The Immigration Crisis

 A church in Indiana has created a work showing the mark of baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph being held in a cage after trying to enter Egypt.  The work has created a sensation in the media, for the message it conveys and the hypocrisy it represents. 

The story is well known.  Jesus' family, fleeing the violence of Herod, who threatened to destroy all newborns under the age of two if the Messiah weren't eliminated, came to Egypt seeking asylum.  That the work shows them being held for illegally entering a foreign country is a radical departure from the typical opinion of the religious right: that illegal aliens be detained and deported back where they came from.  Instead of the open borders that arguably saved the son of God, most of them would prefer to close their borders to those seeking asylum, assuming instead that they are only entering the country illegally to commit a crime. 

Amen to this church for going against the grain.  The orange Pharaoh would have blamed the Jewish dems for locking up the savior of mankind.  And yet, this work doesn't even depict the real situation going on in America today, that families are being separated, held in different cages, not the same one.  No matter how young their children are, the law is the law, and no amount of pity can persuade the so-called righteous.  For the religious right is still predominantly against immigration, even though their savior needed it for his message to reach the world.  How can any so-called Christian say they voted for a man who would have sent baby Jesus back to the land that wanted his head?  An unfair question, perhaps, but an important one.  We've always been known as a benevolent refuge for the dispossessed, a haven for those seeking a better life.  Who cares if an immigrant is legal or not?  It costs thousands of dollars and takes many years to get citizenship [I would know, because I'm currently helping my wife do this].  I would dare anyone to picture themselves living in an immigrant's shoes and not at least be tempted to sneak in illegally. 

These are some sad times for our country.  All the immigrants I have known were wonderful people, most of all my wife.  Ali, an Iranian who would have been barred from traveling under the travel ban, got me my first full-time job at Panera Bread; Rose, a delicately old Vietnamese woman, always brought me food to eat when I worked at Fred Meyer; the countless Mexicans I befriended at McDonald's; all the respectful people I met from abroad in online chat rooms.  None of them wanted to blow us up.  None of them wanted to steal our money, rape our women, and murder our children.  The only terrorism on American soil in the last 15 years has been domestic.  Even then, the countries listed on the travel ban had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11.  We've become a frightening addition to the history books that detail irrational scapegoating.