Immigration
Just as love knows no borders, our dedication to justice reaches across boundaries and walls. We show up on the side of love with all families, regardless of citizenship status, and strive to create welcoming communities and congregations. We organize and advocate for immigration reform, for an end to detentions and deportations, and for a world where hands are extended in peace and care across borders and no one feels forced to leave home or risk death in pursuit of a decent life for their family. We affirm immigration as a moral issue and have long spoken out in support of immigrant justice.
Worship, Learn, and Live Your Faith
Worship and Reflection
- Spiritual centering from Love Resists
- Faithful Journeys, Move It! If You Want Justice and You Know It, Clap Your Hands (Grades 2-3)
- A Chorus of Faiths, "We Are Each Other’s Business" (story) (Youth)
- Heeding the Call, Opening reading (courage, strengthening wills, transformation) (Youth) A reading on finding courage to persevere in Unitarian Universalism’s important immigration work.
- Cooking Together, Changing Ourselves: Theological Reflection for All Ages (PDF) (Multigen) This blog post shows ways to engage children, youth, and young adults in theological reflection in order to understand their relationship with immigration justice work.
- Cooking Together, "Com-passion:" A Theological Foundation for Intergenerational Worship (PDF) (Multigen) This blog post emphasizes com-passion ("feeling with") as an avenue toward understanding the feelings of immigrants, and gives guidelines for sharing this sense of “com-passion” in a multigenerational worship service.
Religious Education Curricula
- With Justice and Compassion: Immigration Sessions for Children’s Religious Education (PDF) (Children) (C)
A program designed for Grades 1 through 8, With Justice and Compassion offers children a structured way to engage with their own family ancestry and to discuss immigration in the U.S. The program includes four 60-minute sessions for each grade group (Gr 1-2, 3-5, 6-8) and involves a service project. - What We Choose, Ethics: An Ethic of Affirmation and Resistance or An Ethic of Affirmation and Resistance in Folk Tales (Multigen) Both of these activities focus on affirming ethical standards to highlight marginalized peoples’ dignity, identity, and how they live their lives in the world. Through a handout and various folk tales, participants engage and think critically about the issues involving peoples on the margins of a dominant, cultural society.
- Amazing Grace, Universal Love Art (Grade 6)
This activity invites participants to create artwork symbolizing the concept of "universal love," an idea that Unitarian Universalism embraces. This concept relates to immigration because the group fosters love, dignity, and respect for families dealing with immigration processes. - Heeding the Call, Taking It Home on Immigration (Youth)
This Taking It Home activity for families activates empathy to engage participants in learning about and striving for immigration justice. Participants imagine what it feels like to migrate to a new place and welcome those in the community who may have emigrated from another place. - UU World Family pages, Standing with Families on the Side of Love; story, “Separated by a Border” (PDF) (Multigen)
Education
- Immigration Justice study guides from the Unitarian Universalist (UU) College of Social Justice
- Welcoming Our Neighbors (PDF, 32 pages)
- Books and other resources on immigration from inSpirit Books