Tales of a descendant of immigrants from a s******* country
In the middle of the 19th century, my great-great-great-grandfather Phil came to the United States from the country of Ireland.
Today, Ireland is a well-off European nation. But if you’re familiar with Irish history, you may know that the middle of the 19th century was one of the worst times Ireland has ever known. The Great Famine (or the Potato Famine) swept through the country, in part due to a disease that ravaged the potato crops, and in part due to mismanagement from London (all of Ireland was part of the UK at the time). Phil lived in one of the poorest parts of Ireland, County Mayo, a highly rural area where almost everyone depended on the potato as the staple food of their diet. A million Irish died (1 in 8), and a million more emigrated, tens of thousands to America. In the years following, conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Mayo left Catholics like himself in constant danger of destitution.
Among the emigrants, during that time period, was Phil. Here he is on the 1880 census, living with his wife Catherine, in Hickory Township, Pennsylvania, about halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. She was also Ireland-born, about 20 years younger than he was. He (or they, if they came together) no doubt had to make a treacherous journey by ship, go through an examination process, and learn to read, write, and speak proficient English (their hometown was a Gaeltacht, an Irish Gaelic-speaking region). They were, in the truest sense, immigrants from a s***h*** country.
Our President, however, doesn’t seem to want immigrants from such countries. Apparently he would rather have immigrants from already affluent countries (like Norway). Now, before I continue, let me say this is not a political post. This has nothing to do with any of President Trump’s policies or character, except this one statement and the distressing attitude it expresses, one which is shared by millions of Americans. The point of this post is not to talk about the President, but how we as Christians should think when it comes to statements like these from anyone.
And I think some people are missing the point of what exactly is so wrong with what he said.
One is that people focus on the language he used because he compared nations to fecal matter in the most vulgar word English has for it. A few people take issue with him implying that other nations are inferior to the United States. But the reality is, most of the countries he was referring to are not pleasant places to live. They’re ruled by despotic warlords, plagued by civil wars, abject poverty, and disease, drug and cartel violence, and full of corruption. That’s exactly why so many of their citizens want to come here. Many of them would agree. Even, for example, El Salvador’s own government is lobbying that its citizens who migrated over here after a hurricane in 1999 be allowed to remain in the United States. Despite the very unpresidential language, the sentiment of acknowledging that other countries are terrible places to live is not the problem.
Two is that people are calling his statement racist. Now, that very well may have been the intention behind it. There are also ways of interpreting the remark that aren’t racist. I don’t know that he wouldn’t have used that same description for mostly white Moldova (notorious for human trafficking, with a lower GDP per capita than Sudan). But, racist or not, zeroing in on that aspect alone is also, I think, missing the point.
The crux of the issue, I think, is that he was questioning whether we would want people from such places to come here.
Of course we want people from such places to come here. Even simply as Americans, we know that immigrants from other countries, often terrible countries, are how this nation was built. But especially those of us who are American Christians are in a very privileged position to extend lavish charity to the rest of the world. We can literally provide for a child’s daily sustenance overseas for less than most of our cell phone bills. There’s no reason for us to say we don’t want people coming from the worst of places — who need this country the most — to come here. There’s every reason to refuse any temptation to look down on people because they come from a rough place.
We might be reminded of the initial response of the apostle Nathaniel to hearing about Jesus. When Philip told him, “We have found the Messiah,” Nathaniel’s response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Indeed, the Son of God came from terrible poverty in a reputed haven for lowlifes and criminals.
So we have absolutely no excuse for disparaging other people from places like the one the Son of God came from, as though they are somehow less desirable. We have no excuse for not abiding by Paul’s statement in Colossians 3:11, “Here there is no Jew or Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
I’m sure people didn’t appreciate the floods of famished Irish, my 3rd great-grandparents among them, filling the cities. I’m sure there were people asking, “Why do we want people from s*******s like Ireland?” But they went on to produce dozens, probably hundreds, of descendants who were productive members of American society.
And I say it not because it’s a huge, defining part of my family identity. It’s not. I had to do substantial research to even find out who they were. And, I’ve got ancestors from England, Germany, and Hungary too. But I use their story because perhaps it might help us to, when we think of immigrants, think of our own ancestors, who looked like us and share our DNA, coming here in their desperate need. Maybe it’ll help us relate to the situation of modern immigrants a little better. And now, we are so thoroughly entrenched in American society that it’s really hard to picture the lives of our ancestors in a s******* country. In 150 years, the descendants of countless people who come from the world’s scum ponds and sewers today will be able to say the same thing.
So, as Americans and as Christians, let’s never neglect to welcome the stranger or the poor. They are truly valuable to our spiritual and earthly society. These poor are the ones that Jesus said possessed the kingdom of God.
