Southern Baptist Leader Weighs in on Immigration
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said today that hie is joining with other Evangelical leaders to call for a “just assimilation immigration policy” at the federal level that:
_ Respects the God-given dignity of every person;
_ Protects the unity of the immediate family;
_ Respects the rule of law;
_ Guarantees secure national borders;
_ Ensures fairness to taxpayers; and,
_ Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.
Land said the “the two extremes of deportation or amnesty are being played against each other, resulting in a stalemate in Congress and growing frustration and division in society.”
The controversial Arizona law that allows police to stop and question people about their immigration status is “a symptom, not a solution,” Land said.
“While I sympathize with the plight of the beleaguered citizens of Arizona, the law they have passed faces severe challenges.”
Land said he is not favoring amnesty but a biblical response to a difficult issue that does not reward those who have broken the law but requires them to traverse a rigorous path to naturalization, which includes standing in line behind those who have been and are pursuing immigration legally.
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Comments
And the baptist cave in.looks like they dont want to lose that tax exempt status so they compromise with the goverment and bow instead of stand.the 13 million plus are criminal illegals.go to go after that offering money criminal illegal or not.when will a church stand up and say go back to mexico,do your paperwork and come back legally.
That is all most of us citizens want. Most of us have NO quarrels with immigrants legally entering our country.
ITs the illegals, the ones with no drivers license, the ones that commit crimes and jump back across the borders, the ones that come here expecting the USA to support them, that bother
our legal residents.
Please drop the hypocracy. If you don’t like immigrants, then at least admit that is what you are up to. It is not honest to pass laws making it impossible for them to get drivers licenses and then blame them for not having drivers licenses. The greatest hypocricy is passing laws making it making it not just difficult but litterally impssible for the vast majority of them to apply for any form of legal entry and then blaming them for not filling out the paperwork. Trust me, I know them. They would be THRILLED to come here legally if it were remotely possible.
It is impossible to get a drivers license in Oklahoma if you do not have proof of citizenship or legal residency. Without advanced academic degrees and rare technical skills, you cannot get a work visa. If you are a spouse child (or sometimes sibling) of a US citizen or legal resident, you will probably have to wait years for legal residency, but at least you might have something you could apply for. But for the vast majority of people there is nothing, literally nothing, to apply for. Not even a piece of paper to fill out and hope for. Please quit blaming them for not getting legal permission while at the same time making it impossible for them to ask for such permission. It is, at the very least, dishonest to do so.
The original immigrants were not illegal because there were no immigration laws to break when the Mayflower came over and the same applies to any country before there was a government in place to pass laws. Just because someone wants to come in doesn’t give them the right to come in because the system doesn’t allow it anymore than they can come into your home and take it because they want it-squatters days are long gone. Jesus would say to uphold the law and not to covet what belongs to your neighbor.
In the first place, the only Christian thing to do is accept all persons who want to come here. If you doubt this, then ask yourself what would Jesus do? There is no doubt what Jesus would do. Jesus would not turn away anyone. The most ridiculous thing about all this is that the people who scream the loudest are the ancestors of illegal immigrants. Those immigrants didn’t come here to work as do the immigrants that you are trying to persecute. The original illegal immigrants came to take what was not theirs and attempt genocide on the people who had been here for 40,000 years.