What Do We Do About the Foreigner?

Despite popular sentiment, the Bible really does have a lot to say to modern life, but it's rarely as simple as finding the one verse that speaks to an issue. Thus when someone pulls out a verse and claims it's all you need to know on a political or social issue, it's reasonable to be skeptical. Let's look together at a topic that's generating a lot of heat right now.

Is "do not oppress the foreigner" really all scripture has to say about our immigration debates? I'd like to invite you to look over my shoulder as I wrestle with the issue biblically.

One of the best tools ever invented for Bible study was the concordance, which allows you to look up everywhere a word appears in scripture. One of the best things ever to happen to Bible study was when that went digital. So visit your favorite Bible software or website and search for "foreigner". I'm going to use BibleGateway.com.

There are many places where the word appears that don't help us. The first applicable result appears in Exodus 12, the passage about Passover.

"For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel" (12:19).

Next,

"The seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns" (20:10).

These laws apply to all equally, whether foreigner or native. This idea will appear again in Leviticus and Numbers. The first command the Lord gave Moses regarding foreigners is that the law applies to them, too. Some of the foreigners among us did not follow the law, and I think we all know that's who our "immigration debate" is about.

Then we get to "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt" (Ex 22:21). This truly is repeated again and again in scripture. God very much cares for the poor and the weak, as the foreigner often is.

Keeping scrolling through and we come to Deuteronomy. Again, God "defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you ... " (10:18). But also,

"Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner" (Deut 14:21). "You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you" (Deut 15:3). "You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite" (Deut 23:20).

There are rules and privileges that do not apply to the foreigner among them. So "do not oppress the foreigner among you" cannot mean that they must be treated 100% the same as the native born.

In Deuteronomy, we find a couple of passages that are useful for expanding our search, eg "Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow" (Deut 27:19). The scriptures bring up "the foreigner" many times, but they speak about the poor or the fatherless and the widow more, so if we look at how they are to be treated, that may help us find more passages relating to how the foreigner should be treated. What does it mean to "oppress" the poor or the widow? We can search for "widow" and "poor". Here are a few useful passages:

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
   to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
   and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
   and robbing the fatherless. (Is 10:1-2)

"There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts." (Amos 5:12)

"So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against ... those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me." (Malachi 3:5)

I feel like we're getting somewhere. A lot of passages about the widow seem to be about her suing or getting sued — most likely someone trying to take her property. Justice was supposed to be impartial, but the rich would bribe the judges. They would hire the poor and the foreigner to work but not pay them. They would loan them money at high interest and take their meager possessions as collateral when the Law of Moses forbade both.

But the standard was not to favor the poor in court any more than the rich. "Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly" (Lev 19:15). No, the rule was that the law applied equally to all. That is something we have to consider as we wrestle with how to think about our immigration situation. When we quote "Do not oppress the foreigner", we have to remember that "oppressing" them was failing to follow the law, not following it. Does that throw a monkey wrench into applying it to this group?

A verse I skipped before from Leviticus also seems important: "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt" (19:34). Love them as yourself. Of course, we're always supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Dare we ask the Pharisee's question, though? Why is my neighbor? OK, everyone is our neighbor. But some neighbors seem to have more of a claim on us than others. What if our neighbors who are either native-born or who immigrated according to the law are harmed by trying to love the neighbor who did not follow the law?

It's no secret that employing those who are not legally allowed to work suppresses wages among those most likely to be competing with them for jobs. Similarly, their demand for housing will raise prices for those seeking the same low-income housing.

We should also ask what message turning a blind eye to unlawful immigration sends to those who followed our sometimes cumbersome rules. Are we telling them they should have simply overstayed a tourist visa? Are they silly for following the law? What other laws might they then deem silly to follow, and what might the repercussions be?

If we cannot equally love all of our neighbors, how do we choose whom to favor? Do we do what is best for the poorest? Does that violate the principle of impartial justice? Or should we favor those who seem to need our help most desperately?

I don't know.

If you were expecting me to lay out my position, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'm not sure where I fall on this issue, and I'm certainly not going to tell you were you should. What's important is to recognize that the situation is far too complex to address by slapping on one Bible verse taken out of context.

These are hard questions the Christian politician and the Christian voter need to wrestle with. It's not the position we come to that makes us a "Christian voter" as much as the process. Consciously trying to obey the Lord as we come to these decisions is what matters.


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