6 min. read
With the current immigration policy debate in US America, there is a particular video lecture circulating social media that involves gumballs. What’s disheartening to me, is that I see it posted mostly by friends and acquaintances who are privileged, white American citizens. Just like me. Further, usually the video is posted with no commentary, or a short remark about how it justifies their beliefs that immigration is a bad thing for the USA.
Allow me to speak to this whole notion.
You can view the video in full here. It is actually an updated and condensed version of a longer lecture that Roy Beck has given for decades.
The Immigrant and the Gumball
He uses the illustration of 1 gumball representing 1 million people who live at or below the World Health Organization’s estimate of the poverty line. That line is about $2 a day (in American currency). In his lecture, Mr. Beck has stacks and stacks of containers holding gumballs which represent the 5 billion of the world’s poorest persons. He has a small snifter glass in which he occasionally drops 1 gumball, illustrating the annual number of 1 million immigrants who are allowed into the United States.
The basic logical argument is that 1 million sounds like a lot, unless compared to 5 billion. 1 million doesn’t make much difference to 5 billion.
Mr. Beck also touches on some finer details of his argument. In the end, he states that the best way we privileged Americans can help the impoverished is not through immigration but by helping them improve their plight in the countries of their birth. In some ways he is right on this point; and to this point I will return.
Mr. Beck is also correct in the statistics he uses for his argument and for the general line of logic he uses.
But here is where, as a Jesus-follower, I must question such logic.
The logic of the lecture — and I can only assume it is also the logic of those who see the video as a firm argument against allowing immigrants into the United States — assumes a particular goal. The supposed goal is to end world poverty. So the argument logically goes like this:
- We want to end world poverty;
- Accepting 1 million impoverished immigrants into the US each year makes no appreciable difference for the 5 billion individuals who suffer from hunger;
- Further, usually the US accepts the majority of its immigrants from countries like Mexico who’s median daily income is somewhat above the $2 a day threshold of poverty;
- Thus, we are actually taking in far less than 1 million of the 5 billion impoverished;
- Because of these facts we are straining our own natural and governmental resources for the sake of an immigration program that is in actuality not alleviating world poverty;
- If we really want to help, we must aid impoverished individuals where they are, not bring them to us so that they create a greater burden on our natural and institutional resources, which are already threatened.
The logic is air tight, if in fact you begin with the goal of eradicating world poverty.
Yet, the illogical path of following Jesus does not mesh well with this logic.
Problem No. 1
The first major problem I have with this logical line of thinking, is that it assumes all good US citizens share the same goal. But as a follower of Jesus, ending world poverty is not my goal. For any of us who follow Jesus, whether we self-identify as “Christian” or not, our goal is a simple, two-fold, ongoing process: to love God with all we are, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
But as a follower of Jesus, ending world poverty is not my goal.
And here is the rub: I cannot possibly love God unless I’m loving my neighbor as myself.
Who is my neighbor? Whoever is in closest proximity at any given moment. Jesus answered that same question somewhat differently. He didn’t describe who a neighbor was, he just illustrated how to love like a neighbor. It’s a love that extends without condition to the lowest of the low.
Therefore, though it is true that 1 million immigrants coming into my country makes no appreciable difference in the plight of world poverty, there may just be one or two immigrants who end up moving to my city. Maybe they end up living in my neighborhood. More likely, they end up bouncing around various social service agencies in my area. And if I actually take the time to sacrifice what I want to do for myself by volunteering or spending time in and with those agencies, I might just occasionally share space and time with those one or two immigrants.
Now if I love them in a neighborly way, we might become friends. And the results of this would make a huge difference in the lives of those one or two immigrants.
Would loving the strangers and calling them friends add to any worldwide statistical charts or relief funding? No. But it could mean the world to my new friends.
Problem No. 2
The second problem I see, especially when it comes to white, privileged Westerners using Mr. Beck’s logic and argument as a way to refute allowing immigrants into this country, is that they seem to miss the final point of his argument. He insists that we must alleviate poverty by aiding the impoverished in their own countries; or in his words “help them bloom where they are planted.”
If this is the case, then how many white, privileged Americans who post this video in social media circles are booking their passage and planning details for a trip to volunteer with a hunger relief agency in an impoverished African country?
I’d wager, not many. Maybe none.
And which requires the greater sacrifice: journeying to an impoverished country to volunteer in relief and rebuilding efforts, or seeking out one of the few immigrants allowed into our country who may be living in your city?
It could be argued either way. Travelling abroad would be a great financial expense. In fact, I can’t afford it. However, befriending a local immigrant may cost me some time, some pride, some “Christian” friendships. We must weigh the cost, as someone has said.
You see, our neighbors are already here.
Yes there may only be 1 million or so that come in each year. But they are already near us. We simply have to do the work of finding them. They can be identified by labels such as: immigrant, refugee, homeless, indigent, homeless veteran, and foreigner, among others.
The God We Don’t Know
I think much of the political rancor and grandstanding and indignant arguing that Christian Westerners display stems from the reality that we don’t really know the God that Jesus called “Father.”
And maybe we don’t really now Jesus either. Jesus can be known when we establish friendships with the immigrant, refugee, homeless, indigent, homeless veteran, and foreigner.
We think it costs too much, or it’s too inconvenient, or we’d have to sacrifice too much, or there are religious and social organizations that can help, or the government has programs for them.
But, I suspect, so many of us have no interest in doing so. We think it costs too much, or it’s too inconvenient, or we’d have to sacrifice too much, or there are religious and social organizations that can help, or the government has programs for them. We have so many excuses and justifications and arguments.
But while we rationalize and justify, or while we support our perspective with the logic of others that isn’t even addressing the goal of loving a neighbor, we are missing out on loving God and others.
We don’t really know this God. If we did, we’d cease the social media mic drops, get off our asses, and be a friend to the stranger.
If we really knew this God, we’d cease the social media mic drops, get off our asses, and be a friend to the stranger. Click To TweetHow does friendship have anything to do with alleviating poverty?
Becoming friends with a stranger — whether immigrant, refugee, homeless, indigent, homeless veteran, or foreigner — addresses both food poverty and poverty of relationship. Authentic friendship means we help each other: when one is hungry, the other feeds them. Friendship means we don’t see labels when we look at each other: no longer strangers, we are now friends. Friends share their knowledge, resources, and abilities: this allows for mutual edification and growth. A friend lays down his life for the other: there is no greater love than this.
Yes, it will cost something; I know.
My family and I have been graced to find Jesus in homeless friends around a shared table each Wednesday night. Too many have been the times I’d rather work on writing my books, or network for my podcast, or blog, or watch a movie, or go shopping with our kids, or have a romantic dinner with my wife, or sit in solitude than share food with impoverished, smelly, destitute outcasts.
To develop friendships with outcasts costs my way and my desires. To serve is to sacrifice.
Yes we may serve them, but we aren’t really there to serve. We are there to develop friendships with people who subsist on less than $2 a day.
What a joy it is to be in the downtown public library on a random Monday afternoon, see one of these friends, and sit down with them for conversation. All the other “respectable” people in the library steer clear of them. But my kids call them “our friend.”
When that happens, I know God.