US rejects the most legitimate immigrants

Back in 1999 I was horrified when the Clinton administration deported several pregnant asylum-seeking Chinese women back to their own country, where they could expect to be forced to abort their babies. When a Republican president was elected, though I disagreed with many of his policies, I thought that we would at least not have to endure that kind of abomination. I was mistaken.

According to a recent Christianity Today article, in 1995 a Christian Chinese man named Xiaodong Li was arrested for hosting weekly worship and Bible study in his apartment in Ningbo, China. His crime was practicing his religion outside of the few churches licensed and controlled by the communist government. After being tortured and beaten by police, and facing two years in prison, Li escaped China and made his way to America.

Last month, at the request of the Board of Immigration Appeals and Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Li was not subject to religious persecution and may be deported. According to the CT article, the court "...ruled that Li was punished for violating laws on unregistered churches that it said China has a legitimate right to enforce. Li, the board concluded, feared legal action or prosecution, not persecution."

The court's opinion made a ridiculous distinction between religion and religious practice. Li was being abused and prosecuted not for being a Christian, but for the fact that he practiced his faith in an unapproved way. Since Li could have belonged to a registered state church (where Christian doctrines are adjusted to promote communism), it is not persecution to prohibit his practice of Christianity outside of a state church.

The reason that the plaintiffs and the court had to make this distinction was to find a way around the language of the Refugee Act of 1980. The law states that an applicant for asylum must only show that he "is unable or unwilling to return to [his or her country of origin] because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion..." To deport Li, the government needed to show that he was not being persecuted for one of the reasons in that list, including religion.

Why is the administration so eager to deport this poor man and subject him to the brutal suppression of Christianity for which the People's Republic is well known? After all, the same administration in 2004 granted asylum to a Nigerian homosexual who feared persecution for his "sexual orientation," which isn't even one of the legal grounds for asylum. This is also the same administration that is notoriously lax when it comes to excessive and frequently illegal immigration from Mexico.

The only reason I can come up with is that the president wants to avoid actions that might upset his policy of accommodation toward the communist Chinese government. Moving away from our historic position of condemning governments that practice religious persecution would smooth the way for more trade with them. It might even make it easier to negotiate when there are conflicts over oil resources.

Our traditional policy of accepting religious and political refugees is the right one. Whatever the opposing pragmatic political considerations might be, they can not justify throwing Li and other refugees into the communist meat grinder.