Evangelical leaders make D.C. push on immigration

June 09, 2010
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Evangelical and conservative Christian leaders visiting Washington to push immigration reform this year say it's a moral imperative and will also be good for their flocks.

"The issue of comprehensive immigration reform is just about the only issue on which there is great unanimity across the Christian spectrum. Abortion divides us. Gay rights divides us. War and peace divides us. Comprehensive immigration reform unites us," Rich Nathan, senior pastor at the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, said at a Capitol Hill press conference Wednesday,

Conservatives for Immigration Reform organized religious leaders for the lobbying day. The roster included such big-hitters as Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Conference and Leith Anderson of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Organizers conceded that during the last big debate on the issue in 2007 there was a divide between "pew and pulpit"--with ministers supporting the legislation and many rank-and-file churchgoers opposing it. However, they said they think the drive has more support now, especially if combined with strong efforts to secure the border and a "tamper-proof" "biometric" Social Security Card.

"I believe that this is a crisis. I believe that the failure to resovle this issue is rending the social fabric of the nation," Land said.

Anderson began the presser on a rather provocative note, by observing that "unlike other countries" such as those in Europe, immigration to the U.S. has been predominantly Christian. (Europe has seen a major influx of Muslims in recent decades, legally and illegally, but Anderson did not explicitly allude to that fact). Anderson and other leaders suggested that illegal immigration has been a boon to U.S. churches because it has boosted their rolls.

The ministers said they are scheduled to meet Wednesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana, and at the White House with Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

Obama has pledged to support a debate in Congress on immigration this year, but he has stopped short of promising to pass a bill or even hold votes in advance of the November midterm election.

Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law, said the only alternative to reform is mass deportation, which he said would run afoul of biblical doctrine. "If you just simply deport everybody it's not practical, it's not only not practical, it's not moral and it's not biblical either," he said.

Staver and other speakers spoke about the difficulty of deporting an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. However, they also spoke about background checks for those who remain in the U.S. legally after reform on a path to citizenship. Depending on what rules are part of reform, as many as 4 million immigrants could be deportable because of criminal records in the U.S. or abroad. Deporting 4 million people may be nearly as unrealistic as deporting 12 million, a fact Obama and other reform proponents glossed over during the 2008 presidential campaign.

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