News reports described a “civil war” dividing two factions of Trump supporters last week. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s support for legal visas for highly skilled workers, which the technology sector has long depended upon, put them into conflict with failed congressional candidate Laura Loomer, who decried recipients of such visas as “third-world invaders.” Late last week, President-elect Donald Trump weighed in as a “believer” in the temporary worker program.
Now, another battle over legal immigration looms between those seeking to suspend refugee resettlement indefinitely and conservative Christians who believe the U.S. should be a beacon for those fleeing religious persecution.
Refugees are legal immigrants, defined under a law passed unanimously by the Senate in 1980 as individuals outside their country of origin facing persecution on specific grounds, including religion. This law gives the president authority to set annual refugee admission ceilings. For decades, usually with bipartisan support, the U.S. refugee resettlement program has offered protection to Christians facing persecution worldwide. In 2024, of the roughly 100,000 refugees resettled to the United States, almost 30,000 were Christian refugees from the 50 countries where, according to religious persecution watchdog Open Doors, Christians face the most severe persecution, including Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and Burma.
Churches are central to the resettlement process. Most of the 10 nonprofit organizations partnering with the U.S. State Department to integrate refugees are faith-based, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, where I lead public policy advocacy. Furthermore, a new private sponsorship process, known as Welcome Corps, allows a small group from a church or any other group of Americans to sponsor specific refugee families directly, covering their resettlement costs. For example, at World Relief, the Welcome Corps process has enabled several “Churches of Welcome” to sponsor specific Afghan Christian families who were forced to flee the brutality of the Taliban but still remain in tenuous conditions in Pakistan.
This personal connection to the lives of specific refugees is what makes the refugee resettlement program uniquely important to many conservative Christians. A survey from the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Lifeway Research conducted last year found that more than one-third of all evangelical Christians had personally been involved in a ministry to refugees or other immigrants and 71% believe the U.S. has a moral obligation to receive refugees.
A preelection open letter to Trump that argued “the United States should continue to offer refuge to those fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution, including many who are persecuted for their Christian faith” was signed by leaders of prominent conservative evangelical advocacy organizations such as the Faith & Freedom Coalition, state-based family policy councils such as Iowa’s the Family Leader and the Christian Civic League of Maine, and pastors and leaders in all 50 states.
While evangelical Christians are nearly unanimously supportive of the president-elect’s calls for secure borders, they also agree with his recent statements affirming the importance of legal immigration. For these Christians, a refugee resettlement program offers hope and protection for those persecuted for their faith.
Others within Trump’s coalition, including Loomer, are likely to push for entirely suspending refugee admissions. He’s certainly hearing now, as he did in his first term, both from those who would like him to suspend refugee admissions entirely and indefinitely and those who hope he will hold on to at least some.
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In his first week in office in 2017, Trump temporarily suspended refugee admissions and reduced the annual ceiling to 50,000. However, the order explicitly instructed the State Department “to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution,” reflecting the influence of conservative Christians on his first administration.
Some 120 million people around our world today have fled their homes because of persecution, many of them fleeing because of their faith. As Trump takes office, Christian voters who largely support his policies are praying he will uphold a refugee ceiling of at least 50,000 and ensure that the U.S. continues to be a refuge for those forced to flee persecution.
Matthew Soerens is the vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief and the co-author of Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
