There can be no doubt that a vast number of people are migrating around the world today. The latest available figures for international migration from the International Organization for Migration, which are for mid-2024, give the number of migrants worldwide at around 304 million.
The precise reasons that people migrate are unique to each individual migrant, but broadly speaking we can say that people migrate for both positive and negative reasons. Positively, people migrate to try to better the lives of themselves and their families. Negatively, people migrate because they are expelled from where they have been living or because they want to escape poverty, war and persecution or various kinds.
Just as the causes of migration are various, so are attitudes to migration. However, generally speaking, we can say that the arrival of migrants is a controversial issue in all those countries to which large numbers of migrants have moved, or to which they are seeking to move.
This is true, for example, in the case of people from Zimbabwe or Mozambique migrating to South Africa, Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar migrating to Bangladesh, people from Southern and Central America migrating to the United States and people from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe migrating to the countries of Western Europe, including the United Kingdom.
In all these countries to which migrants are moving, the questions of whether migrants should be admitted and in what circumstances is one on which both politicians and the population at large are divided and the Christian churches share this division.
In this article I want to explore the theological framework within which Christians should think about these divisive questions and contribute to public discussion of them.
To start off with, I want to suggest that there are four non-negotiable points on which Christians should agree.
The first is that the Bible teaches us that all human beings, regardless of sex and nationality have the same intrinsic dignity because they are all made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
In addition, the Bible also teaches that the general command to love our neighbours as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 19:19, Romans 13:9) has the specific meaning that we should treat the foreigners sojourning in our midst with love and justice. As the ‘Theology of Migration’ set out by the Reformed Church of America puts it:
“‘Do not ‘oppress,’ ‘detest,’ or ‘pervert’ the justice due to the foreigner or sojourner are words repeated throughout the Bible, demonstrating unequivocally that God loves people on the move and wants them to be protected and treated with dignity and respect. The Bible also makes it clear that those who do oppress, detest, or pervert justice due to the foreigner or sojourner are to be cursed (Exodus 22, Exodus 23, Deuteronomy 23, Deuteronomy 24, Jeremiah 7, Jeremiah 22, Zechariah 7, Ezekiel 22, Psalm 146, Malachi 3, Deuteronomy 27, Matthew 25).
“The Bible goes further by stating that the foreigner should be treated the same as citizens of the land (Exodus 12, Leviticus 24, Numbers 9, Numbers 15, Ezekiel 47), and that foreigners in need should be taken care of, whether they need a place of refuge (Numbers 35, Joshua 20) or food and other provisions to survive (Leviticus 19, Leviticus 23, Deuteronomy 14, Deuteronomy 24, Deuteronomy 26).”
The second is that we need to avoid hypocrisy when discussing migration. In the words of the biblical scholar and theologian Chris Wright:
“What strikes me most uncomfortably when the issue of migrants and refugees is hotly debated in some western countries is the blatant hypocrisy of the rhetoric. Almost all western nations have experienced centuries of immigration. Some, like the USA and Australia, are what they are today almost entirely as the result of immigration — some of it soaked in blood and oppression. Whole areas of the national economy in the UK could not function were it not for imported labour at all levels. Yet somehow, some political voices in these countries and their policies want to pull up the drawbridge and keep others out. There is also hypocrisy in the language used. Why, for example, are Britishers who have gone overseas, many in search of better economic opportunities, referred to as ‘expatriates’, or ‘expats’, while all those who come to our country seeking the same, are vilified as ‘migrants?’
“And there is the hypocrisy embedded in the lack of any historical perspective. Five hundred years ago, Europeans decided to migrate. En masse they exported themselves all over the world, sometimes conquering, sometimes colonizing, often both. They asked no permission and needed no visas. They just went and took and stayed — for centuries. And now the world bounces back. Not all, but a tragically large amount of the crises in war torn regions of the world can be traced to the gross historical injustices of European expansionism, colonialism, the slave trade, the carve up of Africa and then the Middle East after the First World War, and other evils perpetrated on the world."
These observations may not provide answers to the millions of refugees pouring into Europe from the Middle East, he acknowledges, but they "should at least generate some humility and less moral superiority in the way we try to talk about the issue, and pray into it.”
The third point, however, is that there is a Christian moral case for policing the borders of the nation states which God has called into existence around the world by placing restrictions on immigration. In the words of the ethicist Nigel Biggar in Between Kin and Cosmopolis – An Ethic of the Nation:
“Borders exist primarily to define the territory within which a people is free to develop its own way of life as best it can. Unrestricted mobility would permit uncontrolled immigration that would naturally be experienced by natives as an invasion. Successful, peaceful immigration needs to be negotiated: immigrants must demonstrate a willingness to respect the ways of their native hosts and to a certain extent abide by them; natives must be given time to accommodate new residents and their foreignness.”
A similar point is made by Brad Littlejohn in his essay, ‘Theology of Immigration.’ Littlejohn notes that those advocating a liberal immigration policy make appeal to the need to show hospitality to strangers (Hebrews 13:2). However, he then goes on to ask:
“But does the appeal to ‘hospitality’ entail a call to abolish or open our borders? To show hospitality in my own home, I must have a home—that is, a house with four walls and doors that open, close, and (ideally) can be locked. To invite people into this home, I must maintain a clear distinction between residents and guests. If every passing drug addict can crash on the couch, I may be running a worthy ministry, but I am not maintaining a home. In fact, if I have children … I will know instinctively that I must sometimes put their needs above the practice of hospitality. Some strangers will be too dangerous to allow into my home. Others may be safe enough, but they will compete for the limited temporal and financial resources that I owe to my wife and children before all others. Of course, a residence totally closed to neighbours and strangers would likewise be a travesty; it might be a beautiful house, but we would rightly hesitate to call it a home.
“Hospitality, then, is an essential function of a home, and yet an unlimited, revolving-door hospitality would quickly destroy most homes. The lesson is clear enough: a nation, likewise, ought to be open to strangers, but it will soon have little to offer either residents or visitors if it does not establish appropriate limits. A nation without borders is no better than a house without walls. Common sense, therefore, shows us that, like every creaturely good, hospitality (whether by household or nation) is made possible only by recognition of its limits.”
In terms of the current debate in this country about immigration, what these four points mean can be listed as follows:
Firstly, all human beings, including those who have migrated to this country, or who are seeking to do so must be treated with love and justice as neighbours who have been created by God in his image and likeness.
Secondly, this means that we should in principle be prepared to let people immigrate to this country who have a good reason to wish to do so, in the same way that people from this country have migrated to other countries in the past and continue to do so today.
However, this does not mean that we should have completely porous borders. Just as it may be necessary to restrict the number of people who come into a family home, so also it may be necessary to restrict the number of people who come into a national home. This means that there need to be appropriate limits to migration.
What results from this is that immigration policy needs to be determined by the exercise of the virtue which the Christian tradition calls prudence, the virtue that consists in the wise application of ethical principles in a given situation. To quote Littlejohn again, we must live in accord with national borders and “care as best we can, first for our own, and then for our neighbors and the needy of every society”.
He continues, “Only prudence can determine the appropriate degree of hospitality. How often should the professor have college students over for dinner? Should a family take in a foster child—or even adopt? Even for my own family I cannot answer questions such as these in the abstract. The answer now may be different five years hence. Just so, each nation must decide how many visitors or immigrants to admit, weighing its own need for security, prosperity, and cultural cohesion. Even the most philanthropic soul must consider limits. In order to offer the best home for native-born and immigrants alike over the long term, strict limits on the number of newcomers may be necessary.”
In terms of action this means that Christians must reject the simplistic slogans offered by those on both sides of the current immigration debate. They cannot rightly align themselves either with those who want to say, ‘No foreigners welcome here,’ nor can they align themselves with those who want to say ‘All foreigners welcome here.’
What they need to say instead is that foreigners should be welcomed, but that the number of foreigners who are allowed to make Britain their home has necessarily got to be limited (the country could not absorb 304 million migrants should they all wish to come). Furthermore, justice demands that decisions about who are allowed to make Britain their home need to be made on a reasonable and consistent basis and that the burden of providing housing and other support for migrants needs to be acknowledged and equitably shared across the country as a whole.
This kind of nuanced answer may not be what people want to hear, but it is the right answer for Christians to give when they are asked where they stand on the issue of immigration.
