12 Missionary Reflections on Refugee Resettlement and Immigration

Most mornings I skim the news of Rwanda, Uganda, and the United States. Heaven is my home. Yet, these three nations have given me hospitality on my missionary journey. I also most mornings read my Bible. In these disciplines I try to make sense of life and respond appropriately. An issue in the newspapers in all three nations is immigration and refugees. I acknowledge the economies and histories of these nations are different. I acknowledge the neighborhoods around each nation are different. I acknowledge the pertinent legalese of each nation’s immigration policies are different. Yet, I do believe each one has a pertinent voice to the Global Church. I also believe each nation’s refugee experience speaks to great truths of our shared humanity. I’d like to offer 12 missionary reflections on refugees from this journey.

Rwanda has a population of 11.8 million. She has over 150,000 refugees in her midst. Most come from neighboring nations. Recently, Rwanda begin accepting 500 refugees from abroad who were stranded in Libya. Uganda has a population of 44.3 million. Uganda hosts 1.3 million refugees. The United States has a population of 327.2 million. Since the USA doesn’t have refugee camps and processes refugees to become citizens it’s difficult to get a count of how many in the USA have a recent refugee experience. At one point the USA was the leading nation in the world to receive refugees from camps and process them into citizenship. At some points that has been more than 200,000 people in a year. Recently, that number has been cut to 18,000. The USA has lost global leadership. The infrastructure of resettlement is being dismantled. Even if the policy changes it will take several years to rebuild infrastructure. With all these nations here are some common themes of humanity I see:

1. Empathy is a learned behavior. For instance, if refugee living is part of a significant portion of a

nation’s population’s history, they will intuitively create hospitality for others. To make it personal my wife, Jana was born in Cameroon after her family was evacuated from Nigeria due to the Biafra War. I intuitively feel a level of shared suffering with Nigeria. I intuitively feel appreciation for hospitality when I meet a Cameroonian. I intuitively wonder each time I meet a refugee how similar they are to my wife. I intuitively want to help refugee situations. I notice shared communal empathy among many Ugandans and Rwandans and Americans who are one to two generations removed from refugee living.

2. Privilege because one’s ethnicity, race, nationality and religion is real. Refugee settlement simply by the numbers is fundamentally unjust. Jana’s family had a much better outcome than the ordinary Nigerians who fled their nation due to the Biafra War. Being a white, American missionary created a multiple of better options in chaos. For many that awareness of privilege creates a later sense of responsibility.

3. Proximity to a neighboring nation’s chaos creates unavoidable situations. Distance creates choice. Economic resources aren’t divided by nations based upon the nation’s virtue. Sometimes you just must deal with the problem. If you make the same choice over and over it becomes part of a corporate national character. Uganda is an example of this. She couldn’t avoid the chaos of neighboring nations and just had to deal with millions of refugees pouring over her borders. In that process a national value of hospitality developed as well as the practical infrastructure to deal with refugees.

4. Refugees always create a stirring of national debate. Every refugee surge brings public scrutiny. Who are these people? Why are the here? Will they make us unsafe? Do we have the resources to care for them? Can’t another take responsibility? Is there a way to turn them back? I remember these questions in contemporary news every time there was a refugee surge. Yet, I can’t ever remember in a history book those who treated refugees out of fear being affirmed. History’s consensus affirms nations who are hospitable to refugees. History’s consensus also looks with regret and disdain to those who turn away refugees.

5. If a nation has a recent memory of day by day living in poverty and most people attend a

local church, they are more willing to take risks of hospitality for refugees. The memory of surviving when the odds of survival were minimal create a national sense like Jesus feeding the 5,000. It’s not so scary to just keep your door open and table available if you too have been fed in the past when you should have gone hungry. As a nation grows in her distance from day by day faith in providence, she loses her sense of responsible hospitality. 

6. Yes, refugees are initially economic takers from systems. Yet, that doesn’t last long even in the poorest of nations. All nations have jobs that almost no one born as a citizen in that nation wants to do. Refugees are the ones who take the most difficult jobs. Without their presence at the low end of employment many industries would stagnate. Look at the those washing dishes, sweeping floors, picking fruit in fields, and cleaning up after livestock to see these refugees as economic contributors.

7. Refugees also many times increase the security and decrease the crime rate in their host nation. They give access to detailed information about the situation they fled so that security operations in the host nation can be better prepared. They also typically move in family units. As a family unit the most basic instincts are to avoid trouble, follow the law, get an education, go to church, stay married, and work. Refugees rarely have unoccupied time to stir up problems in their host nation.

8. For those whose loyalty is to the Kingdom of God more so than their national identity a multiple of benefits happen over time even if they stay as refugees for generations in their host nation. Their sense of dual citizenship to earthly nations can feel troubling to those who only have one sense of nationality. Yet, the kingdom does remarkable things with dual national loyalties. Probably, the best examples are in the Bible with leaders such as Moses, Daniel, and Paul.

9. If the refugees come from a nation that doesn’t have a strong Christian tradition and arrive

in a nation with strong Christian traditions it is likely that there will be a movement to Christ. The Gospel thrives with refugees. This is a means to fulfill the missionary ideal of reaching unreached nations and people groups. It is easy to quickly find new churches or Christian fellowships developing among refugees who come from places such as the Middle East, North Africa, or former Communist block nations in receiving nations that practice the freedom of religion.

10. Conversely, if the refugees arrive from a nation with a strong Christian tradition into a nation in which Christian influence is declining, they frequently are the source of renewal. The USA currently is an example of this. Most of us in urban areas of both Europe and North America can quickly think of church buildings whose native-born members in the church were on a numeric decline. Then a refugee church begins meeting in the building and the building became filled. Then over time the children of the refugees adopted the language of the host nation and the refugee church became a multi-cultural one that could reach to the host culture as well as its own original culture.

11. In the children of refugees not only is there effective multi-cultural Gospel outreach there is

great athletic, academic, artistic, and entrepreneurial success. Pick up a local newspaper and start reading the school news and it’s apparent. Pick up a business magazine and start skimming the names and stories and it’s obvious there is something about the refugee experience that produces excellent human outcomes.

12. Refugee living is not eternal. The original nation will someday be stable. When that happens there will be a large, educated with professional skill Diaspora population. Some of them have dual national loyalties with a deep commitment to God’s Kingdom. They will return to their historic home. When they return, they will be the builders of churches, schools, businesses, and government policy. The Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell this story. If you read international newspapers, you will also find many contemporary stories of this Diaspora experience of building out of chaos.