Christian Engagement on Immigration and Integration

This article was first published in our recent Social Issues Bulletin – Issue 60, which is available to download here.

Out of control

The current Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmoud, spoke in October of the loss of control of our borders.  She said: “Far too many have been able to enter this country and disappear into the black economy.”¹ She argued: “work begins at our borders where we must restore order and control … Unless we have control of our borders, and until we can decide who comes in and who must leave, we will never be the open, tolerant, and generous country I know we all believe in.”²

Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote in September: “There is no doubt that for years, Left-wing parties, including my own, did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration. It has been too easy for people to enter the country, work in the shadow economy and remain illegally. We must be absolutely clear that tackling every aspect of the problem of illegal immigration is essential.”³ He continued: “Equally, the belief that uncontrolled legal migration was nothing but good news for an economy should never have been accepted on the Left. It is not compassionate Left-wing politics to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages. The huge increase in immigration that happened under the Conservatives was based on a hyper-liberal free-market viewpoint. Labour is clear that there must be no return to that.”⁴

Almost every day there are stories of migrants abusing the system or committing crimes. Sometimes this has caused social unrest, as it did outside the migrant hotel in Epping after one migrant sexually abused a teenager nearby. 

At last year’s general election, both Labour and Conservatives promised to cut immigration in their manifestos, not just Reform. Polling this year show that immigration is now the top issue that voters are concerned about. How should Christians respond to this growing challenge in our nation?

Integration isn’t working

Ten years ago the government commissioned Dame Louise Casey to conduct an independent review into opportunity and integration. I was very struck by her comment that: “none of the 800 or more people that we met, not any of the two hundred plus written submissions to the review, said there wasn’t a problem to solve.”⁵ She writes: “Too many public institutions, national and local, state and non-state, have gone so far to accommodate diversity and freedom of expression that they have ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic.”⁶

She argues: “As a nation we have lost sight of our expectations on integration and lacked confidence in promoting it or challenging behaviours that undermine it.”⁷

At the time I found this report encouraging. As Casey herself puts it: “I am convinced that it is only by fully acknowledging what is happening that we can set about resolving these problems and eventually relieve this pressure.”⁸

Her report appeared to be the first step towards that.

Earlier that year, Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, wrote in The Sunday Times: “For centuries we have managed to absorb people of many different backgrounds; Britain has changed them and they have changed us, both almost always for the better. But the integration of Muslims will probably be the hardest task we’ve ever faced. It will mean abandoning the milk-and-water multiculturalism still so beloved of many, and adopting a far more muscular approach to integration.”⁹

Both Casey and Phillips singled out Muslims as a special case. They are right to do so. We do not have immigrants from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Nigeria, South Korea or a host of other countries setting up a parallel legal system (sharia courts), or seeking to restrict free speech about their beliefs (by defining Islamophobia), or advocating polygamy, or supporting terrorist organisations (Isis, Hamas), let alone committing acts of terrorism. I am not saying that all or even most Muslims do these things, but it is only Muslim immigrants who are influencing our society in these ways.

That was nine years ago. Today no one will say that the problem has gotten any easier or that any sensible steps have been taken to improve integration. Instead, levels of immigration have increased to levels that almost everyone agrees are unsustainable.

Evangelistic opportunity

Christians can see the immigration of Muslims to Britain as a fantastic evangelistic opportunity. It can be very difficult or even dangerous to be a missionary in an Islamic country so it’s great that they are coming here where we can freely preach the gospel to them! I co-wrote Questions to Ask Your Muslim Friends with Beth Peltola precisely because of this opportunity and in order to empower and equip Christians to have these gospel conversations. We do still (just about) have free speech in this country which means that we can freely preach that Muhammad is a false prophet and that Islam is a false religion. Muslim immigrants are often disillusioned by what they have experienced of Islam in their counties of origin. This is a great opening for the gospel, and many churches are now seeing growing numbers of converts from Islam amongst migrant communities.

The duty to love the stranger

Alongside evangelism is the Christian duty to love your neighbour which, which as Jesus illustrated with the parable of the Good Samaritan, clearly includes immigrants or foreigners. All Christians should show love and compassion to immigrants no matter how they got here or where they are from. Churches too, should seek to be welcoming to immigrants and perhaps offer practical help with navigating the laws of the land or helping with genuine asylum claims. Christian Concern has provided legal help of this nature to Christian converts from Islamic countries where they would be at serious risk of persecution.¹⁰

Immigration policy

The thornier question is what a Christian approach to immigration policy should be. It is important first to differentiate between the duties of Christian individuals, the duties of churches, and the duties of governments. While Christian individuals are called to love their enemies and forgive those who sin against them, governments are called to administer justice and to defend their citizens from external aggressors. While the state can, and should, punish wrongdoers (Rom 13:4), individual Christians and churches should never take justice into their own hands. In a similar fashion, while individual Christians and churches should love and welcome all immigrants we come across, the state can and should seek to limit the numbers and types of people entering the country.

Maintaining borders

It is interesting to note that the Israelites requested permission to pass through Edom in their travels after the Exodus (Num 20:16-21). They respected the border by both asking permission and by turning away when permission was refused. There is evidence that ancient nations at the time constructed forts to control their borders. Border integrity concerns are hardly new.

Having a border is, in fact, a defining characteristic of a nation.  Acts 17:26 implies that it is God himself who sets the “allotted periods and boundaries” of the various nations. And what are borders for, if not to set limits on who may and who may not enter the country?

Israel’s borders are described in remarkable detail in Joshua 13-19. In fact, the word ‘border’ or ‘borders’ occurs 62 times in the ESV translation of the Bible. Even the New Jerusalem has walls and gates (Rev 21:12-14)! These boundaries are important. A government’s primary responsibility is to protect its citizens. This necessarily means limiting who can and cannot cross the border. The government has failed to do this for many years. Christians should join with others in calling for the government to properly control our borders for the good of the country, while at the same time loving, welcoming, evangelising and having compassion for all immigrants in our local communities.

Resident aliens and foreigners

Eminent Egyptologist and Hebrew scholar, James Hoffmeir, argues in The Immigration Crisis that Biblical law distinguishes between resident aliens (those with rights to live in the land) and foreigners who are temporary visitors.¹¹ The word for resident alien is ger, and the most common word for foreigners is nekhar. Where the Israelites are commanded to love the stranger, it is ger that is usually used (Lev 19:34). All citizens had to obey the same law, whatever their origin (Ex 12:49; Lev 18:26; Lev 24:22). This implies that resident aliens have the same legal rights as native-born citizens of Israel. Such rights did not apply, however, to foreigners. Gleaning rights, which might be equivalent to social benefits today, were given to the poor and the resident aliens (Lev 19:9-10) – both of whom had to work quite hard to get them (Ruth 2:7; 17) – but not to foreigners. A resident alien could formally adopt the religion of the Israelites, get circumcised, and participate in the Passover (Ex 12:48).  Foreigners, though, were not permitted to participate (Ex 12:43). Hoffmeier suggests that we can see here the seeds of a policy which distinguishes between legal and illegal immigrants and treats them differently.¹² There is a lot for Christians on both sides of the political spectrum to learn from these Biblical principles.

Capacity

If the government asked you to accommodate an immigrant in your home, you might agree to do so. While being welcoming and hospitable, you would naturally insist that the guest follows some basic rules about how to behave in your home. If you were asked to accommodate ten immigrants, I suspect most readers would argue that they do not have capacity for this. In a similar way, any nation has a finite capacity to absorb immigrants. The House of Commons Library notes that fewer immigrants arrived in the UK in 2024 compared to the record highs of 2022 and 2023 – but even then, 2024 saw 948,000 people migrating into the UK in contrast to the 513,000 emigrating from it.¹³ The use of hotels to accommodate immigrants at considerable expense to the taxpayer betrays the current lack of capacity to handle the vast numbers of immigrants we are currently attempting to absorb. Then there are all the associated costs of education, health care, social care, and policing, with knock on effects for the existing resident population. The combined effect is why the commentators above are in agreement that we need to cut today’s excessive levels of immigration.

Conclusion

Everyone, it seems, agrees that we have a problem with immigration and integration. Politicians and commentators of all stripes are now in agreement that current levels of immigration are unsustainable. Christians can look to the Bible to inform both our individual responses and questions of government policy. The Bible has radical ideas that conform to neither left-wing nor right-wing simplistic ideologies. This is an opportunity for Christians to speak into a debate with compassion and conviction demonstrating the enduring relevance of Biblical principles.

1. Shabana Mahmood, ‘ Mahmood: UK has lost control of its borders’, The Telegraph, 14 October 2025:
   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/14/shabana-mahmood-uk-has-lost-control-of-its-borders/. ↩︎
2. Shabana Mahmood, ‘“Order at Our Borders” – Shabana Mahmood’s First Speech as UK Home Secretary | Labour Conf. | AC1G’, DRM News, 29 September 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOtXn_w_rf0. ↩︎
3. Keir Starmer, ‘The Left ignored immigration fears for too long. It’s time to give control back to communities’, The Telegraph, 25 September 2025: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/25/the-left-ignored-immigration-fears-for-too-long/.  ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Dame Louise Casey, ‘The Casey Review: A review into opportunity and integration’, 5 December 2016: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80c4fded915d74e6230579/The_Casey_Review_Report.pdf, p. 5. ↩︎
6. Ibid., p. 16. ↩︎
7. Ibid., p. 16. ↩︎
8. Ibid., p. 6. ↩︎
9. Trevor Phillips, ‘ What do British Muslims really think?’, The Sunday Times, 10 April 2016: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/my-sons-living-hell-j72t7fppc.  ↩︎
10. ‘Christian woman who fled Islamic persecution overturns asylum decision’, Christian Concern, 28 May 2025:
    https://christianconcern.com/news/christian-woman-who-fled-islamic-persecution-overturns-asylum-decision/. ↩︎
11. James K. Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis (Crossway, 2009), p. 48-52. ↩︎
12. Ibid., p. 52, 57, 84, 89, 91. ↩︎
13. Esme Kirk-Wade and Annalise Murray, ‘Migration statistics’, House of Commons Library, 1 December 2025: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06077/. ↩︎