Nonrefoulement: Responding to Asylum-seekers through the Prism of Subversive Stories: A Study of Three Trials of Innocnece

As a part of a book honoring Dr. André LaCocque, Furthering Interfaith Biblical Scholarship, A Festschrift in Memory of André LaCocque, (Wipf & Stock, 2024), this chapter links biblical scholarship to asylum and refugee law to engage the critical issue of how nation-states respond to the contemporary demands of asylum-seekers. The chapter focuses on Dr. LaCocque’s contention that the biblical narrative calls all who follow it to respond to a daily trial of innocence. This trial challenges individuals, societies, and nation-states to choose to do well or to not do well. The chapter analyzes three trials of innocence, one from the past, one describing how the United States currently conducts hearings under its asylum and refugee law, and a third trial invoked when contemporary movements of refugees challenge liberal democracies with both traditional legal claims based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion and social group or developing claims based on the consequences of climate change or changing cultural mores initiated when asylum-seekers, fleeing persecution, arrive at a nation seeking haven.

The first trial briefly explores the world’s failure to respond to refugees prior to and during World War II. Subsequently, with the advent of the Refugee Convention of 1951 and the United States Refugee Act of 1980, the adopting nations established the second trial as individual asylum-seekers present their cases to determine eligibility for asylum and resettlement. The initial promises of the Convention and the Refuge Act undergo a third trial as increased numbers of asylum-seekers flee conditions unanticipated by the drafters of the Convention including the consequences of climate change and exploitive extractive industries that frequently corrupt governments that repress their citizens.

The chapter culls from Dr. LaCocque’s scholarship that the biblical narrative contains subversive stories within the canon that challenge restrictive policies or rhetoric that brand asylum-seekers as illegal human beings before any adjudication of their asylum status has commenced. The universal claims of humanity raised in Genesis and the subversive stories of Esther, Ruth, Zechariah, and Job rebut the nation-state's claims to build walls against the one seeking refuge. Finally, the chapter offers one pragmatic example of examining the mechanism of the actual asylum trial and argues that the nation-state can do well by establishing an independent immigration court.

Dr. LaCocque’s scholarship provides insight into responding to the 21st Century debate on how to respond to the strangers at our gate (Ruth 1:19). These subversive stories, told and written centuries ago, remain vital as stories of faith and resistance undermining the legal regimes that, in the name of a nation-state’s purported claim of justice, deprive individuals of their humanity by detaining, denying entrance, and deporting individuals without proper procedures, and call for more humanitarian responses. Those who examine biblical scholarship for more hospitable immigration policies frequently delve into the literature that emphasizes the call to welcome the stranger and to treat the stranger as the native (e.g., Leviticus 19:33-34). The subversive stories identified by Dr. LaCocque support that conclusion but add the element of working toward a more just and equitable world that will mitigate harm and eliminate the tragedy of persecution and exploitation that forces humans to flee their native lands.