One afternoon when I worked with the United Methodist Church’s public policy and advocacy agency, I facilitated a two-day seminar examining U.S. immigration policies with a group of retired United Methodist Women (UMW). They had come thousands of miles to Washington, DC, to discern how God was calling them to work toward just immigration policies and system.
I intentionally invited an Asian American Justice Center attorney to talk about their advocacy to improve immigration policies. Too often, media accounts of immigration focus on members of the Latinx community rather than the diversity of people throughout the world. My goal was to ensure that our examination of immigration would encompass this diversity to lessen the scapegoating of any group of people seeking refuge or economic opportunities in the U.S.