When Joan Maruskin took the podium last April at a Family Research Council (FRC) immigration conference in Washington, D.C., it was hard not to think of Daniel in the lion's den: The liberal director of the Church World Service Immigration Program was addressing an audience convened by a major force on the Christian religious right. It was not her crowd.
It turned out that the Book of Daniel was among the few books of the Bible that Maruskin didn't quote. While making the Christian case for amnesty, she demonstrated that the Old and New Testaments are chock-full of soundbyte-ready advocacy for the "stranger." All told, she counts more than 300 scriptural admonishments to mercy toward immigrants.
"The Bible is an immigration handbook," Maruskin told the FRC audience. "'Cursed be the person who oppresses the alien.' Can we forget that Christ himself was a migrant and a refugee, born in a stable? Under our laws, Mary, Joseph and Jesus would be sent to three different prisons."
A powerful image, but Maruskin's position is far from dominant on the religious right. In a FRC member poll conducted last spring, 90% of respondents chose forced deportation as the appropriate fate for America's estimated 11 million-12 million undocumented immigrants. This response aligns the FRC base with fire-breathing hard-liners like U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the evangelical co-sponsor of an immigration reform bill notable for its criminalization of those who "aid and abet" illegal immigrants, something many religious leaders and laymen see as a Christian duty.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=724
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