According to the US State Department’s 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, “Christians were a leading target of societal discrimination, abuse, and violence in some parts of the world.” As an instrument of diplomacy, the State Department’s  choice of “some” over ‘many’ or ‘most’ is hardly surprising. And rightly so. Were it not for diplomacy, the world would be an even more violent demonic playground.

As such, from the downgraded semantics employed by professional diplomats and their staff, it is possible to gauge the real extent and intensity of persecution suffered by Christian minorities outside of Western democracies and some Latin American countries. The oppression of Christian minorities barely flits on the periphery of media interest.

Mainly, there is a general belief that all minority Christians are rice bowl converts — the residue of 19^th century western colonialism. For the United States to use its power and influence for good on the behalf of an oppressed Christian minority at the risk of compromising its political agenda is not an option. Letting this minority survive as best as it can, is. Just as with the non-Christian Kurds in Iraq during the end days of Saddam Hussein. Thus, the thought that these residual remnants of colonialism are merely the consequence of an economic impulse flagellates western guilt for its redemption, with the hope that mercantile policies can be better pursued from this moral high ground.

Somewhere down the line, this argument has further suffered by being force-fed into the Iraqi and Syrian situations. After all, before the US went into Iraq, and the Arab Spring blossomed for the strategic benefit of militant Islamic fundamentalists, eventually leading to the Syrian civil war, Christians in Iraq and Syria were said to be happy with their lot. As happy as they could be by murky suffrance. Their survival depended on a policy reminiscent of a “don’t see don’t tell” approach: conversions to Christianity were illegal, and to the best of my knowledge, even a capital offence. At the same time, the Syrian Orthodox church colluded with the state to persecute Christian evangelists of other denominations. The US State Department, meanwhile, blithely pursued its diplomacy as the ranks of persecuting-country immigrants in the American Dream swelled, and in proportion to their prosperity, were able to dictate where and when — if at all — Christmas Trees would be lit.

The foreign policy of the United States also appears to have inspired its immigration policy of generously opening its doors to immigrants from countries where Christians undergo direct discrimination.  While these immigrants are enabled to hold stock options in the American Dream, their Christian fellow citizens in their homelands only hold shares in a Living Nightmare — of fear and insecurity during their lucky periods when their homes and churches aren’t torched. Such a policy can safely be criticized as being absurdly disproportionate.

The underlying positive discrimination in the United States’ immigration policy leaves Christian minorities to languish in their predicament, since there is not a single country that has passed positive discrimination laws for the protection and uplift of a depressed Christian minority. Their expatriate dual citizens in the United States, however, may prosper under these laws if they care to.

Except in some individual cases, the United States has no policy to accommodate Christian minority applicants to the United States as refugees from persecution. Yet, in furtherance of its policy during the Cold War, escapees from Communist countries received a treatment almost on par with that accorded to economic immigrants from countries where Christian minorities are actively persecuted.

It is regrettable that this policy shows no signs of being revised in order to redress the unfavorable situation of Christian minorities.

The implicit policy of ignoring the plight of Christian minorities and seeking to assuage western guilt for colonialism has reached an impasse. In any case, carrying this burden is an exercise in the absurd. United Fruit’s dubious approach to Latin America and Hearst’s ‘Hully Gee it’s War!’ notwithstanding, the US never was a colonial power, even though it received the ‘white man’s burden’ from Kipling. This policy begs to be revised — nay, excised. As Alexis de Tocqueville said in Democracy in America (1835), “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults … If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Recognizing the suffering of Christian minorities without taking active measures to redress it has been a mistake. It can be repaired by extending a policy of positive discrimination or most favored status to Christian immigrants from countries in which they are a minority.