I too was "Illegal"

 “Truly You said we were equal; everyone’s heart is deceitful 

Everyone born is illegal, when love is the law of the land.”

- Jon Guerra, from “Citizens”

Is it moral to break the law to enter a country that does not want you? At first glance, I suspect most American Christians would say “no.” After all, breaking the law is generally not a moral thing to do. Indeed, this is the backbone of the argument many politically conservative Christians have used to paint any undocumented immigrant as a “criminal.” There is a law that you need proper identification and paperwork to reside in this country; without this status you are immorally breaking the law.

And yet, there is a deep hypocrisy in this thinking. Of course there's the obvious hypocrisy in calling a person a "criminal" for the civil violation of crossing or living within invisible lines without paperwork while refusing to call ourselves "criminals" when we do the more dangerous crime of driving over the speed limit. However, there is also hypocrisy in how we even approach border laws. While we hold up the rigidity of law and morality when the offender is a person of color or a non-English speaker, we are quick to drop that sense of righteousness when it serves our purposes.

Here’s the reality: I myself have entered a country under false pretenses. Nearly two decades ago, I visited a “closed country” that explicitly forbids missionaries from entering. Despite the fact that I went as part of a “mission trip” with the stated goal of sharing about Jesus to residents of that country, this is not what we put down on our visa applications. Instead, we entered as “tourists” because we knew being truthful would result in a denial of our entry. We twisted the truth to get our way so we could do something we knew to be illegal. In a sense, we entered this country “illegally.”

Ironically, many who now shout for mothers, entrepreneurs, pastors, and other undocumented immigrants to be removed from our country because they’re here “illegally” are the same folks who praised me years ago for doing this trip. While one group gets vilified for breaking border laws, groups like mine are regularly praised as spiritual heroes who are doing something "brave" or "holy."

But at the end of the day, both the Hispanic immigrant and I were “illegal” and unwanted by our host countries. And my experience tricking a country into letting me enter their borders highlights that deep down most of us know that immigration and customs laws are rather arbitrary. Ultimately, they are simply manmade rules that can be changed with any whim. If Christians are willing to set aside border laws so that the Gospel can be preached in a country, why can’t we do the same so that mothers and fathers fleeing poverty and violence can start a new life? Why can’t we do the same so that a pastor can continue to preach and shepherd his congregation of 20 years? Why can’t we do the same for the man whose business employs dozens of neighbors in our community?

Sadly, too many Christians forget their faith that calls us to set aside legalism in favor of grace and humanity. When facing those who would enforce arbitrary and strict rules around Sabbath, Jesus pushed back by saying “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Human laws (including immigration laws) exist for the well-being of people. To me, it is hard to see how our current immigration practices--which kidnap a mother at a school while waiting in line at a school to pick up her child, or send a young Christian woman back to her home country to be executed for her faith, or rip a young student from the only country they’ve ever know to sit in a detention facility awaiting deportation to a foreign country—serve the well-being of people. These actions do not make our country safer. They do not make us economically stronger. They only stoke fear, destroy families, and revel in the pain.

And yet I, in all my privilege, will not be judged or hunted for breaking the law. I, too, entered a country that did not want me. I undertook actions that were not permitted by my visa. But if I share about that trip, I will be praised by the church for breaking the law.

But I suspect that God is no more pleased with me for my minor sacrifice of two weeks of summer than He is with those who have sacrificed their very lives to save their families and seek out a better life. After all, my Savior who remembers all the sparrows and numbers all the hairs on our heads tells me He cares for the quality of our lives. Perhaps breaking the law to save your family from violence, persecution, and poverty is a much nobler and holier act than timidly dropping a few Bibles in the streets. At the very least, I can’t imagine the God who declares “Blessed are the poor [and] woe to the rich” (Luke 6:20-26) will hold their lack of documentation against them.