Michael Stafford on Immigration Crisis

At the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Religion & Ethics" section, Michael Stafford on the border crisis. The money quote:

 Migrants and migration play a central role in the history of our faith and God's unfolding plan for humanity. Jesus Christ was himself a refugee - the Gospel of Matthew tells us that the Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape Herod's terror. Going further back, so too were the patriarchs of Israel - according to the Book of Genesis, famine drove both Abram and Jacob into Egypt. And as people of faith, Christians can say along with Israel that we have lived as strangers in a foreign land, that we have been uprooted and exiled.