Church Serves As Refugee Sanctuary

Nine refugees from Indonesia, who are currently seeking asylum from deportation, have taken refuge in Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale’s church in Highland Park, N.J.

Now living in converted classrooms in Kaper-Dale's church, a Reformed Church in America congregation, these Indonesian refugees had fled religious persecution in their homeland and came to this country several years ago to avoid getting killed.

But they are now in danger of being sent back to Indonesia, where they fear they will be murdered.

“We believe that every human being is created and loved by God,” Kaper-Dale said on Wednesday during a lunch presentation in a conference room at the Grand Rapids, Mich., office of the Christian Reformed Church.

“We believe that it is our Christian responsibility to stand up and speak out any time there is a piece of legislation or a policy that reduces someone to non-human status.”

Kaper-Dale was asked to speak by the CRC’s Office of Social Justice (OSJ) and the Office of Race Relations as part of a week-long effort to educate people in the denominational office on issues related to immigration.

Also this week, the two CRC ministries put up a wall of historic and contemporary photos detailing the process of immigration to the US.

In addition, OSJ and Race Relations are launching this week their Church Between Borders curriculum, a set of educational materials geared to help churches better understand issues related to immigration as well as to teach them what can be done to help change the current system.

The ministries decided to invite Kaper-Dale to talk because he could directly discuss “why this issue is so important … through a real life case happening now to a large group of Indonesian asylum seekers stuck in our broken immigration system,” said Peter VanderMeulen, OSJ’s director.

In a recent interview with USA Today, Kaper-Dale further explained why his church has become a sanctuary.

These refugees have nowhere else to go, he said, other than give themselves over to immigration officials and be deported.

“It is our hope that America can go back to being the sanctuary it used to be for people who came here from around the world seeking relief from religious persecution.”

Since the late 1990s, several hundred Indonesian refugees have settled in New Jersey. A few have been attending Kaper-Dale’s church.

As it turns out, the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. that occurred onSept. 11, 2001 led to authorities cracking down on refugees who came to the US from Muslim-dominated countries such as Indonesia.

This has meant that many Indonesian refugees have been deported and many others have become entangled in paperwork as they seek to be given an official status as an asylum-seeker in the US.

After they arrived, many Indonesian Christians in New Jersey made a deliberate decision to register as refugees, telling the government their names, where they worked, and where they lived, which has made it much easier for immigration officials to locate them as part of the deportation process.

Kaper-Dale’s church is also trying to help these refugees through a pair of bills now sitting before lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

Written with the help of his church, the bills are asking Congress to pass legislation that would “allow certain Indonesian citizens to file a motion to reopen their asylum claims.”

Besides discussing the plight of the Indonesian refugees, Kaper-Dale also touched on issues related to the overall debate going on in the US over how to best address the status of illegal immigrants.

“I want to draw attention to the overall brokenness of the US immigration system and of the need for churches to help seek out ways to address this problem,” said Kaper-Dale.

After his presentation at the lunch, Kaper-Dale said in an interview that some progress is being made to allow immigrants to stay in the US.

For instance, he said, a policy announced in June by President Barack Obama went into effect on Wednesday.

The policy allows at least 1.2 million undocumented immigrants in the US to apply for a temporary stay of deportation and work permit. The policy applies to younger illegal immigrants with no criminal history who were brought to the country as children.

“This is a miniature step forward. But there is still a long way to go,” he said.