Immigrant Life
Blue Blues, Paper clay, Flashe paint on Canvas, 12 x 16, 2019.
Migration is often romanticized as a nomadic journey. The reality of migration and grappling with the new identity as a foreigner is no where close to being romantic. But we trace back to the past, imagining new possibilities of the future and discovering ways to navigate and carve out new paths. (artist: HyeYoon Song)
Migration and Immigration
First Korean immigrant family: Dora Kim Moon (matriarch in center) arrived in Hawaii on January 13, 1903 as part of the 102 Koreans who stepped off the S.S. Gaelic.
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. -Leviticus 19:33-34
The Bible is a story of God and God's people on the move. God who gathers and scatters people continue to move amongst us and calls us to remember and join in God’s reconciling mission.
While some of us came generations ago and still others were forced to come, many of us can also relate to the migration stories in the Bible because we are foreign-born first generation immigrants who make up one-eighth of U.S. residents. We have experienced the trauma and the resilience of being uprooted from one country and transplanted in another.
ReconciliAsian is in the midst of hosting a webinar series about migration and immigration (see speakers below). We are examining what it means to live with and love our neighbors from the margins- examining the Bible related to immigration, how the scripture informs how we are to relate to black lives and their history in America, the impact of health disparities in immigrant communities, and how churches can be agents of peace by becoming sanctuary churches.
How have you embraced your identity as an immigrant, a foreigner the land making a new home? How do you see this identity as a gift and a challenge? How do you relate to challenges facing migrants at the border? Can we be agents of peace to extend and receive hospitality with others in the margins- and in the process, become transformed?
IMMIGRATION & MIGRATION: Living & Loving your neighbors from the margins
In our recent webinar Dr. Sanggon Nam shared with us some interesting facts about immigrant health disparities and addressing health issues in immigrant life.
Making a space in our home for Matthew 25: answering the call for immigration justice
Joe Roos, who has served on the board for ReconciliAsian since the beginning of the organization over seven years ago, recently stepped down from his role as the board chair. We are deeply grateful for his life-long commitment in loving God and his neighbors locally and globally.
Recently, Joe wrote a moving article about how he is responding to the call to welcome strangers by welcoming Pedro, an asylum seeker from Honduras into his home. Joe Roos says, "What Matthew 25, the Movement and the Scripture, was inviting our family to do was to practice radical hospitality in the face of grave injustice to some of the 'least of these sisters and brothers.'”
Read more of Joe's story HERE
This post is part of MC USA’s Immigration Justice: Radical Hospitality Learn, Pray, Join initiative.
