Carlos Campo, president of Regent University, told students about his father, who immigrated to the United States from Cuba because someone promised him a job in New York. His father saw America as a land of opportunity, Campo said. Understanding the motives of immigrants is key to understanding the the overall issue, he said.

“For him it was the promise to be somewhere where his art, his dancing, his entertaining could find new definitions,” Campo said of his father.

Cedarville, a Christian college in Ohio, billed the conference as an opportunity to transcend “partisan sound-bytes” and model an “exceptionally high level of civility” during a two-day discussion about an issue officials described as both complicated and important. Their goal was to give students the information they needed to address immigration in a way that exalts Christ.

Speakers at the event came from both the evangelical and liberal perspectives, but they all urged students to have compassion on a group most often vilified.

Shane Claiborne, writer and founder of The Simple Way suggested Christians should consider how their stance on immigration effects the way the world views them.

“We have a little bit of an image crisis,” he said. “And much of it is well deserved. A lot of us who are Christians are more known for what we’re against than what we’re for. We’ve become more known for who we exclude than who we embrace.”

Claiborne said that through Christ, Christians have the power to tear down the walls and to get to know those who have been walled out.

“They have names, they have faces, and they matter to God,” he said.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine, who is known for his liberal politics, said the immigration issue was a test of faith in a world that does not care much about Christian ideas, theology or belief systems.

“This issue of what we do about 12 million people who are caught in a broken system we created, this is a street test for us as Christians,” he said.

Washington cannot solve the immigration issue, Wallis said, insisting politicians were “polarized and paralyzed.”

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, agreed that Christians must exercise compassion, and he advocated an approach that would give legal status to certain illegal immigrants who had been raised in this country, had followed its laws, and who were making positive contributions. This group would include those brought here as children by their illegal parents.

However, he said that one of the unique contributions of the American system was a high regard for the “rule of law.” He told WORLD on Campus, “amnesty is not the answer.” It would be a fundamental violation of fairness to those who have come to the country legally, and who were patiently, diligently, and legally pursuing a path to citizenship to give “blanket amnesty” to those currently illegal. He also said that “border security must be a top priority.”

Other speakers at the conference included Galen Carey, director for Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Matthew Soerens, U.S. church training specialist for World Relief.

@Copyright 2011 WORLD Magazine – used with permission