When I was growing up, we lived next door to a group home for adults with disabilities. There were probably 15 people living there, not including the old couple who housed them.

Some of the residents paced, some of them sat and rocked endlessly on the porch. Some of them wobbled and scuffed their feet when they walked, and others leered and rolled their eyes at passers-by. They were noisy occasionally, but mostly, they were peaceful, if odd.

I hated living next to them. They were just so different. I was embarrassed when friends came over, and I especially hated it when my mother invited one of them into our house. Two of the residents, in particular, would come by a lot.

One who came often was Bill, a tall, lanky man with no teeth and a massive underbite, his cartoonishly bent legs flapping in old-fashioned trousers. He didn’t say much, but he liked to hang around the kitchen or the porch, and my mother would let him come and go as he liked while she was home. I hated it when he came over, because he was just so different. 

I was also ashamed to feel that way. It was normal and understandable that I would be scared and abashed. Nobody gave me any guidance (that I can recall) about how to behave around them or how to think about them. All I knew was that my mother felt strongly that they should feel welcome in our house, and I didn’t feel that way, and I felt bad about it. 

I was 6 years old.

And I was not the vice president of the United States. 

Here is what the man who is our vice president said the other day on a podcast, describing what happens when immigrants are allowed to live in our country, in the same neighborhood as people who were born here:  

[W]hat happens is 20 people move into a three-bedroom house. Twenty people from a totally different culture, totally different ways of interacting. Again, we can respect their dignity while also being angry at the Biden administration for letting that happen, and recognizing that their neighbors are gonna say, “Well, wait a minute, what is going on here? I don’t know these people. They don’t speak the same language that I do. And because there are 20 in the house next door, it’s a little bit rowdier than it was when it was just a family of four or a family of five.”

Then he said: “It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I wanna live next to people who I have something in common with, I don’t wanna live next to four families of strangers.’”

When I was 6, I wished those different people next door lived somewhere else, instead of next door to me. But I was ashamed of feeling that way. I knew it was wrong.

Mr. Vance is not only an adult; he is a Catholic. And yet he has somehow emerged from RCIA, presumably having read at least parts of the Old and the New Testament, believing that we, the people of God, are entitled to unchallenged homogeneity, and that it’s reasonable to reject people who make us uncomfortable because of their differences. 

It may be common or even understandable to feel this way, but it’s shameful to act on it. It’s shameful not to try to get past it and to be better. It is cowardly, it is selfish, it is un-American, it is un-Christian to reject people just because they are different—which is all that Mr. Vance noted. He did his usual sleight-of-hand, furthering the idea that refugees who presented themselves at the border committed a crime (which it’s not), and calling President Biden’s immigration policy “open borders” (which it wasn’t). But in this particular clip, he didn’t even claim this hypothetical family next door broke laws or threatened anyone or behaved immorally or were dirty or lazy or unkind. Just that they are different, and there are a lot of them. And that is enough to reject them. 

This is such a flagrant insult to our faith that I don’t even know how to explain it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.” That is what the catechism says. Even if it means you end up living next door to people who are still learning English.

Holy Scripture, over and over again, commands us to welcome the stranger, rescue the refugee, feed the hungry and house the homeless. Not recklessly or thoughtlessly, and not in a way that endangers your family. But yes, in a way that might make you feel uncomfortable. Yes, in a way that stretches you a little bit. Yes, in a way that makes you open a door you would rather leave shut. This is our command, for our country and for our individual families. This is our faith. When you do something for your brother, you are doing it for Jesus.

I believe in borders. I understand that a nation needs to defend itself, and every immigrant needs to work out how much assimilation will make life functional in their new home, without losing their old identity. It is a nuanced and complex thing. 

What JD Vance is teaching is not nuanced or complex. He is simply saying, “If you’re different, go away.” And it’s not just a single out-of-context clip from a podcast. The entire immigration policy of the Trump administration says the same thing: Be rich, be white, be like everyone else, or go away. 

Sometimes they don’t give them a chance to go away; they just break their bones, imprison enough every day to populate a small city, tear gas a Halloween parade, use children as hostages. These immigrants are overwhelmingly not criminals. They’re just different. 

This administration wants to set itself up as somehow Christian. Let them, then, do the bare minimum: Welcome the stranger. 

Let me tell you another story about the people next door. One year, my family was celebrating Passover, as we did every year in accordance with our Jewish heritage. The seder includes drinking several ceremonial cups of wine, and at one point, we also pour a cup for Elijah the prophet. Then, on this one special night, the youngest person in the family gets up and opens the door to welcome Elijah in, just in case he wants to show up. Usually, the door stands open for a while, and that is all that happens. 

One year, we opened the door and old Bill walked in. My parents looked at each other. Then they did the only thing that seemed reasonable: They offered him Elijah’s cup. He drank it with satisfaction, set down the cup and then walked out again. 

That was the day Elijah came to our house, and you cannot convince me otherwise. Imagine if we hadn’t opened the door?