Dear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jesus Was Not a Refugee

Ugh

I’m a little late to this party as I was off celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior with friends and family, but I’m going to tackle it now.

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Once again, New York’s Democratic darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs some learnin’, and this time it revolves around that age-old problem Democrats have during Christian holidays, where they attempt to use Jesus of Nazareth as an example of their latest talking point.

This time, it’s that Jesus was a refugee.

This is a solid break from the “Jesus was a socialist” argument the left typically likes to throw out. As I’ve explained before, he’s not.

Right now, however, the hot topic is immigration, and so naturally the left is going to craft Jesus into whatever they need him to be, which as Ocasio-Cortez demonstrated in a recent tweet, is a refugee.

She even tweeted this out, comparing the holy family to the migrants coming to the United States, because why not?

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As usual, this comes from a leftist party who has no idea about what Jesus is, was, or will be, and uses no historical context or research to back up their claim. All they see is a baby fleeing a guy who wants to kill him in a manger, and are ready to throw him into the DREAM program.

Let me correct the assertion…for the second time.

I’ve already tackled this subject not long ago, in October, when the migrant caravan was gaining steam in the news, and the left was already trying to guilt Christians into supporting their swift admittance into the United States.

For one, Jesus was in Bethlehem because his family’s origins were there. At the time, Ceasar called for a census so that Rome could tax the people more, which required that people register in their hometown. It just so happened that many had come to the Bethlehem to register for the census as ordered by the Roman government.

The inns were full of people coming HOME. It just so happened that Jesus was born in a town bursting at the seems of people returning to their place of origin, and thus he had to be born in a manger.

Nothing about that speaks to being a refugee.

But let’s go further down the timeline and get a little technical. Herod did order the death of Jesus, and the holy family DID flee to Egypt. However, as I point out, this still doesn’t qualify them for the title of refugee as I wrote in October, especially by the modern standards of the left.

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Allow me to reiterate:

According to the most common definition of what a refugee is, which comes from the UN’s ratified 1967 treaty “Protocol on The Treatment of Refugees,” a refugee is one who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

If you don’t look carefully, that looks pretty cut and dried. Jesus was fleeing persecution from Herod and sought safety in a different territory. Refugee!

But not so fast. The problem the left arrives at here is that a refugee is someone seeking asylum in a country of which they are not a national, as it says in the treaty. Again, Jesus and His family were what we would consider Roman nationals. While they did flee Herod’s hunt, they didn’t flee to a nation outside their own.

Hypothetically, if I were a California resident and one of its leaders marked me for death, causing me to flee to Texas, I wouldn’t be a refugee in any legal sense. I stayed within the United States, just out of the jurisdiction of California leadership. I still pay the same federal taxes and obey the same federal laws. I never left the country of my nationality, and though I did swap states, I didn’t have to apply for asylum, I just moved there. I’m not a refugee hiding out in Canada, I’m an American living in America.

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Jesus essentially just moved states, and what the left also glosses over is that the holy family even returned to Nazareth after the death of Herod. On a surface level, it may seem like Jesus was a refugee, but upon closer inspection, you can see differently.

Thanks for playing.

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