Episode 419: Immigration Conversation with Christy Staats

Hey friends, Rick Lee James here inviting you to join me over at rickleejames.substack.com. Substack is a great new free platform that helps me connect directly with all of you who listen to my music and podcasts. All you have to do is subscribe with your email address and that's it. It's easy to use and we can interact right away. So go to rickleejames.substack.com for some inspiration in your inbox. Today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I ¡Hola! I'm so glad that you're here with us again for what I know is going to be a very good and very important conversation today. Since April of 2020, the number of people apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection near the southwest border has been rising steadily. In early 2021, these increases have become a touchpoint in the public debate, with growing concerns voiced about the public health and humanitarian ramifications of increasing migrant arrivals. Should we treat the situation at our border as something to stoke our fears? Or as Christians, should we treat it as a humanitarian crisis, an opportunity to care for the least of these, as Jesus has called us to do? My guest today to talk about this subject is Kristi Stats. Kristi has worked with Cru for 15 years, 11 of which were in the UK, and is now affiliate staff She created Crossings in 2015 for her church in northeast Ohio to encourage Americans to welcome and come alongside newly arrived refugees in partnership with resettlement and community development organizations and led a similar work with CRU nationally. She was invited to join the Bibles, Badges, and Business work of the National Immigration Forum in 2018 and has been organizing and speaking with faith, law enforcement, and business leaders about the need for immigration reform since. She is nearly finished with her Master's in Theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She's here with me today to help us better understand some of the ministry opportunities awaiting us at the southwest border and some of the challenges that are presented there. Kristi Staats, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Rick, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Well, I am very glad to have you with me today. It's so glad to have you not only on the podcast, but as a new friend. In many ways, this conversation was prompted by headlines similar to this one that I'm gonna read. It was the week of April 12th, a very recent week. And the headline just said this, I'm gonna read, this is one of many headlines that showed up online and in newspapers. Biden on pace to allow fewer refugees into US than Trump, humanitarian group says. International Rescue Committee released report for fiscal year 2021. Now, that seems to have changed now due to great public outcry and letters written to the White House from many people, including, including myself, by the way.

And thank you.

Yes, surely. And that cap was raised. We don't know exactly maybe what that was raised to at this point, but, but this is a big deal, and there's a lot of talk about and around immigration on this issue. And I'm so glad to have someone like you here who knows a lot about this situation because of the work that you do and the knowledge that you have from the work that you do. And I think one of the first questions that you might be able to address for our listeners as we begin this conversation— there's a lot of confusion around the difference between asylum seekers and refugees. And so I wonder if maybe maybe we should just start very basic today, and maybe you could help our listeners understand what is the difference between someone who is an asylum seeker and someone who is a refugee.

That's a great question. Okay, so this is a, a point of confusion for a lot of folks, so I will try to, um, hopefully clear it up for y'all. The simple way to talk about it is they're both essentially the the same kind of people in terms of asylum seekers and refugees most likely fit the UN definition for a refugee, which is people who are displaced from their home countries because of reasons of fear, persecution for their race, for their religion, for something particular about their identity. Maybe they're part of a political group. And the definition ends up splitting when it comes to where are they processed. So refugees, especially in the US, are processed overseas. So a refugee, the way they come to the US, it is a legal form of immigration. They get displaced from their country and they end up registering with the UN, with the UN's refugee program. And while they're outside of the country, at some point they'll get referred to a third country for resettlement. Now, this is not fast. It's a long process. So The average refugee ends up usually spending decades outside of their own country in displacement, but at some point they would get referred to another country, maybe the US or Germany or Australia or some other, you know, some of the South American countries have currently been really stepping up for refugee resettlement, which has been really beautiful. And so they get referred and then each country has their own processing. So the US process is all 5 of our security agencies get involved. So everything from the State Department to Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA. And what they end up doing is vetting folks. And so over a 2 to 3 year process, they get vetted, they get given the ability to come to the US, and so they get flown here by the US government. So if someone is a refugee and living in your city and they use that term, they actually signed a promissory note to the US government that they would begin paying paying back their travel loan within 6 months of arriving. And so when they arrive, they are here with permission to be here. They usually get resettled in a particular city through one of the U.S. refugee resettlement agencies. So things you may have heard of like World Relief or Lutheran Family Services or Catholic Charities. And they have permission to begin working their first week here. So the purpose of the resettlement agencies is to help get them on their feet as quickly as possible, build their into the local community and they get a Social Security number. And I mean, they are in debt to the U.S. government. They have to start paying that back. And so that's how a refugee arrives. So I live in Akron, Ohio. So all of our refugees that came from Bhutan or the Congo or Afghanistan, some of our local populations, that is how they arrived. An asylum seeker— and this is not what people usually think. So sometimes we will hear terms like people coming to the border are illegal. Actually, asylum seekers are not illegal, but the way that an asylum seeker comes is they cannot apply for asylum outside of the country. They can apply for asylum at a port of entry at the border, or once they are already in the country that they are going to, they can ask for asylum. And these laws were created in 1951. The U.S. helped create them globally, and then we have our own kind of clarifications on them, but they were a response to World War II and all of the refugees and asylum seekers who are fleeing and still displaced after the war. And so asylum seekers, it's a lot harder of a process, so they're not guaranteed that they're going to be able to stay or that they necessarily fit the definition. So one of the tricky things is, so as we're looking at our southern border, there's a lot of folks who are coming to the border and they are presenting themselves at ports of entry to Border Patrol and they are asking for asylum. It will be a long process if they get put in the asylum proceedings before it's determined whether they qualify. Poverty is not a qualification for asylum. Folks who are leaving, for example, Guatemala, which the coffee industry tanked economically globally and coffee prices went way down a few years ago, and so farmers who had had their coffee plantations and farms and were sustaining their families that way no longer were feeding their children because the prices of coffee were so low. A lot of them are coming to our border and asking for asylum. They technically, a lot of them will get turned back because poverty is not a reason for asylum. But those who are fleeing violence based in El Salvador or Venezuela, as the whole country has collapsed, a lot of them would qualify. And if they get put in asylum proceedings, they can't work. It's, it's a much slower process. Usually Historically, we would put an ankle bracelet on them, and about 90% of asylum seekers end up attending their asylum hearings. They want to, they want to be known, they want permission to be here. There is about 10% who don't. Some of that actually is because people want to disappear, but actually a good portion of that ends up being because of lack of communication. So there hasn't been translators involved, they've moved house, they haven't received the notification on where they're going to go to their asylum hearing. And so a lot of that ends up being because of those reasons.

Okay, that clarifies a lot. And maybe you could also clarify for us, you know, usually when people are listening to the news, they also, I think, get all of the asylum seekers and refugees all lumped in in the same category with who also get referred to as just illegals. And could you also maybe specify what that means as well, because I think even that maybe is a misconception for a lot of people, because I think a lot of people are thinking, well, those are people that like jumped a fence or did something, you know, that came in the country. Can you explain to us even what maybe is meant a lot of times by a term like that, by an illegal?

Yeah, so our country, we do have 11 million approximately undocumented people in our country. Who are not here lawfully. I don't use the term illegal. So I'm an evangelical Christian.

I—

a lot— my worldview is completely shaped by scripture and how God talks about us, as well as across the Bible how God refers to the stranger or the foreigner and how we should care for them. And I don't see that keeping with the idea that we are image bearers and that God has called his people in the Old Testament, New Testament to welcome the stranger. But in terms how we understand that civilly. If someone is undocumented or illegal here, unlawfully here, they have committed a civil offense. A lot of folks don't realize it's not a felony to be here illegally. Most people who are here unlawfully are not here because they crossed our southern border. That is probably one of the biggest misnomers I hear. Most people are here because they overstayed a visa. About 60% of our undocumented population overstay a visa. A huge proportion of them have been here 10, 15, 20 years or longer. There are historical reasons for that. Later on, we're going to talk about something called restitution and I'll clarify some of that story that a lot of folks don't know. When folks are coming and they're seeking asylum, asylum is a fully legal process. If somebody is for example, on a migrant caravan coming from Central America right now, and they're coming to our border, they are not illegal. They're coming, and especially if they are looking to present themselves and ask for asylum, that is a fully legal US process. That's how people who are fleeing imminent danger are allowed to come here and seek refuge. And that is something that the US has always believed strongly in. The last years we have really closed down our asylum options. We put a lot of policies in place the last few years under Trump that made it very difficult for people to ask for asylum. We got to the point that less than 1% were getting asylum, but it is something that is based on a lot of our values and why we have that as legal precedence. So 1951, um, the U.S. participated, um, in a whole bunch of things globally that help define what refugees are, what asylum seekers are, and we said as a country that we want to allow people to flee who are fleeing imminent danger and to be able to seek refuge in countries. Ronald Reagan did an amazing job of responding to this in 1980. So in 1980, when the current refugee system was created, he actually had the highest ceiling of refugees allowed to the country, and we brought in 205,000 refugees who were processed overseas and brought here, and a lot of them as a result of the Vietnam War. So I always find that really interesting that people we were at war with, we had a high number of them we brought in. Where this gets confusing for folks, and I, and I totally acknowledge it, is when you're reading the news, it's the global conversation about it. So if you're watching what has happened in Europe the last 10 years and they'll talk about refugees coming to the shores of Europe, and often it is people showing up at the coast in a boat and they're fleeing conflicts in the Middle East or they're fleeing conflicts in Africa. We see them called refugees. Technically, in the U.S. system, those would be called asylum seekers because our refugee program is very specific. It's a State Department-sponsored program. That means people are vetted overseas, they have permission, they come here through plane tickets that the U.S. purchases for them. But so I understand, I think there's a lot of reasons that when you read the headlines, it makes it trickier for people to sort them out.

Yes. Well, and I'm thankful that you picked up too on the question I was asking and helped us reframe that too, because so often I get tired of hearing in the media about illegals and calling people illegals when we should be calling them, especially as people of faith, undocumented or maybe even unlawful, things like that. People are not illegal, you know, people are image bearers of God. And so I'm glad that you helped us reframe that too, because it's so much a part of our dialogue and so much a part of the way that so much of our media will use the term for people that it can be a dehumanizing term, I think, and a label that helps us— maybe makes us look at people as less than human at times.

And one thing that kind of comes up in that conversation, so I'll hear all the time the question like, why don't people come the legal way? And so that's loaded with like two things. One is, you know, we don't realize that seeking asylum is legal. So it is a legal way. So the folks at our southern border who are seeking asylum, they're coming legally. Now, not all of them have been informed well about how to do that. And we do have problems of coyotes and cartels giving people false information. You know, the Biden administration has actually been— they put in like something like 128 advertisements in Central America on the radio telling people not to come right now, that the borders were still closed because of COVID which is true, that— and that now is not a good time to come because our infrastructure is not up. But people are coming anyway. So when people are desperate, they do leave no matter what. And I know, and actually forgetting about our southern border, I have good friends here from Afghanistan who are fleeing the Taliban. And one of my closest friends, they carried their children across Central Asia, were dispelled out of Iran and Turkey twice and sent back to Afghanistan and did it again. I mean, can you imagine walking across like 3 to 4 countries? And so, and the reason I found this out is my friend has terrible back pain. And so she was was, you know, moaning about her back. And I was like, oh, I was like, what, what did you do to your back? And she was heavily pregnant and carrying a toddler at the same time. And her husband was carrying their son who had a disability, and their other children were walking. But they had seen most of their family killed by the Taliban. And they were doing whatever good parents do, which is, we are going to get my babies to safety. And so Knowing that my friend trekked across Iran and Turkey and Iraq and, you know, you know, several countries to try to get to a place where they could ask for, you know, refugee status, that really shaped my view of what's happening at our southern border. And so, yeah, so it's really significant. And as believers, I think when I see a headline, I should always pause and say, is this headline trying to make me afraid? If I see a headline trying to make me afraid, one, I know that the advertisers love that because it means clicks. But two, as a believer, there's a lot of things to fear in the world. But I am told all across the Bible, the only person I should fear is the Lord. And so I don't need to be afraid of people who are coming seeking asylum. I don't even need to be afraid of criminals. Else, you know, really, like, it's the Lord I should be afraid of. And so I always think this is a moment for us to, to pause, to reevaluate, to pray, and to say, if I'm feeling fearful as I read the headlines, how do I take that as a moment to go to Jesus and say, Jesus, I want you to take my fear and realign my fear and help me see your heart in this. And that's one way that I interact with headlines that might be helpful for other folks.

Yeah, do not be afraid. Well, you know, let's kind of continue on along this line talking about fear because there's a lot of people talk about the border with a lot of fear. And I'm going to give an example here. I remember over the last 4 years specifically, I remember the Trump administration, or Trump specifically, you know, kind of calling everybody coming in from the country you know, from Mexico murderers and rapists, and there are probably a few good people too. You know, that was even back when he was campaigning, you know, and that kind of rhetoric just kept sticking, saying that there were caravans coming to invade us. And then, you know, Stephen Miller, who was Trump's anti-immigration policy advisor, he— people like him, they did all they could to spread disinformation about refugees and about asylum seekers, which is why it's so important to have people like you to help us dispel some of, some of the disinformation that we get about people. And especially as Christians, I mean, that's, that's always the wrong way to approach talking about people, not just people at the border, but just talking about people. Because we should be talking about people as, as image bearers of God, you know, and you've already referred to that a bit today. And just because we're talking about people at the border that shouldn't make a difference in the way that we refer to people who are image bearers of God and people who are made in God's image. And yet we so often devalue, I think, life, and especially people who are such pro-life people like evangelicals. It seems like the border is that one place where we tend to devalue life so often, and it didn't seem to matter just because our, you know, I say in parentheses, I guess, so to speak, hand quotes, our guy was in office, so to speak, at that time. And I just, I found the rhetoric so distasteful and so hard to come up against. I wonder if you found some helpful ways in the work that you do, and because you're a Christian, some helpful ways to help us know how we should be talking about situations like this and ways that we can be talking about people at the border. You've talked about it a little bit today, but have you found that there are sort of like trigger words that you hear now that you go, "Oh, when I hear that, I just want to say, 'No, no, no, instead of that, say this.'" You know, there's there's those books out about food, you know, that were really popular for a while that were like, um, I forget what the— yeah, instead of this, eat this, you know, like that. Are there some helpful ways in your mind, like maybe some of those words and phrases that as Christians can help us better see our fellow image bearers as people created by our loving Creator, our Heavenly Father, helping us to see those at the border and those who are refugees and those who are immigrants and asylum seekers and helping us all be able to see each other in the image of God in better ways. I just wonder if you would have any helpful thoughts that can help us with that today.

Yeah, so I mean, I'll say one. Yesterday I was on the phone with Representative Brad Wenstrup's office. And the reason why I was talking to some of his staff were, um, he went to the border last week, um, with the GOP Doctors Caucus, and his comments to a paper when he was done was, this is a humanitarian crisis. And I was like, yes it is. So, so I, I was just so encouraged, like, and so basically their office, we were talking about solutions that that my work has, that some of our partners on the ground are suggesting, and him as a lawmaker, would he consider those? And so it is a humanitarian crisis if people are living in rough sleeping tents outside of our border for 1 to 2 years in cartel territory, nevertheless, like Northern Mexico on the east side is really heavy with the cartels. It is humanitarian crisis if a parent gets to the point that They're putting their children over a wall alone because they're that desperate. No parent gives up their child. So I think empathizing and saying what in the world has happened that a parent would do this. And so I think things that I hear, like we'll hear like, oh, there's open borders. Like, there's not open borders. We've never had open borders. Well, we actually, we used to years and years ago. And when we had open borders, fully open borders, there's this really interesting study that was done between 2 sociologists between the US and Mexico, and between the '60s and the early '90s. And when it was a completely open border, our net was zero in terms of immigration, which is not what most people expect. So we had lots of men who would come seasonally and work our farms, and they would leave. And at the harvest season, they would have big parties back in Mexico, it was mostly Mexican. And November, there was you know, harvest season parties where they reunited with their families, and they would come seasonally. And when we began to militarize the border, instead of keeping people out, we actually started keeping people in. So because people didn't want to be separated from jobs or their families permanently, the whole family started coming. And so, so, you know, folks need to like dig into our history a little bit better. I'd say, you know, start with centering yourself in Scripture. So go to the Evangelical Immigration Table. They have a great series of, like, Bible studies you could do that go through the whole of Scripture looking at how we should care for and respond to the foreigner amongst us. And one of the things that's always stood out to me the last few years as I've done study of, like, what does the Bible say here, is the Bible has a really significant emphasis on what some theologians call the quartet of the vulnerable. So the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and this, um, and the orphan. And you see this, these four cared about all the way through the Old Testament. In fact, that is some of why God judged Israel and had them, you know, taken away by the Babylonians, was they were forsaking the Lord. And some of how they're forsaking the Lord was it was coming out in their neglect of these populations. And so the Lord saw it as idolatrous. And then you move into the New Testament in Matthew 25, where, you know, Jesus's warnings about hell are, if we don't take care of all these vulnerable populations, it's like we're doing that to him. And then you see the early church as they're prioritizing the Word and getting the Word out, sharing the gospel, they're also very early on also focusing on caring for the widows who weren't being fed at the time. And so they appoint appoint Stephen to do this care ministry. And so, you know, and then just the very people of God, the early church live as exiles, as foreigners, like we get displaced in persecution. And so, I think for Christians to get in the Bible and to dig, and if what you're seeing in the headline or from your favorite politician or your favorite news pundit, if it's not lining up with God's Word, that's where I'd say turn that person off. If they're calling people illegals, if they're trying to incite fear in you. The other thing that's really useful, so it's like know our history, get in the Bible, you know, turn away from voices that are trying to demonize people who are image bearers. But the third one is just, you know, really practical, like safety statistics. So I'm a nerd and I read FBI statistics statistics frequently, which is a strange hobby. I'm really interested in the FBI and I like their work. And so, so one of the things you could pull up is things like the safest cities in the country and what, you know, as we've talked and demonized the border. Now, my mom is from the Rio Grande Valley, which is like the McAllen side of the Texas border. And there's parts of that that are very unsafe, like the cartels there were not they were not a safe element to be around in that area of the country. But what most folks don't realize is El Paso is listed in one of the safest cities in the country. So El Paso, Texas— I'm going to stumble over my words— in 20— I believe it was 2019— was number 5 in terms of safest metro cities in the country. Now that's really interesting, as in 2019, 2019, there was a lot of rhetoric at how dangerous the border was. That was the year that we had all of the words about invaders. Human beings fleeing violence themselves are not invaders. They're people that we should be giving hospitality to. But El Paso itself is considered one of the safest cities according to our own data. And so, you know, dig around and look at what DHS and what the FBI has in their statistics. Statistics. We work with— in my work with the National Immigration Forum, we work with a whole network of police chiefs around the country. And one of the things that is statistic from the FBI, and I've found this agreed upon by the police chiefs, is that immigrant neighborhoods in the country are safer than native-born neighborhoods. Now, this isn't because immigrants are holier and more innocent, but honestly, it makes sense. Like, if you are here on a visa, you could lose your visa if you commit a crime. If you were here undocumented, I mean, you don't want to take any risk that you are going to. So, so data-wise, immigrants are safer. Immigrant neighborhoods are safer. And I spent time talking to the— actually not far from you, the Dayton police chief. And Chief Beale has talked extensively about Dayton, Ohio, and the safest neighborhoods they have there are the immigrant neighborhoods. And so it's really interesting. You start looking at numbers versus what the rhetoric is., and they're so different. But like, as people who call themselves Christians, our primary shaping shouldn't be the data, but it should be what the Bible says and how we should show hospitality to those who are foreign in our midst. But the data is really helpful too for those who appreciate numbers.

Oh, that's, that's great information to have. No, we, we need nerds like you. I appreciate that very much. It, it helps us to be able to to understand the information more, for sure. Well, you know, in some of the notes that you sent me to help prepare for this conversation today, you had pointed out something that I found quite fascinating. You said that our immigration system is now older than the internet, and it being so outdated is a big problem. And I wonder, what are some of the long-term solutions that you feel need to be addressed if our broken American immigration system is ever going to be repaired. And I guess I'll let you go as in-depth or as not in-depth or whatever you want to do. Maybe you could give us a few ideas though that you might have about some of these things, because first of all, I just found that quite fascinating because I can remember being in high school back in the— I graduated in right around— it was 1995 was when I graduated. High school. So it was right around then that I just started remembering hearing about the internet, you know, and I know we had it, but it wasn't really till I started college that, you know, email became a thing, and then it started really going. So, yes, so, so all that time since then, you know, we have an immigration system, as you were saying, that really hasn't been updated. So, so what are some of the long-term solutions that you feel like we could be addressing to help maybe fix some of the broken system?

That is a fantastic question. And if I can— I don't know if I can do this— I would love to drop a link on, you know, whenever this goes online, that if folks want— if they hear this and it resonates with them, I would love you all to sign with us because we have some proposals that we're putting out there, and we're trying to really encourage lawmakers to get it across the line and actually to change some of this. So a few examples are our farm visas. So in the country, and Ohio is a big farming state, so this affects my local folks, we have not changed these visas in like 30 years. And so there are farms across the country that have either had to close because they cannot get the number of American workers they need, and they cannot get the number of immigrant workers they need, that if we were to update our system and increase the number of visas, it would help our farms stay viable. In Ohio, there are farms that have been around for 70 years and have to— have had to change the produce that they harvest because they cannot get the number of laborers. And so labor-intensive produce has had to change to something that requires less humans to pick because they just can't get the workers. And so Americans, there's just not enough of us to meet the demand for laborers in this field. And that would be a great thing for us to update. Currently, right now in Congress, there's a Farm Workforce Modernization Act that would both increase the number of visas, but it would also come up with a way of earned legalization for those who are here undocumented and have a history of a certain number of years of working for U.S. farms. And so one is, I think we need to move the conversation from, which is an us versus them conversation to, you know, what do we need to grow our economy? How do we take care of all of us together? And how do we get folks on the right side of the law? And so we have a lot of folks who, you know, spent the last year during COVID which is very vulnerable to be working in farms next to folks, and they have been picking our fruits and vegetables so that we all stay fed during the pandemic. And, you know, what would it mean for us to update this 30-year past date system so that folks who are here undocumented that have been sometimes the only workers that farmers can get, can get on the right side of the law, but also a lot of farmers don't want to take undocumented workers. So I talked to folks in Ohio who, you know, they've struggled to get legal workers, and it's been very, very difficult. And they've had to, you know, close down operations because of that. And so how could we, you know, update that visa system? Another one is Dreamers. So Dreamers are a population of folks who are now adults. Most of them are in their 20s and 30s who have been in the country because their parents brought them unlawfully or they overstayed a visa or some Dreamers. And people don't realize this, some Dreamers, their family came on a legal visa and at some point the paperwork wasn't attached to their parents. Parents, and it made them undocumented. When that happens in our country, there's no way of fixing that legally. So you have folks through no fault of their own, or even their families are undocumented. And so 20 years ago, a bill was brought into Congress to address these folks who, if they don't get resolved by Congress, they could get deported from the only country they know. And that bill has now been brought to the Senate floor. 128 times by Senator Dick Durbin, and we still have not passed it. Dreamers have support of like 85% of the country, including most of Congress, and we still haven't done it. So, so there's, there's folks like that that we need to do. But then across the industries in the country, from tech to doctors, our rural communities really struggle to get the number of medical professionals they need. So we are going to stay viable and competitive as a country. We're going to make sure our own Americans are cared for health-wise. We need to update our legal visa system in a whole bunch of industries. Some of them are things like, you know, skilled labor, like farm workforce, and some of them are more highly skilled, you know, your doctors and folks who've had those kind of degrees. But we need an update of that whole system in order to stay viable. And so— and then the other thing is is it's like, what do you do with our 11 million undocumented? So I said this earlier, like, we have 60% of them are overstayed a visa. It's a misnomer that people think it's mostly Mexican. There's folks from every country you can imagine in that population. And so one of the things we've talked about doing— so I work for the National Immigration Forum. I'm also, as a Christian, part of the Evangelical Immigration Table, which is an organization that is more like a collaboration of organizations. So it is an affiliation of about 9 different evangelical organizations, things like World Relief, the Wesleyan Church, the ERLC from the Southern Baptist Convention, Bethany Christian Services. And that group of folks has been working together for a long time to say, as Christians, how do we shape the conversation that people are created in the image of God? That we want to value the rule of law, that we want to value the family and people should be kept together. And so currently in our undocumented population, you know, the only options are people stay here outside of the law or they get deported, which almost inevitably means ripping families apart. So it's splitting husbands and wives who through marriage still have not fixed one person's visa status. It's separating husbands from their children— or sorry, fathers from their children. And so this is traumatic because if someone gets deported over being undocumented, I mean, they have to stay out of the country a minimum of 12 years. And it is like, mm-hmm, we do not want kids growing up without their mother or father because of that. And so the options we have been given is mass amnesty or mass deportation. And it is like, that does not satisfy most folks in the country. Mass deportation is quite cruel and would really rip apart a lot of families. And as a Christian, I believe that the family unit family unit comes from the Lord, and we want to keep families together whenever possible. And so a third option that all the organizations that are part of the Evangelical Immigration Table have proposed is restitution. And so it's the biblical idea of being able to pay back and address a wrong, maybe a visa overstay, or maybe coming across a border unlawfully, but that there would be an earned legalization over a period of years if somebody comes forward, they could pay a fine, but that they have a pathway towards green cards. And so right now there is zero pathway to fix your status once you're undocumented, other than to be out of the country for a dozen years. And so a way forward for that population we've been proposing, and as a believer, I'm like, I'll get behind it, is to, to say, like, let's propose restitution. And a way for us to get folks on the right side of the law. It's not amnesty, it's not mass deportation, but it's a way to rectify this. And so what we really need is we need folks to start coming together and looking for solutions that holistically care for people and the family and give people dignity, but also address our economic needs as a country.

Very good. Well, thank you for addressing those things. And before we end today, I would love I want you to keep in the back of your mind some of what President George W. Bush is going to be talking about in his new book, because I know that has to do with some of this idea of restitution as well.

Yeah.

Because you were telling me about some of that and the evangelical immigration table, and then I'm so glad to hear more about that and this idea of restitution. And yes, we will make sure that a link link is, is in the show notes, uh, so people can go to Voices in My Head podcast, our webpage, or our Substack page, and we'll be able to find a link where if they would like, they can be able to sign on. I think that's a great idea. Um, you know, since you were talking about families, and this, this will be, uh, leading into one of our last, uh, topics today, but, you know, um, family has been such a big concern to so many, I think, over the last 4 years, and I think many of us watched in horror as children were separated from their families at the border in just some really cruel and terrible ways. The Trump administration really just, you know, and we've always seen, you know, people that were detained in different ways, but it was just taken to such some new and cruel levels with infants being ripped from their mother's arms and children being taken away. And now going on years now, children still not being reunited with family members, and in some cases, from what we're hearing, not even having any way of knowing how to get them in contact with their family members again because such poor records were being kept. And so I wanted to ask kind of 3 questions about that that maybe you can, can help our listeners understand, because I think this is something that a lot of us are concerned about. And when it comes to children especially, I think all of us have a really soft and aching place in our heart for sure. Mm-hmm. And, and so the 3 questions I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask them all 3 right in a row, but then I'm gonna go back and let you kind of answer them one at a time if you could today. But I just kind of want you to have all three of them—

Sure.

—kind of on your mind, if that's okay. The first one is this: first of all, what is happening to unaccompanied children when they arrive at the border? Because we're hearing a lot about that right now. Also, are children still being separated from their parents if they are accompanied when they're coming to the border right now? And then the hundreds of migrant children that were separated from their families under the Trump administration, are they being or have they been reunited under the Biden administration at this point? And if, if so or if not, what do we know is being done to make sure that they are being reunited? So, so maybe we'll start with that first question. What is happening to unaccompanied children when they are arriving at the border?

Yes, so there are a couple things that we should know policy-wise. So the first is that there were about 40 immigration policies that were passed, maybe more than that, maybe 50 in the last year under the Trump administration related to asylum and the border. And so our border has been completely closed for a year. We had more policies even beyond just the pandemic year. And so we had some things called One was called MPP, which is instead of asylum seekers being able to wait for their asylum process in the US, they had to wait in Mexico. And so they basically ended up in makeshift refugee camps outside of our border in northern Mexico. And at one point we had something called metering in place under the Trump administration, which is people would try to come and ask for asylum and we put our border guards on the Mexican side to prevent them from coming in. So that they couldn't ask for asylum. All of that meant in the last year because of the pandemic plus all those other restrictions, no asylum seekers were coming. When President Biden took office, there were some things that remained from the Trump administration. Effectually, what most folks should know is that the border is still closed. He has not removed all the policies. He did remove MPP, which is the Remain in Mexico policy, and so the refugee camps that we had at our southern border, they began to dissolve them over the first couple months of his presidency and allowed those folks who already had a number, were already in the camps, to come in and seek asylum. So some of the folks that were coming that have kind of came into our system that we've had to deal with were those. Separately, seasonally, we always have folks that come to our border in the form of either economic migrants or refugees, you know, seeking asylum. Every February and March, it's just— it's immigration season at our border. So that was already coming. But when you couple that with the previous president's rhetoric was quite bad and this one was saying he didn't want to continue that rhetoric and that we were a nation that would be keeping our humanitarian laws. So there was a spike anyways because of the administration change, which is actually normal. So whether it's Democrat to Republican or Republican to Democrat, there tends to be a spike at those changes. But then you couple it with— there were definitely folks who thought, oh, this will be the nicer guy, I'll come. So that increased it. And then at the same time, you had several hurricanes that really displaced a lot of folks folks at the end of the winter in Central America, especially Honduras. And so all of those kind of coupled together have caused us to have a larger swell than normal this last month or two. It's actually, it's pretty comparable to 2019. So if you think 2020, we were really low because nobody could come. So our numbers are actually quite comparable to 2019. So all that together has affected folks coming to the border. So we removed Remain in Mexico, the MPP policy, and those folks were allowed to come in. We left in place Title 42, which Title 42 meant that people could not come in and seek asylum, new people, because of the pandemic. But we removed one part of Title 42. So for the last year, we expelled any unaccompanied minor that wanted to come. We sent them all back to Mexico. So the Biden administration said we're not sending kids unaccompanied back to Mexico. So every year we naturally have a flow of children that come to our border. And this is— I mean, this is something I think the natural response should be. We mourn. We mourn that any parent would allow their children to flee getting recruited by a gang in Central America and send them on a dangerous journey across Mexico. And that happens every year. So some of the unaccompanied minors we've had coming to our border have been kids who actually traveled on their own, or they traveled with a caravan, but without their parents. And that has been some of the population that now there's been a large amount of them. I think we've hit 19,000 now. And so that's where we don't have the facilities in place, which we should. It's not politically nice, but every year this increases, and it has been doing that for 20 years. We should have permanent facilities that are ready to receive children. 'But we don't,' because it looks like you're expecting it, and that's not politically nice for either party. Just as a comment. So the other thing, though, was a knock-on effect, which was we kept the border still closed. Remember, Title 42 is still in place. So new families who are not Title 4, who are not part of MPP, new families were not accepted into the asylum-seeking process because of the pandemic. So those families, some of them made a terrible decision, which is, well, if I can't get in but I'm hearing unaccompanied children can get in, I'll send my kid in by themselves. And so some of them have been teenagers who did come with their family trying to seek asylum alone, and some of them have been very young children who were sent in alone. And so that is tragic. Um, yeah, so that's kind of where we are with now. And then there's been this rush to figure out Normal process is that they're in Customs and Border Patrol less than 72 hours, and then they get transferred into Health and Human Services where they get put in homes or foster homes or like their custody until they figure out how to either reunite them with family that already exists in the U.S. or, you know, reunite them with the family outside of the country. And it's just a slow process because of the vetting. So that's kind of where that part is.

Okay. Well, so that really kind of answers my question about, you know, if children are still being separated from their parents when they are coming in because families are not coming in, I think is what you're saying. Am I hearing you correctly because of the Title 42 is I think what you said?

Yes. So new families are not coming in. We are letting some particularly vulnerable families come in that weren't part of the refugee camps remain in Mexico. It's very few. So we have let some whole families in if there was some particular vulnerabilities about that family unit, but most of them we're not letting in right now. So the border is still effectively closed. So the other thing that— of separation will happen. So some of it is parents are self-selecting to send their children in alone, but we are not separating parents and children. However, if a child shows up with their cousin, if a child shows up with an aunt or uncle, we are taking those children. And so that is where there is some separation happening if they're not with their immediate parents. And that's for questions of, you know, is it human trafficking or is it just a relative? So some of that is happening.

Okay, well, that, that helps. Thank you for helping us understand that. And, and the third question was, was about these hundreds of migrant children children that were separated from their families under the Trump administration and then had yet to have been reunited. And it seemed like, at least at the time when we were really hearing about this, I think it was early 2020, I'm trying to remember the exact timeline when we really started hearing news stories about how many were still separated, and there just didn't seem to be any effort whatsoever being made to even try to reunite them with their parents. And I know that President Biden said that when he got into office, they were going to do all they could to reunite the children with their families. I wonder if you could help us know a little bit more about that situation, if that is in fact happening and maybe how that's happening.

Yeah, so I guess just a little context for it. So the policy to separate children, I know sometimes people say, oh, it's always happened. Not like this. So it really was kicked off by Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and President Trump. And Jeff Sessions said on a number of times when he was Attorney General that the family separation policy, where they were separating parents from children— like they knew they were parents and their children, not some third party— was as a punishment. And so it was done as a way to try to deter people from coming and asking for asylum. Asylum. So my personal commentary on it, that was terrible. Like, that's not who we want to be as a country, is to punish parents for that. So that started, um, 2017 under Jeff Sessions, and it continued, and it got to the point that we separated over 5,500 families. Um, I happen to know a family personally that got caught up in that, um, that first summer. Um, they kept their teenage son who was 13 at the time, sent him to a detention center alone in Florida and deported mom and dad. So eventually it got to the point that very little was being done by the Trump administration to reunite families. Customs and Border Patrol knew this was a huge problem. So they actually approached a ministry in Southern California called Home for Refugees and said, we know that this has happened. We don't— haven't been given any resources to reunite these families. Could you help us? And so there's a kind of World Relief branch ministry in Southern California who in 2018 went and were trying to find these children and where their families had gone. And I mean, like a small-time operation. So they ended up bringing 29 of those families together. I mean, bringing parents back from overseas, finding where the kids were in our system who had been at that point separated for about 9 months.. And one of those families ended up in Akron, Ohio, as they were waiting for their asylum court case, and a church nearby took them in and were walking them through that process. So I've met them personally and kind of heard their story, you know, from firsthand account. By the time President Biden took office, it was down to about 650, I believe, were still separated. And so he created a task task force in the first month of his presidency to focus on finding those parents and their kids. I mean, some at this point had been several years. And so he— so far they have reunited over 100 of these families. So there's still about 500 or so that need to be reunited. But they've been doing the due diligence of figuring out where are the kids in our system, where's their parents, what country did they come from. So it's been a slow task. It's not done yet, but they are working on that, which is good. Wow.

Well, thank you for updating us on that. I know that's been a big concern for many of our listeners and for me as well. So some of the most heartbreaking things that I remember hearing just in radio interviews and things like of that nature was hearing some of the families that took took some of these children in who were doing their very best to help in situations like these when families and children had been separated. And I remember some of them on the radio being interviewed saying, you know, these children were so afraid and said, you know, here we were trying to do our best to comfort them and help them, and yet, you know, you bring them in— we're bringing them into our home and they're just terrified. You know, we don't know how to contact their We don't know how to call them, and you know, what do you say to a child who is in a strange land with strangers in their home, even with people who want to love them and want to help them? You know, just heartbreaking stories like that. I'm so glad to hear that there is a lot of work being done, but it sounds like there's still a lot more work to do in that area to try to get the families reunited again. What a mess. To be recovered from, and I'm glad to hear that there are churches involved in being a part of that, and as they should be, and I'm so glad to hear that as well too.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

No, no, you, you go ahead, please.

There's a couple practical things that folks could do now if they're interested. So one is, with our current situation with unaccompanied minors, they do try to put them into like some sort of temporary foster care until they could reunite them with their parents or a close relative. And as they're figuring out where they fit in the asylum proceedings, if you are in a city that has Bethany Christian Services, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Family Services, a lot of the children end up in these organizations and they are looking for foster families that they could vet who would take in children for temporary periods. So that's one way practically if you're in one of those cities. Another thing is, you know, I'd really encourage you to call your senators right now. There's legislation in the Senate about fixing Dreamer status, about farm workforce and updating that system, about addressing the undocumented, and to tell your senators that you would love to see fixes to this or or I'll send you the link about, you know, holistic immigration reform that folks can, you know, contact their legislators about because it makes a huge difference. So last week, the Biden administration had walked back one of their promises, which was they were going to resettle more refugees. And they had said 62,500, 62,500, because we had hit our historic low this last October. And then they said, oh, just kidding, we're not going to do that. And there was such an outcry from people around the country. And a lot of them were Christians. A lot of them were evangelical Christians. On Friday alone, they put out the statement that they weren't going to raise the ceiling. And then about 5 hours later, they walked it back and said, oh, we will do it in May. Now, it's not done yet. So we still need to put pressure on them. But that's where, you know, contacting the president or your legislators and saying, hey, this is how I expect our country to behave. We need to help folks get on the right side of the law. We need to care for children. We want to be a place for the vulnerable, and they listen when we do that.

Yeah, and if there's one thing that, that our leaders don't like, it's when we contact them. So that's just, that's kind of a—

Thank God you contact them. Do that. Call. I call my senators every week. They do like the feedback. You can be polite and kind. I mean, most of them have 25-year-old staff answering the phone. Be kind to those people because they have the ear of the senator. But also, they don't like bad press. So if you write an opinion piece to your local paper and say, hey, we want to resettle refugees and why aren't we doing it? They don't like that. But that is a really great way for us to exercise our power as a democracy. So I always think of this as I know it's really about prayer, but Jesus tells this parable about the widow pestering the unjust judge for justice, and eventually he relents because she bothers him so much. And how much greater is the Lord? You know, he hears our prayers and he's not begrudging about it. But really, in a democracy, that's a great analogy. Like, if we pester our leaders, they will relent because they want to get reelected. And so writing things to your paper, contacting them, signing things, leaving voice messages on their answering machines. They have to write down every message and what it's about. It makes a huge impact on our political process, and that's how we can pass just laws, right?

Yeah, and I say that kind of jokingly about, about them, you know, not liking you contacting them, but they don't like the bad press is what I mean. But I, but I do want to emphasize, when we do contact them to do be gracious and be Christian in our communication, for sure. I think that really is an important thing whenever we contact them, to be just and true, but also to be Christlike in our attitude and in our ways of approaching them, because everything is about relationship whenever we're having these conversations, because we want these to be long-term things as well. Well, this has really been great. And, you know, speaking of op-eds that were written, maybe this is a good place for us to kind of start winding down our conversation a little bit. But you've talked a couple of times about the Evangelical Immigration Table, which I've really loved hearing about, and I've looked it up over the last couple of days and found out more about it since you've been telling me about it more. And I love reading more about the idea of restitution, and we're definitely going to be putting these links up as you send them to me because I want people to be able to easily find them on our website at voicesinmyheadpodcast.com, or they can go to rickleejames.substack.com, or even voicesinmyhead.substack.com. Any of those places, we'll make sure and have these links available. But speaking of op-eds, I believe it was this past Sunday, at least at the time of our recording, and we're recording on, on the 20th 20th of April today, the former president George W. Bush had a really great op-ed piece in the Washington Post, and it was actually on this topic, and it had to do a lot with what you're talking about today, and it fits in with some of the things, and it really was about a lot that he talked about in his campaign and things that I really liked about him while he was running for president. And I don't know that it always came through when he was president all the time, but I think he tried. I think that's one thing when you're actually in office. I don't know that you can always do everything you want to do. But I think his compassionate conservatism is something that has long been lost now. And I think it's something that he he is desperately calling for a return to, and I think we heard it in this op-ed. I just wondered, did you have a chance to read his op-ed and kind of what he talked about? And if you did, what did you think of it?

I did. Oh, it's so beautiful. And in fact, I'm just— I want to give him a high five. I love it. So he really is trying to change the rhetoric we have around fear. And that, in fact, this is something that he wanted to do in his own presidency. He really pushed for immigration reform. It never happened. I mean, it's a working process with lots of people and not everyone gets on board. But, you know, 20 years later, he's still calling for that. But his— he spent the last 4 years painting pictures of 43 immigrants and telling their stories and talking about this is us in our best as a country, that we are a nation of immigrants. And, you know, using fear, using name-calling to try to scare the electorate is just not the best way forward and that he wants to have a different kind of voice. So he's really encouraging folks to change course and to see immigrants as part of our country, as the best of us, as all of— most of us in terms of our backgrounds. But he is also calling for us to fix our broken immigration system. And so one thing that folks might, if they want to hear him speak. On May 6th at 12:30 PM Eastern Time, he is going to be interviewed by Dr. Russell Moore from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council of the Southern Baptist Convention. And it's an event that is hosted by the National Immigration Forum, the ERLC, and the American Enterprise Institute and the Bush Institute. And so those four organizations came together. And they're just going to have a conversation with President Bush about his new book and about his ideas around immigration reform, in which they do include restitution. So he would love to see us, you know, move from this stalemate that demonizes people to helping folks get on the right side of the law through an earned legalization process. Y'all want to come to that? It's free. It'll be fun with, you know, Uncle Bush to listen to, as I want to call him Uncle or Grandpa Bush, depending on the day. But that should be a really fantastic conversation.

Yeah. Well, that's great. Well, thank you for that information. And it's on May 6th, so we'll have to make sure and tune into that. I love Russell Moore too. He's always got great things to say, and not even when he's just— not just when he's writing, but he's always wonderful to hear interview, and he's great as an interviewer as well. So that'll be a wonderful thing to look forward to. It's gonna be. Well, Kristi, this has been a really great chance to get to talk to you today. I'm so glad to call you a new friend, and I'm grateful for the work that you are doing and the way that you are helping us understand some of these very difficult, sometimes to understand issues that I think a lot of us are really trying to understand and we want to understand better. And especially as Christians, I know that these are issues that are very much at the heart of God. We see them all through the pages of Scripture, and I think that it's very important that we understand them more. So thank you for taking some time today to be able to talk with me here on the Voices in My Head podcast. I just wonder, before we end our conversation today, is there anything that you really wanted to talk about today that we didn't have a chance to touch upon before we end our time together?

Oh my goodness. Wow, we covered so much. I think I probably said it all, but I would say, you know what, if you are in a community and there are immigrants, try to make friends because I am so encouraged by the Lord who reached out and lived among us. He didn't have to do that, but that's our salvation story. And when people come and live in our neighborhoods is, you know, for us as a believer who has experienced the greatest hospitality ever by the Lord who has shown us, you know, adoption into his family, you know, what does it mean for us to model that and reach out to other folks, get to know them? I've probably gotten fatter because of all my immigrant friends because they all want to feed me so much amazing food, especially, oh man, Syrian food is out of this world and Afghan food as well. And ooh, and Iranian food. It's all the food. But, you know, for you to think about, like, who's around me, who's in my community, is there an immigrant church in another language that I could get to know, you know, and say hello? And I think, you know, that would help us as well dispel a lot of the fears we have, is to just engage ourselves with other communities, get to know them.

Well, this has been a great time today. Thank you for being So, so generous with your time today. I'm proud of you and the work that you're doing. Christy Statts, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Such a joy, thank you.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even You can schedule me for a concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.