2020 ELECTIONS, LATINOS AND THE IMMIGRATION DILEMMA
Dr. Roberto Miranda
Many sensitive, sincere believers fail to understand what the Bible teaches: That in a fallen, sinful world all governments are ultimately unjust. In the final analysis, the Democratic Party is as sinful and unjust as the Republican party.
When submitted to an objective, thorough analysis, neither party can claim to be clearly on the side of social justice when it comes to the issues that presently affect us in modern America.
Many naive Christians have been seduced by this idea that the Democratic Party is the party of social justice and regard for the poor, while the Republican Party is the party of white privilege and financial elites. Again, we must look beyond empty party platforms and political rhetoric, and instead examine actions and actual policies and practices.
The fact is that the Democratic Party does not have a monopoly on social justice. Neither does the Republican Party exclusively bear the shame of reserving social injustice for themselves.
There’s plenty of injustice and corruption in the American political system to
go around.
On the issue of immigration, for example, the Democratic Party’s policies and record are not as clear as they themselves would claim with respect to their rhetoric. Under Barack Obama immigrant children were also separated from their parents and put in so-called cages. Actually, it is well known that this also took place under the Bush administration. Donald Trump’s administration did not initiate this practice, and most probably he will not be the last to engage in it.
It is also common knowledge by now that the Obama administration was quite zealous in deporting undocumented immigrants. Back in 2006 then senators Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as Bill Clinton himself, spoke very clearly and publicly about undocumented aliens taking jobs away from American citizens. The rhetoric may differ between the parties, but the actual results have been pretty much the same.
Different political administrations have come and gone, but the plight of undocumented immigrants remains unchanged.
Politicians execute all kinds of complex, subtle maneuvers, but in the end they all bow to the expedients of electoral politics, the power of unions, the competing claims of ethnic minorities, the fluctuating passions and demands of the masses, and a convenient submission to the burning issues of the moment.
When Latinos blindly ally themselves with the Democratic Party without taking the time to critically separate the rhetoric from actual policies, they are naively succumbing to demagoguery.
The fact is that the Democrats have had several clear opportunities to end the suffering of the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in America. Each time, they have found the way to obfuscate and to complicate the issue, to shift the blame, and to deftly hide the fact that for the time being, they are as indisposed as the Republicans to resolve the tragic situation of undocumented immigrants in this country.
I will finally also add, for the sake of clarity and completeness, my belief that at some point in the not too distant future America will be forced to grapple with the fact that there are probably more than 20 million undocumented immigrants in this country.
For the most part will not be going anywhere any time soon. They are here to stay. And to keep them forever in a state of limbo, they and their children filled with
dread and uncertainty about the future, is downright cruel and mean spirited. Something needs to be done with these unhappy masses, and it is not to build large cargo ships and send them off back to their original countries!
These are spiritually sensitive, hard-working, America loving, family oriented, culturally rich individuals who are deeply grateful to this nation, and who would represent the biggest shot of creative and spiritual vitality that America has received in a long time. That is, if they were allowed to become full-fledged participants in the life of this nation, and given a path to voting and citizenship.
Conservative, Christian America does itself a huge disservice by preventing these masses, that represent precisely the values that we are fighting for, from becoming a powerful influence in the spiritual destiny of this nation.
Even as we first seek to secure our borders and institute a clear, well defined immigration policy, we should also start planning on how to resolve in a humane and generous manner this most important of social, political issues.
The idea that if a believer votes for the Republican party in these elections he or she is making a pact with the devil is naïve at best. And the conviction that if he or she votes for the Democratic party somehow they are clearly siding with the principles of social justice is equally unjustified and simplistic.
Again, God’s understanding of social justice is way more complicated and elusive than our simplistic schemes might admit.
I marvel at these modern believers who somehow cannot find a biblical way to fit Donald Trump into the ways of this mysterious God that we serve.
On the issue of justice, God thinks in terms of millennia, not years. In God’s lengthy chronicles of justice, Donald Trump is a mere asterisk, an insignificant, almost invisible footnote in God’s long narrative of human history.
We should neither idolize Trump, nor ascribe to him the power to singlehandedly turn around the sad moral state of this nation. Neither should we demonize him, or regard his particular brand of politics and leadership as definitive.
Donald Trump should be regarded by American Christians as a mere temporary convenience, a somewhat bitter, costly medicine that provides enough time for the failing American Body to partially recover, to bolster our institutional scaffolding, and to buy us enough time for other, kinder influences to take his place.
God’s chess board is made up of an almost infinite number of pieces, and sometimes He makes sacrificial moves that ultimately are necessary for the final victory of His Kingdom that the Bible prophesies.
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