This really is "compassionate" conservatism. I'm happy to take yes for an answer.
Washington (CNN) – When the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez talks about immigration, it is as someone who has witnessed the way a religious community is affected when a family is torn apart by deportation.
“It is personal for me,” Rodriguez said, describing deported friends and congregants as "lovely people. These are wonderful, God-fearing, family-loving people.”
Rodriguez heads the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and, along with a number of other organizations, including the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the National Association of Evangelicals, Sojourners and Focus on the Family, have created a coalition called the Evangelical Immigration Table.
The fact that Sojourners, led by well-known progressive Jim Wallis, an adviser to President Obama, is a part of this coalition means that it is not just a stalking horse for conservative ideology. Another leader is David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, which is a non-partisan Christian organization aimed at ending hunger in the U.S. and worldwide. This coalition is impressive in its breadth.
The Evangelical Immigration Table has published a statement of principles on immigration reform, calling for a bipartisan solution that:
Respects the God-given dignity of every person
Protects the unity of the immediate family
Respects the rule of law
Guarantees secure national borders
Ensures fairness to taxpayers
Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and
who wish to become permanent residents
Their open
letter to the President and Congress also declares:
“As evangelical leaders, we live every day with the reality that our immigration system doesn’t reflect our commitment to the values of human dignity, family unity and respect for the rule of law that define us as Americans.”
I am no fan of
Focus on the Family. Not by a long shot. The
Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized them as a hate group because of their work against LGBT equality. Their support for comprehensive immigration reform doesn't change the fact that they are a core member of the hard right on issues relating to choice, or a broad array of crucial issues relating to equal rights. But I'll take their support on immigration reform, thank you very much. Then I'll turn around and work against them on just about everything else.
Richard Land has been on the wrong side of almost every issue I can imagine. But he's a part of this coalition on immigration, and here's why:
“For those of us who are people of faith, these are issues that our faith informs,” Land said. “For us, this is an issue that is rending the social fabric of the nation and causing a great deal of human suffering. As people of faith, we need to address it.”
Again, I'll take yes for an answer.
Seeing this coalition gives me hope that perhaps we can pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2013. On a related note, today's NYT has a front page article describing what I'd consider a promising strategy on the part of the White House:
WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week.
Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept.
The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said.
We'll have to see what happens, but it can't hurt the cause to have religious conservatives and liberals working together to help push it forward.
PS-Please check out my new book Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, published by Potomac Books, where I discuss Barack Obama's ideas on racial, ethnic, and national identity in detail, and contrast his inclusive vision to language coming from Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh and (some) others on the right. You can read a review by DailyKos's own Greg Dworkin here.