The Church and the Migrant Crisis

For over a decade, influxes of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border have created a crisis. These trends of migration push us to examine questions of identity, economics, and charity. For the church, there are questions of hospitality and truth telling, especially as the crisis invites hatred, fear, and a disregard for the sanctity of human life and fullness. To help understand the crisis and how the church might respond, we invited longtime Ekklesia Project participants Amy P. Lee and Victor Hinojosa to share their wisdom.

Amy Lee is the co-founder and Executive Director of Jubilee Immigration Advocates (Jubilee), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides free and affordable immigration legal services to low-income, vulnerable immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to Jubilee, Amy worked for 15 years at Bay Area Legal Aid representing limited English proficient immigrants and refugees in their public benefits, domestic violence and immigration matters. She received her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and her law degree from UC Law San Francisco. Amy was born in Hong Kong and raised in Panama.

Dr. Victor J. Hinojosa is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Honors Program at Baylor University where his teaching focuses on the politics of Mexico and Latin America, U.S.-Latin American relations, and migration. He is the author of Domestic Politics and International Narcotics Control (Routledge 2007), among many other publications. With his students, he is the author of the illustrated children's book “A Journey Toward Hope” (published simultaneously in Spanish as Una Jornada Hacia la Esperanza) which tells the story of unaccompanied children who migrate from Central America to the United States.