If you read my first post on Welcoming the Stranger, you know that I once was the stranger who was welcomed. I would like to share with you now a few stories of other Strangers who were welcomed.
Years ago, I met a young woman named Lilith. Lilith was the oldest of four siblings. She and her three younger brothers lived with their mother in a small village in a war-torn African country. Their father died fighting in the war when she was 10. About the time she was 12 and her brothers 10, 7, and 4, the rival forces came to her village. She and her brothers were out in the fields when the armed forces showed up. They heard gunfire and screaming and saw smoke. They ran for their lives, as did the other children out working that day. The women and elders left back home were all slaughtered.
Lilith and her brothers walked for days in their bare feet, with no food or clean water or change of clothes, looking for a place of refuge. A place of safety. They made it across the border to a neighboring country, where they were found by Red Cross workers who took them to a refugee camp. The lived there for four years, virtually on their own.
The UNHCR – the United Nations High Commission for Refugees – finally got all the paperwork in order to declare Lilith and her brothers Unaccompanied Refugee Minors. They were able to qualify for a little known program here in the US that resettles refugee minors who have no parent or guardian to care for them with US foster families. That’s when I met them. Lilith was 16 then, her brothers 14, 11 and 8. When they first arrived to the US, they were sooo skinny and malnourished. They had very little previous education. Almost no English.
They were placed in a foster family that was willing to take all four of them together. They slowly began gaining weight, learning in school, and even getting previously untreated medical issues taken care of.
Lilith became a track star at her high school. She got her diploma at age 20 and went on to nursing school. She found a job out of school and helped her brothers finish their schooling. Two of them also went on to college. The change in these four children from their time of arrival to the last time I saw them was remarkable. They were like different kids.
In case you don't know, a refugee, by the official definition, is someone who has fled their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. There are over 27 million refugees in the world today, and only 1% of them will ever qualify for resettlement. It is a very difficult process to go through. It has to first be determined that there is no other viable option for them – they can’t return home and can’t stay where they are.
At my church in North Carolina, I helped create and establish a Refugee Welcome Team. We welcomed newly arrived refugees and helped them get settled here in the US. One family we worked with was a very traditional Muslim family from Syria: a husband and wife and three children. After a couple of months, the husband asked if he could come to our church to thank us. If you know anything about Islam, you know that’s a big deal in and of itself. Muslims do not go to Christian churches. We honored his request by hosting a reception for them at the church and invited all the volunteers to come. This gentleman stood up in front of us and, through a translator, said, “We left everything behind in Syria. We left all our family. But now, YOU are our family.” We were all in tears.
Had that required much of us? No. Just obedience. Compassion. Kindness. Welcoming the Stranger.
Here's another story. Rogelio and his 14-year-old son were from one of the Northern Triangle countries in Central America. These small countries have some of the highest homicide rates in the world. He worked as a baggage attendant and made about $6 a day. Every day the local gangs came by and demanded their payment. Rogelio was told that if he didn’t pay, they would kill him, and he believed them because he knew many others who had been killed or had their families killed for nonpayment.
The amount they demanded increased regularly. He had less and less to give to his family, for his son’s school, for food for his other two little ones. It got to the point when he couldn’t afford to go to work anymore. Let me say that again. He couldn’t afford to go to work. Not knowing what else to do, he fled with his oldest son. They crossed into Mexico and rode on top of “La Bestia” – a Mexican freight train - to get to the US border. It was a 30-hour trip in the heat of the sun and with no water or food. Rogelio hurt his leg jumping off the train and still walks with a slight limp.
Since this happened in 2019, it was prior to COVID, and there was metering at the border. They had taken a number and waited in unsafe conditions in Mexico for over a month before being allowed to present to an asylum officer. Before meeting with an asylum officer, they were put in detention. Shackles were fit on Rogelio’s feet, and he was put in a cold cell. Thankfully, he and his son were able to stay together. Their shoelaces, belts, and meager belongings were taken away from them. They were given a small burrito – like a freezer section burrito – to eat three times a day, plus crackers and water. Nothing else. They had no access to showers, or a change of clothes, not even a toothbrush. They had a thin, smelly cot to sleep on with an aluminum blanket to cover up with. Keep in mind that even though they were being treated like criminals – they had at this point done nothing wrong. They hadn't broken a single law. They were following the process as they had been told and yet they were still put in shackles and jail cells.
After four days, they finally had their meeting with an asylum officer. It was determined they might have a case for asylum. They were told that they could be released pending the outcome of their case – which could take 2-3 years. That’s when they came to us.
I worked at a shelter for recently-released asylum-seekers. Asylum-seekers are a type of refugees and fall under the same definition: someone who left their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, but whose request has not yet been processed or decided. In other words, refugees have their legal status established before arriving to our country, but asylum-seekers apply for status after arriving in our country or at the border.
Rogelio and his son came to us with nothing. They didn’t even get their shoelaces back. They were dehydrated, undernourished, tired, scared. The shelter was at a church. They were welcomed in under a large cross. We provided them with a warm meal, a warm shower, clean clothes, new shoes, and a place to rest. We helped them contact family and assisted in sending them across the country so they could live with their family while awaiting the outcome of their case. Rogelio told us of how eager he was to work and send money back home to his wife and two younger children, and his hopes of one day being able to bring them here as well, so that they would finally be safe.
I have so many stories from my time at the shelter. The pregnant women who were released, while their husbands were kept in detention - sometimes kept so long they missed the birth of their children. The woman whose husband died shortly after they were found in the desert - and I had to be the one to tell her he was gone. The woman who was thrown back in a Border Patrol holding cell 48-hours after an emergency cesarean, forced to sleep on the floor with her newborn. The four-foot-tall mother who carried her seven-year-old, nearly as tall as she was, on her back all the way up through Mexico in hopes of getting him help for his debilitating cerebral palsy. The man whose uncle had just been killed back home, and he was not able to go back and support his family without jeopardizing his asylum case (if you leave the country before the case is decided, the case is often thrown out).
Then there was the family who came with five children – all girls! We asked the father of the family, what are your hopes and dreams for the future? He replied, “Salvar mi familia.” To save my family.
To save my family. That hit me hard. What would any of us do, in order to save our families?
Asylum-seekers, the ones just trying to survive, these are the ones coming in bulk to the border. These are the ones who are filling detention centers around the country and being treated like criminals – even though they are running from criminals. They are looking to save their families. They are looking for compassion.
Here’s my last story: in a previous post, I mentioned a woman I met who was from Mexico but had lived in the US for many years. She told me about the horrific physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father from the time she was four until she ran away at fourteen. She told me about the long journey up to the border, and about getting smuggled across. She was constantly afraid of being deported and sent back to Mexico, where she was certain her father - who was in the government - would find her and kill her. She was unlikely to qualify for asylum because the violence she experienced was intra-familial, not systemic. As an undocumented person, she had no options.
There have been a few attempts to create a path for citizenship for undocumented people who either entered the country as minors or have lived in the US for over ten years. She could qualify, if that were to happen. But those efforts have been blocked by conservatives every single time they come up.
There are an estimated 10.5 million undocumented people in our country – that’s about 3-4% of the overall population of the US. Some may be surprised to know that the majority (an estimated 65%) of undocumented are not people who crossed (or "sneaked across") a border without papers. The majority of undocumented people in our country are immigrants who came on a temporary legal visa - as a student, worker, visitor, or family member - and then stayed after their visa expired. While Mexicans account for close to half of undocumented immigrants, another 35% are not from Mexico or Central America, but from other parts of the world, including: India, China, Vietnam, Canada, and the UK, to name a few. Nearly 80% of all undocumented have lived here for at least five years; 22% have lived here for over twenty years. They count the US as their home.
Studies continually show that undocumented immigrants are considerably less likely to commit crimes and actually contribute more than 11 billion dollars a year to our economy. Mostly they are hard-working, well-intending people, who came looking for a better life.
I suppose you’ve noticed I prefer to call them “undocumented immigrants” as opposed to “illegals.” Why? Soerens says it best, “We also prefer not to use the term illegal as a noun, as in ‘an illegal.’ ... while entry without inspection (or overstaying a temporary visa) is an illegal activity, this does not define the person’s identity. Many of us have broken a law at one time or another (we can both confess to having sped down the highway on more than one occasion), but if a single (or even, in the case of our speeding, repeated) act were to define our identity, we would probably all be ‘illegals.’ Such terminology, in common usage, lumps immigrants – whose entering or overstaying unlawfully usually does not require any malicious intent – with criminals like murderers, rapists and kidnappers. It is too easy to dehumanize such immigrants when we lump them with such unsavory characters.”
I said in Part 1 that I have spent the much of the past 20+ years – pretty much my whole adult life – working with “Strangers”. I have found that when you get to know them, they are more than strangers. They are neighbors, friends, family. They are living, breathing human beings with souls and an eternal destiny. It is our duty, our responsibility, our calling as a Church, capital C, as Christians, to love them, to welcome them, to come alongside and befriend them.
After all, God welcomed us. Ephesians 2 says, “At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ… Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God”.
God welcomed us. He brought us into His family. How can we who bear His name not do the same?
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