I was a stranger and you welcomed me.--Matthew 25:35
The other night I watched the 2011 film A Better Life, which had come up on my Netflix queue. The previous night, watching the Academy Awards telecast, I saw a clip from this film showing Demián Bichir, who was nominated for Best Actor. After seeing the film, I decided he deserved his nomination.
He plays Carlos Galindo, a gardener in East L.A. who struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while trying to give his son the opportunities he never had. Early on, the film feels topical, but soon it gets more specific and tells the story of this man who tries to live a moral life in the midst of hardship and trying circumstances that feel like rotten luck.
He borrows money from his sister to buy a truck so that he can have his own gardening business and make some money in order to get him and his son into a better situation. But another immigrant that he hires steals his truck and sells it in order to send money to relatives back in Mexico. Carlos enlists the help of his son to find this man, and when they do, the son can't understand why his father isn't angrier or more vengeful toward the man who stole his truck.
The film helps viewers get into the skin of an immigrant who lives in constant fear of being caught and removed from his son, who is legal because he was born in the United States. This describes the situation of thousands of people in our country. We also see that immigrants are not a homogeneous group. Neither are Hispanics. Although Carlos shares a language and culture with many other Hispanics in L.A., he feels out of place with many of them as well.
What makes the film better than most is that while it gives us a glimpse of this "issue," it mainly tells the moving story of a father and son caught in the grip of larger forces and doing their best to get buy. That helps make this specific story a universal one as well.
At church the previous day, last Sunday, I spoke with Jesus, who was visiting with his wife and two children. They'd been there a few weeks earlier as well. He and his son, Alejandro, helped us set up tables and chairs for our twice-monthly potluck after worship. Jesus told me a bit of his story, his going to Michigan from Mexico five years ago, then moving to Wichita, Kan., to find work, then bringing his family here. When I said, "I'm glad you're here," he smiled. It's not the message he hears much in our culture. There seems to be a lot of vitriol expressed toward immigrants, and too much of it comes from people who call themselves Christians.
I'm not claiming it's a simple issue. There are many complexities. But the Bible verses quoted above represent a thread in Scripture that ties strongly to the Golden Rule: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12).
The argument in Leviticus is that you love aliens (that word sounds strange, as if they're from Mars) because you were once aliens. In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies with the stranger, saying we welcome him when we welcome a stranger.
Yesterday I had lunch with Caleb Lazaro, a young pastor from Colorado Springs who is scholar-in-residence at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., for six months. I'd heard him at our church back in January, where he talked about his own church. Most of the 45 or so in his church are undocumented, and he says the main issue he and others address with them is their anxiety. They often feel shame, he said. And their kids are often raised without a sense of home, which leads some to join gangs. Caleb said there has been no reform in citizenship laws since 1965. There needs to be a redefinition of citizenship, he said, so that people who've been living like citizens (paying taxes, contributing to the economy) for, say, five years, should be recognized as citizens.
In a letter in a recent New Yorker (Feb. 27), Katherine Fennelly notes that "immigration prosecutions now make up nearly half of federal felony prosecutions." NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) brought a freer flow of goods and capital, she writes, but not an increase in visas for blue-collar workers. "Over 20,000 immigrants now languish in federal prison for no crime other than entering the United States without a valid visa."
A Better Life tells a story that helps us see in a clearer way the experience of many undocumented workers. It doesn't explore why people are leaving other countries and coming to the United States at such risk. A documentary that does that is Dying to Live: A Migrant's Journey,which is available from Mennonite Central Committee (www.mcc.org). It's a 35-minute film and shows the desperate straits that drive people to leave their families to try to find work here. I recommend it.
Immigration is a huge issue, but it involves real people. As people seeking to follow Jesus, we need to summon the courage and the decency to welcome people some call aliens. In doing so, we may be welcoming the Lord we claim to follow.
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