One of my favourite concepts the last few years is to “complicate the narrative.” Oversimplified stories don’t build trust in journalists and they don’t take into play the complexity of the real world we live in. The main idea of that piece made such an impact on me that I have since read every book Amanda Ripley has written. She’s fantastic. Go. Read her books.
This idea has been rattling around in my head as I watch politicians and pundits oversimplify immigration and as I find myself in churches, conferences, and civic spaces around the country answering questions of a very confused and frustrated public. Becoming U.S. (I am saying “us,” but being clever.) is my attempt to tell the complex stories of how we got here, these United States, this nation of immigrants. It is to tell the beautiful and complex and painful stories we have wrestled with as we have tried to become a “more perfect union” as the Framers wrote so long ago.
I hope to lay down some ideas a few times a month, complicate the narrative, offer some solutions to our immigration struggles (they won’t be simple because immigration is not simple) and some ideas for both healing and hope in these divisive times. Some thoughts will be by looking back and some will be by looking forward. A lot of hope will be through the lens of the gospel that shapes me so. Thanks for hanging out for those who are not Christian or even very religious.
America is a nation of immigrants and that is a really special part of our identity. We have trickled onto these shores in small batches and poured in larger batches and these complicated stories to how we all got here are worth telling. I hope maybe some of you will let me tell your stories here and I will tell you some of my own family immigration history.
Who belongs in America? It’s a question as old as our nation and its tension has always carried both the anxiety of change as well as the joy of our unique “out of many one” story.. Ben Franklin at our founding famously lamented that Germans would never fit into English settled Pennsylvania.
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion.”
Me, belly laughing at any perceived difference in pasty English and German complexions. A counterpoint to this anxiety is a couple hundred years later President Reagan boasted that one of the unique things about America is that anyone from any culture could become American in a way that people could immigrate to France but never truly become French. These two ideas about immigrants have tag-teamed forever in our history. Hope and anxiety.
“Who belongs,” often comes with the questions to the next batch of immigrants, “How did you get here?” “Was it legitimate?” “Will you be able to blend in with the rest of us?” “Will you change us?” Right now a lot of folks are coming to our border to seek asylum. It’s created a lot of questions and a lot of worry and a lot of politicking. I am going to wade into that conversation a bit over the next few weeks.
Yes, newcomers do change us. But we always remain American with a very strong culture. (Ask anyone in another country how strong our culture is. We have invaded everyone with our culture via television and music and film at the minimum.) Yes, immigrants will and do fit in with the rest of us (often to the fret of of the immigrant parents, the young of every culture learn English and are enthralled with American culture within such a short time that parents stress they will forget where they came from) I have had these conversations with new immigrants and Americans both more times than I can count.
It is also sometimes hard on receiving communities to navigate cultural differences, the already housing crisis in many parts of the country, struggles in communication, the pressure on teachers to teach children who don’t speak the language and more.
Bad joke intermission. My grandparents were of Swedish heritage and missionaries to the Mexican border and at least my grandmother spoke three languages. My mother and her siblings only spoke English and Spanish and lost the Swedish of their parents and grandparents. While some of my cousins speak Spanish the rest of us abysmally only speak English so with our dropping a language per generation I was sure Gen Alpha in our family would all be mute. So far the kiddos are speaking.
Back to the border. Yes, a lot of folks are coming and seeking asylum. No, the border is not open. (I mean it’s open to commerce, open to the cross border travels of the locals, not open to everyone, open to asylum seekers sometimes, depending what month and what policies are in place.) No, not everyone qualifies for asylum who is asking for it. Yes, the people coming there in higher numbers add pressure and complexities to the job of Customs and Border Patrol officers. No, we are not at all time highs. Remember I said I’d complicate the narrative? Here are a few complications for us to chew on today.
The record highs of people coming to the border were actually in 2000, 2001, not now despite the politicians emails. (It’s a good fundraiser for them). We are nearing those totals from twenty years ago and have hit very high numbers in the last few months. Why? I really like this chart from David Bier at the libertarian CATO institute.
Our border crossings have gone up in correlation with the globally displaced refugee numbers because of war, famine, other kinds of violence, persecution and government collapse.
As of this summer 2023 there were 108 million globally displaced people. When I started working with refugees in 2015 there were 59 million displaced people. There are a lot of people on the move because of terrible circumstances.
Folks are coming to our border from all over the world but some of the higher numbers are from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela. The last decade or so, Central Americans were our highest numbers. The Bush Institute has a great piece on the Root Causes of Central American Migration: Towards a Holistic Approach. The whole piece is a “complicating the narrative” sort of approach but one line stood out to me. “It is important to acknowledge that a successful hemispheric collaboration targeting the root causes of migration will not result in zero migration. Rather, it will increase economic development and reduce forced displacement, allowing for normal, orderly migration.”
I’ll save my second post for a deeper look at asylum. Why do we have it? Who can access it? The circumstances that have hindered it from working well. But a couple things I will finish with today. There’s a really terrible bill called H.R. 2 that would fundamentally alter the right to asylum and make it almost impossible for people who are persecuted and really need it to access this legal right. I am hoping you’ll tell your Representatives no to H.R. 2. There’s a great story in the Baptist press talking about the Open Doors/World Relief report on this.
Most of the folks coming across the border either have entered seeking asylum or have a humanitarian parole status (via a new dysfunctional app called CBPONE meant to alleviate border pressure and irregular crossings). They are legal. Asylum seekers have a court date in the future to prove their case. It’s really hard to prove your case and you need to fit the global definition of a refugee and also have proof that you fit this definition. A lot of folks lose their cases. There are people who cross unlawfully and don’t turn themselves in, but most these days are looking for border patrol to try to seek asylum. Asylum seekers who come to our border do not know US immigration law and whether or not they have a good case for asylum. Americans do not know US immigration law and what qualifies someone for asylum. There’s a lot of confusion out there. Criminal smugglers also spread disinformation to profit off peoples desperation.
We need more technology and manpower support for CBP. We need to know who is coming in and out of our borders. Colombia needs to uphold their end of the bargain to stem flows of people through the dangerous Darién Gap and not profit off of peoples’ desperation.
Two other complicated factors to this? When politicians or pundits get on TV and say the borders are open (even if they do not want migrants to come to the border) they advertise for people to come. Ever think about that? People are facing really hard things and need a safe home to start life over and our unhelpful political fights can spread false information. Being poor doesn’t qualify you for asylum. But that person who heard the borders were open doesn’t know that (even when really strong restrictions would have prevented them from asking for asylum like certain periods the last few years). We need to ask our politicians to be more measured and precise in what they say. And as for solutions that could actually pass both the Republican House and Democratic Senate and get signed by the President? The Dignity Act is a great piece of bipartisan legislation that could amend our asylum system, increase funding for border security, pass needed immigration fixes including permanent status for our Dreamers.
Next time I am going to talk a little bit more about why asylum exists and the stories behind it and our desperate need to reform it for this moment in history while making a case that we should not do away with it. If you are not bored, stick around. Thank you to those who subscribed with NO knowledge of what I would write. Gluttons for punishment. (Or just really awesome friends). To those I added because you have followed my news and prayer updates before, feel free to unsubscribe if this is not for you, but I think many of you might appreciate it.
I will end with a story. I hope to tell a lot of these beautiful stories. I was in Urbana Ohio, a small town in Champaign, a county of around 35,000 people in western Ohio a few weeks ago. I sat with a group of pastors talking about immigration, questions about how people arrived, the border, what’s broken etc. We also talked about what Scripture said: Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger, built on the Old Testament commands to love the widow, the poor, the foreigner and the orphan. These Baptists, Nazarenes, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals asked great questions but less were about immigration and border technicalities and most were about how they could get involved in welcoming immigrants in a county that was mostly made up of 96% native born white people. The main immigrant population were farmworkers and none of them knew a farmworker. One of them said he knew a Hispanic pastor. Their decision was to make sure he was invited to the county gathering of pastors to partner and learn both from his immigrant heavy church as well as look at how their churches could welcome his folks better to their community. The spirit of welcome was alive in Champaign County Ohio. Thanks Urbana pastors for having me for such an encouraging conversation. Thanks for your posture of learning!
“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people -- our strength -- from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.” - President Ronald Reagan
Christy, I appreciate the reflections of this piece. I didn't grow up in the US either, and can resonate with so many of what you said here, particularly the 'who exactly belongs in America' sentiment. So many questions that never get asked, that perhaps should be asked. Either way, I'm glad you've found yourself stateside. :)