Opinion on Recent Immigration Decision

amcottrell11
Mar 22
2 min read

I know some feel very strongly about their support of the current administration. I am not looking to offend or start a debate. I just find a recent decision the administration has made to be heartbreaking.

This last Sunday I spoke briefly with missionaries who served in Haiti. They are currently in the states working with Haitian church plants/congregations. (They also have personal friends in Springfield, OH, and can attest that they are not eating pets.) Many are of the people they are working with are refugees (people who have been forced to leave their homes for fear of violence or persecution, and are looking for safety outside of their country of origin). President Trump is revoking the legal status of over half a million LEGAL migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and telling them to self deport or face arrest. They have 30 days.

While disagreeing with the legal pathway President Biden provided is one thing, revoking the legal status of half a million people is another. Most have likely tried to assimilate and have lives here. They had legal status after all. What are they to do? Could you imagine being given 30 days to self deport? These human beings are refugees. They are vulnerable displaced human beings.

The quote on the Statue of Liberty reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I thought one of the things that made America “great” was the hope America represented for people like these refugees whose legal status is being revoked.

I am very much opposed to this recent decision. I think it is reneging on legal migrants, it is inhumane, and it’s not what many believed this administration was going to do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the line, “He only wants to deport violent criminals.”

The prophet Jeremiah of old speaks to us today:

“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.”(Jeremiah 7:5-8)

Prophetically speaking to one of Israel’s Kings:

““Does it make you a king

to have more and more cedar?

Did not your father have food and drink?

He did what was right and just,

so all went well with him.

He defended the cause of the poor and needy,

and so all went well.

Is that not what it means to know me?”

declares the Lord.

“But your eyes and your heart

are set only on dishonest gain,