“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)
“You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) offers downloadable Red Card templates to print off and hand out to educate your immigrant friends about their rights. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) offers know-your-rights flyers with practical guidance. Both are in English and Spanish. Why not post them in your neighborhood, church, grocery store, and institutional bathrooms?
- ILRC: Red cards
- NILC: Know your rights
- Prepare
Update: After writing the above, a pastor friend here in Oklahoma replied:
“We are aware of the red cards and the fliers, but the way ICE is working there is nothing that can be done. They ignore the cards, they take the people regardless of what they say, book them and tell them that they will need to say that to the judge, which they will never get to talk to. By the time someone gets a lawyer to help the detainee, they are already gone, in a bus to Houston. They are not listening to anything one has to say in self defense.”
So awful! A travesty of outrageous injustice and rampant lawlessness. I’m grieved by the sheer lack of mercy and violence of it all. We have lost our communities. May God bring relief to all the vulnerable. May he raise up his people to cry out on their behalf as he cried out on the flight to Egypt.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Flight into Egypt (1899). Detroit Institute of Arts.
“We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower
Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,
The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,
And death squads spread their curse across the world…”
–Malcolm Guite, “Refugee”
Complete poem with a reflection and a recording of Malcolm reading.
Update: Malcolm comments on a wondrous example of understanding overcoming enmity. This short reading from the Lord of the Rings may help us learn to see the immigrants among us as our neighbors and worthy of our love. May we all become like Galadriel in this moment:
