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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

GOP presidential candidates beware: Don’t assume evangelicals are anti-immigrant

The State (Letter to the Editor-South Carolina)
By Rev. Robbie McAlister
May 26, 2015

Some assume that the only way for a candidate to win in conservative states is to throw red meat to GOP primary voters in the form of anti-immigration rhetoric and hardline stances. Earlier this month, at the “Freedom Summit” in Greenville, someone actually compared immigrants to rats and roaches. As an evangelical pastor, I plead with candidates to stay away from such strategies.

Recently, I have become involved with the growing evangelical movement to welcome, love, and serve the immigrants in our midst, regardless of legal status. Most large evangelical denominations have urged support for immigrant ministry and common-sense reforms, and several dozen pastors and leaders in the Columbia area recently met to discuss the issue.

The Bible, our ultimate guide, has much to say about immigration. Throughout the Old Testament, God commands his people to “welcome the stranger” in their midst, extending the same protections that citizens enjoy. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to offer hospitality, the Greek word for “love of strangers.” Scripture compels us to see the arrival of immigrants as an opportunity for evangelism and service, and for partnership with the many who are already Christ followers.

Our broken immigration system needs to be addressed. However, most evangelicals reject the false choice between mass deportations on one side or open borders and amnesty on the other. In fact, a recent LifeWay Research poll found that about 70 percent of evangelical Christians in the South support reforms that would include improved border security and a process whereby undocumented immigrants could pay a fine and then eventually earn citizenship. Three times more evangelicals said support for such a policy would make them “more likely to vote for a presidential candidate” than said it would deter their support. It’s no anomaly that candidates who have advocated an earned legalization process for undocumented immigrants have won every S.C. Republican presidential primary since 2000.

My message to the candidates visiting South Carolina would be this: Don’t try to win votes with extreme rhetoric about immigrants or impractical solutions to our nation’s immigration problem. Evangelicals care about immigrants as people, and we want to have an intelligent conversation about how to reform our immigration system in a way that helps our economy, secures our border and provides a way for people to get right with the law.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com



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