policy that offers a legal path to citizenship but does not promote amnesty.
In a statement released Tuesday, the leaders—who range from Pentecostals to
Southern Baptists and represent millions of constituents—said the nation must
secure, not close, its borders then allow “the millions of undocumented and
otherwise law-abiding persons living in our midst to come out of the shadows.”
The group said a “just, rational” policy would put undocumented persons on
one of three paths: one that leads to earned legal citizenship or residency,
one that leads to acquiring legal guest-worker status, or one that leads to
deportation, which they said should be swift for undocumented felons.
“Let us be clear—an earned pathway to citizenship is not amnesty,” the
leaders said. “We reject amnesty. And we ask those who label an earned pathway
to citizenship as amnesty to stop politicizing this debate needlessly and to
honestly acknowledge the difference.”
Signatories to the statement include: the Rev.
Samuel Rodriguez, an Assemblies of God minister and president of the National
Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Richard Land, president of the Ethics
and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Bishop
George McKinney, pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ and
a member of his denomination’s general board; Mathew D. Staver, founder of
Liberty Counsel; and Lou Engle, co-founder of TheCall prayer movement and
TheCall to Conscience.
The leaders said immigration policy is a moral issue and
criticized the federal government for the “crisis” sparked by Arizona’s strict
law authorizing law
enforcement officers to question a person about his or her immigration status
if there is “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country
illegally.
The Christian leaders said Arizona’s law is not the wisest course of action
because immigration is a federal responsibility but called the move “a symptom
and a cry for help.”
“The crisis the country is witnessing in Arizona over immigration is the
result of a failed immigration policy at the federal level,” the statement
said. “Arizona lawmakers felt compelled to act because the federal government
would not.”
The leaders are part of a growing number of evangelicals who are calling for
immigration reform. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose
members include such denominations as the Assemblies of God and the
International Pentecostal Holiness Church, approved a resolution last year
saying it “is in our national interest to protect our borders, reunite
families, admit legal immigrants and bring the undocumented onto the tax
rolls.”
“Evangelicals may have largely missed the civil rights battles of the 1960s,
but we do not intend to repeat our mistake in 2010,” Galen Carey, the NAE’s
director of government affairs, told Charisma.
The nation’s largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention, also
is on record as favoring reform under certain conditions. This spring its
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission issued a statement of principles for
just immigration reform.
“One reason we prepared [this] document is it’s part of our contribution to
moving this issue from debate to action that enables the nation’s 12 million
undocumented aliens to come out of the shadows,” said Barrett Duke, vice
president for public policy in its Washington, D.C. office.
In their statement Tuesday, the leaders said the pathway to earned
citizenship or temporary residency should be subject to appropriate penalties,
waiting periods and background checks. They said individuals seeking
citizenship should demonstrate moral character, an embrace of American values, and a commitment to full
participation in American society by understanding English and the rights and
duties of citizenship.
They said America’s success is largely due to its openness to new
immigrants. “We have proven to the world that people from diverse backgrounds
can come to America, live in peace with their neighbors, pursue their dreams
and succeed,” the leaders stated.
“We must always stand for the freedom that makes our
shores the object of desire for people without hope,” they added.
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