Every Advent season, a familiar claim begins circulating online: “Jesus was an undocumented immigrant.” The intention is often to draw a political analogy between modern immigration debates and Joseph, Mary, and Jesus’ flight to Egypt.

But as followers of Christ, one of our greatest concerns ought to be the responsibility to handle Scripture faithfully and resist the temptation to use the Lord’s story as a tool for our own agendas—whether on the political left or right. In this post, I want to offer a historically grounded and biblically faithful response.

Judea and Egypt Were Both Under the Same Imperial Authority

When Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt (Matt. 2:13–15), they did not cross from one sovereign nation into another in the modern sense. They traveled from one Roman province (Judea) into another Roman-controlled region (Egypt).

• Since Pompey’s conquest (63 BC), Judea had been under Roman rule.
• Egypt had been under Roman rule since Augustus defeated Antony and Cleopatra (31 BC).

So when the Jesus’ family sought refuge in Egypt, they were not entering a foreign, hostile nation with a different governing power. They were relocating within the borders of the same empire, not crossing an international boundary in the modern legal sense.

Thus, no passports, no border checkpoints, no immigration status. That’s simply not how mobility worked within the Roman world.

Bethlehem Was Jesus’ Legal Hometown

Another argument suggests Jesus was “born away from home” and therefore mirrors the experience of displaced refugees. But the text is clear: Joseph went to Bethlehem because it was his ancestral and legal hometown (Luke 2:4).

In the ancient Near East, especially under Roman census practices:

• A man’s ancestral town was his “hometown.”
• His household—wife and children—shared in that legal identity.
• Bethlehem, therefore, was not a strange foreign place to Joseph.

Which means Jesus was born in His family’s legal hometown, not on the road as a stateless outsider.

It was humble and lowely, yes. But it was not an experience of being “undocumented” or a “foreigner.”

The Holy Family’s Flight Was Not a Violation of Law

Matthew presents the flight to Egypt as an act of obedience to divine command, not an evasion of civil law (Matt. 2:13).

Within the Roman Empire:

• Families frequently relocated for trade, safety, or family reasons.
• There were no internal travel restrictions between provinces for ordinary residents.
• Joseph was not breaking Roman law by taking his family into Egypt.

In other words, Joseph was not an illegal border-crosser, and Jesus was not an undocumented foreign national. They were well within the civil law and their legal rights according to the sovereign state of Rome.

The Real Point of the Story Is Theological, Not Political

The flight to Egypt is not a lesson in immigration policy—it is a lesson in God’s sovereign protection and Jesus’ fulfillment of Israel’s story (“Out of Egypt I called my son,” Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15). We would be wise (and probably better defenders of the Gospel!) if we would pay more attention to the purpose of the text, and less to the ways that we can use the text to make a point.

The purpose of the narrative is typology, not politics.

• Herod represents a Pharaoh-like tyrant.
• Egypt becomes a new place of protection for God’s chosen Son.
• Jesus reenacts the story of Israel, except He succeeds where Israel failed.

None of this is about Caesar’s immigration bureaucracy. None of this is about immigration bureaucracy today.

A Pastoral Plea for This Season

So let me say this with gentleness and clarity:

Let’s not misuse the birth of our Lord and Savior to score political points. Left, right, or center—Jesus is not an illustration for our policy preferences. When we distort His story to serve earthly agendas, we risk taking His name in vain by using the holy for the sake of the partisan.

Christ’s incarnation calls us to humility, worship, and repentance—not to weaponize His infancy in the service of modern political rhetoric. By all means, Christians should pursue justice, show compassion to immigrants, and treat every image-bearer with dignity. But let our ethics be shaped by Scripture—not by politically-charged slogans that rest on shaky (and errant) historical claims.

This Advent, let’s honor Christ’s kingship by letting His story speak to God’s sovereign hand in fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies–prophecies that validate Christ’s claim as Immanuel, God with us!