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Supporting Comprehensive Immigration Reform

�      If those waiting had the means to enter, they would, but the truth is that current immigration laws benefit no one.  Adopting comprehensive immigration reform will help everyone � both those who have been waiting and those newly arrived.
�      The wait for newly arriving immigrants actually discourages legal means of entering as for example, children of US citizens have to wait for 17 years from Mexico and the Phillipines, and for skilled workers to get green cards the waiting list is 5 years (taken from Justice for Our Neighbors)

Why don't they speak English?

�      It is to the advantage of immigrants to learn English so not knowing English is not due to anti-American sentiment, but is due to other factors; Immigrant men who are not fluent in English earn nearly half as much as immigrant men who are fluent (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999); Hispanic immigrants who speak English earn 17 percent more than those who do not (Chiswick and Miller, 1992).

�      Legalization leads to greater language learning as within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply.  The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events:  enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001 (Justice for Immigrants website).

�      Biblically, this just simply isn't important, as nothing in God's commands to his people require the acceptance of a certain language.

Why should I pay for "illegal immigrants" to use social services when they aren't citizens?

�      Undocumented immigrants pay income taxes as well, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration's "suspense file" (taxes that cannot be matched to workers' names and social security numbers), which grew by $20 billion between 1990 and 1998 (Justice for Immigrants website).

�      Immigration had historically been a benefit to the US economy, not a drain and this is seen in the net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually.  As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age.  That means we haven't spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years (Justice for Immigrants website).

�      Immigrants come to work and reunite with family members and not to get on US welfare.  The ratio between immigrant use of public benefits and the amount of taxes they pay is consistently favorable to the U.S.  In one estimate, immigrants earn about $240 billion a year, pay about $90 billion a year in taxes, and use about $5 billion in public benefits.  In another cut of the data, immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they use. (Justice for Immigrants website).

�      The real problem is not "illegal use of services" but a lack of social services as low-income immigrants have uninsurance rates twice as high as high-income immigrants.  But at any income level, non-citizens are much more likely to be uninsured than native citizens (Ku and Matani, 2000).

�      Immigration is a complex issue as seen in the fact that immigration raised the average wage of the native-born worker b 1.1% during the 1990s.  Among native-born workers with a high-school diploma or more education, wages increased between 0.8% and 1.5%.  Among native-born workers without a high-school diploma, wages declined by 1.2%.

Why should we allow "illegal immigrants" to take jobs from US citizens?

�      Immigrants make up a growing share of the US work force as one in five new entrants to the U.S. workforce is an immigrant (Passel et. al., 1998)

�      Immigration has historically added jobs as immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial and so create employment through new businesses (such as Silicon Valley); high immigration in areas also produces a demand on services, which also creates new needs for employment (Richard Vedder, Lowell Galloway, & Stephen Moore).

�      The majority of native-born workers (those with intermediate educational levels) experience benefits, more than competition, from foreign-born workers concentrated in high and low educational groups; even among workers with the same level of formal education, the foreign-born tend to be employed in different occupations that U.S. natives.  Less-educated foreign-born workers, for instance, are found mostly in agricultural and personal service jobs, while less-educated natives are found mostly in manufacturing and mining. (AILA).

What is our biblical call to immigrants as the people of God?

A better question is, "How do you support enforcement-only or exclusionary immigration reform with Scripture?"  Welcoming the stranger is a pervasive biblical theme.  Hospitality is repeatedly taught by Jesus to his followers through both his teachings and his actions.  Thus, the posture of the church in mission to the world is best characterized by open arms, and not fences, deportation, or criminalization.  We are called to advocate for justice for the most vulnerable, and clearly this involves immigrants, documented and undocumented alike.  If all that holds us from welcoming the stranger and advocating for the undocumented is nationalism (or depicted by some as the demand that we maintain allegiance to the borders of the United States), can we way that faithfulness to this country's borders is greater than our call to obey the Scriptures of welcoming the stranger and showing hospitality to the poor?  While immigration is a complex issue, there is simply no way to support enforcement-only, exclusionary immigration legislation with Scripture and maintain any kind of biblical integrity.  Our quest as the people of God is to follow Jesus as he incarnates himself among the most vulnerable, and then use our resources--economic, social, political, etc.--for their redemptive benefit.