Spotlight on Solutions: Re-imagining the immigration landscape
Immigration in the United States has always been a complex reality, and yet, recent incidents and changes – including plain clothed ICE agents grabbing a PhD student with a valid visa off the street; ICE detaining even green card holders; protections being stripped from schools, healthcare facilities, and places of worship; and the administration seemingly defying a court order to stop deportations of Venezuelans without due process – have made the last several weeks particularly fraught and tumultuous. In a crisis moment like this, swift action is necessary to protect individuals and safeguard fundamental rights and the rule of law. At the same time, even in the midst of chaos, we must stay engaged in long-term thinking and strategic innovation for sustainable change. Moments of upheaval create an opportunity for bold, creative solutions to reshape our future.
Faith-based organizations today are deeply embedded in the immigration infrastructure in the U.S. and elsewhere, providing essential supports for refugees and other migrants who arrive in search of a better life, as they have throughout history. Many of those organizations now face severe funding cuts and an aggressive undermining of their work, forcing some of the leading players like the Catholic Church to shut down their programs. Innovation is essential if faith communities are to continue living out the values that pushed them to this work in the first place. How do we uphold human dignity and love our neighbor not just in our individual and organizational actions but by nurturing culture and systems that do so sustainably into the future?
Below are some innovative organizations that have something to offer as we consider that question.
Welcoming the Stranger, Loving our Neighbor At Scale
In this moment, faith communities can play a unique and powerful role in reasserting the moral and ethical imperative to welcome the stranger, not as a political statement, but as a spiritual one. In the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, Trump voters identified immigration as one of the most important political issues impacting their vote, second only to the economy. Trump and his allies repeatedly drummed up fears of an invasion at the border and immigrant crime, not to mention random menacing acts by immigrants, such as eating people’s pets. All of these are myths created to serve political ends and have been debunked, but the misinformation still drove fear and concern for enough people leading up to the election that we are now living in one of the harshest immigration eras in our history.
If we stop to consider the facts – the vast majority of people arriving at our borders go through the legal system; immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S.; even undocumented immigrants pay taxes; our economy is significantly bolstered by immigrant labor and talents – perhaps we can set aside fear and remember how to welcome the stranger, how to love our neighbor. We can reframe the conversation as one based in values and our shared humanity. We need to do so at scale, in every community across our country if we are to change the narrative that has led us to this moment. We need more than charity for vulnerable populations. We need to shift perspectives and create a path to thriving both for those who migrate here and for the communities where they land.
The organizations below are helping do so in innovative and important ways. Learn more about their work, and start a conversation in your community. What stories from your religious or spiritual tradition can you amplify to shift perspectives? How can you collaborate with secular organizations while maintaining a faith-centered mission? And how can you use language that roots your approach in faith and values rather than politics?
Welcoming America supports communities in becoming more inclusive toward immigrants and refugees. They lean into the widely shared value of welcome, strategically working with both local organizations and local governments to build a roadmap to inclusive and thriving communities for all. Through Welcoming America’s innovative certification program, 26 U.S. cities have met the standards for programs and policies that reflect a commitment to immigrant inclusion, earning them the designation as Certified Welcoming, which can be a competitive advantage for those cities.
FaithAction International partners with faith communities and diverse organizations to offer services and advocacy for immigrants in North Carolina and beyond. Their Stranger to Neighbor Initiative builds transformational relationships between theologically and culturally diverse faith communities through four steps: education, exchange, faith in action, and story telling.
Upwardly Global dismantles employment barriers for work-authorized immigrant, refugee, and asylee professionals while advancing the inclusion of their skills into the U.S. economy. Their work bridges the gap between underutilized talent and the American workforce, helping make immigration a win-win for all of us
Emma’s Torch empowers refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking through culinary training, job placement, and language support. Based in Brooklyn and Washington D.C., they use the power of food and hospitality to provide meaningful workforce development.
HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), is the oldest refugee agency, started over a hundred years ago. Originally created to support Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe, HIAS has consistently innovated to meet the moment, evolving over time from basic support to Jewish refugees in New York to now working to protect the rights and safety of all displaced people globally and offering a range of supports geared at enabling refugees to thrive in their new homes.
Rural Immigration Network connects and supports leaders and organizations working on immigration in rural communities where such work can be lonely and isolated. They offer peer learning, amplify rural voices, and promote inclusive approaches to migration in non-urban contexts.
Building a Humane System that Benefits All
People of faith who believe that no one is any more or less sacred based on the national borders within which they were born, can live out that belief by helping political systems find new ways to adapt to migration trends and create a humane and effective immigration system. Some migrants leave their home countries voluntarily in search of better opportunities or to join family members. Others are forced to leave by political, economic, or climate circumstances. Many leave to escape inhumanity of various sorts (poverty, violence, political repression), and the most vulnerable often risk even greater inhumanity in their migration journey (exploitation, rape, hunger, human trafficking).
Migration is a constant in human history and also a growing phenomenon in recent times. People are on the move, and it’s putting significant stress on our existing systems. Forced migration can have devastating physical, financial, social, and emotional consequences for people, and the reasons for it require their own attention and solutions. No one should be forced to leave their home. But what if we stop treating the general phenomenon of migration as a problem and instead create systems designed to embrace rather than resist it? What if we use it to build stronger, more resilient societies and economies where migrants, whether they’ve voluntarily or involuntarily left their homes, can find new opportunity?
Whether or not the U.S. can ultimately offer any given migrant a home here, a system based on shared values from across our religious, spiritual, and ethical traditions would recognize and respect the humanity of all. Providing a humane system is not mutually exclusive to protecting the security of our nation and its citizens.
The below organizations are working to build such a system. Learn more about their work, and explore how you can contribute. How can your community support just, effective, even bountiful migration and immigration policies? What interfaith or community partnerships could strengthen your efforts and expand our impact?
Immigration Forum’s Bibles, Badges, and Business initiative brings together faith leaders, law enforcement, and business voices to advocate for immigration solutions. The initiative emphasizes shared values and practical reform that supports both security and opportunity.
Evangelical Immigration Table is a broad coalition of Christian organizations and leaders advocating for systemic change and just immigration policies that reflect biblical values.
Interfaith Immigration Coalition is a partnership of faith-based organizations that work together to support just and humane immigration policies. Rooted in diverse spiritual traditions, they engage in education, advocacy, and public witness to uphold the dignity of all migrants.
In times of crisis, we naturally go into reactive mode to address the urgent issues coming at us. Yet, as faith-inspired leaders, we are called to do more than simply withstand the storm; we are called to reimagine what is possible. The fact that our country has selected leaders who use lies to demonize fellow human beings and deny them due process suggests that we have failed to nurture deep enough roots in our society for some of our most basic values. Crisis can be a time to rethink and rebuild, a time for innovation to flourish as we realize we can’t simply go back to what we were doing before.
Now is the time to act. Collectively, we need to believe that we can achieve welcome for the stranger at scale and that we can build a humane system that works for all, and keep innovating toward that vision. Whether it’s forging new collaborations, amplifying stories that shift narratives, creating connections based in humanity rather than politics, building new coalitions to fix the system, every person and community of faith can help lead change. How will you step forward? Join the conversation by engaging your community with some of the questions and initiatives above, explore new strategies, and commit to a vision of a future where we honor the dignity of all people.
Let us know what new initiatives you and your community are developing in response to this moment at info@innofaith.org.
For a helpful primer on the current immigration landscape, check out this recent podcast episode from CCDA.
Photo by Road Ahead on Unsplash