Belated thoughts on the immigration order

So I know this is old news by now, but for a while everyone was talking about Trump’s executive order on immigration. I was surprised at the strength of my own emotional response to it, and I spent some time trying to figure it out. Part of that was a wonderful facebook discussion that brought in people with opinions on both sides but still managed to be largely civil, and I’m super grateful for that – you guys are awesome. I wanted to synthesize my own conclusions afterwards, and in fact I wrote most of the following post three weeks ago. But I wanted to sit on it for a while to make sure I wasn’t just running off emotion. (Also, I ended up re-thinking my approach to Bible interpretation, which is kind of a big deal? I mean, it probably didn’t actually change very much, but the way I talk about it did. And I wanted to include it here, but it all ended up in footnote 6, so feel free to ignore it – just realize there were weighty things that delayed this post.) Though to be honest, most of the delay was school and life and things like that. Even now, I’m supposed to be home washing dishes.

So, apologies for the delay. If you’re still interested, here’s the way I’m thinking about that order:

Just to review, the executive order did a couple of things.

1). Suspended the US refugee program for 120 days.

2). Suspended travel into the US for all citizens of seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. This includes people who currently have visas, and maybe excludes people who hold green cards (are permanent US residents) – things are up in the air. This suspension lasts 90 days for six of these countries – it is indefinite for citizens of Syria. Exceptions are allowed on an individual basis.

3). Orders a thorough review of the information required for proper vetting of visas, with regular reports starting 30 days from the issuance of the order.

4). Directs that when the refugee program resumes, priority will be given to members of a religious minority facing persecution.

I’d like to start off by observing that we all share the same values. All of us want to be safe, want our loved ones to be safe, and want our fellow citizens to be safe. Additionally, all of us want to show compassion to those in need – and I think we all agree that refugees are in need. The way I’m thinking about it, we then need to decide how to balance the perceived risk to safety with the perceived benefit of showing compassion to those in need.¹

The disagreement then comes about regarding two or three questions.

1). What is the risk posed by continuing to allow refugees in general, and people from the above seven countries in particular, to enter the United States?

2). What is the benefit posed by continuing to allow refugees in general, and people from the above seven countries in particular, to enter the United States?

3). Is the benefit worth the risk?

The answer to question 3) in particular will determine how you feel about the president’s recent executive order. Here’s how I’m answering these questions right now.

1). What is the risk?

In the facebook discussion, we spent most of our time talking about this question. I think it’s the easier question to talk about. For one, it seems to be the motivation behind the order, and so it’s what people will first cite in support. For another, it’s easy to point to data to make a point about it.

From what I’ve seen, people are afraid of two things:

i.                     That recent terror attacks or attempts by refugees or their dependents in the United States signify that the system is broken.

ii.                   That as the crises in the above seven countries intensify, our system will be overwhelmed and unable to successfully screen out terrorists masquerading as refugees – even if the system works fine now.

I can’t help but turn to the data for these questions. Here’s what I find.

First, let’s be clear about the type of violence that the order is meant to eliminate: radical Islamic terrorism. There are many acts of violence committed within the United States – of those, some but by no means all threaten people who do not know the assailant – of those, some but by no means all qualify as radical Islamic terrorism. It seems that the rates of radical Islamic terrorism within the US are very low compared to other forms of violence (“Attacks by Muslims accounted for only one third of one percent of all murders in America last year” – https://sites.duke.edu/tcths/2017/01/26/muslim-american-involvement-with-violent-extremism-2016/, note that murder still does not meet the requirements of terrorism, unless it is trying to take down a state.)

Further, no people in the U.S. have been killed by refugees engaging in terrorism, at least since 9/11. And it seems that of the attempts at terrorist attacks which are detected, vanishingly few of them are committed by citizens from the seven targeted countries. (http://www.heritage.org/terrorism/report/60-terrorist-plots-911-continued-lessons-domestic-counterterrorism - has an in-depth explanation of methods, https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/who-are-terrorists/ has up-to-date information).

Finally, it seems that our vetting process is very thorough indeed. Here’s a story from 60 minutes about the process of allowing Syrian refugees into the US: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-syrian-refugee-crisis/ And here’s an infographic on the refugee process from the (former) White House: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infographic-screening-process-refugee-entry-united-states I don’t know how to check this information – if you think it’s wrong, please let me know why – but it all seems credibly sourced, and I see no reason to disbelieve it.

So it seems to me that the risk posed by the system, historically, is very small indeed. (You might argue that a small risk is still unacceptable. Hold on! That's question 3!) What about the potential for the system to fail in the future? People are holding up Europe as a specter of what might happen to the United States, if we don’t change our system. Germany, in particular, is cited as a country that is being overwhelmed by refugee crime.

I think the comparison between Germany and the United States might be useful…but only if the US were admitting far more refugees than it actually is. In 2016, the US admitted less than 100,000 refugees². Compared with our population of 300 million, that’s less than one refugee per 3,000 residents. In 2015, Germany admitted 17.55 refugees per 3,000 residents (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37207800).

Take a look at those numbers again. Germany is literally admitting 17 times the number of refugees as the US, on a per-capita basis.

Second, consider the pressures on Germany vs. the pressures on the US. People can literally walk to Germany…and they are. This leads us to consider the difference between an refugee and an asylee. According to the Department of Homeland Security, a refugee is someone who applies to enter the US from outside of it, while an asylee is someone who applies from within the United States. Germany seems to be attempting to process these people while they are actually within its borders – a much more tenuous position than that of the United States, who can let potential refugees wait in camps on the other side of the Atlantic until we decide it’s safe for them to enter. The German government, by contrast, is trying to figure out what to do with people who literally show up on their boarders and want in.

So I’m not convinced that our system is going to be subjected to the same kind of pressures as that in Europe. And even with ISIS claiming that it is trying to infiltrate the refugee process, I’m not convinced that we can make it much safer than it is. But of course I would welcome a safer system! The question is, at what cost?

2). What is the benefit posed by continuing to allow refugees in general, and people from the above seven countries in particular, to enter the United States?

Of course the safest system is to admit no one at all. Why take the risk? That’s what we’re going to address in this section. There are arguments to be made about economic output – the creativity that new (perhaps highly educated) people with new perspectives bring to our country. There are arguments to be made about our national identity as a nation founded by and largely composed of immigrants. There are arguments to be made about our image abroad as a welcoming and tolerant culture. These are fine arguments, but I’m not going to make them. I am an evangelical Christian. I am going to base my arguments on the Bible.³

See, when Jesus is asked to identify the greatest commandment, He Himself quotes scripture: 

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22:35-40⁴

Luke portrays this differently. In his Gospel, Jesus asks the question, and the lawyer gives the answer reported above. Jesus commends him, and the lawyer then asks “And who is my neighbor?” I’m sure you know the story that follows.⁵ And I’m sure you’ve heard that the scandal of the story is that the “good Samaritan” of the eponymous story is a Samaritan – a religious and political enemy of the Jew whom he helps (at great personal cost). Jesus ends the story with the command: “You go, and do likewise.”

Throughout the Bible, I see a God who cares deeply about the poor, the vulnerable, and the outcast. I see it in the Old Testament prophets who scathingly accuse Israel of their failure to pursue justice and mercy. I see it in the New Testament Jesus who ate with prostitutes and tax collectors (the morally and politically despised). I see it wonderfully flipped on its head in the collection for the (Jewish) church in Jerusalem from the (Gentile) churches in Asia (2 Corinthians).

It is clear to me that this care should not only extend to those in my immediate vicinity, or those who are like me (ethnically, politically, religiously, etc.). The Mosaic law commands the Israelites to welcome foreigners:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

Jesus famously commands His followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-47), and He even tells them not to resist an evil person – in effect, to allow themselves to be taken advantage of! (Matthew 5:38-40)

I know all this doesn’t amount to a command for open borders. But I don’t particularly think I should be reading the Bible to look for a command to follow in this situation.⁶ I think that what all this reveals is a God who himself has, and who wants me to have, deep, sacrificial love toward those who are in need, and to those who are different from me. “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?” Jesus asks. “Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:47).

Truth is, I was God’s enemy “by nature [a child] of wrath.” “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Ephesians 2:3, Romans 5:9). Showing love to my enemies is a particularly God-like things to do (Matthew 5:45 again) – it is in fact only me paying forward what God has done for me. What then of showing love to the refugee who is fleeing my enemies?

All this to say, in the light of this Biblical evidence, I see great benefit in allowing refugees into our country. This is really at the heart of my response to the executive order, and while I do think our vetting procedures are probably safe enough, my beef isn’t with trying to fix them,⁷ but with shutting down the system while doing so, and losing the great benefit of showing God’s love to those in desperate need.

3). Is the benefit worth the risk?

And that brings us to the real question: is the benefit worth the risk? From what I’ve laid out here, I can say that I think the great benefit is worth the small risk. Will letting refugees into the country make me less safe? Maybe slightly. But housing refugees seems to me so in line with the heart of God that I think it's worth it.

So that’s why I strongly oppose the continued ban. I’d love to hear your opinion (on both the answers to these questions, or on the questions themselves if you think they’re missing the point) – feel free to comment, call, message, or e-mail me!

Two more things before I end. First, one of the things I was convinced of because of our discussion was that the perceived intent of the order mattered to me a lot. I think this goes back to trying to follow God’s heart: if the order is given for what I think are good reasons, then while I may disagree with the order (and I hope I still would), I’m pretty sure I would be less outraged. So for those who remember the debate, when Obama stopped the Iraqi refugee program for six months, he did it as someone who had not built a campaign around fear of foreigners. I am much more inclined to trust the intentions of such as person (as regards immigration), than to trust the current administration. If Obama had given Trump’s executive order, I hope I wouldn’t have been cool with it, but I would certainly have felt differently about it. (Now, if the current administration decided to loosen immigration restrictions, one might trust their intentions to keep us safe more than the previous administration, because safety played such a part in Trump’s campaign. But I’m going to stop before we get to talking about whether I would actually trust Trump, because I really don’t want this post to be about his character. But that’s the point of this little aside: character matters).

Second…I think before this executive order I had an intellectual commitment to the above, but it hadn’t really gotten anywhere past that. This event drove it to my heart. So let me be the first to acknowledge my own hypocrisy for not speaking out against an administration that contributed much to the refugee crisis while allowing very few refugees in, except in recent years. I would say that I’ve experienced some kind of moral awakening over the past couple of weeks, and in a roundabout way I’m grateful to the Trump administration for that, at least.

-David Wit

¹In case you take issue with the word balance and argue that we should accept no risk to safety…that’s still an opinion on the proper balance.

² here’s a link to refugee data straight from the source: http://www.wrapsnet.org/admissions-and-arrivals/ You can tell it’s legit because they’re all excel documents. But also because that’s where the Department of Homeland Security sent me for statistics on refugees. Fun fact: the average number of refugees admitted to the US between 1975 and 2015 was 79,464 per year, with a minimum of 19,946 (1977) and a maximum of 207,116 (1980) – gives some historical perspective on Trump’s cap of 50,000. Note that these are fiscal years that run from October to October.

³ Though of course I don't mean that these conclusions could not be reached by other means! Non-Christian reader, I hope you are not put off by this section, and I'd be interested to hear your take on it. But by and large the people I know who support this ban identify as Christian. The Bible is our shared language of values, and for me, at least, it's the most compelling source of arguments.

⁴All Bible quotations taken from the ESV, because the NASB is just a little too awkward.

⁵ but if you don’t, check it out in Luke 10 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37&version=ESV

⁶I’m sorry, but I want to go off on a long tangent here in response to Matt Walsh’s defense of the border ban, which has been pointed out to me: http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-yes-of-course-christians-can-support-trumps-immigration-and-refugee-policies/

He makes the following two claims: 1) That these verses are aimed at personal piety, not social structures such as border laws and 2) that these verses emphasize locality, charging people to care for those nearby geographically rather than those far away.

In response to 2), I can only say that as I lay out above, I cannot see the text supporting only a local view of charity. For sure, one of the lessons to take out of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that you should help the people you see nearby. But I think it is very much against the spirit of the story to say that means you shouldn’t help someone far away, if given the chance. As Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem church shows, long-distance charity was encouraged by the apostles. Further, we can think about how the concept of locality has changed radically in the time since the Gospels were written: it is just as easy for me to send food to a child in Africa as it is for me to buy food for a hungry person on the street (easier, in fact – I don’t have to leave my room. And cheaper). This doesn’t preclude us from helping the people nearby – I think the Good Samaritan story still keeps us to that – but we can no longer claim the same practical difficulties that would have been encountered in Jesus’s day.

In response to 1)…

 First, Matt Walsh does correctly call out the hypocrisy that inheres in someone who expects the government to act charitably, but does not do so him/herself. This is a point that’s worth repeating to myself, often.

Second, our mode of government straight up didn’t exist in Jesus’s day. We shouldn’t expect the Bible to lay down explicit rules for how to live in a democracy, because that was entirely irrelevant to the people who received it at first.

Third, I’m no political ethicist, but I’ll share this one conviction and leave it at that: a government that is truly run by the people should probably reflect the morals of that people. If I see a call to harbor the refugee personally in scripture, and I see that my government has a chance to do it (especially in a way that I, as a private citizen and not in control of the border policies cannot), I should hold my government to that standard (while acknowledging the unique pressures and roles it needs to play as a government). There is a principal of subsidiarity here: while I cannot push off onto the government my personal responsibility to welcome the refugee, the government cannot push off on me its corporate responsibility to put me in a position so I can actually do that. You might as well say that the Bible doesn’t call governments to ban abortion, just individuals to not have them.

Of course, the Bible doesn’t explicitly mention abortion, just as it doesn’t explicitly mention open borders, and therein lies the problem – if we only act when the Bible makes a specific command, we miss the point. As I’ve been thinking about this problem over the past few weeks, I’ve become more and more disenchanted with the idea that my main interaction with the Bible should be looking for commands to follow. Am I not under grace rather than law? Don’t get me wrong – God’s commands certainly create obligations on my part. But I think it’s even more important to read the Bible and ask what it reveals about God’s heart. God desires that I be conformed to the image of His son (Romans 8:29), so knowing how God sees something should dictate how I see it – and from there, how I act on it.

This is a little more subjective, a little more up in the air, and it requires that I perform Biblical interpretation in community (including the historical community represented by tradition!), so that I don’t just go off on my own wild ideas of what God thinks (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sola-scriptura-radicalized-and-abandoned, https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2016/09/06/why-protestants-need-to-use-tradition-when-they-read-their-bibles/). But I cannot help but see an approach to the Bible that cares only for commands as legalistic.

So in the end, I see this order on immigration in direct conflict with God’s heart as I understand it from the Bible. To convince me otherwise, you’d have to show me not that the Bible doesn’t command a country to take in refugees, but that doing so in the present situation is inconsistent with who God is.

⁷There is another ethical dilemma that balances the cost of the screening process with the cost of delayed entry into the United States (assuming that delayed entry entails more suffering on the part of the applicant) – a more rigorous system is not necessarily a good thing. But I think we’ve got enough going on without trying to address that, too.