Migration as Grace: A Conversation with Dr. Robert Chao Romero
Throughout 2021, the Immigration Resource Center is partnering with Fellowship Monrovia to present “Immigration at the Crossroads,” an ongoing webinar series about the intersections between faith and immigration. On Saturday, February 6, the series kicked off with “Migration as Grace,” a discussion with Rev. Dr. Robert Chao Romero, a professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies at UCLA. Dr. Romero has published numerous books about immigration, race, and religion, including the new Brown Church, and also works as a pastor, attorney, and community organizer.
Romero’s conception of “migration as grace” grew out of his desire to analyze and reflect upon the numerous instances of migration in the Bible. He explained that “from the earliest pages of scripture...to Abraham to Jesus to Moses to the scattering of the early church...migration is everywhere.” When reflecting on these stories, he quickly realized that, by his estimation, the Bible consistently supports a profound idea: that migration serves as a “source of grace,” both to migrants and to the countries that “choose to receive them with biblical hospitality.” He clarified that he thinks about grace in the broadest sense: “love, compassion...kindness, unmerited favor.”
Romero walked through several well-known biblical stories to support this idea of migration as grace. He immediately looked to the Gospels, which briefly chronicle the incident in which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fled to Egypt to escape persecution. Romero summarized this story as an instance of “God using the migration process to save God as a refugee.” Another prominent example comes from the story of Joseph, in which “God used Joseph, a migrant...to be a source of grace to all of Egypt.” The story sees its central figure forced into migration as a slave, only to save thousands of lives by becoming the pharaoh’s dream interpreter and foreseeing a massive famine.
Romero explained that these are merely the most prominent biblical examples of migration as grace, and that there are numerous other instances that support his interpretation. The speaker said that the word “ger,” meaning immigrant or sojourner, appears 92 times in the Old Testament, and that the ger were excluded from owning land and meaningful participation in the agrarian sector. This meant that, despite their contributions to various societies, the migrant populace was far more vulnerable to hardship –– and Romero explained that “this is the experience of the ger then and now.”
Romero clarified this point by discussing migration as grace in the contemporary world, stating that “undocumented immigrants serve as an important source of grace to the United States through their vast economic contributions in the form of labor and taxes.” He refuted the common claim that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes: although many undocumented workers use fake social security numbers, ten percent of their income still goes toward social security, which subsequently caused undocumented people to contribute $240 billion to social security by 2007. Additionally, the United States’ population of 11 million undocumented migrants adds an estimated $400 billion to the national GDP every year. Romero refers to these facts as the “mathematics of injustice”: although migrants already serve the country as economic citizens, there is still a governmental commitment to withholding full political citizenship.
Although the system remains unjust, Romero still has hope for the future, because “hope happens when we come together as the body of Christ.” He encourages everyone to support compassionate, nonpartisan immigration reform, and to support new and existing DACA applicants. “I’m not saying be a Democrat, be a Republican...I’m talking about biblical principles. Migration as grace is a very clear biblical principle that we must unite around,” concluded Romero.
Click here to watch the full webinar.
“Immigration at the Crossroads” will continue with a discussion with Karen Gonzalez, author of The God Who Sees on May 1. You can buy Dr. Romero’s book Brown Church here.
For more information, email jean@ircsgv.org.