From the President’s Desk
September 2007

‘Be Not Afraid!’
By Ralston Deffenbaugh, LIRS President

This is the greeting I delivered August 9 to the national Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which met in Chicago.

Sisters and brothers in Christ! It’s my joy and privilege to bring you greetings from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, our church’s national cooperative Lutheran agency carrying out the mission of welcoming the stranger.

I wish I could bring an upbeat report to you but these have been very tough times. We live in a time of fear—fear of the stranger.

When it comes to refugees, U.S. resettlement is still far below the levels we had before September 11th. In the quarter century from 1975 to 2000, the U.S. averaged about 90,000 refugees resettled each year. After 9/11, the numbers plummeted. This year we will be lucky to reach 50,000 refugees resettled.

The fastest growing group of refugees in the world today is from Iraq. There are 2 million Iraqi refugees outside their country, and another 2 million who have had to flee their homes but are still within Iraq. Yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq our country has admitted fewer than 500 refugees out of the 2 million who have fled.

When it comes to immigrants, we’re also fearful.  Our Congress this spring has failed to adopt comprehensive immigration reform and is unlikely they’ll do so for another two years. And yet our immigration system remains very badly broken.

Why is it that people come to America? I would suggest that it’s for one or a combination of three reasons—for family, for work or for freedom. In each of these three ways our immigration system is broken. Let me give examples:

• For family—Even U.S. citizens have to wait five, 10 or even 15 years to be reunited with parents or siblings.
• When it comes to work, our growing economy requires about 500,000 additional foreign-born workers each year in lower-skilled jobs, yet the number of visas that our law now allows for lower-skilled workers each year is 5,000, not 500,000.
• For freedom—Refugees are languishing in camps overseas, their lives on hold, as we keep the doors of our country only narrowly open. And for those who make their way to the United States and lay claim to political asylum, we lock them up in immigration detention while their claims are being adjudicated.

Our nation is paralyzed by fear: Fear of the 12 million undocumented strangers already among us. Fear of the refugee strangers—even those from Iraq who risked their lives on behalf of the American forces there.

What does all this mean for us in the churches? We are already seeing an increased level of anxiety and fear within our congregations and communities as the undocumented among us feel all the more insecure and vulnerable. More and more will be apprehended and deported, leaving families agonizingly divided. The demand for legal advice and services will rise, especially for those awaiting deportation in immigration detention facilities. We at LIRS will do our best to provide educational information to pastors and congregations about the current law and about what few areas of legal relief there might be. Pastors and congregations should be prepared to try to respond to those in fear by providing pastoral care for those who are being deported, for the families being left behind, and for communities being torn apart as a consequence of increased enforcement.

We Lutherans have been pro-immigrant—it’s part of who we are as an immigrant church in a nation of immigrants. We will continue to welcome the stranger, and we will urge our nation to do so as well.

In this time of fear, I remind you of the words of Jesus. Jesus said, “Be not afraid!”

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