17 Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.
18 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.
19 When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
20 When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.
21 When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.
22 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.
(Deuteronomy 24:17-22)
In the morning, these are the straightforward statements I read in my Bible. I recognize their original context as God-given directives through Moses to the children of Israel just before entering the Promised Land after forty years of wilderness wanderings. I reflect on the moral principles that still apply today, troubled in my spirit that what seems so clear in Scripture now feels so confusing.
Our city has always been a city of immigrants. We've met men and women from most Latin countries - Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico. Our missionary team is comprised of citizens from the United States and Canada. We've had Australian friends come and live among us for several years. There is an old and recognized Croatian community in Iquique. And the Zofri (free trade zone) draws business owners from Pakistan, India, China, Taiwan, Nepal, and other nations.
Today, however, Iquique is experiencing an immigrant crisis such as it has never seen before. Waves of desperate men, women and children are weaving their way thousands of miles from Venezuela through neighboring countries until reaching Chile by way of Bolivia. We cannot fathom the conditions that drive them to take this risk, nor can we envision the solution to so much need. We can only see the result, which is hundreds of people arriving daily to Iquique and stumbling upon the realization that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The truth is that Chile itself is a nation with great need. There is both rich wealth and and depressing poverty. In part, it was these vast socioeconomic disparities that drove the nation to a social uprising in October 2019 that ended with a decision via national plebiscite to rewrite the country's constitution. Then came 2020 and COVID-19 with its strict constraints and fearfulness which left thousands without work behind closed doors. From May through December, our city of Iquique experienced a full lockdown for 140 days. This was followed by weekend lockdown for 78 days. After only 13 days off any lockdown at year’s end, the city returned to full lockdown on January 4, 2021.
Outside the professional classes, only a select few retained jobs and income throughout the pandemic. Some were laid off with partial pay; but others found themselves suddenly penniless and panicked. A great number of people in Iquique work informally, cleaning homes for a daily salary or selling food and wares on the street. Many work in service industries that were shut down. The inability to leave home meant the inability to earn money to pay rent and put food on the table. Schools shifted to online education, but many families did not have access to multiple computers for multiple children, nor printers and stable internet.
Even more stressful, "home" for hundreds in our city meant one single rented room in a houseful of other rented rooms. Lockdown within four walls will always be a challenge, but when those are four literal walls it creates an entirely oppressive existence taking a heavy mental and psychological toll.
In time, we observed the creativity that characterizes Chile as those who were able adapted to these circumstances. Restaurants added delivery services, with many people borrowing or repurposing motorcycles or bikes to earn income in this fashion. Goods were bought and sold online, although the limits on official permissions to leave home sometimes made acquiring these challenging. Single parent homes continued to be especially taxed as virtual schooling required a parent's presence and even those who might have otherwise found some form of employment, could not do so.
And so it continues until today, but into these circumstances now enters the host of humanity that are the Venezuelan refugees. While Chilean citizens and permanent residents are confined to their homes, busses full of immigrants arrive daily and unload into municipal schools turned into temporary COVID-19 housing. After completing fourteen days of quarantine, these same immigrants are turned out into the streets to apparently fend for themselves. On street corners, mothers huddle with their children while fathers beg for a coin or offer a lollipop in exchange (certain organizations donate bags of lollipops for this purpose to solicit a more positive response.) Beaches which have been declared off limits to Chileans in lockdown have become littered with lives in limbo, often entire families in a little tent they have somehow acquired. Occasionally police intervene to clear them away, but where do they go next?
Iquique's once-welcoming community is in conflict. There are those who continue to show compassion in word and deed, but more and more anger is being expressed as residents of the city feel trapped in a COVID-19 cycle that they attribute to these travelers. The government restrictions which often chafe like a churlish game of chess involving people's lives, lend themselves to increasing frustration against local and national authorities who seem to clamp down on citizens but loosely open their borders to foreigners. Those who have struggled to get by all these months decry the free food and housing authorities provide the immigrants, asking how these funds appeared and why they are not allocated elsewhere. Emotions sizzle and people suffer.
Outside of politics and preferences, what then is our moral responsibility? If it is not to question the "how" someone got here but to quell the desperate needs right in front of us, what does that look like while contained by lockdown? At what point does the call to compassion supersede legal constraints? When physical needs are so intense, how do we meet them but still move beyond to the all-encompassing spiritual need of the soul for Jesus Christ? And if our ability to help tangibly is just a drop in the bucket of vast burdens for so many suffering people, does it make a difference at all?
These are just some of the many questions that cry out for answers as we seek to make sense of our part as God's ambassadors to His image bearers who profoundly need Him. Elsewhere in Deuteronomy it says, " And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt." (10:19) In the New Testament we are urged to "show hospitality to strangers." (Hebrew 13:2) It is easy to read and easy to say, but when at 9:30 PM you are told that a Venezuelan family of five in these days of COVID-19 has crossed the border and been dropped off on a street corner with nowhere to go then what do you do? When two Venezuelan women - one pregnant and having health difficulties - with seven children between them contact FLORECE and claim to have completed quarantine and been relegated to the streets, how do you respond?
These are jarring juxtapositions. The simplicity of Scripture next to the devastation of a nation dispersing its inhabitants; the morality of ministry versus the quandary of quarantine; the crisis and protocols of COVID-19 against the question of personal protection. In addition, the complexity of conscience when working as a team whose positions on all of the above may or may not coincide. It is not simple or easy. We pray, seeking wisdom and harmony and courage and discernment to do what is right. In this dark time of confusion, may the Light of the World be our bright guide!
