ABSTRACT
When refugees and other humanitarian migrants arrive at another country, the receiving country is faced with a set of simple questions: Welcome the humanitarian migrant or close the door? What are the migrant’s rights and responsibilities? What are the receiving state’s responsibilities beyond welcome?
To answer these questions, the receiving country may turn to its values as a nation, its history, and its religious traditions, which are then often codified into laws, procedures, and policies that govern the adjudication of individual cases. All laws, policies, and procedures, however, are implemented within the context of a broader political narrative, which exerts pressures, both overt and covert, on the legal systems implementing relevant laws.
The current, global political narrative about humanitarian migration, and immigration more generally, is dominated by pervasive fear of the outsider and portrayals of migrants as dangerous. That dominant political narrative is fueling efforts to retreat from long-standing traditions of welcome, acceptance, and protection. The time is ripe for a counternarrative to emerge that incorporates teachings from Christian faith traditions and influences policies in favor of welcome and acceptance. This chapter makes the case for such a counternarrative about the law of asylum and refugee protection.
