God enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
These words from Deuteronomy, in the Bible, were directed to those who “revere the Lord your God” and who “serve him, cling to him,” a people who themselves had been immigrants. They had been immigrants who then were enslaved. They knew what it was to be received into a land and then mistreated.
God says to them that they were not to be like that with those who came into their land. They were to love immigrants because they had been immigrants and because God loved and welcomed them.
This message from the Bible is especially for those who read the Bible as their sacred text, who hear in these words a word of the Lord.
For those who believe in the God who loves immigrants, it is impossible to support what is happening in our nation and the actions of our leaders in regard to immigrants. We are to care for the sojourner in our land. It makes no difference how they came here. They remain human beings made in the image of God in our midst, with needs. We are not to turn away from them. We are not to add to their burdens. We are not to demean them, treating them all as criminals, so as not to feel we have a responsibility for their welfare.
This is a word especially for those who see themselves as people of the Book, of the Bible and as Christians. If we are unwilling to welcome the sojourner, if we refuse care and a place for those who have fled from harm, if we would only add to their harm, it would be better not to call ourselves Christian, that is, persons who have come to be in Christ.
If we have come to be in Christ, the Christ in us does not allow us to disregard other human beings created in God’s image. The love of Christ compels us to respond to their needs—which means getting to know them and their actual needs.
Whatever the laws of our land are or become, we have to live by the law of love which we have come to know in Christ. We must not make of our nation or its laws an idol. We are children of God, before we are citizens of a particular nation. That is why St. Paul calls us “fellow citizens with God’s people.”
We have learned to recognize fellow citizens of a common humanity across national borders and ethnicities who we are called to love with the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit.