For the past few years, Sojourners has been intimately involved in efforts to reform America’s broken immigration system. We took up this issue because we believe that our Christian faith compels us to struggle for a more humane immigration system as a moral imperative.
The Scriptures are very clear on this issue, as Matthew Soerens of the Evangelical Immigration Table has already outlined in this Think Christian series. This text from Matthew 25 was instrumental in converting me to my Christian faith and has converted millions of Christians to support immigration reform:
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Beyond the clear Biblical imperative to welcome the stranger, at Sojourners we have felt called to struggle for comprehensive immigration reform because of the very real human costs that our broken system exacts on the “strangers” among us.