Day: August 31, 2025

This is a blog written by a guest blogger, the Rev. Pablo Nunez. Pablo is minister of the Ballina Uniting Church and Moderator-Elect of the NSW.ACT Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia. It is particularly pertinent for today, when xenophobic fascists are trying to mobilise people to “protest against immigration” in Australia. Thanks to Pablo for permission to reproduce his words here.

If you pause for a moment and look around Australia, what do you see? Beaches that take your breath away. Red dirt that stains your shoes and stretches your imagination. Cities alive with languages, smells, and flavours from all over the world. And at the heart of it all, the world’s oldest continuous culture, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have lived here, cared for this land, and told its stories for thousands of years.

That’s the starting point. Before we speak about immigration, we need to say out loud: every single non-Indigenous person in Australia is here because of migration. Some of us came by ship generations ago, some by plane more recently. Some came fleeing war, some chasing opportunity, some brought by chains, others by choice. But none of us, apart from our First Nations brothers and sisters, can truly call ourselves original to this land.

And if that’s true, then the way we talk about migration in Australia has to begin with humility.

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Jesus Was a Migrant

The story of Jesus is not a neat, polished tale of a man who lived in one safe place his whole life. From the beginning, his life was marked by displacement. Born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, taken as a refugee to Egypt because a violent ruler wanted him dead. Jesus knew what it meant to live in a strange land. He knew what it was to flee under the cover of night, to live with uncertainty, to depend on the hospitality of others.

Later, as an adult, Jesus would walk dusty roads from village to village, never truly at home, saying: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). He was, in every sense, a migrant—on the move, without fixed security, dependent on God and others.

So when Christians think about immigration, we don’t start with politics or economics. We start with Jesus. And Jesus says something radical: when you welcome the stranger, you welcome me (Matthew 25:35).

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Migration Is in Our Blood

Sometimes in Australia we talk about immigration as if it’s something unusual or threatening. But migration is the story of us all. Think about it:

• The Irish came during the potato famine.
• The Chinese came during the gold rush.
• Italians and Greeks came after the war, bringing pasta, olives, and coffee that changed our food culture forever.
• Pacific Islanders have brought love for family, music, faith and more than a few sports’ stars.
• Vietnamese families arrived in the 1970s, rebuilding their lives after war and giving us the joy of pho and banh mi.
• More recently, African communities have brought strength, music, and resilience born from hard journeys.
• Latin Americans, like myself, came in different waves, some fleeing dictatorships, some chasing new opportunities, and we bring rhythms, faith, and fire for life.

Australia today is richer—economically, socially, culturally, spiritually—because of migrants. We wouldn’t be who we are without them. And the truth is, most of our favourite things—our food, our music, our sport—carry a migrant story. Even Vegemite was invented by a man whose parents came from Switzerland.

Migration is not an interruption to the Australian story—it is an essential part of the Australian story.

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The Gift of the Stranger

Here’s the thing about migrants: they don’t just bring their skills, their recipes, and their music. They also bring gifts we desperately need but often overlook.

Migrants remind us of courage—because leaving your homeland is never easy. They remind us of resilience—because starting again from scratch takes grit. They remind us of generosity—because most migrants know what it’s like to have little, and so they share what they have.

And, most profoundly, migrants remind us of God. Over and over in Scripture, God appears through the stranger. Abraham entertains three mysterious travellers and realises he’s been hosting God (Genesis 18). The Israelites are told: “Do not oppress the foreigner, because you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Exodus 22:21). And then Jesus himself comes as the refugee child.

To welcome the stranger is to make room for God.

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A Personal Word

I carry this personally. I wasn’t born in Australia. My family story, like many of yours, is one of packing up, crossing borders, learning a new language, and trying to fit into a place where you don’t always feel you belong.

And yet, what I’ve discovered is that this tension—this experience of not quite belonging—actually brings me closer to the heart of God. Because faith is, at its core, a migrant journey. Hebrews 11 describes all the great heroes of faith as “foreigners and strangers on earth, longing for a better country—a heavenly one.”

In that sense, migration is not only Australia’s story, it’s the Christian story. We are all on the move, walking toward God’s promised future.

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A Challenge for the Church

But here’s the challenge: in Australia, conversations about immigration often get reduced to fear. Fear of boats. Fear of “the other.” Fear that there won’t be enough jobs or houses or space.

Jesus calls us to a different way. If every person is made in the image of God, then every migrant is not a threat but a gift. If Jesus himself was a refugee, then to reject the refugee is, in some sense, to reject Jesus. And if the Spirit of God is at work in every culture, then immigration is not about us “helping them,” but about recognising the Spirit who comes to us through them.

This means the Church in Australia has a prophetic role: to remind our nation of its migrant story, to model hospitality, and to show that love is bigger than fear.

What if every church treated migrants not as projects, but as partners? What if we saw multicultural worship not as a challenge, but as a glimpse of Revelation 7:9—a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language worshipping before the throne? What if we stopped seeing immigration as a “problem” and started seeing it as a mirror of the kingdom of God?

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Building Our Legacy

Friends, Australia is at its best when it remembers its migrant heart. Our legacy will not be built on shutting doors, but on opening tables. On meals shared. On friendships made. On seeing the image of God in one another.

And the Church must lead the way. Because when we welcome the migrant, we are not only welcoming a neighbour—we are welcoming Christ into our lives in new perspectives and possibilities. A new life. A better life.
So let’s be people who celebrate our heritage, acknowledge our debt to First Nations peoples, and embrace the truth that every migrant—past, present, and future—brings a gift from God.

Australia’s modern story is migration. The Church’s story is migration. The Gospel’s story is migration. And in all of it, Jesus is the one who walks with us, the migrant Messiah, calling us to follow him into a kingdom where every tribe and tongue has a place at the table.