On Immigration, Christian Voters Face Their Biggest Test Yet

If the United States stands for religious freedom, then it should not be blocking refugees fleeing persecution from entering the country, a group of Christian organizations said this week.

While more Christians are trying to escape violent persecution for their faith around the world, the groups said the Biden administration’s effective asylum ban and former President Donald Trump’s hint that he would end a refugee resettlement program both had consequences.

Shortly before the report from World Relief and Open Doors U.S., over 200 faith leaders wrote an open letter to both presidential candidates, asking for them to apply biblical principles to their immigration policies.

“We can’t profess to defend international religious freedom while simultaneously closing the doors to those facing persecution on account of their faith,” Chelsea Sobolik, director of global relations at World Relief, said at a briefing Monday.

In the 2023 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, nearly 29,500 Christian refugees from 50 countries had been admitted into the U.S. The State of the Golden Door report warned that the U.S. must not be closed to more.

According to the report, one in seven Christians worldwide live under the threat of persecution, including those in countries like North Korea, Iran and China, and Christian leaders in the U.S. have lined up to support them.

One of the co-signers of the letter, Ben Marsh, who leads First Alliance Church in Winston, North Carolina, told Newsweek that he believes people who spread anti-immigrant rhetoric “can’t be Christian.”

Marsh described anti-immigrant sentiment among Christians as “ill informed at best and xenophobic at worst”.

“The ill-informed are those who think we do not have enough money to help Americans because we are spending too much money on immigrants,” he said. “This is simply not borne out by reality, as World Relief and many other organizations show.”

“Immigrants are a net gain from a tax-paying perspective, and they commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans.”

Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes compared to U.S. citizens, according to a study by the Cato Institute.

Top Stories Tamfitronics ‘Dehumanizing’ language used against migrants

As the presidential campaign enters the final stretch, Trump is focused on the defining issues of his campaign: border security.

“When I win on Nov. 5, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins,” he said at a rally in the key swing state of Arizona on Sunday in front of a crowd of MAGA supporters.

Trump has proposed a mass deportation policy and increasingly dark rhetoric throughout the campaign, which has been criticized by religious leaders.

The former president has characterized immigrants as criminals and unknown entities coming into the U.S. to damage the country’s way of life, often referring to them speaking languages never heard of or understood.

Part of that has included repeating debunked claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets, along with the notion that Venezuelans had overrun Aurora, Colorado.

“I make this pledge and vow to you, November 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America,” Trump said at a rally in the Colorado city on Friday. “I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered.”

Trump said he would seek the death penalty for any undocumented migrant who killed an American citizen or law enforcement officer.

The Republican nominee also pledged to hire 10,000 more U.S. Border Patrol agents, after ordering the GOP to kill the bipartisan border security bill that would have added 1,500 more personnel.

Newsweek asked the Trump campaign whether Christian values would be applied to immigration policies, should he win a second term, but the question went unanswered.

“The Harris-Biden administration has unconscionably abused our refugee and asylum systems and turned them into programs to import mass numbers of unvetted migrants from the most dangerous countries on earth, at the expense of Christians and other persecuted religious minorities who those programs were intended to help,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement.

During Trump’s first administration, he tried to dismantle refugee programs and implemented a series of policies aimed at limiting access to the asylum process.

These included family separations, the “Remain in Mexico” program, third-country asylum agreements, and narrowing asylum eligibility based on domestic violence and gang-related threats.

The administration also attempted to restrict the number of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border through various regulatory changes and legal challenges. These actions faced significant pushback in courts and from advocacy groups.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Limiting asylum has global consequences

While Trump’s rhetoric is not new — he launched his first bid for the White House in 2015 famously by decrying “rapists” and “criminals” streaming across the border, he leaders voiced concerns about an apparent shift to the right on the issue by the Democrats.

President Joe Biden’s decision to effectively ban asylum entries at the southwest border in June worried these leaders. Messages of a tougher stance on the border following the election also did not fit with the polling of evangelicals, a key Trump voting bloc. A vast majority said they believe the U.S. had a moral responsibility to accept refugees.

“When the U.S. drops their [refugee admission] numbers, countries around the world all drop their numbers,” Nadine Maenza, president of the International Religious Freedom Secretariat, said Monday. “So when we close our doors, guess what happens? Other countries close their doors, and it becomes an even larger problem in the world.

“More countries in the world should open their doors, and we have this opportunity to be a leader in providing refuge for those fleeing persecution.”

Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign for comment Monday via email.

The Vice President has said repeatedly that she would seek to reintroduce the bipartisan border bill, which would help ease illegal immigration while speeding up legal pathways.

“The United States has been enriched by generations of people who have come from every corner of the world to contribute to our country and to become part of the American story, and so we must reform our immigration system to ensure that it works in an orderly way, that it is humane, and that it makes our country stronger,” Harris said at a campaign event in Georgia on Sept. 27.

Top Stories Tamfitronics What do Christian leaders want to see?

Marsh said that just and fair policy would involve a secure southern border and “loving” treatment for migrants entering the country.

“Neither party is perfect – the question to me is, which party is moving people toward a just treatment of the people coming to our doors? Justice would involve a safe border but also a loving treatment of the people arriving.

“That’s the key: to ‘love them as yourself’ as Leviticus 19:34 commands. We almost had a solid movement toward a just treatment that was bipartisan in nature, lead by Southern Baptist pastor and Senator James Lankford but it was shut down by Donald Trump.”

Speaking during Monday’s briefing, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas told Newsweek that as a Christian, he felt there was a need for a balanced approach to border policies.

“I think that what we can see in the country right now, we Christians have a big job ahead of us, quite a task, to bring the message across,” he said. “But it’s not quite as much a lost battle as we might sometimes feel, because I think people are reacting to extreme rhetoric.”

The bishop and the open letter referenced a Jan. 2024 poll of evangelical Christians, which showed 91 percent of those asked wanted policies that respected the dignity of every person, while the same number wanted policies which secured the border.

Many felt the “dehumanizing” language seen in some portrayals of migrants, which has continued throughout the election cycle, was offensive.

“We have to reframe the whole discussion and help people to recognize that while, of course, vetting has to take place, we will find that those who are coming, the vast percentage of them are people you would be proud to have as a neighbor,” Bishop Seitz added.