Immigrant Justice

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.

What We Are Doing

Love Resists
The UUA-UUSC Love Resists campaign is activating and helping people resist the criminalization of immigrant and other communities targeted by the current administration by expanding sanctuary, growing solidarity and raising our voices.
#Not One More Deportation
We are partnering with Mijente, We Belong Together, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Interfaith Immigration Coalition and others in their efforts to end deportations.
New Sanctuary Movement
We are providing sanctuary to people appealing deportation orders, refugee children, and families fleeing violence. We are part of the movement to create “Sanctuary Cities” across the country that have welcoming policies towards immigrants.
Social Justice Trips to the U.S./Mexico Border
The Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice offers service learning trips to the border. Journeys are grounded in theological reflection and help individuals, groups, and congregations understand the issues and discern a path toward effective action.

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, &quotWe Are Each Other's Business&quot (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 (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, &quotCom-passion:&quot A Theological Foundation for Intergenerational Worship (Multigen) This blog post emphasizes com-passion (&quotfeeling with&quot) 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 (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 &quotuniversal love,&quot 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” (Multigen)