HIV - The New Age Epidemic

Surya, a tailor from Guntur, is 34 years old and has been living with HIV for a couple of years now. He was tested for HIV without his knowledge or consent and becameaware of his status only after a year when he contracted pneumonia whilevisiting a Catholic hospital in Bangalore. The nuns broke the news whilecounseling him on the treatment regimen he now had to follow. I can only imaginewhat he must have felt at that time when his life irrevocably changed – as ifsuddenly possessed of a sharp fault-line; between the “then” and “now” and deepenough to swallow him into a darkness where even the light of life could nottouch him there.

After his diagnosis, Surya became possessed of only one thought – to pursuethe trail of a medicine that would make him well. After visiting a couple ofhospitals and NGOs, he was told by an NGO about the Positive Network of hisstate where people like him would not only receive emotional succor but alsoaccess to medication that needed to be taken to keep him healthy. These positivenetworks are a community of people living with HIV. Among their key importantfunctions of advocacy, networking and service delivery, they serve as safeemotional spaces for a people whose belief in their own humanity has been shakenand come here to find meaningful ways to rediscover it.

By his own confession, Surya’s sole preoccupation was acquiring his medicationwhen he became a member of the network. Since he hailed from a district outsideBangalore, he was asked to get involved in the different activities of thepositive network in his district, which he did. Carrying his preoccupation withhim, Surya attends a district network meeting on his first day and beyond allexpectations is elected as President of the network! This, for a man who’s onlythought was to lay hands on a few strips of powder; unbeknownst to him thehealing process that would change his life had already begun.Surya begins his work as President in earnest, not only liaising with otherNGOs working in the field of HIV but also attending meetings and counseling hispeers and their families whenever he was needed to do so.

Throughout all thistime, Surya had not disclosed his positive status to his family or relatives.The only folk who did know were his peers in the positive network. But being 34years old and like most Indian families, a search for a suitable bride for himbegan. A choice was made and the girl was Chitra, a 27 year old who worked in agarment shop in the same place where Surya lived. The couple grew to like eachother fairly quickly and spent many hours in each other’s company after work.One the surface of things, everything was going smoothly; a couple were courtingand would soon be married with the consent of both their families.

The hidden reality was another story; they were hanging on to each other by a very finethread. Surya was HIV positive and no oneknew; Chitra was sero-negative (she does not have the virus) but Surya hadfallen deeply in love with her. The thought of his honest disclosure and herleaving him was a risk he did not have the strength to take.Time moved along and their love blossomed and, I would assume, so did theirmarriage plans. But still, he could not bring it upon himself to tell her. Oneday, a lady whose husband was admitted in the hospital with an opportunisticinfection (an allied illness that affects positive people because of a depletedimmune system) asks Surya to visit her husband and counsel him. Thisconversation takes place in front of Chitra and Surya does the unthinkable; hetakes her along to the hospital as well.

During the closing hours of the evening, Surya and Chitra returned from thehospital and while traveling had a conversation that would change the way theylooked at love and life forever. (Though much of what Surya shared was lost intranslation – here is the gist of it…)“So this is the kind of work your network is involved in, counseling andtreatment of people living with HIV?” asks Chitra.“Yes, for the most part.” replies Surya“So does this man have the virus in his blood?”“Yes… yes he does. There is a long pause in their conversation.Then Chitra asks the question (softly) – “Do you have HIV?”Surya exhales deeply and replies – “Yes I too have HIV.”“Were you ever planning to tell me?”“I could not find the words to tell you so I thought I could convey it you byallowing you to observe my work and through what I spoke to the couple thisafternoon at the hospital.”“Why has it taken so long for your family to find a suitable girl formarriage?” asks Chitra.“I kept putting it off and discouraging them as I have HIV and besides I havenot told them about my status yet.”Another pause.“Do you still want to marry me…now that I have told you everything?”

Surya asks Chitra knowing what comes next might sift him like chaff in the swelteringwind and he will lose her forever.“Yes.” She replies softly. “I will marry you because I love you and it hasnothing to do with you having HIV.”At this point, to those of us hearing him tell his story, we were tempted tothink the story had one of those ‘happy-ever-after’ endings. In fact, in thefollowing months prior to and after their marriage, all hell broke loose.The network which Surya was a part of accused him of duplicity and that he wasdeceiving a girl into marriage without disclosing the truth about his status. Helost his candidature as President because of it. Some others even went to theextreme of complaining to the Lawyer’s Collective about him over this issue.

Quite remarkable was the reaction of the local NGO. They went a step further andgave real-life satire another dimension. Two women of that NGO invited Chitrafor tea at a local tea stall and began “counseling” her on the folly of herdecision and their advice kept swinging between conjuring up visions ofimpending doom and begging her to reconsider her position, after all she was agirl who did not have the virus and had her whole life ahead of her but wasinstead wasting it by marrying a man who had already spent his. At one point oneof them lost their composure and blurted out – “He may not live for even threemore years since his diagnosis! I urge you toreconsider!”Chitra’s reply to that hollow exclamation is a telling testimony of the powerof love to heal all wounds – “Even if he were to live for just three minutesafter our wedding ceremony, I will still marry him.”

By this time, Surya’s voice is choked-up and we all had lumps in our throats.You could hear a pin drop as we sat wide-eyed in a circle watching this mannarrating the story of his life. My own heart was in a semi-state of maddeninggrief and ecstatic joy. We all gathered around him after the meeting and thenext day we even got to meet his wife, Chitra. A doe-eyed soft spoken wisp of agirl whose face had an ethereal grace; not of this world! I asked her, quitefoolishly, how she had attained such maturity at such a young age and she saidthat working in the garment shop made her interact with customers from all walksof life and that every face had a story to tell and a life that had anexperience to learn from.

With more than a billion people in India, Surya’s story is obviously just one more story of human suffering in the midst of one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world since the 1980s and a robust Information Technology industry that is projected to earn about US $ 50 billion by 2008, India is a country of striking contrasts. With more than a quarter of the population living below poverty line, making the numbers in absolute terms (2002) living below the poverty line, the country has the highest concentration of poverty anywhere in the world. The country accounts for 40 per cent of the world's poor and its social indicators are still poor by most measures of human development.

India is facing an accelerating threat from HIV, with some states such as Andhra Pradesh already experiencing a cross-over into the general population from high-risk groups and Surya the tailor is just one of them. Current estimates of the number of individuals infected range from four million to eight million, expected to rise to 15 million in the coming decade. HIV/AIDS greatly impacts the social fabric of Indian society.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic's evolution in sub-Saharan Africa may possibly be repeated in India. Numbers and projections in these African countries are being widely used as a guide to the progression of the pandemic in India. As a result of current numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS at the present sere-prevalence rate, India is expected to become the next epicentre of the AIDS crisis, raising concerns about preparedness for a scenario as dire as in sub Saharan Africa.

India is in the stage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that many African countries were in a decade ago. The spread of HIV within the country is as diverse as the societal patterns between its different regions, states and metropolitan areas. In fact, India's epidemic is made up of a number of epidemics, and in some places they occur within the same state. The epidemics vary from states with mainly heterosexual transmission of HIV, to some states where injecting drug use is the main route of HIV transmission. Both tracking the epidemic and implementing effective programs poses a serious challenge to the authorities and communities in India. It would be easy to underestimate the challenge of HIV/AIDS in India. India has a large population and population density, low literacy levels, consequent low levels of awareness and low status of women. HIV/AIDS is one of the most challenging public health problems ever faced by the country.

In these African countries, alarming setbacks are evident in several key indicators such as life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality rates, and availability of skilled labour, child labour, school dropout rates, sexual exploitation of children and youth, agricultural and industrial production and the number of families in poverty. These adverse developments have resulted in enormous demographic pressures in many developing countries, decreasing prospects for healthy meaningful lives for millions. This is especially worrisome in a country like India where more than half of the population, about 600 million, is below the age of 24.

In India, as elsewhere, AIDS is perceived as a disease of "others" - of people living on the margins of society, whose lifestyles are considered 'perverted' and 'sinful'. Discrimination, stigmatization and denial are the outcomes of such values, affecting life in families, communities, workplaces, schools and health care settings. Because of HIV/AIDS related discrimination, appropriate policies and models of good practice remain underdeveloped. People living with HIV and AIDS continue to be burdened by poor care and inadequate services, whilst those with the power to help do little to make the situation better. In India the social reactions to people with AIDS have been overwhelmingly negative.

The health care sector has generally been the most conspicuous context for HIV/AIDS related discrimination, stigma and denial. Negative attitudes from health care staff have generated anxiety and fear among many people living with HIV and AIDS. As a result, many keep their status secret, fearing still worse treatment from others. It is not surprising that among a majority of HIV positive people, AIDS-related fear and anxiety, and at times denial of their HIV status, can be traced to traumatic experiences in health care settings.

Other examples of discrimination are children of HIV-positive parents, whether positive or negative themselves, being denied the right to go to school or being separated from other children. Whilst women are often blamed by their parents and in-laws for infecting their husbands, or for not controlling their partners' urges to have sex with other women. People in marginalized groups such as female sex workers, hijras (transgender people) and gay men, are often stigmatized on the grounds not only of their HIV status but also because of their deviated lifestyles. Stigma and misconceptions, coupled with complicated social norms and conservative attitudes toward sex, make it difficult for politicians and policymakers to get beyond taboos when responding to the epidemic. For example, prostitution is illegal yet widespread. Contrary to the belief of many Indians, homosexuality, even among married men, is quite common, even though it is also illegal.

More importantly, those involved often do not consider that some common instances of sex between men are homosexual acts. In a society where dating and sexual relations before prearranged marriages are generally not allowed, such acts include teenage males’ sexual experimentation with other boys before marriage and sexual encounters between truckers and their young assistants. Combating social taboos will require political leaders to speak out in public forums.

The low status of women and girls make them vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence, discrimination and HIV infection because their ability to negotiate safe sex or abstinence becomes even more limited during times of insecurity and strife. The low status of women is also accelerating the spread of the disease. Despite an impressive array of female leaders in government and civil society, most ordinary Indian women have very little say in the daily affairs of their households. The proportion of women in the population is one of the lowest in the world: 933 women to every 1,000 men. (United Nations Development Program, “Human Development Indicators 2004”)

In a society in which women feel vulnerable and lack a strong voice even in
matters of their own health, they are less likely to protect themselves from infected husbands who contract the disease from sex workers because insisting on prophylactics often results in accusations of infidelity or in physical abuse. Moreover, fear of retribution by their families and friends prevents many afflicted with the disease from coming forward for testing and treatment. Discussions about sex remain off-limits in most Indian households and even in elite private schools in large cities such as New Delhi. AIDS is often seen as a disease restricted to a marginal, morally suspect population, people who “brought it on themselves,” making it difficult for India to respond effectively through strong public awareness messages because they are deemed too controversial.

The scope and complexity of challenges and threats to the well being of orphaned children are staggering: Social exclusion and extreme economic uncertainty, illiteracy, malnutrition, illness, exploitation of their labor, and physical and sexual abuse. These risks are especially high for children orphaned by AIDS. Their communities often shun them; they are not protected under local laws, and may be denied their property rights and rights to inheritance.

Those orphans who cannot be taken in by relatives or by their communities will become street children. These children have to fight to survive, they are at a greater risk to contract HIV; indeed, orphanhood is a factor in continuing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Young girls who are orphaned often turn to prostitution to survive, putting their lives in more danger. The impacts of the AIDS crisis have not begun to emerge fully in India, and AIDS-related orphans are not yet occurring on a large scale. Yet, India has the largest number of AIDS orphans of any country in the world. This number is expected to more than double in five years, and the proportion of orphaned children will remain exceptionally high until 2020 or 2030. Given the long incubation period between infection and the onset of symptoms, the epidemic's impact will linger for decades even if the rate of new infections is brought under control.

Overt intra-state conflicts are to be seen at present in the four north-eastern states of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and Tripura. The remaining three states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh do not at present display overt and active conflict but were historically part of the conflict scenario in the region. For reasons of geography, demography, ethnicity and politics, they share the impact of conflict in the other four states in various ways, including by being transit routes for the militant groups. Poverty, inequality, perceived injustice and so on are among the causes of conflict. Regional disparity, identity and ethnicity issues are also dominant in the region. In mainland India, there are often conflicts based on various factors and causes such as religious, caste, class, linguistic, regional and other differences.

HIV infections among IDUs first appeared in Manipur. Injecting drug use is also a major problem in urban areas such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai. In India drugs are often used in open public places such as the roadside, parks, playgrounds and market complexes. Although India does not appear to have a widespread culture of professional injectors or 'street doctors', as in some Asian countries, there do appear to be shooting galleries where IDUs come to inject. Generally, syringes and needles are purchased from pharmacies without any need for prescriptions, and although they are regarded as inexpensive many drug users tend to focus on buying the drug rather than purchasing new injecting equipment. The sharing of equipment among India's IDUs is widespread. Recent data indicate that most IDUs had at some stage shared their needle and syringe. The majority of drug users in India are male.

However, use of drug treatment data may underestimate the number of female drug users, with women addicts being predominately a hidden population. In the northeast of India, there are increasing numbers of young widows of addicts, many who are HIV-positive as a result of having been infected by their husbands. With the reported increase of HIV infection among wives and children of IDUs, this is highlighting the crucial need to reach the sex partners of IDUs with prevention, education, care and support services. There is no government policy for harm reduction, leading to a lack of coordination in designing and implementing interventions. Some states, such as Manipur, have adopted their own harm reduction policies and consider that: "Harm reduction is the urgent, practicable and feasible HIV prevention method among Injecting Drug Users and their sex partners."

Migration of the economically productive sections of the population is a common phenomenon all over India. According to the 1993 National Sample Survey in India 24.7% had migrated within India, to neighbouring countries or overseas. Applying this percentage to the mid 2003 population, about 264 million Indians are mobile. Migrants include the following-
§ permanent and seasonal labour migrants within the country
§ those entering and leaving India for work-related reasons
§ people dislocated by drought, floods, or other disasters
§ people dislocated by conflict
§ refugees seeking asylum in India
§ transport workers
§ traders/vendors
§ hotel and tourism workers
§ tourists (e.g., temple tourists)
§ prisoners
§ military personnel
§ sex workers
§ trafficked persons
§ MSM

Migration per se is not a risk with regard to HIV/AIDS. It is the situations that are encountered and the sexual behaviour that frequently occurs which increase the vulnerability and risk to HIV/AIDS. Most of the migrants are highly mobile, live in unhygienic conditions in urban slums, have long working hours and are in relative isolation. This may result in fostering casual sexual relations that make them highly vulnerable to STDs and HIV. They have little access to HIV/AIDS information, voluntary counselling and testing services etc. Cultural and language barriers make it even more difficult for them to access services. Returning or visiting migrants, many of whom do not know their status, may infect their wives or other sex partners in the home community.

The association between poverty and HIV/AIDS is a subject much debated by scientists and of deep concern to governments and donor agencies. A common assertion is that poverty has been an important facilitating factor in the spread of the epidemic. Another common assertion is that AIDS morbidity and mortality will be devastating to the economies in those countries most deeply affected by the epidemic.

A related worry is that AIDS morbidity and mortality will (further) impoverish the affected households, and in so doing worsen economic inequality in the society as a whole. The causal linkages between poverty and HIV/AIDS are probably multiple and complex. It is plausible that causation runs in both directions. Poverty may have a direct impact on behaviour underlying the incidence of HIV/AIDS as well as behaviour mediating the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. At the same time, looking at causation in the other direction, the disability, medical expenses, and mortality resulting from the disease may push some households into poverty, depending on their capacity to make adjustments to this shock (which itself may vary with the poverty status of a household). It is also clear that the association has both macro-level and micro-level components. Social scientists and other observers have posited that HIV/AIDS can affect the social and economic well-being of households and individuals through several mechanisms. These include changes in labour market status, changes in productivity in both labour market and non-labour market activities, and changes in the care-giving demands on household members.

Given differences between poor and non-poor households in terms of resources and the consequent capacity to make adjustments and smooth consumption, it is important to know whether an HIV/AIDS shock translates into different outcomes for poor and non-poor households. Household responses of interest would include school enrollment, labour market participation, changes in household living arrangements, and the re-allocation of agricultural and home production responsibilities. Questions such as the following are important to address: Does the employment of other household members adjust in response to disability and death of HIV-infected members? Are children pulled out of school? Is there evidence that households reconfigure themselves in response to an HIV/AIDS shock? Who bears the burden of caring for HIV-infected persons? Who cares for orphans and others dislocated by AIDS mortality? Is there evidence of migration of HIV-infected persons or potential caretakers as a response? What is the impact on consumption and intra-household allocation of resources? Does HIV/AIDS push households into poverty? To what extent do neighbourhood and community factors affect the adjustment process? Is there evidence that the impacts and responses to an HIV/AIDS shock are similar to other shocks, especially other health shocks, or are there unique dimensions to HIV/AIDS shocks?

How does Faith and Religion enter into the global response to HIV and AIDS? Perhaps the most obvious way is through the call issued, from the deep roots of most major faith traditions, for their believers to address the needs of their neighbors who are most vulnerable. The Jewish call to mend the very fabric of our broken world and the Christian call to respond to the needs of the hungry, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned as they would to the needs of Jesus Himself are two excellent examples of the motivational force of religion in the struggle against HIV and AIDS.

Strongly-held values have inspired faith-based organizations to provide some 50% of health care services in many developing countries. Spiritual and social support is a key component of FBOs’ work. The provision of hope, compassion, and acceptance is considered by most as a first level of care that must be offered and underlies all other services.

Because the issues of judgement, sin and punishment have often clouded the thinking and response of the church in dealing with HIV and AIDS , it is instructive and educative to go back to the words of Jesus. The move of Jesus is instructive. If Jesus responded to the message of repentance, we are certainly not above our master (Jn 13.13-14). We need to reflect seriously as Christian leaders, as people of faith, as the church. Do we regard ourselves high up there, as holy? Or do we acknowledge we need a message of repentance? Do we hold that we know it all and people have to learn from us that they must get baptized by us? Or do we believe there are moments when we must come down from the thrones of our power and learn from people who are lower than us? How does our self-understanding play itself out in the age of HIV/Aids? How does it inform our response and our impact?

I suspect that we, the Christian church, and our leaders in this HIV/AIDS era are hindered from hearing the message of salvation. More often than not, we claim that those who are infected and afflicted by HIV/AIDS are being punished by God for their sins. Instead of fighting the epidemic, we begin to fight the victims. Instead of doing away with the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, we add to it. Many of us are not ready to say that we all need to repent, Christians and non-Christians alike, for both are failing to abstain, to be faithful. If Christians are not failing, then how else do we explain the fact that "churches are themselves living with HIV/AIDS," that our church "members fall ill, become incapacitated, die and are buried"?

To say, "Those who are dying of HIV/AIDS are being punished by God; they are paying for their immoral lives," reflects that our understanding that needs to change, for it does not explain the children who are born with HIV/AIDS infection. It does not confront the problem of married women who are married to unfaithful partners. It cannot address the situation of those women and girls who are raped in their homes, on the roads, in their offices and in their churches. It does not account for sex workers, who have to choose between dying of hunger and selling sex. Neither does it address the question of loving mothers, old women in rural areas, or nurses who get infected in the process of caring for the sick. Is God punishing these groups of people? Have they sinned?

That Jesus went around healing the sick signifies that health is God's will for all people. If Jesus did not care to ask his patients, "how did you get your illness?", but restored them to full health, this shows the need to shift our focus and concentrate on the healing of God's people without judgement. We need to operate from a standpoint that holds that health is a God-given right of all people and that HIV/AIDS is an epidemic that violates God's creation and kingdom and therefore cannot be sent by God.

One of the debates that seems to consume energies in the church and its leadership, and, in my opinion, indicates an urgent need to shift our theological focus, is the condom debate. Many argue that condoms promote promiscuity. Other church leaders point out that condoms are not one hundred per cent safe - as if to abstain and to be faithful have proved to be 100 per cent safe in the church or outside. If there are voices in the church leadership that advocate the use of condoms as one of the viable preventative intervention strategies, they are way too few and most of the time they remain silent, perhaps, to facilitate unity amongst the churches.
The sensibilities surrounding the condom debate in the church are connected to what we regard as Christian sexual values of holiness. We are afraid to talk about the condom for, if we do, we might be heard to be promoting sex outside marriage. We are also afraid to advocate condom use among married couples because, if we do, we may be too close to tolerating unfaithfulness among married couples, we may be admitting that unfaithfulness happens amongst married couples. We thus insist on preaching abstinence for the unmarried and faithfulness for the married. Our fears, though, are ungrounded for they seem to imply that unfaithfulness did not happen prior to the condom and HIV/AIDS. Our fears blind us to the fact that unfaithfulness and lack of abstinence does happen today with the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic. We have forgotten that Jesus said, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (Mt 9.13). Our fears and our insistence on abstinence be faithful or die with HIV/Aids, seem dangerously to equate the gospel Christ and Christian salvation with sexual purity. We forget that we are Christians because we are forgiven, not because we are perfect; that we are saved by faith, not by our works. Our debates are, more often than not, naive, for they turn a blind eye to the structures that make abstaining, being faithful and condomizing, not as easy as ABC! When our relationships are based on gender, race and class inequalities, fighting HIV/AIDS is more than just abstaining, being faithful and condomizing.

Like the biblical world, our churches and our societies are still patriarchal. Our societies in still marginalize women from access to property and decision making. Consequently, many women still need to dress like Tamar and to work as sex workers for life to go on. Many who are married or in relationships fear to insist on safe sex lest their providing husbands/partners desert them and leave them without food or shelter. Further, male violence has escalated in the HIV/AIDS era so much that many girls, women and elderly women are raped both in the home and in public. In such a setup, the formula of "be faithful" does not work for many married and unmarried women. The formula of abstinence is defeated by our underlying social ways of distributing power unequally.

Indeed, our churches are, more often than not, the guardians of patriarchal power and other unequal relationships. HIV/AIDS studies, however, show that a major factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS is the powerlessness of women: their incapacity to make decisions about their lives due to the lack of material ownership and decision making powers. (UNAIDS 2000, pp.45-54) That is, as long as men and women are defined as unequal, the control of HIV/AIDS will prove to be a challenge. As long as we are living in families, churches and denominations that promote the inequality of men and women, then we are a significant part of the problem in curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS. This is a factor that calls the church and its leadership to repent from baptizing patriarchal relationship and to struggle with propounding a theology that affirms both men and women as made in God's image and equal before God (Gen 1.27). Jesus set precedence for us when he disregarded patriarchal power and called into being a church that recognizes the equality of men and women (Mk 5.24-43; Mt 15.21-28; Lk 7.36-50; 10.38-42; 18.1-8; Jn 4; 8.1-12; 12.1-8, 19-20; Acts 2.14-21). Wherever gender discrimination leaves women under-educated, under-skilled and unable to gain title to property or other vital resources, it also makes them more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection". Do we really want to uproot HIV/AIDS? If our answer is yes, then we must uproot patriarchy from amongst us. We must develop and implement a theology of gender justice.

Another problem that confronts us in the struggle against HIV/AIDS is that we have failed in our prophetic role. Our response remains bound to the traditions, to the boundaries of our ancient practices. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, unfortunately, requires more from us. It requires that we deliver a new and prophetic message to our churches and society. It requires prophets, who are willing to act, hear and see outside the comfort of tradition. The prophets of the Old Testament were individuals who were socially connected and well informed. A prophet was an individual who was a social analyzer, one who delivered criticism on the prevailing oppressive social structures and called for a new social order. In our efforts to become active prophets in the struggle against HIV/AIDS, we need constantly to scrutinize our theological frames of reference, to be fully informed about the latest best practices on HIV/Aids, and to revisit our policies and the structures of our councils and churches. Do we have an HIV/Aids policy for our employees and for all our programmes? Have we trained our officers and project officers on mainstreaming HIV/Aids in all their development projects? Have we trained our members on gender awareness, gender planning and gender mainstreaming in all the projects and programmes of our councils. If we have answered "No" to the above questions, then we need to start by holding workshops for our own education, for we cannot afford at this point to become blind guides.
Another image that I think of is that of Jesus preaching to the crowds and to the disciples in Matthew 23. He acknowledges that what the Pharisees teach is correct and instructs the disciples to keep their teaching. But he faults the scribes and Pharisees for their practice. Jesus' harsh castigation of the scribes and Pharisees indicates the serious responsibility attached to being spiritual leaders, to being preachers, interpreters, theologians or ordained clergy. The crux of Jesus' unhappiness with their leadership is in verse 23. Here Jesus says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith."

In this age of HIV/Aids, are we sitting responsibly in our seats of power? Can both our teaching and practice be trusted or are we hypocrites? The message I see in this image of Jesus is that all of us who are entrusted with the task of interpreting should responsibly hold to our positions without, as Jesus tells us, neglecting the weightier matters of the law; namely, justice, compassion and faith. These, I believe, should be an integral part of our theology in the fight against HIV/Aids.

I do not know what your answers to these questions are, but I say to you, Let those who have ears hear. I say to you, Let the church know that they cannot afford not to repent, for the kingdom of God is violated in your families, in your congregations, in your denominations and in your societies. I say to you, Let the church know and understand that they must repent from judging the sick, by saying those who contract HIV/AIDS are punished by God for their sins, hence fuelling the stigma of those living or dying of HIV/AIDS. I say to you, Let the church know, understand and repent of the patriarchal structures embedded in your families, in your churches and in your societies which are sentencing millions of women and girls to death by HIV/AIDS. Yes, let the church know and understand that every human breath is sacred to God; every human being is made in God's image - and that we, as church, are in the business of respecting all creation. I repeat, Let the church repent, for we have neglected the weightier matters of justice, compassion and faith (Mt 23.23). Yes, let the church bear fruit worthy of repentance (Mt 3.8) in the struggle against HIV/AIDS

The Christian community in India is a minority group, forming 2-3% of the population. The church in India is at the same time, both vital and growing and both nominal and in decline. Much of organized Christianity is based on people movements over the past 400 years. Disputes over personalities, power and property have led to many divisions, court cases and a widespread disillusionment. The church in India has, however, responded decisively and positively to HIV/AIDS through both individuals and institutions in prevention, treatment, care and support. Following the pattern of caring for leprosy-affected people, a number of Christian hospitals have been treating HIV/AIDS infected patients without any discrimination and this has been acknowledged by national as well as international agencies.

There are innumerable small Christian organizations, in addition to those mentioned above, working through the church at grassroots level. The programs they carry out include awareness programs in slums, youth groups, women’s’ fellowships, schools and among groups that practice risk behaviour (CSWs, MSMs, IDUs, truckers and others). Many of them have introduced value based sexual health education programs into schools, colleges, Sunday Schools etc. Many of these curricula have been developed locally and are relevant to the Indian context. A third area has been in the area of care and support where many of the organizations have opened day care centres, orphanages, women’s’ homes, hospices for PLHA and women and children infected by HIV/AIDS.

A strong component of care in these interventions is home-based care. Tied up to this is the provision of nutritional support, educational support and free medical care. Providing livelihood opportunities has been another area of focus in all or most Christian organizations. These include vocational training in a variety of skills and income generation programs including of provision of interest-free loans. In all these activities, spiritual nurturing has been an important component of all these activity of these organizations and take the form of unconditional love, care, compassion, Bible studies and prayer. Almost all of them have been involved in capacity building and have nurtured volunteers from the church, the staff of other NGOs, CBOs and FBOs. Some organizations, on their own initiative have set up local networks of similar organizations – e.g. Red Ribbon Network in Delhi and the Corinth network in Mumbai. These small organizations have mentioned that they need strengthening in administration and monitoring skills.

There is a final aspect of the role of faith in the global response to HIV and AIDS – that of defending and promoting respect for the human rights of all who are affected by the pandemic. I have no intention of defending the small but vocal minority of religious leaders who have furthered the stigmatization of people living with HIV by claiming that the disease is God’s punishment on those whose lifestyles do not conform to religious teaching and values. I believe that these people of so-called faith are seriously mistaken in their understanding of God and of God’s inter-action with the human family

The Church does not cease to proclaim and defend fundamental human rights, unfortunately still violated in different parts of the world, and works so that the rights of every human person will be recognized [- rights] to life, food, a roof, work, health care, protection of the family, the promotion of social development, and respect of the dignity of man and woman, created in the image of God.

Spirituality and religion can and should exert much positive influence and action on the overall situation of social health in the world. In the case of HIV and AIDS, faith-based principles and values have motivated effective services, have assisted those affected to discover the God-given meaning and values of their lives despite the trauma and suffering wrought by the disease, and have insisted on respect for the human rights of such persons. Our response to the needs of persons with AIDS will be judged to be truly effective when we discover God in them and when they, through their encounter with us, are able to say, “In my pain, fear, and alienation, I have felt by your presence, a God of strength, love, and solidarity.

Aliens in our midst

In a famous passage from the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, the voice of God tells the people “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:32-33) In this passage the Hebrew people are reminded that what goes around comes around. They are reminded that they were once aliens, too. Later, Christian teachings extended this approach to its radical logical conclusion: that we are all same, that our ethnicity and our nationality are not important. We are all human. The early church was confronted with the question of whether to be a Jewish sect or a religion that extended beyond one ethnic group. In what was truly a radical departure, the early church, led by the apostle Paul, came to insist that the gospel was for everyone. It did not matter if you were a Jew or a gentile.

The Bible has a lot to say about aliens and strangers in our midst and how we should be treating them but it does not help matters that the definitions and terminologies are constantly changing and just as one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, so too, one man’s alien is another man’s infiltrator. But it is precisely because of these conflicting definitions and the often violent responses that one encounters if one is on the other side of the line that one needs to unpack the issues of migration, displacement and alienation both with in our borders and outside our borders and then define a Christian response to this. As we will see though the barbed wire at the border makes a lot of difference , the essence of migration and its causes are often the same or similar.

India, itself, with its huge population and diverse language, caste and ethnic complexities is in the throes of a chronic debate about the migrant, the displaced and the infiltrator. We hear a lot of talk about people who are legal and people who are illegal. Our government is writing new laws and talking about building hundreds of miles of new fences on the Bangladesh and Pakistan borders for example to rein in infiltrators. Similarly, from time to time, there is a move to curtail the numbers of people who can live and work in metropolises like Mumbai. Therefore, given the many modes and nuances of migration and the understanding of who exactly are an alien and also the fact that new laws and judgements constantly shift the goalposts, understanding the phenomena is difficult. Understanding this from the perspective of the heart of God is perhaps even more difficult. Given below is a sample of what happens when two groups of people who are “different” clash, because they feel that they are intruding on each other’s space. From there, we will move on to study the roots of migration and displacement from different perspectives and attempt to arrive at a Biblical understanding.

Fifty-six Biharis were murdered in Assam in November 2003, over a week of sustained ethnic violence. In the face of intense competition for the semi-skilled D category of jobs (requiring a minimum of eighth standard education) in the Indian Railways (the single largest employer in the world), targeted bloodshed was the answer. A mere 2,750 vacancies in Assam had attracted 20,000 prospective applicants from Bihar. This prompted the local ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) to call for protection of employment opportunities for the sons-of-the-soil, a long-standing ideology of Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. In the days of violence, 11 wage labourers were also brutally murdered because they hailed from Bihar.
This incident can be interpreted as a symptom of a larger malaise but the question can and should always be asked regarding what is the root of a force so vicious and desperate that it instigates mass murder on ethnic lines? Economically, the root of the problem is ‘jobless growth’ in the Indian economy, that is, despite acceleration in the growth rate in India; the pace of creation of work opportunities has not kept pace with the growing requirement. In the post-liberalisation period, unemployment on a Current Daily Status basis rose from 6.0 percent in 1993-94 to 7.3 percent in 1999-2000 resulting in an additional 27 million job seekers. The most disturbing fact is that of these, 74 percent are in the rural areas and 60 percent among them are educated.

This trend of rising unemployment is compounded by the existence of regional imbalances in development within the country, which have collectively accelerated the phenomenon of migration. All theories of migration concede that migration occurs when the region of origin lacks the opportunities which the destination promises. It is inherently a combination of pull and push factors. Variation in economic development across regions is a primary motive for migration to greener pastures. The rural poor are concentrated in eastern India, and in the rainfall-dependant parts of central and western India, which continue to have low agricultural productivity, while the bulk of the jobs are being created in western and southern India.
The phenomenon of overcrowding appears to be both a cause and a symptom of the exploitative labour process of distress migration. The growing phenomenon of rural-rural migration also has important implications for future generations who would also suffer from the same debilitating lack of opportunities and low productivity. For example, whole families of tribals from the Dang district of South Gujarat migrate for six to eight months to work in the sugar factories in the plains, resulting in their children being unable to enrol in schools.

There is also now a new phenomenon of circulatory migration in South Gujarat. Employers prefer to hire migrant labour, as they are considered to be cheaper and more docile than local labour. Consequently, labourers need to migrate in search of jobs, which they are denied in their native region. This perpetuates a vicious cycle of migration. Also, there often seems to be an inherent specialisation among labourers according to their place of origin, resulting in region and task specific movements. For example, road workers originate from the Panchmahals, quarry workers from Bharauch, cane cutters into South Gujarat from Maharashtra, and rice mill workers from the Jalan district of Rajasthan. These location-specific ‘skills’ however often are inconsequential for unskilled jobs with high content of physical labour. They are nevertheless perpetuated as a justification among employers to hire outstation labour.

These processes of seasonal migration have even developed into semi-formalised systems with the active participation of contractors as middlemen who gather migrant labourers for prospective employers. The seasonal movements are often debt induced as the contractors often provide a wage advance to the migrants. According to the NCRL (National Commission of Rural Labour), there were approximately 10 million seasonal/circular migrants in the rural areas alone in 1999-2000. This includes an estimated 4.5 million inter-state migrants. There were large numbers of migrants in agriculture and plantations, brick kilns, quarries, construction sites and fish processing.

While migration enables workers from underdeveloped regions to find employment, its impacts have been evaluated and the conclusions vary. Some people regard migration as a product of rational economic decision-making. The migrant makes a rational free choice to improve his economic condition by seeking more favourable employment conditions, even if the decision is being taken under distress. Scholars and economists who believe this way are therefore in favour of migration and suggest reducing the cost of migration. They believe that migration in fact ought to be encouraged and all efforts should be made to improve the bargaining power of migrants, improve information and conditions of their work and livelihood.

Also, the reality of migrants at a micro-level ensures that their constant motion and inherent insecurity of employment reduces their ability and inclination to unionise or enhance their bargaining positions for fear of instant dismissal. The policy recommendations of this group of academics would therefore be in favour of strict implementation of programs to reduce regional development imbalances, minimum wage regulation and right to work, for example, employment assurance schemes like the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS).
Irrespective of ideological interpretations of the phenomenon of migration, it is an urgent crisis for the Indian state. The alarming call of political parties to curb migration on ethnic lines is a by-product of the economic distress facing the nation. Hence it is imperative to implement policy options to alleviate the situation for the short and long term.

All of the above looks at the prevalence of migration in India as the root cause of ethic tensions vitiated by economic distress at low level of skill and education. The problem of unemployment is in urgent need of redresses in India. The implications of its unchecked fury were evident in the ethnic violence in Assam. The phenomenon of low productivity due to overcrowding and cyclical unemployment have important implications for future generations in terms of education as it affects their labour market options to a improve their skills and vertical mobility. Therefore it is imperative to protect the right to work in the second most populous nation on the planet.
That leads us to examine next the daunting challenge of unemployment and all it leads to in terms of social and economic unrest. As we all know with restructuring and economic liberalization, many formal sector jobs have been shed. While employment options abound for the core circle of skilled professionals, the periphery of the unskilled and semi-skilled is worsening. Universalisation of programs like the Employment Guarantee Scheme might provide an important measure of relief and long-term growth for the rural economy. However, it must be noted that a decade from now, the problem that the nation will face is educational unemployment for which the Assam incident cited at the beginning of this piece serves as an ugly precursor. In fact, with the expansion of rural education, 8 million children have been taken off the fields in the last decade to join the rural schooling system. The aspirations of these first-generation literates require the construction of creative strategies for mass semi-skilled employment in the near future.

Then there is the phenomenon of brain drain that needs consideration. There was of course a time when people used to worry a lot about the "brain drain" from India. The apprehension was that the Indian state was spending a huge amount of resources to train doctors, engineers and technicians who were then emigrating to other countries and not contributing anything to India's national output. There was talk, even in responsible circles, of closing the doors, while keeping the windows open. Though some economists, even at the height of the debate, pointed to benefits in the form of remittances from Indian workers abroad, in addition to emigration providing a safety valve for frustrated unemployed or underemployed educated workforce, the general public opinion in India was decidedly against the brain drain.

Things have changed much since, particularly for India. In India, despite the so-called brain drain, there is no appreciable shortage of engineers or researchers as yet. The shortage of doctors in villages continues to be a big problem but it is highly doubtful whether stopping migration of highly qualified doctors (who have the necessary expertise for migrating to North America or Europe) would have mitigated this problem. However, to put the matter in its full perspective, there is however a shortage of skilled software professionals keeping in mind the growth of the software industry. As far as he economy is concerned, the huge remittances by Indian professionals, initially by workers from West Asia countries and then increasingly by IT professionals from the US, have largely contributed to solving our decades-old balance of payments problem. The resentment against the brain drain phenomenon has consequently reduced. This may also be partly due to the fact that most families have some relatives working abroad.

The brain drain, the way it has happened, has contributed in other ways too. International migration of professionals, instead of being a permanent brain drain, has, in many cases, resulted in reverse migration of people after training abroad. India has gained from the higher productivity of these workers. This would not have been possible if India did not allow its students/professionals to go abroad for higher studies or training. The Chinese did follow a closed-door policy during the Maoist time and paid the price for it. Now they are trying very hard to make up for the loss.

In recent times, there has also occurred a significant rise in work-related temporary migration from India to provide services in other countries (look at the thousands engineers of TCS working temporarily all over the world). Should this be considered brain drain? India's current advantage in the area of services exports (including software, medical services and R&D) is largely due to our past open-door policy towards higher education abroad. Though some Indian IT professionals decided to stay back in Silicon Valley in the US, they started companies that created a market for software developed in India. In addition, they indirectly contributed by creating a good image about the competence of Indian IT professionals.

Notwithstanding these positive fallouts, even now there is a good deal of talk about how to lessen the damage caused by brain drain. Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, in the 1970s, proposed a brain drain tax which would partially compensate the country of emigration for the education subsidy which these professionals received. The idea of a brain drain tax has not totally vanished from the minds of some policy-makers and academics. Other suggestions floating around include granting, like the rich nations, only time-limited visa which would force the emigrants to go back to their country with their expertise and savings after working for a few years abroad. But, then, in today's increasingly globalised market place, should we try to stop this flow of human resource? If capital can move freely across national boundaries, why not labour?

One argument for stopping labour migration is that the developed countries are allowing only the highly skilled workers to move in. This is increasing the income gap between high- and low-skill workers and consequently worsening the income distribution in countries such as India. By the same token, the disparity in income between high- and low-skill workers in a country like the US should be low as result of migration of cheaper (relative to the US) skilled workers from India to the US. That way global inequality may not necessarily go up as the income of poorer skilled workers from India are moving closer to the income of richer skilled workers in rich countries. In fact, technology has changed in such a way that everywhere the income gap between skilled and unskilled workers is widening. The demand for low-kill workers is going down all over the world. But there the primary blame should be more on the nature of technological progress, rather than migration.

Very recently another new trend has emerged. A global pool of high-skill human resource is emerging and employers in countries at different stages of development are all trying to draw from this global pool. Some regard this as the third phase of globalisation. In the first phase, goods moved globally, in the second stage, capital, and now it is the turn of skilled labour. Moreover, it is no longer restricted to a movement from less developed to developed countries as in the early phase of brain drain. Quite a few of the established professionals are now moving from countries such as the US to take up jobs in India.

This is due to a number of factors. One, the compensation package offered to these people (when considered in terms of the standard of living they can buy in India) is better in India, compared to the US or Europe. In any case, the emergence of a global culture and the ease of international travel and communication have hugely reduced the role of the residency factor in a person's life. Second, some of these professionals feel that they will be able to make better use of their expertise and contribute more in newly-emerging economies such as India. An example: New start-up low-cost airlines in India are hiring professionals from abroad who have experience in running such a business in other countries.

Three, as more and more companies are going global, often by acquiring production facilities in other countries, employing local managers and professionals to run the ongoing facilities have certain advantages. Even Japanese and Korean companies, who so far stuck to their age-old practice of having only Japanese or Korean CEOs to head their subsidiaries abroad, are now changing in response to the new global trend. Transnational companies want to employ workers from many different cultures as an essential ingredient for successful global operations. To top it all, even entry-level engineers from countries such as Australia have started to take up jobs in India, as the job situation is becoming increasingly tight in their own countries. What is still now just a trickle may increase significantly in volume over time.

Finally, do not forget that even migration of world-class academics or scientists from India is not a loss as it has led to greater contribution to the global pool of knowledge from which India has also benefited, along with other countries. For example, the work by Amartya Sen or Jagdish Bhagwati on Indian economy conducted abroad has advanced the understanding of Indian economy more than much of the work done by Indian economists in India. Then, should we bother about brain drain when the flow of brain is moving in all directions in today's global economy?

Why should Christians be concerned? Coming back to scripture, Throughout the Old and New Testament, we are commanded time and again to be welcoming of and serve the needs of the stranger. There is no question about God’s expectations of us. In the earliest Hebrew books of the Old Testament, we hear the prophets teaching the Israelites that the test of their society would be how well the widows, the orphans, and the aliens fared among them. This theme carries on throughout the Scriptures all the way through to Luke’s Gospel story of the Good Samaritan and Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus tells us that in the final judgment, we will be asked if we welcomed Him, in the form of the stranger.In Genesis, we learn that Abraham and Sarah provided hospitality to three strangers from another land and that this response became a paradigm for the treatment of strangers by Abraham’s descendents. We see the children of Jacob become forced migrants, with Joseph being sold into slavery. The enslavement of the Chosen People by the Egyptians and then the liberation by God led directly to the commandments regarding strangers. “You shall treat the stranger no differently than the natives born among you, have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Lv19:33-34)Think of these passages when you consider today’s slaves. The migrants and the aliens and the displaced and the refugees and all the others we encounter today… well the Bible may not use that term to refer to them but that is what it is talking about. If so, then what are we doing as individuals and as Church to liberate these poor people of God? For the Israelites, not only were they commanded to care for the stranger, but they structured the welcome and care of aliens into their gleaning and tithing laws. (Lv 19:9-10; Dt 14:28-29)

One of the most satisfying as also one of the most painful initiatives I have been involved in my long NGO career happened when the Taliban were pretty well entrenched in Afghanistan, 9/11 was a long way away and there were swathes of Afghan refugees in India – mostly educated, middle class and secular minded Afghans reduced to penury by the harsh living conditions imposed by the Taliban. India was not the permanent dwelling place most had in my mind but it was the place of halt for the secular Afghan, escaping from Afghanistan and Taliban friendly Pakistan as they got organized for putting in asylum applications to various Western embassies.

It was a difficult life they lived in the mean while in refugee ghettos, creating a cocooned refugee sub culture of their own. Even as they did the rounds of the UNHCR offices to collect their stipends and the embassy lawns in Chanakya puri with their visa applications, they had carved out a living space of their own which can only imagined. A former army major selling second cameras in the Sunday chor bazaar behind Red Fort, doctors whose qualifications were not recognized in India practicising clandestinely among their own, a woman lawyer rendered unemployed working in an illegal Afghan bakery , their frames and despair filled faces still flash across my mind.

In small, window less rooms they lived and from these rooms their children went to school. Exiled from their homeland and with no clarity as if the children would ever see their watan, the mother land, the parents drew small pictures of hills and deserts on tattered pieces of paper hung up on peeling walls. There seemed to be no money for maps and atlases

Occasionally some one would get a visa but it was not always a cause for celebration. The entire family of course would apply for a visa, but it wasn’t usually the entire family that got the visa. One or the other did- some times the father, occasionally the mother, now and then the oldest child. The joy of it all was crowded out by the thought that the family would separate – two or even three generations that had always lived together – laughed and cried together were about to be separated … possibly for ever. It was not unusual for a family to be separated in another way. Most families had applied for asylum in more than one country. It was not unheard of for spouses to get asylum in different countries as faceless bureaucracies processed papers according to their own legalistic criteria. Aged grand parents would stay back with younger children and babies as other family members scattered around the globe leaving behind emotionally scarred families. Then 9/11 happened and of course, shortly thereafter allied troops poured into Afghanistan and the Taliban dislodged from power. Hamid Karzai, a liberal and a friend of India was brought to power. The refugees trekked back to liberated Afghanistan and the camps first shrunk and then disappeared.

Our project Umeed, conceived in hopelessness was no longer necessary with hope flourishing all around. Many people as they went back post cards sent greeting cards and even phoned or emailed us thanking Umeed for that it had done for them in some of the darkest hours of their lives. It was a time of great fulfilment, knowing that families would be united again, there would be proper careers for the lawyers and the judges and the teachers, that children could see their own deserts and mountains and not merely see two dimensional pictures on limp walls. It was a euphoric moment of joy. But in the initial days of the project and indeed all through its very existence, we had to be ready to answer many questions – why were we doing this, what was the purpose, what was the reason? Didn’t India, have many problems of its own that needed our time and energy? Of course it had. Specifically then, we had to ask ourself the following questions:

What is the Bible's attitude to foreigners in general?
What is the Bible's attitude to immigrants and refugees in particular?
What do the gospel and the kingdom have to say to our subject?

A superficial reading of the Old Testament could leave the impression that God's purposes are narrowly nationalistic. His covenant with Abraham, and promise to bless his descendants, and his election, deliverance and rule over Israel suggest that the nations are not his concern - except negatively, in the conquest of the promised land when he decrees their annihilation. Indeed, Israel is told not to be like other nations and the prophets are littered with frightening oracles against the nations of divine judgement of the utmost severity. After the exile, Ezra instructed those who returned to divorce their foreign wives. In fact, throughout her history Israel is to maintain a safe distance vis-à-vis the nations in order to protect her own cohesiveness in terms of ethnicity, language, territory, religion and political institutions. So are we left with a negative view of the nations in the Bible? Does the Bible unwittingly encourage xenophobia?

Not at all. The overall theme of the Bible's teaching is summed up in Exodus 22:21, "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." Reminding the people of biblical Israel that they had been slaves in Egypt, the Hebrews are enjoined to treat aliens, foreigners and sojourners in their midst fairly and with respect. Leviticus 19:34 echoes and expands upon the Exodus teaching. "The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God." From the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews we hear, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares."

Why is the matter of the immigrant or the "foreigner who resides among you" such a concern of the Jewish and Christian faiths and what bearing does it have on the current immigration debate in our country? As for the first question, the answer is that God didn't want the ancient Hebrews to forget where they had come from, or how they had gotten where they were, namely, the Promised Land. They had come from slavery in Egypt. They knew what it was like to be exploited and taken advantage of.

It was for this reason that biblical law is remarkably generous towards and supportive of the strangers in Israel. It is acknowledged that such people have no power, and are frequently poor and needy. Yet they are accorded fair and hospitable treatment. Whether assimilating or not, strangers were protected from abuse, especially abuse stemming from patriarchal authority, protected from unfair treatment when employed by Israelites, and protected from unfair treatment in the courts, including justice at the city gate. The example of God is also cited as a motivation, as in Deuteronomy 10:17-19: 'The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, he shows no partiality, and loves the alien.'

Much after these scriptures were written, in 586 BC Israel as a nation, or strictly speaking the southern kingdom of Judah, was exiled to Babylon. They were not so much refugees, but even worse, deportees; not chased out, but led out or shipped out. The forlorn Israelites sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept (Ps 137:1), with Jerusalem in ruins and their infants slaughtered. Predicted in Leviticus (26:33) and Deuteronomy (28:64; 30:3-4), lamented in the book of Lamentations, and with Ezekiel and Daniel as exilic prophets, the Old Testament gives much space to this catastrophic experience and future generations of Jews lived under its cloud. Even after the Return, not unlike Jews today who continue to shudder at the memory of the Holocaust, its shadow remains. With only a little overstatement, we could characterise the Old Testament as a book about refugees.

When we come to the New Testament, the obvious question to seek to answer is, what would Jesus do? What did Jesus do is more pressing and fundamental. In short, he did two things. Jesus broke into history with a kingdom from heaven which encompassed those Israel conventionally thought to be its least likely subjects, namely, the poor, women, children, the socially excluded (prostitutes, lepers) and eventually, gentile sinners like us. Jesus redefined the people of God. 'Many who are first will be last, and the last first' (Mark 10:31; Matt 19:30; Luke 13:30; cf. 20:8), sums up the breathtakingly radical reversal that stamped his work and agenda.
The second thing that Jesus did was to insist that those who acknowledge him as the Christ should care for the poor and the powerless. Each of the four Gospels captures a distinctive feature of the moral vision of Jesus for his people. In Matthew Jesus calls for a surpassing righteousness; Mark sees him challenging us to a heroic discipleship; John focuses on the common life of love Christians are to provide for each other

The example and teaching of Jesus impresses on us a compassionate response to refugees, strangers and the marginalised. We know the heart of the stranger, for each one of us were once lost and estranged from God. The same logic applies to us as it did to Israel. Christians of all people can empathise with foreign strangers. Once we were strangers to God, then having experienced his welcome, we become strangers in another sense - strangers to the world in which we remain. The Christian response of welcoming the stranger, in full knowledge of the attendant risks, is not based on Christian niceness. Rather, it is grounded in God's love for all, even (or especially) for the outcast and the stranger.

Therefore according to our scriptures, immigration is not simply a sociological fact but also a theological event. God revealed his covenant to his people as they were in the process of immigrating. This Covenant was a gift and a responsibility; it reflected God's goodness to them but also called them to respond to newcomers in the same way Yahweh responded to them in their slavery: "So you too must befriend the alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19).

The gospel vision challenges the prevailing consumerist mentality of our culture, which sees life as an endless accumulation of goods, even while the rest of the world suffers. Jesus in his life and ministry went beyond borders of all sorts -- clean/unclean, saintly/sinful and rich/poor -- including those defined by the authorities of his own day. In doing so, he called into being a community of magnanimity and generosity that would reflect God's unlimited love for all people. He called people "blest" not when they have received the most but when they have shared the most and needed the least. Christians, as such, distinguish themselves not by the quantity of their possessions but the quality of the heart, which expresses itself in service. Above all, this quality of the heart is measured by the extent to which one loves the least significant among us.

Many immigrants sit at our doors like Lazarus, hoping for scraps to fall from our bountiful table of prosperity. They are seeking not simply charity but justice. In Matthew, Jesus says, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." The corollaries to the immigrant experience are striking. Hungry in their homelands, thirsty in the treacherous deserts they cross, naked after being robbed at gunpoint by bandit gangs, sick in the hospitals from heat-related illnesses, imprisoned in immigration detention centres and, finally, if they make it across, estranged in a new land, they bear many of the marks of the crucified Christ in our world today