ITLT-14 - Immigration: one immigrant's point of view

There is hardly a newscast that does not include some story related to immigration and immigrants. It’s a hot-button issue that upsets me personally every time I hear a news report, because I was an immigrant myself for 44 years, over half my life.  I know a lot about that side of the story. But I was also a US Consular Agent for over 12 years, and I know about immigration from the other side of that “fence”. Every immigrant has a story, I know, but these are my stories. Does God have a story too?

It was 1982. We got to the airport in time to board our 90-minute flight from Madeira to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. We rarely had a chance to get off our small island with our four kids, and we were really excited to go somewhere else, even if it was another island. The lady at the check-in popped our balloon very quickly when she said Rachel would not be allowed to board. Her document had expired and had to be submitted to Lisbon for renewal. SEF, the immigration police, would not let her leave Portugal without it.

 I immediately called the SEF agent in Funchal, and explained the situation. I would have to go to his office personally to resolve the problem but the airport was at least 25 minutes from town. Fortunately, it wasn’t a weekend or holiday, and the immigration officer would be expecting me. I left Abbie and the kids with the baggage at the airport and dashed to town (I didn’t offer to explain how I got there in under 20 minutes). There was a line at the office, and the boarding time grew closer as I waited in line. Finally, there was just one person in front of me, and whatever form he needed had to have a tax stamp on it. It would have cost less than a dollar, 20 escudos, probably, but the document couldn’t be issued without it. I listened intently as the conversation went something like this:

SEF agent, looking over the application form, said, “That’s good, but you have to pay a stamp duty. You can buy the stamp at the tax office downtown.” (That was at least 15 minutes from where we were.)

Customer: “Can I get a tax stamp here?”

SEF agent: “The tax office sells them. Run down there and buy the stamp, and I’ll wait on you as soon as you get back.

The customer insisted, “Can’t I buy the stamp here?” but to no avail, as the SEF agent repeated unrelentingly: “Run down to the tax office where they sell tax stamps.”

Giving up reluctantly, the man disappeared down the stairs and headed out the gate at the street.

The SEF agent called out: “Next.”

That was me! We exchanged pleasantries and the agent and confirmed the fact, “Your daughter can’t leave without this document, and hers has to be renewed in Lisbon.”

My body language clearly acknowledged that was a real problem. Verbally, my response was, “Now what?”

The SEF agent was pleasant in a professional sort of way as he said: “Well, that’s the law.”  I was used to his flat, matter-of-fact, unemotional tone. His job was to inform me of what the law said, and I knew better than to expect anything else from him. I held my breath and waited for his next move. He continued, “But pursuant to Art. Such-and-such, paragraph so-and-so, I can issue Rachel a temporary travel pass.”

I maintained my outward demeanor as the paperwork was filled out. The clock was still ticking and the departure time for our flight to the Canaries drew nearer. The document was ready to be signed…almost. “You need a tax stamp,” he informed me needlessly. Well, of course. I had been in Portugal 5 years and learned that no Portuguese document had legal value unless it was signed across an appropriate number of tax stamps. From the previous customer’s experience, I knew that meant another 30 minutes at least to get back from the tax office with the stamp.

“You need a tax stamp.” But before my heart had time to sink all the way to the very bottom of my being, he opened his desk drawer and added, “I have one right here. That’ll be 20 escudos.”

Although he had seen me waiting patiently (?) in line, he had to respect each person in the line. He had to wait on the man in front of me first, but he wasn’t obliged to sell a tax stamp to him. That’s what the tax office downtown was for. In the time it took for the man to get back with his stamp, the SEF agent could dispatch my document and allow me to get back to the airport in the nick of time.

“Enjoy your week in the Canary Islands,” he said as I thanked him and left.

That agent was a real stickler for the rules, so much so that he got a bad reputation from many foreigners who ran afoul of seemingly endless regulations. They tried to tell him what the law said and how it applied to them. They only made matters worse. He knew the rules and he would not bend them. I knew better than to tell him what to do. Whenever he laid out a legal problem, citing article and paragraph in the immigration code, I simply listened and agreed. I didn’t protest. “So, what do I do now?” He knew the law, but I knew he also knew a legal way in the code to deal with it.

But some regulations had no work-around. In our 40 years in Madeira, we never got a year of furlough, the usual practice of most mission boards and organizations that allow their missionaries to spend a year back home with churches and family every three or four years. Unlike Brazil, Portugal would revoke our residency status if we were out of the country over 180 days in a year. We would have to start the paperwork all over again. In 40 years, we were in the US for a total of 2 years; 90 days one time, and 60 days another time, never a long furlough. Our home visits were more like vacations of a month or less. We know one missionary family that left and only got back to the island after the 6-month period had expired. They lost their residency permit and were given a deadline to leave Portugal. That day, SEF (the immigration police) knocked on the door of their house to make sure they had left the country.

Moral to my story: although it may not seem like it, immigration officers have a heart, but they also have a law to uphold. I think of that when I watch news reports from around the US.

Although we were never openly persecuted, as immigrants we were treated as different. Even the lady behind the counter at the local American consular office, upon learning we had come to start a Baptist church on the island said, “Don’t take the Madeirans’ God away from them.”

“I’m not taking God away from anyone. I’m here to give God to those who have been looking for Him and haven’t found Him.”

Full disclosure: she was Polish, and her husband was a personal friend and university classmate of Pope John Paul II.

Rachel and Rick experienced a couple of anti-American incidents in grade school, and the village priest warned people not to come to our meetings, because we had brought a religion of the devil. Worst of all, we were called “Calvinistas”, but that’s a long story for another day. Otherwise, if there was any anti-immigrant opposition against us. We always found the people to be friendly.

Our church was full of immigrants

Our calling was to establish a church for Madeirans, but in our 40 years there, we ministered to immigrants from 20 countries, and there were often 10 or 12 nationalities in the church at any one time.

In my 15 years of prison ministry, I worked almost exclusively with foreigners from European, African, and Latin American countries. As a pastor, I signed sponsorship letters for foreigners who wanted to do mission work on the island.

I was an immigrant who worked with immigrants.

But I was also on the immigration enforcement side, serving  as the US Consular Agent for Madeira Island for over 12 years (2001-2013)

The 9/11 terrorist attack of 2001 (my first year in office) resulted in profound changes in consular services. Before the attack, I did preparatory interviews of persons seeking a visa to enter the US, and forwarded their documents to the consulate in Lisbon, where the visas were issued. As technology improved and the costs of security rose, our local office was closed in 2013. On a historical side note, our consulate in Funchal was the first consular office created by the United States, under Thomas Jefferson in 1783.

For 12 years, I was charged with ensuring that US immigration and naturalization laws were followed. I paid regular visits to US citizens in prison. Despite headlines touting prisoner releases, the US government will not play a Get-out-of Jail card for you if you go to prison for breaking the law of another country. The government’s only duty is to ensure that Americans are being treated the same as the national prisoners, and that they have been given a fair trial. I asked prisoners if they had any complaints about how they were convicted, or if, because of their nationality, they were denied medical treatment offered to other inmates. The US government will not defend you in court or demand you receive special treatment.

 A young man from the island came to my office to say he had been denied entry into the US at the airport in Boston, and the authorities sent him back to Madeira on the next flight. The border agent suspected he was intending to overstay the 60 days allowed under the visa waiver program and he was held for further questioning in the presence of an interpreter. He was given a transcript of the interview, which I read, and then I told him two things: 1) any decision made by a consul or border control officer is final and non-appealable; 2) his answers were full of red flags signaling his intention to overstay his visa. Now, he could not even think of returning to the States for 10 years. So much for his dream of living in America.

The lesson from my experience is simple: immigrants are required to obey the rules; immigration officers are required to enforce them, and that explains my reaction to stories of immigrants. Are there are exceptions to the rule? Maybe, but the exceptions can never become the rule.

What does the Bible say?

You won’t find the word “immigration” in the Bible. There is only one verse in one English translation that uses the word “immigrants”, Ez. 14.7, NASB. “For anyone of the house of Israel or of the immigrants who stay in Israel who separates himself from Me,...”

Immigrants and emigrants are actually the same people….in the country they leave, they are “emigrants” and in the country they move to, they’re “immigrants”.

The Hebrew root word ger is used in its various forms almost 100 times, and it’s translated in English as “stranger, foreigner, sojourner” and 3 times in the ESV as “resident alien.” The Hebrew lexicon defines ger as, “a non-native who has taken up residence among the people of God”, “a settled outsider living under Israel’s civil jurisdiction,… one who depends on the goodwill of the host community.” It is one “who sojourns as a guest.” Although “sojourner” is often used in translation, the word means more than a pilgrim passing through, a temporary dweller, or a tourist, as it were.

There are many passages where God commands His people to respect foreigners, to accept the strangers that live among them and to treat them as guests. On the flip side of that duty, we note the responsibility of the ger (stranger) God talks about. The ger is one who lives under the host country’s civil jurisdiction (which would include its immigration laws). As an immigrant, I never got involved in politics, local or national, in Brazil or Portugal, and I never expected or demanded the right to vote. There were some Portuguese laws that I felt were unfair because EU citizens had privileges that I, as an American did not have, yet I paid taxes and worked under the same laws as the Portuguese, which included EU laws. That did not give me the right to protest in the street or attack authorities demanding a change in their laws. I was a guest who depended on the goodwill of the host country that allowed me to live and work according to their rules. I was in no position to tell them how to run their country. To my mind, immigrants who do not meet those conditions lose their right to the goodwill of the host country.  

Many immigrants in the US are afraid of what could happen to them. That’s understandable. In fact, the Hebrew word for “foreigner, stranger” is from the same root word translated “fear” and “to be afraid”, because that’s how we feel when we’re in a strange place.

As Bible-believing Christians we live in enemy-occupied territory in this world. The psalmist said in Psalm 119.19, “I am a stranger on earth; do not hide Your commands from me.” True, we are strangers here and this world is not our home. Paul reminded us that our citizenship is in heaven, but in the meantime, we are told to live as good citizens under the civil jurisdiction of foreign governments. We are ambassadors who represent God in a foreign land. We must follow the instructions of God to live in a way that is loyal to the constitution of the new country of which we are citizens.

While the southern border wall is formidable, it’s nothing in comparison to the border wall that surrounds the kingdom of God. You can’t climb over it, dig under it, or get around it. There is just one Door, the only way to get in. Jesus said, “I am the door…I am the way. No one comes to the Father except by Me.” That’s the wall that really matters, and no amount of protesting in the streets or human legislation will get you into that kingdom. And if you think immigration officers are tough here, just wait until your interview with the Chief Immigration Enforcer Himself. “Depart from me you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.”

And there you have it. Immigration as seen by one who has been on both sides of that wall. Which side of the wall are you on?