Christians, Americans, and “English-Only”

As an American citizen, I share the concern of many citizens over the issue of illegal immigration. The flood of undocumented people into our country presents a number of disturbing problems. How can our economy absorb all the people looking for work? How will our health care and education institutions meet the needs of these individuals and their children? Will our welfare system be able to manage the demands placed on it? How does the lack of border security affect safety and security in an age of terrorism? These are troubling questions and I claim to have no answers.

On the other hand, I am also increasingly concerned about the tensions, prejudices, and even hostility I see in our community over immigration issues. Sometimes the language used to discuss these problems sounds like racial prejudice in thin disguise. America has always been a nation that claimed to welcome immigrants (“give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”). But in reality, immigrants quite often have faced much prejudice and hatred—whether the Chinese working on the railroads, the Polish in Chicago, the Vietnamese boat people in Texas, and on and on.

The city of Nashville is about to vote on an “English-Only” amendment. The law would prohibit the city government from publishing official documents in any other language or from hiring translators to communicate with citizens, except to protect public health or safety. The proponents have some good points to make about the importance of immigrants in any country learning the official language so they can function and prosper (http://www.nashvilleenglishfirst.com/). But the opposition raises some very troubling points about the impact this legislation will have on the poor, on recent immigrants who have not yet had time to learn the language, and on the image of our city in a global economy (http://www.nashvilleforallofus.org/).

Sorting out all the social, political, and economic implications of this amendment is beyond my pay grade. For me, though, there is one question that seems pretty clear: What would Jesus do?

Jesus seems to have been little concerned with the politics of his day. For example, he swept aside the debate over Roman taxation with the simple exhortation to “give Caesar what is Caesar’s, and God what is God’s”—which didn’t answer the questions about whether the Romans had any right to be there or whether their tax system was just. Throughout his ministry Jesus made it abundantly clear that he was more concerned about the kingdom of God than worldly kingdoms—and that meant he was very concerned about the poor, the outcast, and the foreigners, even the hated Samaritans. I think Jesus would be less concerned about the cost to the city of providing translations than he would be about the impact on poor immigrants of refusing to do so.

Jesus said one of the two greatest commands is to “love your neighbor as yourself,” quoting Leviticus 19:18. Just a few verses later, God commanded the same thing regarding foreigners:

“‘When foreigners reside among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

According to Moses, God loves the foreigners residing among his people, and they must do the same (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).

If I were an immigrant in another country, I would want to learn the language as quickly as I could. But I wonder how welcome I would feel if the citizens said their city would offer me no help until I could master their language well enough to navigate my way through the system. (Well, actually I don’t wonder that at all. I think I know exactly how I would feel.)

And I wonder what Jesus would say to us as we head for the polls. I can’t say for sure, but I think it might be something like: “Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”