The center of our work at the Episcopal Migration Caucus is promoting Migration With Dignity.
The MWD Principles are a transformative framework for approaching migration. What they insist on is nothing less than the promotion of human dignity and love of neighbor. They say: these are the fundamental rights that those who migrate deserve to have.
Migration With Dignity is a moral framework, not a political one. The positive rights envisioned by the MWD Principles certainly require changes from the political and economic realities of the world we live in. But Migration With Dignity does not name how we get there from here.
The Way of Love, the Beloved Community, and the Reign of God are spiritual frameworks, not political programs.They proclaim a vision of human dignity, mutual belonging, and sacred worth rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus. These visions call us beyond the current realities of exclusion, fear, and scarcity. Yet, like Migration With Dignity, they do not prescribe a single path forward or a fixed set of strategies. They name the why and the who we are called to become, more than the how.
So how do we live into these spiritual visions? What are the practices that embody the Beloved Community in real time? The Church responds not first with policy, but with formation—through prayer that reshapes our desires, worship that reorders our loyalties, and scripture that reorients our imagination. We practice radical hospitality, not as charity but as kinship. We engage in accompaniment, walking alongside those on the move rather than speaking for them. We commit to truth-telling, naming systems of harm while refusing to surrender to despair. We practice Sabbath as resistance, loosening our grip on systems of extraction and anxiety. We cultivate courage, learning when to stay, when to go, and when—following Jesus—to cross boundaries others insist must remain closed.
In this way, the Church becomes not merely an advocate for Migration With Dignity, an embodiment, a living sign, a community where borders are crossed in love, where dignity is restored in relationship, and where resurrection is practiced as a present-tense reality.
How do we put Migration With Dignity into practice? What are the political or practical interventions that the church might explore to bring about a world of Migration With Dignity?
Below are some possible resources on how we get there, with a focus on specific suggestions for politics, policy, and protest. These resources go beyond Migration With Dignity in itself to provide starting points for conversation about what the steps toward the world of love and dignity might look like. This page will be updated as further resources become available.
Resources and Starting Points
What Comes Next? A Long-Term Framework for Progressive Christian Leaders to Respond to This National Crisis With Accountability and Healing
This resource by Hannah Bowman explores three steps toward long-term organizing for justice around migration and mass deportation: Abolishing ICE, Welcoming Migrants, and Truth and Reconciliation.
Hannah also wrote an essay for Sojourners on this topic: "ICE Must Be Abolished. Can Truth and Reconciliation Follow?"