Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss immigration from a Biblical and legal perspective. Rev. Deborah shares her immigrant story. Dr. Thorpe discusses her story of American roots.
Transcript
Transcript generated by automated service.
DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action. So morning and welcome to this new episode we’re doing today on immigration. And for myself, I like to start these conversations with really rooting myself in the subject and maybe a little bit more of a personal way because it allows me to share with you who I am and what has perhaps shaped how I see the world and the issues that face me, but it also gives you a chance to reflect maybe on your own lives and what has shaped you and the perspective that you hold.
DDM [01:11] So for myself, growing up in South Africa, my biological family came to South Africa because of immigration. My family immigrated probably because of economic issues in Europe. And for many people, especially those who loved farming, South Africa offered a new beginning, new economic opportunities, perhaps even lifestyle issues. The climate of South Africa is phenomenal compared to Northern Europe. But immigration linked with colonization and white supremacy in South Africa really made for a very toxic combination that led to hundreds of years of violence, slaughter, oppression that we really still haven’t recovered from. And then I came here to the USA as an immigrant 15 years ago.
DDM [02:03] I married a USA citizen and we decided to live here. basically because it was far easier to navigate being gay and married here than in the church in South Africa. So when I approach this topic, I really feel like my whole life story is a story of immigration and I wouldn’t be who I am today without those opportunities that immigration afforded. But I’m also so aware that at every point I’ve had opportunities and space made for me as a white person that does not equally apply to people of color. So Elizabeth, as we start this topic today, I’m just interested, what is your ethnic or ancestral background?
MET [02:47] So I’m going to answer this question as thoroughly as I can, and I’m also going to be a profound disappointment to you, because I do not in any way feel like I have any kind of connection to the immigrant story, and I’ll tell you why. I know my family is Scotch-Irish pretty much all the way back, but really the only reason we know that is because there are some castles with my family name over there.
MET [03:14] My family on both sides has been in America. for a really, really long time. Like we can’t, we don’t know when we got here. We just know we’ve been here for a long time. Examples, my grandmother’s grandmother was born on a covered wagon coming across the plains and they didn’t know where they were, but they wanted to name her after where she was born. So they named her Texiana. because they knew they were somewhere in the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas area. But that was a time when there weren’t solid borders. So they just kind of named her after maybe kind of an area.
MET [03:55] And then they kept coming across the plains and they eventually like eventually settled in the really the unsettled kind of American plains of that area. My grandfather’s grandfather was the wealthiest man in his area of what was then kind of Texas because he owned the only bank and slave block in that area. So and their people were in that area before then too. Like my family is very entrenched in America for a long time. So to say, where are you from? Like I don’t, I don’t have any connection.
MET [04:35] So yeah, like my family, my parents went to Scotland and Ireland to go see the castles, but we don’t, We don’t have any of those narratives of like traditions from other, we’re just, we’ve been here. And in some way, I like, that gives me a lot of sympathy for those DACA kids because They don’t know any other place than where they’ve been from. Why would you go somewhere else than where you know? That makes sense to me because I don’t know anything other than this.
MET [05:17] So I recognize I’m a profound disappointment to you. In no way is immigration a personal thing to me other than I recognize its vast importance to the narrative of the American experience. But for me personally, I don’t have any connection to it. Even like growing, I grew up in an area or the last part of my childhood was in an area that was like 60 or 70 percent Hispanic, but I grew up in such a segregated way that I didn’t, I didn’t quite make sense of the world I was living in even in that way. So it wasn’t until I was an adult that this kind of dawned on me, this is a really like pertinent thing to be thinking about.
DDM [06:06] Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that’s amazing!
MET [06:08] In some ways I’m coming at this from a very kind of… I’m not thinking of it in terms of an academic perspective only, but I’ve had to kind of understand this from an intellectual rather than personal perspective. Does that make sense?
DDM [06:23] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And for me as well, you know, there’s always that faith perspective that for me shapes, I think, also how I see it. Because whenever I look at these scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, it really is a story of human movement, you know, of God being with and guiding those who are moving for all kinds of reasons. You know, so there’s the story of Abraham and Sarah, there’s the story of Hagar, there’s the story of Moses, you know, all stories of human movements. And for me, human movement in Scripture is simply a part of what it means to be human.
DDM [07:03] It’s almost this given that it’s a right for people to move for safety, for better economic reasons, better posturing, better relational reasons. So I think from Scripture, you know, as a foundation, human movement across geographic space is a part of what it means to be human. And that should biblically never be something that is legislated against. Human beings have the right to move across geographic spaces. And you said something so fascinating, Elizabeth, when you were sharing your story, was how, you know, you casually said, you know, there wasn’t really the boundaries. You know, Texas wasn’t how it is today.
DDM [07:45] But I think that’s a reality. What we forget is those nation states and boundaries are a really new phenomenon in the fixed way that they operate in our societies now. But then I think if you look at Scripture, you realize how much intermarriage and interdependent living there actually was between peoples. You know, unless you’re wanting to end up with a system like apartheid South Africa, human cultures have always intermarried and interrelated. And in fact, for all of those of us who love to do our DNA testing, you know, our DNA tests show that. I mean, all of us are a hybrid of so many different peoples, races, cultures, and again, That’s what it means to be human. So I think our own faith narratives are narratives of migration and God working in migrant communities and those that welcome migrant communities to develop these ethics of hospitality, justice, and compassion.
MET [08:44] Now, I think it’s really interesting that we’re going to talk about this. from a faith perspective, from a personal perspective, and then also from like a political and historical perspective. Because I think it’s an issue that encompasses so many different parts of life. I do want to say immigration is a surprisingly fluid topic. For example, we know that there are people out there right now who seem to want to cut off all immigration, right? Like there is an anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s going on. And they seem to want to eliminate immigration and throw out anybody who isn’t American.
MET [09:24] And I’m putting American as in quotation marks.
DDM [09:29] Which we kind of also see happening globally. I mean, it’s interesting.
MET [09:31] Yeah, this is definitely a global phenomenon. So I’m not going to pull any punches. We know what all this means. If a person has brown skin, then there are people who want to get rid of them. But the reason I say this is a fluid topic is because I actually think back to Reagan, of all people. Ronald Reagan made huge strides in making citizenship a more accessible goal.
DDM [09:53] Interesting.
MET [09:55] This actually says something about the conservative movement at large. For years, members of the GOP, you know, they’ve held up Reagan as this, you know, kind of paragon of the movement, but now his policies kind of seem almost quaint, right? Reagan would never be accepted in the party of Trump. He would be called a RINIO at best, Republican in name only, or any number of other inappropriate names that I won’t say here. But the reason I go back to Reagan is because in the late 70s and then in the Reagan years, the early 80s, they provide a useful place to think about the immigration narrative.
MET [10:32] Because you won’t believe this based on what we’ve heard for the last decade, but really until the last four to six years or so, immigration, legal or illegal, hasn’t been a problem in about 40 years. The number of people coming here illegally, the number of people entering legally, and the number of people leaving, and the number of people naturally just dying off has actually been about even.
DDM [10:57] Yeah, I’ve heard that actually in a lot of countries, that that actually is the reality of the stats. Yeah.
MET [11:02] So what I’m saying is, until just before the time COVID hit, America was pretty much breaking even on illegal immigration. It was literally not a problem. And even then, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, immigration died down, both legal and illegal, because everyone was afraid of coming to America because we handled the pandemic so poorly. However, In the year or two after that, there was an explosion of migrants and refugees. And here is where I’m going to ask you to use your sociological imagination for just a bit. The question is, why has there been an explosion of migrants since COVID? OK, we’ve got to think for a minute. What has happened in the US since COVID? Now, from our perspective, where you and I are sitting, we think the economy has been shaken to the core, inflation has soared, and corporations have done a number on the housing market in ways that dwarfed what they were doing beforehand.
DDM [12:01] Absolutely.
MET [12:02] So one would think that would make this an unlikely destination. If we believe what we’re being told, then Biden’s attempts to heal the economy by pumping money into it killed the whole system by hiking up inflation and making eggs cost $10. But here’s where I need you to think broadly. If inflation is because of Biden’s stimulus checks, then why is there inflation in France and Venezuela and Germany? If Biden killed the economy to a point that America is a pit of squalor, then how are we affording our military and DOGE? Now, as I’ve said many times before, I get that things are hard out there right now.
MET [12:45] I absolutely do. Every time I go grocery shopping, I am well aware of how we are all feeling just how rough it is. But what I am telling you is that you have been misled about how bad it is comparatively and why.
DDM [12:58] That’s the issue, I think so, yes.
MET [13:00] We have a migrant issue in the last four years because America bounced back from COVID in ways that other countries did not. They are coming here because it is safer, healthier, and wealthier. This is the narrative that we need to be paying attention to. Because there is this story about how bad it is because the immigrants are here. And I am telling you the immigrants are here because it is not that bad.
DDM [13:23] I think you’re spot on, Elizabeth, because people have no idea how good it is here in the USA. I mean, South Africa handled COVID way better than we did here in the USA. But South Africa is struggling economically. You know, and I think myself, part of the reason that the USA has done so well economically and generally, really are reasons maybe more related to post-World War II
MET [13:50] Yeah, that’s fair.
DDM [13:51] economics and policies. I don’t think it’s necessarily that the USA is somehow better than other nations.
DDM [13:58] But what is interesting, I think, is that human beings will always move to where they perceive life to be better. Whether it actually is may be another story, but it is about perception. And I think this happened, we see equally in our own scriptures. People were moving to where land was seen to be more fertile, where they perceived that their crops would grow better, to where they perceived water was more abundant. People moved away from oppression to places where they thought they might find safety and freedom. So, these themes are not new, they really are as old as human communities are.
DDM [14:36] And so, in the Old Testament, we find more commandments around how to treat the foreigner, the stranger amongst you, the alien, whatever term you like. There’s more commandments in the Old Testament around this issue than any other issue. You know, you always think about idolatry or you think about all these other issues in the Old Testament, you know?
MET [15:02] Well, I mean, obviously gay people is the most important issue in the whole thing.
DDM [15:14] She’s being very facetious right now. No, but it was really interesting, because when I started doing a little research scripturally on the issue of immigration, I started to realize, and it was repeated numerous times by different scholars, that this was the issue that actually is most dealt with under sort of commandments or law. So really, for the Old Testament, this was a central issue for people of faith. The verses throughout the Old Testament really deal with three issues. And I think they’ve got a lot of significance for us today. The first one that they always are calling for is for us to remember that we were like them.
DDM [15:57] So there’s this constant refrain in the Old Testament, remember you too were foreigners in the land of Egypt. Remember you too were aliens. Remember. It’s this constant call to remember. And I find it interesting that we tend, I think, to oppress and discriminate against newcomers in a land when we start forgetting our own immigration histories. So in Scripture, there really is no us and them, but there’s this call for we. Scripture asks us, I think, to take a position of solidarity. in remembering what it is like to have to move to a new country, to remember what it’s like to be new and not know the ways of a new place, to remember what it’s like to not have family and friends around you, and to feel so isolated and vulnerable, and to remember how hard it is to start again.
DDM [16:50] And so, it’s almost like in Scripture in the Old Testament, remembrance is the place out of which compassion is birthed. And then secondly, Scripture thematically repeatedly tells us not to take advantage of a foreigner’s situation. Especially they actually isolate, do not take economic advantage. So there are numerous commandments such as do not mistreat the immigrants. Make sure you leave the edges of your fields unharvested so that immigrants have access to free food. Do not have one law for the immigrant and another for the citizen. If a foreigner… If a foreigner can’t support themselves, you support them until they are able.
DDM [17:34] So now, these are our scriptures, and yet we can see how we’ve built certain sectors of our USA economy specifically around the exploitation of foreign workers. So in the agricultural sector, for instance, the immigrant labor does the jobs that no one else wants to do, is paid what no American would be paid, and works in conditions no American would accept. And then thirdly, Scripture tells us that we are to treat immigrants as native-born and to love them as we love ourselves because, and it specifically says this, God loves the alien in your midst. So for a country that calls itself Christian, Although I completely disagree with the concept of a Christian nation, and that’s another story, you can see how far we actually are from scriptural commandments.
DDM [18:25] Because our policies here, but you could say globally, in no way under any administration have been shaped in the last good while by scripture. We’ve not treated immigrants and foreigners for centuries as those who are sacred and hold the Spirit of God within them.
MET [18:43] Okay. I, I’m gonna, you’re gonna have to let me finish what I’m gonna say here, and it’s like a long thing. Sure. I’ve been reading this book a friend gave me called The Law is a White Dog, which I think is a terrible title. It’s by a woman named Colin Dayan, and it’s for a manuscript I’m working on. And it actually really got me thinking about this issue the other day. Now, before I start this, I want to be very clear on something. I am not about to compare immigrants to any kind of animal. It is just what, it’s the way the book is structured.
MET [19:22] She talks about the way the law treats both people and animals, like there’s a section on how the law treats animals and how the law treats people, and it’s not a comparison, it’s just. this is how it works out.
DDM [19:37] It’s very interesting that you that you raise this issue before you’ve gone into it because in South Africa I remember there was always this cry that people in white communities treated their animals better than they treated people of color.
MET [19:49] This is why I’m being very clear that I am not comparing immigrants to any kind of animal because I think that is straight-up genocidal language. But Dayan does make some insightful comments on how the law treats both animals and people and what that says about the state. And that’s kind of what I want to get to. One of the things Dayan is concerned about is how the law makes and unmakes both people and animals. And she writes about – it’s called The Law is a White Dog. She writes about how dogs are kind of this weird thing in the law because they are not a person, obviously. And historically, they have been treated as personal property at best by the law. But owners of dogs, they’re gonna argue that a dog is much more, right? Like your pet is not just your property.
MET [20:35] And what she pointed out that made me think, however, is that what makes a dog valuable or even recognized as property at best is its legal recognition. And that comes from its license or its tags or even its pedigree. Now this is not a black and white issue, because while it is true that a license makes a dog a matter of private property in a way that an unlicensed dog is not, that doesn’t mean you don’t get punished for harming an unlicensed animal. Animal cruelty laws still apply. If you steal an unlicensed animal from someone, it is theft of some sort.
MET [21:16] But the issue is that person is not even supposed to have an unlicensed animal. That dog is illegal in the eyes of the state. An unlicensed dog, unless it is just too young to be licensed or hasn’t been bought yet, isn’t so much a pet in the eyes of the law, so much as it is a violation. And that’s a major tension I need you to see. In most places in the US, at least in areas where these laws are consistently applied, your options for a dog are licensed pet and therefore personal property, something that is not yet personal property, or a violation.
MET [21:53] The law doesn’t fuss over a stray that gets hit by a car the way it does a licensed dog. And that is because a licensed dog is owned by someone. A licensed dog can be connected to a human. A licensed dog can be connected to someone who can be fined, held accountable, or in some way acknowledged as being responsible for the dog. But the ownership is the real crux. The owner has invested in that dog. The owner put capital into it. The owner has a reason to care about that dog. It is in some way a transactional relationship in the eyes of the law, an owner and its property.
MET [22:32] The reason this struck me as so important to a discussion about immigration is because we basically treat people the same way. They are not valuable unless they are licensed. It is a person’s certification. That’s not specifically where this is going, but I was like, oh my gosh, that’s what I was thinking about. It is a person’s certification that makes them something recognizable by the state. If you take that analogy further, it’s pretty frightening. If the state values your licensing, then that implies you are licensed by somebody. And in this case, that is the state itself. In short, if a person licenses a dog because they own the dog, we have to ask if the state licenses people because they own the people. Now, before I get weirdly radical on you, let me acknowledge that there are a lot of good reasons for the state to keep an eye on how many people are there and who are the citizens.
MET [23:32] That’s the kind of thing you really need to know for tax purposes. And if you are actually taxing people in a fair and equitable way, that’s important because it will help you in doing things like planning social services. So I’m not here to tell you we need to abolish citizenship yet or anything like that. But we do need to think about how our attitudes towards citizenship play out in the immigration debate. If licensure from the state is what makes you valuable, then we’re setting up not just parameters for citizenship, but a moral quandary. Because we are assigning more than just association with a central government, we are assigning value.
MET [24:11] And we can’t ignore the capitalistic impulses of such an attitude either. When you license a pet, it is valuable because it is personal property. So what does that mean about licensing people?
DDM [24:22] Absolutely.
MET [24:22] When the state licenses us, be that with birth certificates, ID, or whatever, is the state doing so because we are valuable as persons or as capital? If licensure is because of ownership, then we have to think of ourselves as capital.
DDM [24:36] Are we the property of the state?
MET [24:38] And if licensure is because we are people, then there is no reason not to give citizenship to anyone who wants it, unless there is something about them that keeps them from being people. So I guess you have to ask which you are more uncomfortable with. I know, I just laid a whole bunch on you.
DDM [24:55] No, but that’s absolutely amazing. It’s amazing. And if I can add, Elizabeth, I think it’s fascinating, that argument, because according to our faith, we are not legal or justified because of being licensed by a government. We’re justified through faith in Jesus Christ. We are never, as people of faith, to be owned by a government or any authoritarian body, because Scripture constantly reminds us we belong to God, to God alone. And so, that theological piece, I think, is really crucial in a debate like this, because our legitimacy as human beings is not because you give me a piece of legal paper or not.
DDM [25:36] My legitimacy is because I’m a beloved child of God. created by God, holding God’s Spirit, and so in some ways I am because I belong to God. And I wonder to what extent we have sold our belonging to the state or to a government. You know, to what extent have we allowed governments to tell us who we are and where we belong, instead of remembering again that we belong only to God and we are not for sale. Because if we sell our belonging to a nation or a government, In effect, we’ve become slaves, owned by that national government.
DDM [26:13] And Scripture says, for freedom you’ve been brought by the cross, by Jesus. So, for a country that speaks so much of freedom, you begin to realize how much power we’ve actually given to the state and to the government.
MET [26:28] So one fun little bit of American history that many people do not know about is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Chester Arthur signed that act in May in the last part of the 19th century to keep out all Chinese labor immigrants for 10 years. This was followed a few decades later by the Immigration Act of 1924, or the Johnson-Reed Act, which included the Asian Exclusion Act, which prevented immigration from Asia and limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also established the U.S. Border Patrol. So if anyone ever tries to tell you that the Border Patrol is not inherently racist, please take this little nugget with you.
MET [27:20] The Border Patrol exists less to patrol the border and more to keep specific kinds of people out. I could go through any number of other historical examples, but these are the most blatant. Until we get to Trump’s first administration and Executive Order 13769, or the Muslim Ban, as it came to be known, EO 13769 was designed to keep people from majority Muslim countries out. Like the immigration acts that came before it. It was designed to target specific groups of people. Now, we absolutely cannot understand who we are as a nation without understanding who we are trying to keep out.
MET [27:59] And who we are trying to keep out has historically been people of color, but not black people. More on that in a second. Jewish people and those who practice religions that are not Christian and Protestant in nature. One would think that would mean America is a white Christian nation, but you only need to listen to our Christian nationalist episode to know that is not the case. So let’s go back to the question of capital. We let black people into America, but consider the situation. Black people weren’t immigrants to America. They were basically imports. If we’re going to talk about people as capital, you absolutely cannot look away from the brutal and immoral practice of slavery.
MET [28:45] Interestingly, There was an effort at one point to keep more slaves from coming to America from the slave trades of Africa, but only when we had so many slaves in this country that we could maintain the slave trade for generations without enslaving even more from foreign countries and just furthering the burden and ripping apart families in America. There is an effort to rewrite this history as we speak. Conservatives are pressuring textbook manufacturers to refer to slaves as workers or immigrants as opposed to slaves or captives to ignore the brutality and the immorality and the cravingly capitalist nature of it all.
MET [29:28] The Chinese exclusion bills are similarly monetary. They were designed to keep jobs open for American white workers, and the Muslim ban was supposedly a safety issue. However, given that in this Trump administration, he is selling that same citizenship for $5 million, regardless of where you are from, it is increasingly clear that citizenship has more and more to do with capital. Let me repeat that. Trump’s gold card, a multi-million dollar opportunity to just buy a visa, is the complete transformation of citizenship into a capitalistic transactional exchange.
DDM [30:09] And you know, it’s interesting you raise that, Elizabeth, because actually I listen to a lot of different podcasts and YouTube videos, and there’s one called the Nomad Capitalist. And it really is, it’s about highlighting which countries in the world you can literally buy citizenship if you have the money. You can buy multiple citizenships in multiple countries. As you say, it’s a commodity now to be purchased.
MET [30:32] Yeah, citizens are literally a means to provide profit for the state. And you should 100% be paying attention to this right now because it is all part of one big shebang. The administration is getting rid of certain kinds of people because they are the wrong color or religion and that makes them unprofitable. The administration is also cutting program after program because they do not turn a profit. This is often done in the name of cutting waste. So consider what might be coming. What else might be considered waste? Who else is not profitable? This is all nonsense, of course.
MET [31:07] A government is not supposed to turn a profit. A government provides a good or public service. An understanding of people as capital and the government as a business is a pretty big perversion of what this all started out as, and that makes a difference in how we treat people.
DDM [31:24] Hugely. And I mean, these are such important issues you’re raising that I think we’ve got to take seriously, because nobody wants to be reduced to an economic commodity. And the issue of disposable people is a hugely ethical issue, especially for people of faith who believe no one is disposable because all are created in the image of God. But in closing this episode, I really encourage you who are listening to think back to our Scriptures and where God is always to be found. You know, in the very beginning, in Genesis, God comes to Abraham as three strangers needing hospitality.
DDM [32:00] Abraham welcomes them, washes their feet, gives them food, and offers them rest in his tents. In the burning bush, God comes as the unnamed one, very specifically unnamed. I am who I am. God who is refusing to be boxed by any one name or category. We see in the Gospels in Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family becoming political refugees in Egypt. to escape violence and genocide. And again, God is in the face of Jesus, a refugee child. In Luke, we’re reminded that God had no place to lay his head. And in the final book of Revelations, there’s that iconic image where God stands at the door knocking and says, will you open and welcome me in?
DDM [32:48] And so Matthew reminds us that whenever we give food to the hungry, the thirsty, water, whenever we invite strangers in, we do this to God. And when we don’t, we have turned God away. And so are we as individuals, communities, and nations, are we those who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome in the strangers? Or are we those who, by turning them away, find that we have turned away God? And this issue is really right at the heart of our faith. So I hope you found this episode helpful in some ways, and we’d love to hear your feedback and comments.
MET [33:34] Thank you for listening to the Priest & the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [34:03] Music by Audionautix.com
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