes a heavy toll on the Islamic community. “Muslim-on-Muslim violence” is a significant problem in many countries, especially between opposing factions. Furthermore, a measure of humility is required when considering this issue, since Christians have also used religious texts to support their injustices. (See: the African Slave Trade.) Finally, we should remember that Jesus calls Christians to love their neighbors. This command to love directs us to engage with people as individuals and seek their good. We can sometimes find amazing common ground with Muslim neighbors. But even in the absence of common ground, we are called to love our enemies. Loving our enemies does not mean that we take foolish risks or naively assume that everyone is safe. But as a follower of Jesus, I am not excused from loving, even when people are committed to religious violence. Throughout the week we will hear other voices address this complex matter. We do not expect to resolve something this challenging in a few posts, but I hope that we can begin to model a different manner of engaging with this issue. By Rev. Matt Koerber
When Fais and his family moved to the United States in 2009, they landed across the street from us. They had been granted asylum in the United States after the post-war chaos in Baghdad, Iraq forced them to flee. It didn’t take long for us to become friends and share life in many ways. Recently, I asked Fais if I could interview him for this blog to share his experience as a refugee. He was eager to oblige. We were already scheduled to visit a mortgage broker today and planned to do the interview afterwards. I had been walking with them through the mortgage process – it is complicated enough when English is your first language – but things ran long, and as we drove home we started to look for a time to reschedule. Fais was riding in the passenger seat while his son drove. Now a college student in Pittsburgh, Ibrahim had offered to sit in for the interview. Fais speaks English well, but with an accent. Ibrahim arrived in the US just after becoming a teenager, and now speaks English without an accent. As we started to talk, the story unfolded. Sitting in the back seat, I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell from Fais’ voice that it was an intimate story. “You know I was kidnapped,” said Ibrahim. I did know, but we had never talked about it together. The story hung over everything I knew about their past. Fais had told me about it, in a fairly general way, but I had never talked about it with Ibrahim. It is not the sort of thing that comes up naturally in conversation. “Are you willing to talk about it?” I asked. “Sure.” Ibrahim replied nonchalantly, but I don’t think it is a story that he tells often. “Things were different after the war. People didn’t go outside much anymore. I always would play in the streets and play soccer with my friends. But after the American soldiers arrived we stayed inside. We played a lot more video games.” Fais had worked with the government before the war and like many Iraqis, the fall of Saddam introduced a difficult period in their lives. As he told me later, “In those days, no one had money.” One morning Ibrahim left the house in the morning to pick up some groceries. On the way, he stopped at a friend’s house to grab a video game that he had left there the day before. He noticed a suspicious car parked outside, but didn’t think much of it. As he reflected back on it, Ibrahim remarked that the family he visited was known for being pretty well off, and may have been the targets of a kidnapping plot. Ibrahim may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After leaving, he was followed to the store. A strange man in a brown jacket followed him into the market. “In our neighborhood, everyone knew each other,” said Ibrahim. “When this guy, that I didn’t know, started to ask me questions it made the store owner nervous. He told me to wait around till he left. I waited awhile and when it had seemed that he was gone, I left to walk home.” But he was not alone. Ibrahim was followed across the street and as the man drew closer he was joined by two other men. “The strange thing was, I was right in front of the school when they grabbed me,” said Ibrahim. A black car rolled up immediately and he was thrown into the back seat. The kidnappers punched him and yelled in his face. Apparently, setting him on edge would enhance the negotiation to follow. “All I could think about was my mom,” Ibrahim told me. “I was wondering, ‘How is she feeling right now?’” Back at the house, Fais was getting nervous. He didn’t know where his son was, and his fears rose quickly. A quick turn through the neighborhood revealed that no one knew where he was. In those days, kidnappings were not uncommon. Often, they did not end well. “I knew right away, that someone had taken my son,” said Fais. Over a decade later his voice still cuts out some as he tells this emotional story. Five minutes after returning home, the phone rang. Young Ibrahim had been able to give his home phone number to the kidnappers and they called with their demands. “You son is with us. Don’t call the police. Don’t call anyone. Give us the money and you can get him back.” “Ibrahim, I am here.” Fais told him, when they handed the phone to his son to prove that he was alive. “I am going to get you.” His only option was to comply as much as possible and hope that these kidnappers were “honest”. “I don’t think that anyone would have helped anyway,” said Ibrahim, matter-of-factly. “In those days, the government had bigger things to worry about.” Fais became a little more animated as he rehashed the events of the story, “I told them that they could come to my house and take anything that we had. Come, I have two cars, you can have them. Take any of my possessions, but give me my son…but they wanted cash.” They asked for the equivalent of $150,000. At the time, it was an incredible sum of money and practically impossible to get. It would require selling nearly everything they had and borrowing money from relatives, but in the end, they scraped together enough money to make a reasonable counter offer. It was possible that they would take the money and still kill Fais. But he saw no other reasonable course of action. They arranged a meeting point on the highway and Fais presented himself in plain sight to show that he was not followed. Fais walked forward to the cars that pulled off the road towards him. Ibrahim was in the back seat, flanked by men on each side. “You have my son. I have your money. Just give him to me and we will leave.” Both parties acted relaxed and friendly so as to avoid suspicion. The exchange progressed smoothly. Fais took his son’s hand, determined to never let it go. They briskly left the scene, caught a taxi and returned home. “It must have been a relief,” I said. Fais didn’t understand me at first. Maybe the word needed translation. Maybe it was an understatement. Maybe, in hindsight it was seen to be just the beginning of the struggle. The kidnappers were Shia Muslims, a minority Muslim sect, which happens to be predominant in Iraq. Violence between them and the majority Sunni Muslims colored the post-Saddam landscape with the red of shed blood. As Sunni Muslims, Fais and his family would have been naturally suspicious, but now they knew that they were targets. The kidnappers actually called to confirm the request, and offer their future protection. But now that they had paid a ransom, word might spread. Future kidnappings would become even more likely. They knew that they had to leave. Three months later they sold their remaining possessions and hired a private driver to take them across the closest border to Syria. They left with nothing but their clothes, some blankets and their remaining money. After a year in Syria, where there were no options for work, they moved again to Jordan. Here Fais got a job as an accountant for a baker and they applied for asylum with the United Nations. After an intensive and extensive interrogation and vetting process, the family was cleared for resettlement, and three years after fleeing Iraq they found refuge in the United States. A relative lived in Pittsburgh, so it was a natural destination. Pittsburgh is a world away from Baghdad. Their family is safe and the challenges that they faced have knit them together in a tight bond. Each of the four children are either in college or working in the area. “It was not easy to get settled here,” said Fais. “Not easy at all. It is still not easy.” Perhaps he was thinking of the nearly two-hour meeting that we had with a mortgage broker. “We just want to live and to be friendly with everybody. Just like how we lived in our country.” As our interview wound down, I added the words that I have heard Fais say many times over the years. “We have much to be thankful for.” By Rev. Matt Koerber
This article was originally written last summer (2016) while our family was serving the refugee community in Greece. It is a good example of the first-person experience of someone in the midst of the refugee resettlement experience. Currently, there are millions of refugees that are waiting to be granted asylum. This is one of their stories. I met with Khaled* for English lessons today. He is a Syrian refugee stranded in Greece. His English is decent, but rusty. He says that he was more fluent five years ago when he was using it more often. Until the Syrian Civil War, he had worked for a Petrochemical company in Syria. It was a good job. He was married, he had a son, a car and two houses. After the war started, his job ended. As he watched, bombs swallowed homes leaving nothing but smoke and ash. As food shortages swept the land, he looked for an opportunity to flee. His wife and son had a passport, but Khaled did not. Administrative affairs in Syria were often quite unpredictable to begin with and there was additional red tape in his case. Apparently, several other men shared the exact same name, and the passport was not issued. Eight months ago a window for refuge opened and his pregnant wife and son took it. They haven't seen each other since. His wife delivered a healthy baby girl, but Khaled has not yet seen her in person. His wife flew with friends from a nearby country into Turkey. They were smuggled into Greece when its borders with Western Europe were still open, so they made their way into Germany where his wife had their baby. Khaled could not leave so easily. Without a passport, his path there was more circuitous. He headed North from Damascus into the north-western part of Turkey which is controlled by the Syrian Free Army (non-ISIS rebels.) He paid smugglers to take him, and then paid the city officials to let him pass. After slipping hundreds of dollars worth of bribes and fees into the hands of drivers and faction leaders, he was dropped off at the mountainous border with Turkey. From there, he had to cross on foot, scurrying past armed guards and dodging bullets. Turkey doesn't want border traffic with Syria because of the threat from ISIS; the “no-man’s land” between Syria and Turkey is particularly ruthless. Once he crossed into Turkey, he had relatively free travel. He went first to Istanbul to try to enter Greece by land, but by then the borders were closing. The terrorist attacks in Paris had tightened the borders and narrowed the immigration policies of European countries just as they induced American fears. The only option was to go by sea. He was a father desperate to be reunited with his family and was willing to take any route. He paid a smuggler 700 Euros to take him by boat to the Greek Island of Mytilini. Interestingly, the price was 300 Euros cheaper for him than when his wife went because the borders between Greece and Western Europe were now closed. Supply and demand dictates smuggler’s fees and the demand for Greece has fallen now that it no longer offers access into Western Europe. Once at sea, their small overloaded ship bobbed along the waves as they crossed into Greek controlled waters. The Greek navy picked them up and shipped them to Athens on a Ferry. Several attempts to cross into Western Europe illegally were met with stiff resistance. Without proper identification, he cannot go forward and he cannot go back. He pays 300 Euros a month for rent, which his wife wires to him from Germany. I don't know how she gets the money. The land route that he took getting here would be just as treacherous to use for a return to Syria, and with added risk. If he tried to cross from rebel controlled territory back into the lands occupied by the Syrian army, he would risk being shot as a traitor or a spy. He is effectively locked out of his homeland with fewer prospects than he had envisioned when he first fled. He can't go forward and he can't go back. He is a man without a country. *I share this story with his explicit permission, so I have done less to mask the details of his life. By Luda Bates
[KS: We asked Luda Bates to share the story of her journey here to the US. As a refugee from the former Soviet Union, her perspective is unique. Her family has gone through hard circumstances, but it is apparent how faithful God has been through them.] My family and I came to America when I was ten years old, but the journey started two years prior. My father had heard from fellow Christians that many were leaving to the US and he decided to try as well. In order to leave, one had to file an application to petition the US government, then fill out an application for each member of the family (including medical and work forms, each with the proper stamps and signatures from local and regional authorities). After sending the application, we waited for an invitation to attend an interview at the US consulate. Because it was still the Soviet Union, getting out was extremely difficult. My father’s friend, a fellow believer, drove 1,500 miles from Estonia to our little city in Russia to pick up the application and later to bring us our visas. The documents were sent to him in Estonia so that the KGB wouldn’t intercept anything. After getting the visas, my parents, not trusting the local postal service, went directly to the US consulate in Moscow to request an interview. Every applicant had to be interviewed by the US consulate in order to gain one of two possible statuses: a refugee or an immigrant. Many Christians became “immigrants” and others, like my family, became “refugees”. If you got the “immigrant” status, you would have to find an American sponsor who would finance your passage to the US, which was impossible. For those of us who got the “refugee” status, the US government paid for our tickets (we would need to pay them back when we were financially able) and provided all financial support when we came; a housing allowance, food stamps, and Medicaid. In order to get the “refugee” status, my parents had to prove that they were persecuted for their religion. As members of the Baptist church, that wasn’t very difficult to do. When he was young, my father was a pilot in the Soviet army, but he became a believer in God and was kicked out. From then, our family lived in Eastern Ukraine and my father worked as a coal miner. When we received our tickets the only thing that my mom could read was “metropolitan area” and she was terrified that we were going to live in a metro. We arrived in New York City and got our next tickets to St. Louis. There are cities in the US that are refugee relocation centers and the US government works with local agencies to resettle refugees. We were placed in the care of the International Institute of St. Louis and they worked with local businesses, schools, churches, landlords, and other organizations to resettle the thousands of refugees that arrived each year. Each state has different programs for resettling refugees, but in Missouri we got a housing stipend for 9 months, giving my parents time to learn English. In order to receive that money, refugees had to take English classes, so the institute was full of foreigners: Russians, Ukrainians, Bosnians, Serbians, Africans, and many others others learning English, and about American customs, holidays and culture. They found my dad a job and helped us to get on our feet. When the US government resettles people, they try to settle people with others that come from similar regions, so there were already a few Russian Baptists in St. Louis, and therefore a church. A local American Baptist church let us use their building to hold services and within a few years the church was full of Slavic people who continued to arrive from the former Soviet Union. Sometime during that first year, someone local found out about my dad’s story and decided to write an article about our family in the St. Louis Journal. A few months later, an American woman saw us taking a picture in the neighborhood, recognized us from the journal and befriended our family. Lenita, a Catholic who worked for the city of St. Louis, petitioned the local parish school to accept us children on scholarships, which was instrumental in giving us a good education, from elementary school to college. She found out about scholarships, helped my siblings and I to find odd jobs kids our age could do. She also helped us talk to potential landlords to make sure no one was taking advantage of us. Along with Lenita, there were other American Christians who helped our family. There was a local man from a Baptist church in the suburbs who took it upon himself to help the Slavic people. From bringing gifts on Christmas, helping us navigate medical jargon, to organizing a VBS in his church for Slavic kids, Don Wilson has been a servant to our people. Growing up in Ukraine, Russia, and the US, I always remember my parents talking about God’s grace and kindness to our family. They never sat us down and explained this to us, but through their conversations with each other and others, the reality of God’s kindness and mercy was like the oxygen that my family breathed. God was merciful: the journey out of the Soviet Union took many years for most, but the process took us two years. God was comforting: though we did not fit in at our private Catholic school, we always had a close group of Russian Christian friends. God was caring: when my father got fired from his job, it led him to a better job and to pursue his dream of being a pilot. When we had murders and death take members of our extended family, even in the midst of that darkness and deep pain, God met us in our need and provided His comfort and presence. Truly, God has been extremely generous and kind to our family. When I think of all of the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, I can’t help but see God’s generosity. When I reflect on my own life, I see God’s grace and mercy clearly. Even in the midst of the harshness of life from unimaginable sorrow, loss, loneliness, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and from carrying the burden/gift of being a third-culture kid, I revel in knowing that God has been so loving and kind. I can see God’s mercy to us in our circumstances, but the most kind thing that God has done is lead us to know Him deeper. In the Soviet Union, Bibles had to be smuggled, churches had to register with the government and the ones that didn’t had to meet in secret, and premarital counseling consisted of “don’t be affectionate in public”. In the US, we were overwhelmed with all of the resources available to learn about Jesus, which was like rain on parched lands. Being connected to Russian Christians in a foreign land, getting married to an American man and growing in and being part of his (now our) church has led me to weep at the goodness of our God. He didn’t have to be this kind and generous, but I add my voice to the Psalmist in wonder: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” God used different people, and global and local events to care for me and our family. I can’t help but be grateful. MK: This is a reposting from a good friend who is working at a refugee camp on a Greek island in the Mediterranean. I got to know Lizzie last summer when we worked together with refugees in Athens. She is a recent college graduate who has devoted her life to serving on the frontlines of the refugee crisis. As I got to know her I was deeply impressed by her courage and sacrifice. This past winter she returned to Greece, but instead of working with refugees that were in the process of moving towards asylum, she is now working with the refugees who are not yet in the system. On the whole, this group of refugees is in a far more difficult place. I asked Lizzie if I could publish two of her most recent updates because they offer a rare window into the frontlines of refugee ministry.
(April 12) Dear Family and Friends, Some days I have grace-filled stories, and many other days I sit empty handed and heavy hearted. This past week has been especially difficult. From hearing more details of friends’ stories to a deeper realization of the hardships of living in this camp: I am burdened. When I was in Athens, I saw many difficult situations, but this camp has a hopelessness unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Many of these men have been here for over a year. They have no information on the status of their asylum claims, they sleep most of the day because there is nothing to do with their time, and the food is limited in portion and nutrition. They are crammed in their living spaces, have limited electricity, and often are treated as criminals by the Greek military and police. Minors are forced to sign papers saying that they are 18 so that the government does not have to protect them or provide additional resources. A man I knew drowned the other week and the police didn’t show up until an hour after the emergency call. Everything in me wants to find them a bright, clean space to live in. With windows and fresh air and real beds. I want to give them access to education and training programs so that they don’t waste months of their life sitting in this camp. I want them to feel respected and to be treated as equal and worthy. I want to feel confident that their current suffering will be worthwhile in the end. But for now, I can keep showing up for my shifts. Cleaning rooms, opening gates, welcoming new arrivals, and sitting and listening. While I cannot make any substantial changes, I can be faithful in my small part. Even when the news stops reporting, these men remain. Even when you have to go out of your way to hear about these camps, thousands sit with their lives on hold. My desire is that a part of my purpose here is to tell their stories, to relay the situation to others back home. The situation is difficult in every way you could imagine. There are no quick fixes or easy answers - but it demands a response, a deep compassion. Whether you feel convicted to show up in person, to donate money or resources, or to advocate back home – I encourage you to not forget these people. Could you keep me in your thoughts and prayers? For strength to keep showing up when my heart feels like it breaks a little more each day? And much more so for my friends who live with intense anxiety and fear of the future - that they could keep going, that they could hold onto hope even when everything seems to suffocate it? Also, I am struggling to figure out my future steps after my time here is finished. Could you pray that doors would be opened for me to stay if that is what is needed, or for new opportunities to present themselves? Lizzie (May 11) Dear Family and Friends, When you’re constantly surrounded by pain, flashes of joy burn bright. I’ve been honest in my updates, resisting the pressure to include a ‘silver lining’ or to sugarcoat the reality in this camp. But I also want to be honest in the tastes of hope I’ve experienced. In the past few weeks more families have moved into M – and my organization regained access to their section of the camp. After weeks of only being able to shake hands and being constantly guarded, getting to scoop up babies and sit with my arm around my new friends is heaven. There are two Syrian families with several teenage daughters that are my new shadows in camp. We giggle and talk about boys and make up and what they want to be when they get older. There are a few toddlers that run straight into my arms and I’ve gained several new ‘mamas.’ The other night I got invited to an engagement party in the compound. I sat with the girls, Arabic music blaring as we fixed each other’s hair and they caked about 10 pounds of eyeliner on me. Paper flowers and streamers decorated the small room filled with gray UNHCR blankets and metal bunkbeds. I was the lone Westerner laughing my way through dabka lessons and pretending like I knew the words to the songs. And as I sat on a cot on the edge of the room, a friend’s little baby asleep in my arms, I watched my beautiful new friends spin and stamp their feet, faces lit up with joy. Here it was – the glimpse of hope, stubborn and resilient in the face of injustice. I felt it in my bones, in my heart – these beautiful people will thrive. And I felt that swell of intense conviction, an understanding that my place is beside them, for them. While there have been situations that have broken my heart all over again the past few days, and that flash of hope seems a little dimmer – it was there. And it is precious and worth sharing. Lizzie By Kevin
For most of us, conversations about refugees are theoretical and abstract – we speak more of them as a group than as individuals – simply because most of us have had little direct contact with refugees. This can make it harder to view refugees as individuals who are image-bearers. We believe that people are made in God’s image. Part of this involves recognizing that others are individuals who think and feel as we do (psychologists refer to this as our theory of mind for other people). A 2017 psychology study showed how our empathy and moral judgments about others can change depending on whether we see them as groups or individuals. Participants were told about a number of individuals going through some experience, and had to rate those individuals on their capacity for experience (“How able are they to feel pain or pleasure?”) and agency (“How able are they to control their actions and act morally?”). Some participants were told about “a group comprised of 15 people” (highlighting the group), while others were told about “15 people in a group” (highlighting the individuals). Participants who rated individuals when their group was highlighted gave significantly lower ratings of the individuals’ capacities for feeling pain/pleasure and acting morally. This result comes from an experimental setting, while our conversations about refugees are often complex and dynamic interactions. However, it does suggest what we know to be true – it is harder to be empathetic for people who are faceless and distant. The converse is also true – it is easier to be moved to compassion for those we know and share space with. There is a clear biblical echo of this in Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). Neighbors are not faceless groups; neighbors are individuals. “Who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer, and in response Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). My neighbor is someone in need that I have access to, and who has a claim on me. In this day and age, technology renders some distance irrelevant – the plight of many refugees in distant lands are accessible to us, and we can provide help that can reach them. But look closer, and we will find refugees (and opportunities to know them) closer to home. The refugee is our neighbor, too. Refugees share similarities (they are all fleeing hardships and are often in great need) but they are also a diverse group of people (with distinct stories and perspectives). In this week’s posts, we will hear from those who have more direct experience with refugees than we do. Let us take the opportunity to listen to them and become more intimately familiar with the stories of refugees, so that we might become empathetic neighbors moved to compassion and action. By Carla Farias
Kevin: I originally invited Mauro and Carla to both to write about their experience leaving Brazil for Mauro’s education here. Mauro was traveling for a conference, as is common for graduate students, so Carla stepped in. While she is now in graduate school as well, she came here initially as Mauro’s dependent. As challenging as it can be for immigrants, the dependents (spouses and children) of immigrants have an even more challenging time. I’m grateful that Carla could share her experience – sojourners sometimes come with loved ones, who we cannot afford to overlook. Three years ago my husband and I moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school. It was an unusual decision, since the two of us had well established careers in our home country, Brazil. Mauro got accepted into the Materials Science and Engineering Doctoral Program at Carnegie Mellon University. Even though I had not been accepted to the programs I had applied to, we knew that the best decision for our family was to go, despite all we had to give up back home. I knew God had a plan for us as a family, especially for me as a wife. So, I moved to a different country for a sabbatical year, where I would re-invent my goals and face new challenges. Being part of the labor force for nearly ten years, a sabbatical year was a big break to my busy schedule and endless working trips. Adjusting to our new lifestyle was not easy for us. As newcomers to the community, Mauro was consumed day and night by his academic activities, while it was left to me to find a place in the community I could fit into. Spouses of international graduate students are much more limited by visa restrictions. As F- 2 visa holders (dependents to F-1 visa holders), we are not allowed to study or work full-time. With this status, I felt invisible and completely unproductive to society. I was allowed only to exist. Nothing else. I was not allowed to have a Social Security number. I was not allowed to rent and sign any utility contracts under my name. Even to get a driver’s license, PennDot had to have verification from USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services), since I was also “invisible” to their system. I recall when we entered the country, the Immigration Agent at the airport going over my visa restrictions and asking me, “What are you going to do, sit at home and watch TV all day?” In the early days of us getting to the US, my sabbatical experience turned out to be different from what I imagined. I could not come up with a reasonable answer that would bring peace to my heart. It hit me that I had given up a home I owned, my senior position at a firm, my friends, my family, and even my dog to “sit at home and watch TV all day”. I left my country and my professional life to pursue my husband’s dream at CMU, but I found that I could not eliminate the dreams of my own. And so, I started interacting with professors at CMU and got involved in volunteer research work. Then, I applied again for graduate school and was accepted to be a full-time student in the Masters program at CMU, giving me my own student (F-1) visa. Along with that, we experienced our greatest fulfillment as we now have a new addition to our family, our 3-month-old son, Daniel. And so, God transformed my life. He picked me up from the ground and filled every gap in my professional and personal life, in spite of the challenges and limitations I faced. Because I was once “legally invisible”, I couldn’t just close my eyes to a reality that affected not only me and my household, but also many other spouses of international graduate students. These are women (and men) who are typically well-educated themselves and want to be intellectually challenged. But instead, they end up feeling lonely and lost, just as I did. These spouses look beyond coffee meetings and social gatherings. Like me, they don’t have personalities suited to being locked up at home. I reached out to other wives here as dependents on F-2 visas and helped them design plans for their stay in the US, helping them to find research opportunities and academic programs at CMU that matched their interest, and to initiate conversations with professors and advisors. We brought up to the University the importance of belonging, and the need to embrace this group of spouses to enable personal and academic growth in the school and wider community. As I look back on the past three years, having to reshape my life and face the limitations of my immigrant status was not easy. The feeling of being unproductive and intellectually stagnant was cruel to my mind and soul. But on the other hand, it urged me to find new dreams. I found strength and care in our community group, as we got to know the people from City Reformed. Having new friends in our faith, who prayed for and with me calmed the anxieties and uncertainties of my heart, and refreshed my hope in the Lord’s greater plans for my family and me. Maybe the paths taken were not the easiest, but I can see God’s perfect plan being fulfilled in my life. God honors his children and He honored me, and I could not be more thankful for the changes I had in my life and in my family. My experience has made me a more humble, sensitive, thoughtful, and stronger person. Interview by Kevin
For this post, I interviewed Lucas Saenz. His education and medical career has taken him from Colombia to Pittsburgh, where he also met his wife, Christa. Kevin: How and why did you come to the US? What is your immigrant status? Lucas Saenz: Everything started my first year in medical school back in Colombia in 2001, when I realized that all my medical textbooks were written in the US. That sparked a desire in me to travel to the place where the books were written, to learn about how medicine was practiced there. Around the 5th year of medical school, in 2007, the opportunity came and I travelled to the US for the first time, to Miami. I was 24 years old. A Latin American shadowing program at the University of Miami provided my first one-year visa. In the following years, I travelled back and forth to different cities in the US under different immigrant statuses, such as business travelling visas, student visas, and research scholar visas, which is what I currently have. What are the biggest differences between your life here and your life back home? What challenges do you face from being in a culture you didn’t grow up in? The biggest challenge for me at the beginning was language. I couldn’t express myself or understand others well. Back in Colombia, I thought I knew English, since I had learned it in school since a young age. However, coming to the US made me realize how little I really knew. It wasn’t until I had spent two years here that I felt comfortable with the language and could communicate as I wanted to. The other challenge was knowing no one and losing my social circle. It took a lot of time to get to know people, not only because of the cultural barriers but also because I am an introvert. I moved around the US a lot, which also made it more difficult to build relationships. I was used to moving, since my growing up years were characterized by moving throughout Colombia. However, when doing it in another country, even simple things became difficult. Shopping for food, buying a phone, finding a church – all these were hurdles that had to be faced. One of the nice surprises, though, was that there were always people who were willing to help. Back in Colombia, there were always people around me, whether it was family or friends. We helped each other out all the time. Here, however, I have had to learn to be more independent and individualistic, which has also forced me to become more practical. Not being close to my family and knowing all the time how they are has also been a big difference, not only for me but also especially for my mom, as she worries about me being far from home. This has forced us to strengthen our dependency on God and learn to love in other ways, from a distance. With time, I adapted to the culture and enjoyed my time here. I found a good church, friendships grew, and I was able to assimilate to the workflow. Since coming to Pittsburgh in 2014, I attended Bellefield Presbyterian Church and through that was introduced to PRISM (Pittsburgh Region International Student Ministries). Getting involved with PRISM gave me the opportunity to reach out to other international students who were in similar situations as me, and to share my faith with them. PRISM is a ministry that helps international students feel at home in Pittsburgh. It’s also where you met your wife, Christa. Tell us about that life-change! God changed my life in ways I didn’t expect here in Pittsburgh. Christa and I met in a Bible study hosted by PRISM, and now, two years later, here we are married. My visa status is still related to my work, which adds a little bit of uncertainty. We haven’t been able to visit my family in Colombia yet, since there is a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to reenter the US on the way back. Figuring out my immigration status can be complicated and must be done in the correct timing, but we are thankful to be married and know God will help us in the future as we go through the process. It has been enriching for Christa and I to get to know each other and learn about our backgrounds and what has shaped us as people. Coming from different cultures, there is even more to learn. We learn a lot from each other’s families, customs, different ways of thinking, and even different ways of daily living. It opens our perspectives and broadens our worldview. Of course, this can also bring challenges, as we have to learn how to communicate well and not make assumptions based on our own experiences. You have medical training both in Colombia and the US. Do you have any challenges practicing medicine with that background? There is a long road still to go in my education. Although I already completed 6 years of medical school (3 years of critical care training in Colombia and 3 years working in Pittsburgh), I will need to repeat some of my previous education to become a pediatric cardiologist here in the US. This means that I will need to take several exams and be certified in many fields. Even though it is a lot, it is worthwhile. How has God and the church played a part in your journey? Knowing that there is always a degree of uncertainty in my immigration status has driven me to depend on God. To know my citizenship is in heaven is an idea that has become more real to me. As an immigrant, I’ve faced some difficulty at church connecting with people. The differences between me and many other people that attend church here makes it easy for all of us to form stereotypes and not easily connect. However, I have met many people who are willing to cross those barriers and reach out, and those people have greatly influenced me. What uncertainties do you face as an immigrant in the US, and how do you face that? Since the last presidential elections, fear in internationals has grown, to the point that we restrict our travels outside the US and are even more uncertain about the future. Personally, it causes me to try to do everything according to the right timing and procedures as I move towards applying for a green card and citizenship. As an immigrant, I feel a lot of pressure to work hard, be competitive, and exceed expectations at work to keep my immigrant status. It also gives me a sense of expectancy for what God will bring in the future, since we never know what the future will hold and how things will change. A verse that has been an encouragement to me is Ephesians 2:19: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” By Evelyn and Kevin
For this post, we interviewed our good friend, Anna Yong, about her experience being an immigrant in the US. Her quotes are in italics. She came here from Malaysia at 17 to pursue an undergraduate education, and met and eventually married her husband Joel Chan here. She started out on a student visa, not expecting that she would still be in the US 11 years later. Although Anna was here first on a student visa (F-1), she transitioned to a dependent visa (F-2) once she graduated and married Joel, who was a graduate student. Later, she decided to begin a Master’s degree in Pittsburgh, requiring that she transition back to student status (F-1). While Anna was legally allowed to be in the country, the government did not issue her a new visa because she had already been in the US and had changed her status from a dependent (based on Joel’s job) to a student who could be here in her own right. In 2013, she wanted to travel home and visit family – having a visa would allow her to re-enter the country if she left. Anna describes a critical irony in the system: “US visas are only issued at embassies outside the US, so we actually had to leave the country to apply for the visa. In other words, to find out if I would be able to re-enter the US (on my own with an F-1 visa), I had to first leave the US – exposing myself to the risk of not getting the visa and being stuck outside the US. Since the visa requirements were the same as the status I already had, we thought this possibility was more theoretical than actual. As we later found out, we were quite wrong!” In early 2013, Anna and Joel travelled to Malaysia to spend time with family and apply for her visa at the embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. She describes what happened to her on the day of her visa interview: “I waited about an hour to meet the assigned consulate officer. It quickly became obvious to me that he didn’t really understand my case. He expressed concerns about my ability to fund my education, the most important part of my case. But he overlooked that 1) I had already completed 1 out of the 2 years of my program, 2) I had a scholarship from the school to cover part of my fees, and 3) I was married to Joel who had income that was more than sufficient to cover the remainder of my fees and was obviously covering my living expenses. This last point was the most incredulous to me: when I noted that I was married to Joel, the officer replied that his income “didn’t count” – I needed to show that *I* had enough funds. At this point I started to panic. I was completely at the mercy of the consulate officer. Legally, there was no recourse whatsoever for me if the officer made a mistake – there is no appeal. Further, if the officer denied my application, I couldn’t simply get a “second opinion”: his decision would remain on the record and greatly decrease the probability of a successful re-application. This power imbalance weighed heavily on me: how do I dispute his misunderstandings (of which he was convinced) without angering him? I had heard stories of people having their applications denied because they had rubbed their officer the wrong way, or because the officer had had a bad day. Some of these stories came from family friends who were personal friends with visa officers. So I ended up not disputing the officer’s claims too much, hoping he would be reasonable. This turned out to be the wrong choice. The officer decided to cancel my existing F-2 visa – effectively erasing any ability I had to re-enter the US – and formally requested that I come back to the embassy with more documentation showing that I had at least $25,000 (not including Joel’s income and the scholarship from the university) to cover the remainder of my Master’s degree. I left the embassy in fearful tears.” After returning home, Anna tried to figure out what to do. Her parents offered to help with the financial requirements. Unfortunately, that was not a straightforward solution, either. Anna describes her situation: “Because my parents run their own business, they often don’t have a ton of liquid assets available. But they did have a credit line from their bank that was large enough to cover this expense. So we decided to bring that as additional documentation. I was told that there was no need for an interview; I just needed to “drop off” this additional documentation. When I showed up at the embassy the next day, however, I was brought in for… you guessed it – another interview with the same officer! Being unprepared for that, I was not able to clearly explain how my parent’s credit line worked. The officer pressed me hard, and seemed unconvinced. Again, he didn’t issue me the visa I needed. Thankfully, I wasn't rejected, but the officer told me he needed more time to review my case.” This was a stressful time for Anna and Joel. The severity of the officer’s questions indicated there was a very real chance that Anna’s visa application could be rejected and she could not return to the US with Joel. “Rejection would mean Joel and I would have to live in two different countries for an indefinite period of time while we figured out a solution. Even if that didn’t happen, we were worried I wouldn’t be approved in time for my flight back home, which would mean purchasing another costly (>$1500) flight back to the US. For two long days after that, I waited, shed tears, prayed, and asked for prayers. There was nothing I could do but wait and pray. By the grace of God, our story had a “happy ending”: my visa was approved before our flight back to the US. Even now, as I reflect back on how I was feeling back then, I am filled with joy for the faithfulness of our good God!” Anna now has more stability in her status here, and has even travelled to Malaysia since then without any immigration issues. The story she shared is one instance of the type of stressor that immigrants encounter over and over again. She looks back on her time in the US: “In the 10+ years that I’ve been here, I’ve had to apply for a change/extension of my visa and immigrant status 7 times. About half the time, the process was easy and painless — the other half, not so much! It wasn’t just the application process that was challenging; it was the waiting, the unknown of the person dealing with the application, and my powerlessness over the situation that was so frustrating.” The events since the 2016 presidential election have brought her anxieties into sharper focus. She reflects on her life in the last year: “In this past election season, people have tried to reassure me about our new president’s stance on immigration by saying I have absolutely nothing to worry about because I’m not an illegal immigrant. To be honest, those statements aren’t very reassuring to me. Because of what I’ve been through, I know how incredibly challenging it can be to become and remain a legal immigrant. I have experienced first-hand how it’s possible to become an illegal immigrant even if you’ve done everything right. I know that the mistake of even one government official can negatively impact my chances of gaining/keeping legal status in the country. I’m so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to live in this country, but my journey here has been trying, and I wish people wouldn’t brush me aside when I speak of my concerns. We became adults in this country, and we fell in love with it. We felt called to stay. But wanting to stay and immigrate here legally is complicated (and challenging at times). This is something I wished more people would understand. All that said, as a Christian, I know that our God is bigger than this country’s immigration system or any immigration officer (cue famous Sunday School song). It is by the grace of God alone that my family is able to be alive and well, living in this country. And that grace is worked out in the kindness of His people.” She closes with something she shared with her friends in the US after receiving news of her visa approval: “All of you have been such an amazing source of support for me, and I cannot be more grateful! I'm sincerely thankful for the words of encouragement that I've received from you.. It's been a huge reminder of God's faithfulness, love and grace when I find myself in a dark place. I think, through all of this, I'm more thankful for you guys – my friends and church family – than I am for receiving this visa.” Interview by Kevin
For this post, I interviewed Kate Kim. She’s worshipped at City Reformed since 2015 when she started as a PhD candidate at Pitt. As an immigrant, the stakes are much higher for her in her career path, and requires a great degree of trust in God’s faithfulness for circumstances that many of us easily take for granted. I asked her to reflect on her identity and place in the US. Kevin: What is your immigrant status? Kate Kim: I am currently on an F-1 student visa. I was initially a dependent on my parents’ visas until I turned 21, when I had to switch to my current visa. Tell us you how and why you came to the United States. My family (my parents and younger sister) and I came to the US in 2001. In Korea, it’s everyone’s dream to study abroad, especially in English-speaking countries. Around then, English was mandated as a required subject starting in the 3rd grade in Korean schools, and learning English is very important for one’s success. The Korean education system is highly repressive and highly competitive. So, when there’s an opportunity, people move abroad to English-speaking countries. My parents came to the US for our sake (their children), for us to have a better education and a better life. To do that, my Mom enrolled as a graduate student at a university and got her masters in linguistics; we came to live in the US as dependents on my mom’s visa. How old were you when you moved? What made it easy/difficult to move here? I was 12 when I moved to the US in 2001. This was months before 9/11, so it wasn’t difficult for our family to move to the States, especially because my mom was coming to the US to study. There were, of course, many difficulties in getting accustomed to a new culture. My sister and I were 6 and 12-year olds, so learning English was not a difficulty. We caught up really fast. But for my parents, the language/cultural barrier was hard, and is still hard for them. One thing that was difficult for me in particular, was that I was just becoming a teenager, and because I was culturally split (Korean at home, but trying to assimilate with other kids at school), I had a lot of anxiety and shame from being different from other kids. I couldn’t relate to my peers at the same level of experience, although I spoke English fluently soon after I moved here. While I went to school in the US from 6th grade all the way to graduate school, all under legal status, I am still considered a non-resident alien in the US. While in college, I realized that unlike my other friends, I couldn’t apply for federal loans, couldn’t work part-time jobs anywhere I liked, couldn’t vote, couldn't take a gap year after college (in order to maintain my F-1 status), and couldn’t apply for certain professional schools. This is when I felt most lost and isolated, because in all other aspects I relate to the American culture, but legally, I am not an American. Tell us about your ties to your country of birth, and to the US. What is “home” to you? I’ve lived 12 years in South Korea, and 16 years in the US. The last time I visited South Korea was in 2006, when I was in high school. So, I don’t remember Korea very much…the memories I have are from my childhood, and I’m sure so much has changed in the last decade. So, when I think of “home”, I’m conflicted. Where is home for me? A few years ago, my parents got their greencards, sponsored by their work. At that time, my sister was 18, and I was 24. The law states that for immigration purposes, once you turn 21, you are no longer a dependent, so my sister got her green card through my parents, while I didn’t. My parents and my sister are now on their path to US citizenship, and plan to make their “home” here. However, I am still on a student visa, and need to find my own way to permanent residency. In a few months, I will graduate and be a scientist with a PhD in the biomedical sciences. However, it is now difficult to get a work-related visa (H-1B) even in a science field. This makes my path to getting a green card much harder. I was hoping to do my post-doctoral research in the US while on an H-1B visa, meanwhile applying for permanent residency. However, this road has gotten tougher now. What challenges do you face living in a country that is not your own? How do you deal with them? Because I am bicultural, there have been many conflicts. Because I’ve spent more time in America than I have in Korea, I am more familiar with the American way of life. However, I can’t be a full part of it, because there are always restrictions on nonresident aliens for school and job applications. And of course, I cannot vote here. So, I am always culturally split. I haven’t been able to visit Korea for more than a decade because I was on my student visa (some students like myself take a risk in visiting their home countries because there’s no guarantee we will be granted visas to return to the US to complete our studies). I have no connections in Korea besides my relatives. So, with this confused cultural identity, I’ve learned to rely more on my identity in God’s Kingdom. I’ve been instilling in myself that whichever country God intends for me to live, my identity in God’s Kingdom is constant, and that gives me comfort. How has the 2016 presidential election and the current administration affected your life as an immigrant? The calls to decrease immigration and the number of H-1B visas being granted* make me nervous, because my plan was to get an H-1B visa for post-doctoral studies, and eventually apply for permanent residency. What do you wish people understood about your journey as an immigrant? Even though I’ve lived legally and paid taxes in the US for 16 years, I was disqualified from getting permanent residency together with my family a few years ago, just because I was over over 21 years of age. My younger sibling who had the same experience as I did in the US was granted permanent residency, because she was younger than 21. I am back to the start in my immigration journey – only this time, I am alone. The road to permanent residency has gotten more difficult, even for US-educated scientists like myself. I hope to be able to stay in the US with my family, but I also understand that God may have something else planned. And I trust that whatever may come of my immigration journey here in the US, God’s plans prevail, and for his good purposes. * Even if current numbers are maintained, H-1B visas are already extremely hard to get. – Kevin By Melanie Hommes
[Evelyn: In the discussion about immigrants, some types of immigration can sometimes get overlooked. We asked the Hommes family to share their story of how their unique experience with immigration changed their lives. Jim and Melanie Hommes have gone through the difficult process of international adoption twice, and have gained two wonderful children – Mei and Jacob – into their family. We sent some questions and prompts to Melanie, and she wrote the following response.] We are a diverse multi-ethnic family both in our immediate and extended families, having family members from Japan, China, and Mexico. In fact, our children like to joke that dad was born in Japan (as a missionary kid), they were born in China, but mom was only born in Ohio! International adoption was the way that God provided for us to have a family. We went through the immigration process to bring Mei and Jacob to the United States. The international adoption process changed the year that we adopted Mei (2004) and was still in effect when we adopted Jacob (2012). There were a lot of forms, official documents, special notarized seals, fingerprinting, and interviews – all before we left United States soil. Once in China there were more forms to fill out, more interviews to undergo, and sworn statements that we would always love and care for our children. Then, the legal adoption took place, and finally we received the official brown envelope which was to be guarded at all costs and delivered intact and unopened to airport immigration officials when our airplane touched down on US soil. If the official brown envelope instructions were followed correctly, it meant that our children became automatic citizens the moment our airplane landed in the United States. After months (for Mei) and years (for Jacob) of paperwork and interviews, citizenship papers arrived in the mail within 45 days of our return home from China. Mei and Jake were babies when we adopted them, aged 13 and 18 months respectively. As we raise our children, we desire that they will have an appreciation and respect for the three countries – Japan, China, and the US – that make up our lives. We fill our home with books, movies, pictures, and stories of all three places, eat a variety of foods, and celebrate some Asian festivals like Chinese New Year. We talk often of the time we have spent in each country, and have picture albums to look at from our trips. As a family, being multi-ethnic is a natural way of life as my sister and her husband adopted a girl from China, Jim’s younger siblings are adopted from Japan, and his older sister is married to a man who immigrated from Mexico. It is important for us that the time Mei and Jacob spend at school and at church show the richness of diversity and the richness of adoption. We have been blessed by Pittsburgh Urban Christian School (PUCS) and its commitment to diversity and reconciliation as well as the presence of many adopted children who have shared life with us there. At church, it is a blessing that our children can see so many men and women from Asia worshiping and serving God. When Mei and Jacob were young they would sometimes comment excitedly that there were people at church that looked just like them. While some people have experienced negative repercussions from the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, our immediate family has not felt them. However, we have felt the difficulty as we join in supporting family members and friends who are more directly impacted by immigration practices and policies, and who may face opposition, delay, and fears of deportation. Even with our immediate family, for the last few years we have begun carrying everyone’s passports when flying within the United States. We started doing this because we don’t all look alike – what if an official didn’t believe that we are a family? In addition, my sister and her family live in Canada, and when they crossed the border to visit us at Easter, in addition to my niece’s passport, they brought her birth certificate and adoption certificate, due to hearing stories of families being separated at borders. This is also something for us to consider when we travel across borders or when we fly domestically. So far, in Pittsburgh, we have not felt any specific negativity toward us as a multi-ethnic family, although we have occasionally experienced some negative reactions as we travel to other places. Both God and the church have played a big part in our family’s adoption story. God brought us together as a family through adoption just as He adopts each one of us into His family. Though there are relatively few adopted children at City Reformed, the church has embraced our children and welcomed them as the covenant children that they are. As Christians, we should embrace adoption – international or domestic – as a valuable part of building the household of God. In many ways, adoption demonstrates not only God’s generous provision for his children, but it also gives the church a visible reminder that ultimately the strongest and most lasting bonds between us are not of blood, ethnicity, or nation, but of faith in our loving Father who has chosen to adopt us as eternal heirs with Christ. By Kevin
Telling one’s story is an art form; we pick and choose what to include to communicate particular aspects of ourselves. We do this based on who is asking, and what we perceive they’re interested in knowing about us. For immigrants, we are frequently asked how and why we got to the US – it is a door for others to know us. In my first year in Pittsburgh, I got plenty of practice telling that story. At City Reformed, we’re blessed with a significant number of immigrants, each with their own stories. My own story has been shared in a previous post by my wife. In the coming posts, we invite you to read to the stories of those who have experienced what it is like to be or walk alongside immigrants. We invite you to listen, and to better know the sojourners (in many cases, these are people you share communion with). You may know them, or of them, but we invite you to listen not just for the details of their experience (which you may have heard before), but for the unique loves, burdens, challenges, and perspectives that are revealed in the telling of their stories. Since the 2016 presidential election, telling an immigrant’s story can take on added dimensions. I have found that my upon hearing my story and any anxieties I have about immigration, some quickly dismiss my concerns because “I’m one of the good ones” (someone coming here for graduate study). In such an exchange, my story has been used to make a point, which makes it hard to feel like the hearer cares about knowing me and seeing things from my perspective. In this polarized culture (that we’ve written about previously), it is worth reflecting on whether we have acquired some bad habits for listening. To hear someone’s story and see only how it supports or disproves a belief is to miss the chance that someone has offered to know them better. We invite you to view these stories as doors through which you can better know others. In this day and age, it is exceedingly rare to share fellowship with those who differ from us, but the church offers us that invaluable opportunity by joining those of every nation and tribe into one body. We cannot know the fullness of human experience without the help of others who are willing to share their stories. By Rev. Matt Koerber
Week 1: Foundational Thoughts Week 2: Immigration Policy Week 3: Voices of Immigrants (City Reformed) Week 4: Refugees Week 5: Engaging Islam Week 6: Reaching Across Barriers Last week, we discussed immigration policy. This week, we will turn our attention to the voices of the immigrant community in our midst. Because City Reformed is located in the university community of Pittsburgh, we have a large number of international students in our midst. We will be interviewing members of City Reformed to discuss their own experience with immigration. “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) There are a couple of things that we learn from this commandment. First, the command to “not oppress a sojourner” assumes that it would be tempting to do this very thing. A sojourner or an immigrant is a person who works and lives in a foreign country. They do not have extended social networks to help them in times of trouble. They also may have difficulties speaking the language or navigating the culture. They may not have access to all of the legal protections that native born citizens would have. For that reason, it is easy for them to be oppressed. Secondly, this commandment was given by God, through Moses, to an exile community. The tribes of Israel had been recently delivered from bondage in Egypt. They came as guests to live with their brother Joseph, four centuries earlier. But the favorable policy changed. A new pharaoh was on the throne and things were hard. They had been severely oppressed in Egypt. Moses speaks to this experience and reminds them that they know what it is like. As an exile community they knew what it was like to be a sojourner. They could easily relate to the situation because of their own experience. The problem that we have is that our experience is often quite different. Our own individual experience does not allow us to know the “heart of a sojourner” from personal experience. In this matter we are different from the original audience (those who experienced the exodus first-hand), but we are similar to many of the people who have read this text down through the ages. Together with the four other books of Moses, this forms the Pentateuch, which is the foundational law for the nation of Israel. The laws which God gave were given in the context of the Exodus, but they continued to carry weight for all of the following generations. It is clearly not the intention of Moses to suggest that the command would no longer apply once people forgot their own personal exile experience. We are left to conclude that the way in which this command was meant to be applied is through appeal to the “collective experience” of the community and not individual experience. That is, if we want to know about the heart of the sojourner we can either experience exile or immigration… or, we can listen to the experience of others in our community. With that in mind we will spend this week listening to the voices of immigrants in our church. Through that we may be better equipped to understand “the heart of the sojourner.” By David Snoke
MK: We hadn’t scheduled blog posts for Sundays, but in the flurry of activity this week we ended up with an extra post – so we are slotting it in as a “special Sunday edition.” This post addresses the challenges of migratory movements by looking at a classic American novel (and movie), “The Grapes of Wrath.” While the people movements in the story are not strictly “immigration” – the characters are all Americans – it provides a window into the dynamics we have been exploring. The story is a work of fiction, but it reflects real historical events in our country. Sometimes, fiction can offer a window into real world problems. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is one of the great novels of all time, and also one of the great novels of migration and social justice. It tells the story of poor Scotch-Irish farmers from Oklahoma (“Okies”) who migrated westward to California in the 1930s. The mass influx of these people created a social disaster for several years, as wages were extremely depressed, jobs were hard to find, and a wave of starvation and homelessness followed. A main theme is how the family structure that could support people through hard times can be scattered to the wind by the overwhelming pressures of migration. Steinbeck, a socialist, partly used the story to argue for government social services. The people of California are not especially welcoming of the Okies, and don’t take responsibility to help them. A high point of the story occurs when the main characters, the Joads, find an efficiently run government project to help them. This may seems somewhat quaint to modern eyes, but it addresses a real issue, namely what to do when private charity isn’t sufficient. Another theme is the existence of social evils, forces that make it hard for any one person to do what is right. The main social evil in the story starts when farmers in California advertised widely in Oklahoma to attract workers for their fields. Pressed by natural disaster in their home land (the “dustbowl”), the Okies migrated in great numbers. By the economic law of supply and demand, this suppressed the wages in California drastically. Steinbeck makes it clear that part of the social injustice comes from the farmers in California being happy about the vast number of immigrants suppressing the wages. They had incentives to encourage the migration of the Okies, as it gives them cheap labor. What can we apply from this book for today? On one hand, it seems clear that the role of the church and the individual in California at that time was to help the immigrant Okies as much as possible. To allow them to die in the streets and fields, as Steinbeck portrays, is heartless. On the other hand, we could also take a step back to question the structural aspects of the situation. How do we address the incentives that businesses have to attract cheap labor and suppress wages? Were there alternatives to the situation that played out in the Grapes of Wrath? Would a more just society have worked to improve conditions in Oklahoma, rather than encourage the breakup of families and cultural structures that so often occurs in precipitate migrations? Steinbeck’s novel, remote from our present lines of argument, may help us with a different perspective. By Rev. Matt Koerber
For this post, I interviewed two pastor friends in Pittsburgh. Jon Price and Alejandro (Alex) Martinez are pastors at Covenant Community Church (PCA) in Pittsburgh. In addition to being pastors, they are also family – Alex married Jon’s sister, which led to their friendship. Their church has a vibrant ministry to Hispanics in the Northwestern Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry. This ministry provides a window into a the little known (but rapidly increasing) world of Hispanic immigration in Pittsburgh. Alex recently completed seminary and pastoral training. He will be ordained as a minister this coming Sunday evening. I recently conducted a phone interview with them and was thankful for their many insights. I opened the conversation by giving them both some background to the blog and then I asked Alex how long he has been in Pittsburgh and how he came to work at Covenant Community. AM: I have been here for almost 5 years. I grew up in Mexico City, but had a scholarship to study in Texas for high school. I returned to finish my college degree in Mexico and met some missionaries who were working for MTW (Mission to the World, the PCA sending agency). I worked with them helping with ministry, and when a good friend moved to Guadalajara they asked me to join them as a liaison to the Hispanic community. We helped to start a nonprofit organization addressing poverty in the community. This included medical care and literacy classes. Praise God, we helped to establish a church and a daycare and kindergarten were also formed. Alex’s trajectory began to change when his missions team hosted a group from Covenant Seminary. The future dean of Covenant, Mark Dalby, met Alex and recruited him to study at Covenant Seminary – they even had Alex live in their home. Alex was interested in ministry and after two years, he moved to Virginia for a ministry position. It was there that he married Jon’s sister and through that connection became aware of a job opening in Pittsburgh. I asked Jon how this came to happen. JP: I was driving around Cranberry one day and I took a different route, passing through a neighborhood that I didn’t normally see. I noticed 5-6 Hispanic families outside the house as their kids came home from school. This coincided with another visit to a local park where I stopped and watched a very serious soccer game of all Hispanic players. It dawned on me that there were these families and people in our community that I hadn’t noticed before. At the time, we had two part-time ministry positions in our church – Alex came to mind and the church was open to the idea. I can’t honestly say that my initial desire to bring Alex on was part of a goal of establishing a Hispanic ministry in our church. I was trying to meet the needs of our church, but the Lord showed me pretty quickly that was not his ultimate goal. I asked Jon about the Hispanic community in Pittsburgh. It is not as visible as other places where I have lived – Boston or North Carolina. Often, we assume that Pittsburgh has been missed by national trends in Hispanic immigration. JP: I think that we tend to be blind to this. Immigrants in general are on the fringes, and the majority culture doesn’t typically look on the fringes. For example, the neighborhood that I drove through that day is easily missed. But, within 10 minutes of our church, the expected growth of Hispanics is 5% per year. That is the highest increase of any people group in our area. It is a very fast growth rate. One reason that the community is not as noticeable is because it is diversified – with regard to the areas in which people work. By contrast, in other big cities, immigrants may be grouped in one industry. I asked Alex what factors were driving this recent growth rate of Hispanics in Pittsburgh and what we could know about the people. AM: It is very different in each case. Many Hispanics come in the summers to do landscaping. They come with a work permit and stay for the summer. You find different types of people. Some are fleeing poverty or unrest, others are chasing the American dream. It is hard to perceive them, and hard to know when to count them. Generally, we would find people from the higher class have permits and those from the lower class are less likely to have legal status. Generally speaking, but interestingly enough, the lower-income people are more open to the Gospel and coming to Bible studies. Alex told me about some Hispanic men that he knows who have recently come to Pittsburgh to start working in the roofing industry. This caught my ear because of a recent post in which we focused on immigrant workers in the construction industry. Essentially, these men had come here because the wages were better and they could compete more favorably in this market where there was a smaller supply of workers. (In contrast, the California roofing industry was flooded with Hispanics.) I asked the hard question about how we think about the negative impact that this can have on the American workers already here. JP: That is a hard question. There are issues there on both the employer and employee side… the immigrant community gets caught in the middle. They would say, “I need to support my family. I’m willing to do what it takes to do that. If this guy is willing to hire me, I am going to take it.” It strikes me that this history is not new to Pittsburgh. It was played out over the generations as immigrants from Europe flooded the three rivers area. The history of organized labor – we can think particularly of the Homestead strike – was inflamed by these difficult questions. This led us to another challenging and difficult question. What is the legal status of the immigrants who come to Pittsburgh, and how should we think about that? I raised the topic and probed into this challenging area. AM: Most often, workers in white-collar jobs have their paperwork in order. By contrast, those who work in labor intensive jobs are often not documented. JP: Their legal status contributes to them being willing to take less money. The company can save money on benefits and take advantage of the situation. Jon continued to reflect on the challenges of this situation. JP: A lot of undocumented immigrants came here as children, through no choice of their own. They have been in the U.S. for many years, and they need to provide for themselves and their families. That group of immigrants is probably the ones who truly get caught in the middle. They have no legal standing, but have to work, so they may undercut the job market, but what else are they supposed to do? From my understanding it is one of the largest groups of illegal immigrants that we have in our country – perhaps as many as 15-30 million. Our biggest issue is how we respond to that group. I asked Alex about how the political controversies about immigration have been impacting the Hispanic community. He told me that a lot of people are feeling more vulnerable. Public expressions of dislike have become more common and many workers are afraid of the authorities and more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. He relayed two stories to illustrate. AM: One of the guys who is a friend, is a Latino who has lived here for years. Recently, he felt the shifted tone of public opinion even in Pittsburgh. Someone spit on his face and said, “Go back to your country.” He told me, “That never happened here in Pittsburgh, before. We had heard of it in other places, but not here. What is happening?” I think that when people hear immigrants being called names in public and in politics they start to act different. I have another case, from another lady who is attending the church. She was working in a restaurant and her boss wanted to take advantage of her sexually, or he threatened to fire her. She had to quit and leave without pay. She was afraid to go to the authorities. She said, “This never happened before. I know that I’m not legal so I can’t ask for protection from the government because I fear being kicked out.” Knowing that we aren’t going to solve all of these problems in one interview or one blog post I asked about how their church was trying to serve in the midst of this situation. JP: Alex has become a social worker! They both laughed at this and Alex expanded: AM: Praise God, we have some connections to the city of Pittsburgh. Many of the social workers don’t speak Spanish and they found out that we have Spanish speakers at the church, so they ask us to help out. For example, there is a refugee couple from Cuba – they speak no English at all. They came to Pittsburgh while they were still waiting for their visa and they needed many things. For about a year, we have helped them – finding a place to stay, getting their driver’s license, just figuring out how to go to the store. JP: This particular experience with this Cuban couple really had an impact on our church. They saw the real visible needs and began to engage in ways that we had never even thought of before. The congregation is excited to serve. A couple of people have begun to explore ways to help them navigate immigration policies. One is considering a masters in ESL. The deacons are really active. 3-4 years ago we would not have been having these conversations. AM: Many people from the church are coming to take classes on learning Spanish. They want to learn so that they can communicate with our new visitors. I asked them how this changed the Sunday worship service. JP: Some Sundays we are getting close to 20% Hispanic attendance, which many see as a tipping point for how a minority culture feels as it is part of the congregation. Practically speaking, they have many in attendance each Sunday who do not know English. AM: We have headsets for people who don’t speak English. I translate everything, from announcements to the benediction. We introduce one Spanish song each month. Fully in Spanish, with words and Latin music and Latin feeling. Interesting, many of the guys who come here do not have Protestant backgrounds. But, they sense that we care about them and they feel welcome. People are open. Jon told me that several people have expressed faith in Christ at an outreach Bible study that Alex has been leading. He also told me that this ministry is impacting the church as a whole. He believes that because his church is immersed in Hispanic ministry, they are able to navigate the challenging topics with more compassion. In the midst of a hard time, God is working out his purposes. There have been bumps along the road and more challenges lie ahead. But as native English-speakers and native Spanish-speakers gather for worship we get a glimpse of God’s kingdom. The nations are streaming to the mountain of God. Jon concluded this way: JP: This is an actual visible representation of the gospel at work. By Rev. Matt Koerber
For this post, I interviewed Andy Alexander. Andy is an elder at City Reformed Church and the owner of an engineering consulting firm. Andy has been working in the computer/tech industry since the late 1980’s and is able to share about how this industry has been impacted by immigration over time. In this post, we are discussing “legal immigration”, almost exclusively. But as usual – it is complex. MK: What is the impact of immigration to the US in the technical world? AA: There’s been immigrants for decades in the technical world. A large part of the US space program in the 50’s and 60’s, after WW II, was populated by Germans. In the 1990’s, immigration law was changed to increase the number of temporary visas (H1B’s) for people with technical skills. To obtain one, an employer is supposed to justify that an open position could not be filled from people already in the US. Also, H1B’s are a special kind of temporary visa with an intentional path to obtaining a “green-card”, allowing work in the US without a need for repeated renewal of that permission. In my experience, it is typical that people admitted under H1Bs are from India and have less experience in their field. They are also mostly people with a background in software or IT. MK: Are most of these people here legally? AA: Yes. I haven’t heard of anyone in the US working illegally in this area. MK: How has this affected you? AA: The earliest I remember working with people here on an H1B was in the mid to late 1990’s at Union Switch and Signal. This was at a time when demand for software skills was very high – the Y2K crisis was in full swing as was the growth in internet and PC application software. The people I met and worked with at the Switch were good friends, with families. Towards the end of my time there, I did sense the competition from India. The company was always looking for ways that they thought it would be cheaper to get things done. Contractors, on a sponsored H1B, were one way. My career path took me in a direction away from that company where there was less of this kind of competition for a while. Even at this new company, after a while I did see the increased push for more hires along with an unwillingness to spend as much on people as they might have otherwise. Since leaving that position and starting a consulting company, I am acutely aware of the competition. A good part of the work my company does requires access to specialized hardware as part of a product development process. This is one of the ways that we compete against lower cost engineering services. Still, I have a need to explain why the rate a potential client might be paying for someone isn’t always going to lead to the lowest cost for a completed project. MK: How is this different than other professional fields? AA: Unlike lawyers and doctors, engineers have not maintained the same legal protections. At least in Pennsylvania, to advertise yourself as an Engineer, you must have a Professional Engineer’s license. Over time, the need for this license in many fields has diminished. Typically, a licensed engineer is only needed in things such as building design and construction, power distribution and chemical plants. MK: What about outsourcing/offshoring? AA: In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, cultural barriers made it difficult to successfully finish software development work outside of the US. One of the methods used by some companies providing offshored services is to place one of their workers at the client’s site. This person provides the direct interaction with the client and then relays the necessary information to the people working in the primary office of the supplier. MK: Since the availability of labor directly impacts wages (supply/demand) some people would be in favor of protecting the market. How do you think about the role that the government should have in limiting the labor force? AA: I’m not sure, exactly. Clearly, all governments are involved in limiting and regulating trade. Consider the concept of “Free Trade Agreements”. If trade was going to be completely free, a free trade agreement would be a simple one liner: “we won’t have any restrictions or tariffs on goods or services between our two countries.” Differences in taxation and other preferences for certain kinds of businesses within a country make this simplicity impossible. My main point in all of this is the complexity of the issue. Adding people to the available pool is good for employers because it reduces the salary they need to pay. On the other hand, it reduces the opportunities and incentives to enter the field. By Rev. Matt Koerber
I asked John Standridge to tell me about his life in Texas. John is a PCA pastor and a good friend from our time in Boston. He is a native of Texas and returned several years ago to work with a church plant. Although John doesn’t literally live on the U.S.-Mexico border, he lives a couple of hours’ drive away. More importantly, the community that he lives in is a “border crossing culture” with a significant Hispanic population. Many of the issues that seem distant to Pittsburghers are part of his everyday reality. MK: You told me that you live only a few hours from the U.S.-Mexico border. How does immigration affect the makeup of your community? Are most immigrants in your community from Mexico? JS: Yes. We live a little less than 250 miles from the border city of Ciudad Acuna, which is in the state of Coahuila. It's kind of challenging to talk about our community in terms of the usual associations we have with immigration, for the simple reason that we live in a part of the world which was for so long part of another country (most recently Mexico). As someone once told me, "My people never moved. It's the border that moved." This creates quite a different community dynamic from, say, Boston, Houston, or New York, which represent opportunity magnets for peoples all around the world. While the immigrant demographics of Cambridge, MA (where I used to live) was wildly diverse, it was that way because of the attraction of the universities, business opportunity, etc. In the town I live in, which is about one-third Hispanic (almost entirely of Mexican heritage), the connection is ancestral (i.e. they've always been here), familial (they come because they have family here), or economic (they’ve come to earn money to send back home). MK: Do people tend to move back and forth across the border quite a bit or is it hard to do that? Once people arrive in the U.S. do they typically stay for good? JS: People still go back and forth quite a bit. On the one hand, the back and forth is just the normal shopping/visiting family stuff that's always gone on. Any time we go to the mall in San Antonio (about an hour southeast of here), the parking lot has a good number of cars with Mexican license plates from some of the adjacent Mexican states (Coahuila and Tamaulipas mostly). At the same time, crossing is much harder than it used to be. Prior to 9/11 you didn't need a passport to cross the border. It was common to pop across for lunch, shopping, visiting friends and family with barely a nod to immigration authorities on either side. The realities that have come in the wake of 9/11 as well as the ascendence of the drug cartels has changed that immensely. I went across recently into a little town called Nuevo Progresso (south of Welsaco, TX, in Tamaulipas), and it was a breeze going into Mexico, but coming back was pretty onerous. There are not only tightened borders, but Border Patrol/immigration checkpoints at various spots along I-10 within the U.S, this has been pretty controversial but it makes the point that this country is very much vigilant about drug trafficking/illegal immigration. Because of this, illegal immigration is actually way down. My sense is that most people who come, come for stints of time, to earn a little money, with plans to return. There are, however many who have come and stayed, managing to function pretty well. This can get pretty complicated in the course of life. Some are illegal, but have children here. Many work in family businesses or even businesses that they have started. Many of them pay taxes, despite their illegal status. A lot of this stuff is changing in the current climate. There are a few local restaurants I frequent, and I have noticed since the election that they are down in staffing, with many of the regular employees no longer there. The rumor is that they were undocumented, and have now either returned to Mexico or decided to stay out of the public eye. MK: From your perspective how do the lines between documented and undocumented immigrants break down? JS: I have no idea what the percentages are, and I think it would be a hard thing to find out. There is nothing in place that would keep families from enrolling their kids in school, there are job opportunities, there are family connections, all of which make it less obvious who is documented and who is not. MK: In what ways does the presence of immigrants impact the community as a whole? JS: From a cultural standpoint, it certainly makes it richer. In other ways, it creates tension. The Anglo and Mexican-American communities coexist in our town, but there is little evidence of seeking connection. Apart from the school system, which necessitates integration, we are divided in the parts of town we live in, cultural values, where we worship, and in many cases, by language. I don't know if you're familiar with Colin Woodard's book "American Nations," but our little town of Kerrville, TX sits right on the fault line of "Greater Appalachia" and "El Norte." Greater Appalachia is largely born out of a Scots-Irish culture, suspicious of those perceived as outsiders, where identity is rooted in a kind of "warrior ethic" bolstered by a strong sense of personal sovereignty and independence. "El Norte" is the oldest of the American nations, running along the borderlands of the old Spanish colonial empire that took root in the late 16th century. This culture is more community-oriented, but in such a way that it values fierce independence, self-sufficiency, and hard work. While there is certainly tension between these communities, the deeper concern is how readily dismissive they can be of each other. Of course, there is also this deep irony in that those communities that are now cast as unwelcome/illegitimate (the Mexican-American culture) preceded the culture that is now in power. If you were to visit the Alamo in San Antonio, you would see that the defenders of it were an incredibly international group, but it seems to me that they cohered around a common enemy, more than a common interest. MK: How does the Hispanic community relate to the dominant culture? What term do people use to describe the "white American culture"? JS: Not being an insider of that culture, this is a hard one for me to answer. One thing that should be pointed out is that in many places in our region, the Anglo culture is not the dominant culture. In our community, which is about one-third Hispanic, on one level, you could be encouraged by the level of integration. The public life of our city churns with a mix of people going about their day, getting along, commonly contributing to its life in commerce, education, public service. On the other hand, my sense is that there is at best a reluctance to venture past the cultural bounds, and probably a pretty deep suspicion of the Anglo culture. This is lamentable, but to some degree understandable given not only the history, but the current climate especially in politics which are charged with fear-mongering related to immigration related issues. MK: As a pastor, how do you try to interact with these issues in your ministry? JS: In one sense, in my capacity as a minister of word and sacrament I continually unearth inescapable biblical themes that supremely bring to bear reconciliation, of being called together into Christ as "one new people," comprised of "every tribe, tongue, and nation." I see that at the heart of how we think about our relationship with God has immediate and palpable implications for how we relate to our neighbors. As Christians we are urged to remember our former alienation and hostility toward God and others, to the end that we would relish the grace that reconciled us not only to God, but has now related us to those we once despised and were suspicious of. I love Peter's phrase, that we are "elect exiles," called to love the home we've been called to for the time we're here, but to never lose sight of our fundamental loyalty to the Kingdom of God. This is not an easy issue to interact with in our context. I have people in my life who would celebrate a mass-deportation initiative, and I have others who have illegal immigrants in their family and are scared about what might happen to them. It seems to me that God has called me to sit in the tension of that, trusting the power of the gospel to change hearts, patiently pursuing folks even as I have been (and continue to be) patiently pursued by my faithful Savior. By Matt Koerber
For this post, I interviewed my uncle, Jim Koerber, who has been a contractor in Asheville North Carolina since the early 1980’s. I worked for Jim for parts of several summers when I was in high school and college. He became a good friend and mentor to me during that time. I wanted to interview Jim because the construction field in North Carolina is dominated by immigrant workers and because I knew that he is a thoughtful Christian who would want to reflect on these issues from a biblical perspective. I spoke to Jim about this project a few weeks ago and called him recently while he was driving around between jobs. (By Matt Koerber) Jim grew up in Pittsburgh and has a good perspective on how job markets can vary from region to region. In spite of our rich history of immigration, Pittsburgh hasn’t seen the waves of Hispanic immigrants that other parts of the country have received. I know from personal experience that when I worked with him 20 years ago, most of the roofers were Mexicans. By contrast, when I interviewed roofers in Pittsburgh 7 years ago, none of the crews had significant numbers of immigrants working for them. I asked Jim how things were different in North Carolina: JK: “Pittsburgh is a highly unionized market and people are also very protective of the construction jobs that are there. In the South, they have ‘right to work laws’ and there is not as much of a union presence. Pittsburgh is a city of immigrants (going back to the early 20th century), but it was very different historically in the South. For example, you rarely meet someone with a Polish name in this part of the country. Most families have Northern European heritage.” But all of that began to change at the end of the 20th century. Waves of migrants from Mexico began to enter the region’s job markets. The construction market was particularly affected. I asked Jim what this looks like: JK: “I would say that a lot of framing crews are now totally Hispanic. Only 10 or 15 years ago that would have not been as much the case. If you had a Hispanic crew framing your house, people would assume that it was not built well. But that has changed. Hispanic workers are now viewed as viable workers in that field. It is the same with the roofing crews, or even more so. Most drywall crews are mostly Mexican. They have to work their butts off – it is a grind. Americans who are willing to do it expect to make a lot of money. Mexicans are willing to grind it out for less. Some crews are owned by Mexicans; you can see the names on the truck. Often the foreman is an American, but he may hire all Mexicans to work for him.” By contrast, some parts of the construction field are still done by American workers. Electricians, plumbers and mechanical workers are mostly American. I asked him where most immigrants were from: JK: “The majority of immigrants are Hispanic, by far. There are increasingly a lot of Guatemalans, but I would say that 90% are Mexican, 5% other Hispanics and then 5% from other places like the Ukraine. We have seen a lot more Ukrainians here, they have a reputation for being good with woodwork.” We talked about the ways in which competition from immigrant workers can undercut wages. “In my experience, immigrants will often be willing to work for less money. They might charge $18/hr instead of the $20/hr that Americans would want. The Americans really want $22/hr and they were getting $25/hr 10 years ago (before the market crashed). They may undercut wages, but it is not typically as much as you think. Here is the thing, if they live here and their kids go to school here, with American kids – they end up being more American than Mexican. The kids are U.S. citizens and they speak English much better than Spanish. The kids end up with really no experience of Mexico. They want the same stuff that American kids want. They all have to pay rent and buy food at American prices. They might live less expensively, but it is not that much different.” I asked him whether workers were typically documented or not. As we discussed it, I began to appreciate the complexity of the situation. I learned that most workers have a number that they can give to their boss that allows a form of quasi-legality. Sometimes the number is a green card number, and sometimes it is a social security number. Sometimes the number is legitimate, and sometimes it is not. Some workers that he knows have been here for decades, but they are still undocumented. We discussed the impact that this had on the job market. JK: “I think that the ongoing undocumented status for a lot of workers has a real negative effect on the economy. It makes it hard for them to negotiate fair wages and the boss is tempted to pay them less than an American. Unless they have a legal right to be here, their employer has the ability to manipulate the situation for their own benefit. A lot of time I see people being treated like (mere) tools and not as someone who is made in the image of God.” But it is not just Americans who feel the competitive pressure. Jim told me a story about a Mexican friend, C, who has worked alongside him in the construction field for 20 years. Sometimes crew members will go back and forth to different crews, and recently Jim’s own kids were working for C on a job. He told them how mad he was about recent migrations of Mexicans from South Carolina. He said, “Those Mexicans from South Carolina keep coming up here. They don’t charge enough and they lower everyone’s wages!” I asked him how he thought American workers responded to this situation and then the interview started to get really interesting. Jim had just arrived at the job site and started to talk with the plumbers who were subcontracted for the job. JK: “This is my nephew from way up in ‘Yankee land.’ He is writing some things online to try to get people to talk about immigration in helpful ways. He is asking how people down here feel about immigrants.” Kevin and Mike, two plumbers on the job, seemed more than willing to weigh in. I could hear their distinctly Southern accents as they spoke into Jim’s cell phone. One of them said, “In general, it is basically this: if they are legal we don’t care. If not, then it does kind of ruffle feathers. I can get along with anybody I know. The bottom line is that I don’t like it if they don’t pay their taxes.” ** The other plumber chimed in as well, “I don’t think that there is a whole lot of resentment between Mexicans and Americans. We get a kick out of working with most of these guys. We have a lot of back and forth jokes going on. But I don’t like it when they don’t learn English. I mean, if I went to France I would learn to speak French. Most of these guys pick up enough English just by being here, but it is hard when they don’t speak English.” I asked Jim how his Christian faith impacted the way that he views the situation. JK: “The ultimate point is that even if we disagree with how things are going, we still have to love our neighbors. We even have to love our enemies. Jesus said that all of the law and the prophets hangs on these two things – love God and love your neighbors. That is pretty much what the fundamentals of Christianity is all about. That was laid out clearly by the Boss. For Christians, it can be tempting to skirt around it because it is so darn hard, and unless you are connected to the Spirit it really seems unnatural. In my experience, I really like working with the Mexicans that I have been around. I feel like they add a really rich fabric to our culture. In my experience most of them do a pretty good job staying out of trouble. Partly that is because that if they are not here legally, they could get deported if they get in any kind of trouble. The other reason is faith. My friend C became an Evangelical when he got here, like many of the Mexicans that I know. Around here LOTS of Mexicans have become Evangelicals since arriving in the U.S.” I had a lot more questions to ask, but the plumbers were not getting paid to talk about my blog post and the building field is highly competitive. I thanked Jim for his time, and as I hung up I reflected on the complex nature of the immigration question. As I listened to these stories, I could see threads of our previous posts showing up here as well. In the midst of migrating people, God is working for his own purposes. We can see the nations streaming to the temple of God. But at the same time, the economic impact of immigration presents real challenges for some American workers. On the other side, many Mexican-American families have members with different legal statuses. The parents don’t have a secure foothold here, but the children have no connection with Mexico and it would not be easy to return. The issues are complex, but like it or not, immigrants and native-born Americans are working side by side – building together in the mountains of North Carolina. ** A significant number of undocumented immigrants pay taxes (an estimated $11.74 billion annually). Many also contribute to Social Security (estimated $13 billion), while not receiving much access to the benefits. See reporting on that here, here, and a personal account here. – Kevin By Kevin
When discussing immigration, some tend to focus on the stories of individual immigrants or families, while others tend to focus on macro-level statistics that describe immigrants as a group. Both stories and statistics are valid and important parts of the conversation. Emphasizing one at the expense of the other can lead to grave errors. If we focus only on statistics, it can be easy to forget that we are talking about image-bearing humans. In this blog, we will hear from the voices of immigrants and those who walk alongside them. We hope this will show the uniqueness of each immigrant’s story; immigrants are not a homogenous group. We also hope that you will be able to relate to and share the cares that they have. If we focus only on stories, we can fail to understand the larger contexts of immigration debates. We can easily pick and choose stories that confirm our prior beliefs. Statistics are helpful for understanding the big picture. Of course, it is also possible to pick and choose statistics that fit into the narratives we hold, so we must 1) be critical of data sources, 2) reason properly and reasonably about data, and 3) be open to new data that others bring up. Since the bulk of this blog will focus on stories, I’ll present some statistics here that may help inform our subsequent conversations about immigration. This post should be taken as a snapshot; there are certainly many other statistics that are relevant. I have chosen a few issues that we feel benefit greatly from knowing relevant statistics. The number of immigrants is high, but it’s not exploding In 2015, there were an estimated 43.3 million foreign-born people living in the US, about 13.5% of the total population. For the last 10 years, there have been just under 1.1 million people being granted legal permanent residence on average each year. In sheer numbers, this is close to the historical highs at the beginning of the 20th century. However, as a proportion of the US population, it has hovered between 0.31% and 0.34% per year over the last five years; it does not seem to have increased significantly.* The figure above shows the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in the US over time. There were an estimated 11.1 million in 2014.** Between 1990 and 2007, there was large growth. The growth tapered off and stopped in 2008, at the beginning of the last administration. This suggests that the number of new undocumented immigrants is offset by the number who are deported or gain legal status. While there are indeed many immigrants coming into the US, the number is not increasing at a high rate. Immigrants take some jobs, but affect different industries differently Similar to the number of undocumented immigrants in the US, the number in the labor force competing for jobs increased until about 2008. In 1995, undocumented immigrants made up 2.7% of the labor force. In 2008, they made up 5.4%. Since then, it has hovered between 5.0% and 5.4% nationally. However, there are significant differences across geographic regions. While some states have seen labor force participation rates by immigrants plateau or even decrease (e.g. CA, NV, GA, SC), some states have seen increases (e.g. PA and VA). Aside from geographic location, these rates alse depend on the particular industry, and also whether we are looking at documented or undocumented immigrants (see the figure below). Generally, jobs requiring less skilled labor and those that are less regulated by professional bodies will have more immigrants. These diverse findings may partially explain why you are either more concerned or less concerned about the economic effects of undocumented immigration than other people (in different jobs and different parts of the country). Any discussion about the economic impact of immigration should bear in mind that different people may feel the impact to different extents. Immigrants are less likely than citizens to commit crimes Increased immigration has sometimes led to fears of increased crime. Several studies (here and here) demonstrate that immigrants (both documented and undocumented) are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens in the US. While about 15 in 1000 natives are incarcerated, only 9 in 1000 undocumented immigrants and 5 in 1000 documented immigrants are incarcerated. This difference may be partially explained by the legal vulnerability faced by immigrants; the stakes (e.g. deportation) are higher, which restrains criminal activity. This does not mean that crime committed by immigrants are more or less important or serious. Wise and righteous policing is needed to safeguard all communities from criminal acts. What the statistics suggest, however, is that political rhetoric blaming immigrants for rising crime is not rooted in fact. Since immigrants (both documented and undocumented) have such low incarceration rates, why does this issue generate so much political attention? Avoiding extremes Statistics are helpful for qualifying our claims: there are a large number of immigrants within the US, but the number is not exploding; immigrants take some jobs, but affect different industries differently. Statistics are also helpful for dispelling some falsehoods: immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. As Matt has said, there are a range of legitimate positions different Christians could take on immigration. But whatever the position, let it be rooted in compassion and truth. Statistics do not equal or guarantee truth, but the right statistics enable us to get closer to it. We will get to practice compassion as we listen to diverse voices speak about immigration in the coming weeks. * Computed from Department of Homeland Security statistics and Census Bureau population projections. ** Another study estimated the figure was less than 11 million. |
AuthorMatt Koerber is the senior pastor at City Reformed Presbyterian church. This is his personal blog that he also asks guest writers to participate on. Archives
August 2018
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