Entertaining Angels Unaware: Welcoming the Immigrant Other

Ondrej & Milina Franka We moved to Vienna, Austria to teach as a part of the Eastern European Bible Institute in January 1991.   EEBI was a theological college for training students from Yugoslavia. While we were in Vienna the Bosnian war started.   We decided in August of 1992 to return to Serbia, but decided to return to Novi Sad, which was the capital of Vojvodina, the northern region of Serbia. We were hosted by the Christian Evangelistic Centre in Backi Petrovac.   The CEC’s director, Dr. Ondrej Franka, extended us a visa to live and work in Serbia at that time. Ondrej and people from the Centre helped to bring humanitarian aid to the “refugees” (Internally Displaced People, IDPs) who were flooding into Serbia from Bosnia and Croatia. Ondrej as an ethnic Slovak and a Baptist had no stake in the war.   His only concern and the concern of his team was to help these refugees to have enough to eat and enough clothing to deal with the winter.   Once I took a...

We lived in Communist Yugoslavia from the fall of 1986 to the spring of 1989. During that time a war was brewing. Slobodan Milosevic was rising to power in Serbia, a republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia had once been the ruling power of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I. The Serbs lusted for hegemony once again. For a decade after Josip Broz Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia from World War II until the 1980s, had died the Union of the Federated Socialist Republics of Yugoslavia had rumbled on, a testimony to his popularity and strength as a leader. But old scores were waiting to be settled. During World War II Croatian Nazis, known as Ustasha, fought against the Allied Forces of the Serbian King. There were brutal acts of violence. In an area where blood feuds were the norm, there were those waiting on both sides after Tito died to settle the scores. When Slovenia, the northern and western most republic of the UFSRY withdrew from the Union, Se...

In my book Entertaining Angels Unawares: Welcoming the Immigrant Other I tell many stories. The point of the stories is on one hand to praise those who selflessly tried to help those who have been either refugees or IDPs. I have been so impressed by some people who though they had little tried to help those who had less. On the other hand I hope to spur us to consider what we can do. I mentioned our mothers, Pat Gottschalk and Sylvia Stuckrath, and how t hey cared for a Vietnamese family who were refugees back in the early 1970s. They taught us to have compassion on refugees. When I was in seminary in the early 1980s I worked with a small ministry called the Russian Emigre Ministry of the Slavic Gospel Association. Slavic Gospel was aimed at Russian speaking people at a time when the Soviet Union and its allies were not open to evangelism. However, President Jimmy Carter’s administration worked a deal with the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to leave Russia. Many ...

       Our mothers, Sylvia Stuckrath, and Pat Gottschalk, who taught us compassion for refugees To those who feel empathy towards refugees the question seems perhaps even ridiculous. They usually answer with something like: “But they have been driven from their homes by war!” which may well be the case. Many people Christian or not feel compassion towards refugees. Seeing the destruction of whole cities, like Aleppo, Syria after the Russian bombing creates compassion, just as pictures of bombarded cities in World War II creat ed compassion. There is a fellow feeling which comes from imagining ourselves in someone else’s place. However, for some of us we cannot imagine ourselves in a refugee’s place. We live in comfortable suburbs in “civilized” towns in democratic countries. Unless someone has served in the military or lived through the destruction of a hurricane, it is hard to imagine what it means to lose everything you own. Learning compassio...

Not everyone fleeing is automatically a "refugee." Refugee is a specific category of people who are fleeing. Many fleeing are not "refugees" per se, but Internally Displaced Persons IDPs. When someone flees war or fighting in his or her own country and doesn't leave the borders of his or her own country that person is an IDP not a refugee. However in some languages like Serbian there is no real distinction. A refugee in Serbian is a n "izbeglica," literally someone who is running from something (war, persecution, etc.) Though technically the people fleeing from Bosnia into Serbia during the Bosnian war were not "refugees," but IDPs, they were called "refugees" in Serbian. Refugees are entitled to UNHCR help while IDPs per se are not. They may receive help only if their own government allows an outside organization like the Red Cross or Red Crescent to intervene. This does not always happen, as in the case of the...

 In 2015 I made a short presentation to show how hard it is to get into the US as an immigrant (refugee). If it was hard in 2015 it's harder now. Trump's administration claims to have made it harder. Aside from that he had stopped all immigration, if COVID hadn't done it anyway. The point of posting this is to help people realize that it never was easy to immigrate to the US. No immigrant since the 1970s has killed anyone in the US. https://www.facebook.com/phil.gottschal…/…/10208582350500166

                                    This is the largest of 22 refugee camps. Many are far less luxurious.

                                       This is what was left after Russian bombing of Aleppo, Syria.

Once we have decided that someone is a safe immigrant and opened our doors to them, what should we do? The US has had a very strict program in place in which immigrants (legal immigrants) have had to be sponsored by a US based charitable agency. These agencies agree to care for immigrants who enter the US. They promise to help with financial costs, as well as with cultural assimilation: finding housing, finding work, helping people learn English , learn to shop in the US, learn to use the bank (and write checks – something hardly known outside English UK US culture), etc. One such organization is HIAS, the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. When I was in seminary in the early 1980s living in the far north side of Chicago, HIAS sponsored many Russian Jewish refugees. A program set up by President Jimmy Carter, but instituted during the Reagan presidency, allowed Jews in the Soviet Union to move generally either to America or Israel, though a few managed to remain in Europ...

- Here's a personal opinion, what do you think? The situation on the Greek island of Lesvos and the refugee camp called Moria has been awful, unbearable. I have friends who are there now, they have been serving these dear people for a year. And I have been praying for several years daily that God would move upon the politicians in Europe to let these people off the island and let them come to us in Germany (like Merkel did 2012-2016), where we have resources to care for them, to rebuild their lives, and we have churches who so gladly take them in and give them help, community and a relationship to Jesus Christ. I have been praying that the EU would choose the path of mercy and that rightist politicians in Hungary, Austria, Italy etc. would cave, would open the borders...I have been praying that God send us another flood of refugees (we want them and we want them in our churches), and I think God is going to do that again. Soon. BUT if it was refugees who themselves started the fire...

To begin with we should distinguish between those who cross borders without permission and those who cross with permission.  In the United States it is alleged that illegal immigrants, people crossing the border without proper permission, enter the country and commit crimes.  Once again I defer to Dr. Daniel Caroll Rodas immigrationmdcr.com and his book, Christians at the border . I want to dispel a myth which has been circulated widely.  It is in some ways merely a confusion, but sometimes one wonders at the continued spreading of this confusion which is in fact easily refuted. When one speaks of immigrants and terrorists to US citizens one often hears the refrain that the 9/11 bombings in New York City, Shanksville, PA and Washington DC were carried out by immigrants.  This is false.  None of the men involved in the bombings were in the US on an immigration visa.  None had gone through the extreme vetting that all immigrants go through. One source has es...

 No apparent solution in sight... migrants in Moria, Lesvos and the other Greek islands... It was announced that Germany and several other European countries will take all the unaccompanied minors (that is anyone under 16 years of age who is in the camp without any other relatives).  At least that is some improvement. https://www.voanews.com/europe/long-term-solutions-sought-migrants-displaced-fires-lesbos-island

 Voice Of America reports: The US Global War on Terror has displaced up to 59 million people. According to the UNHCR there are 79.5 million people displaced in the world.  That would mean that 74% of all displaced people are due to the US Global War on Terror! https://www.voanews.com/usa/report-us-global-war-terror-has-displaced-59-million-people

 The predictable outbreak of COVID has hit the Moria Migrant Detention Centre on the Greek island of Lesvos. The camp has at least 12,500 migrants at present. There is no way to socially distance, nor has there been any adequate medical care or preparation. https://www.ekathimerini.com/256727/article/ekathimerini/news/1000s-flee-fire-at-migrant-camp-on-virus-lockdown-in-greece

Who is an immigrant? Who decides? In my book I have tried to answer this question. Of course, it depends on who you ask. To be an "immigrant" is to have a legally protected status. To be a "migrant" does not. Who decides and how varies from country to country. In any event, when a person arrives at a "migrant detention centre" he or she is interviewed by UNHCR officials. He or she is asked for his or her story and his or her documents, proof of identity. Only after ca reful interviews do the UNCHR officials designate a person a "refugee." A "refugee" has the right to seek asylum in a country other than their country of origin. A "refugee" is not a person seeking "political asylum." A person asking for "political asylum" may seek the right to "immigrate" due to fear of persecution in their home country, for example Christians from Iran. "Migrants" in a detentio...

M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rojas) has a website as well. https://immigrationmdcr.com/ Hispanic Immigration immigrationmdcr.com Hispanic Immigration Hispanic Immigration

Because the topic of immigration is such a large one, I have limited my book to dealing with those who are fleeing violence or war, whether refugees in the strict sense or internally displaced people (IDPs). I do not treat the issue of those who have illegally entered the United States through the southern border with Mexico. An excellent book on that topic is Christians at the Border by M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rojas). M. Daniel Carroll R. is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He is a leading Hispanic Evangelical spokesman. https://www.amazon.com/Christians-Border-Immi…/…/ref=sr_1_1… Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible About this website amazon.com Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible  

Who is an immigrant? Immigrants come from different categories according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The total number of people at risk is almost 80 million (79.5 million). 26 million are refugees, people who have fled their own countries due to war or persecution. 45.7 million are people who have fled their homes and or regions within the borders of their own countries. While the 26 million refugees qualify for help from the UN and other Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), internally displaced people (like Rohinya within Myanmar) may not receive any external help, unless their governments allow the UN, the Red Cross/ Red Crescent and NGOs to do so. https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html

There are now 15,000 migrants in the Moria Detention Centre where according to this article only 2800 can be accommodated. The situation for these migrants with no medical care is horrific. The UNHCR says that the goal is to return about 1/3 of those who seek refuge. These migrants are being enticed with cash payments to leave voluntarily. https://www.infomigrants.net/…/greece-reactivates-voluntary…

           Migrants landing on the Greek island of Lesvos where the Moria Detention Centre is located             source: https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow_style/public/country/image/Grease.jpg?itok=weSuZMF9 I have been working on a book about immigration for the past four years. It has taken a long time to find a publisher, but it will be published by Cascade Books soon, perhaps in November. At present the book has finished copy editing. I have also received a "dummy" of the book cover. This book is both popular and "academic." It is popular since it is aimed primarily at the average Christian. It is directed to US Christians especially, but also contains information and ex periences of Europeans: in Greece, in the Netherlands, in Belgium and Ukraine. The book is meant to help average people get a hold on the issue of immigration and what it means for them. Much has been publ...