With the tragic passing of Edward Kennedy this past week, countless individuals and organizations have eulogized his 47 years of service. Most eulogies have focused on his health-care bills and speculate how he would have impacted the current public debate. However, Kennedy will be missed for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the immigration reform in which he so passionately believed and our country so sorely needs.
Maybe he was influenced by his big brother Jack’s bestselling book A Nation of Immigrants. In the introduction to that book, Bobby Kennedy wrote, “Our attitude toward immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal.” Perhaps Ted saw in immigrants a continuation of the fight for civil rights. Whatever his inspiration, Sen. Edward Kennedy was a champion of immigration reform in his later years. In 2006 he partnered with Sen. John McCain in crafting bipartisan legislation which nearly succeeded in passing Congress.
Edward Kennedy will most certainly be missed by all, both in the political arena that so badly needs bipartisan cooperation as well as in the immigrant community which needs real reform. While Obama once promised comprehensive immigration reform within the year, he has since moved the deadline back to sometime next year. For our President, Congress, and all the men and women in this great nation, Ted Kennedy’s “Introduction to A Nation of Immigrants” should remain a lodestone.
[W]e will have ample inspiration in the lives of the immigrants all around us. From Jamestown to the Pilgrims to the Irish to today’s workers, people have come to this country in search of opportunity. They have sought nothing more than the chance to work hard and bring a better life to themselves and their families. They come to our country with their hearts and minds full of hope. I believe we can build the kind of tough, fair and practical reform that is worthy of our shared history as immigrants and as Americans.
Last night, I spent almost half an hour filling out the 2009 American Community Survey, part of the 2010 census. As my wife and I filled it out, I wondered what the census would show this year. Many predict that Minnesota will lose a seat in the House, that some serious redistricting will go on, and that the answers from the census will be analyzed and implemented in everything from political campaigns to television commercials.
Although the American public won’t get the results from the 2010 census for a while now, and when it does immigrants and minorities will still probably be underrepresented, this past week saw some encouraging polls released from the New York Times, CBS, ABC, and the Washington Post, just in time for the initiation of immigration reform discussion before the Senate Immigration Subcommittee on Thursday, April 30. (Belanger, Maurice). The New York Times and CBS polls asked:
Which comes closest to your view about illegal immigrants who are currently working in the U.S.: 1. They should be allowed to stay in their jobs, and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship; OR 2. They should be allowed to stay in their jobs only as temporary guest workers, but NOT to apply for U.S. citizenship; OR 3. They should be required to leave their jobs and leave the U.S. [NYTimes]
44% said they favored allowing immigrants to stay and eventually apply for citizenship, while 21% said they should be allowed to stay in their jobs as temporary guest workers. Refreshingly contrary to national pundits who typically pit African Americans against recent immigrants, 55% of African Americans favored allowing undocumented workers to stay and work, with only 19% stating they should be required to leave their jobs and the U.S. (Belanger, Maurice)
The Washington Post/ABC poll released on Thursday was similarly encouraging news. The survey asked,
Would you support or oppose a program giving ILLEGAL immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here LEGALLY if they pay a fine and meet other requirements? [ABC]
61% said they favored allowing undocumented immigrants to continue to live here and have a viable path to citizenship. Liberals supported this (70%), Democrats supported it (68%), Republicans and Independents supported it (59%), and moderates (63%) and conservatives supported it (56%). (Belanger, Maurice) Despite the repeated statements from nativists that this is a partisan issue and that humane immigration reform is contrary to rule of law in the United States, the poll speaks loudly that the majority of Americans are in favor of treating these new Americans humanely and reasonably.
With 73% of Americans under 30 supporting such legislation (compared to 42% of seniors), this comprehensive immigration reform seems to be the mandate of the future. As the Senate debates the finer points of specific immigration bills, it is highly encouraging to know that the American people have not caved in to nativist and xenophobic fears during this time of economic depression, but instead have chosen to recognize that as Dr. King said, we are all “inextricably linked in the garment of destiny.”
Saint Bridget is one of Ireland’s patron saints. Born to Dubhthach, a pagan chieftain of Leinster, and Brocca, a Christian Pict who had been baptized by Saint Patrick, Bridget went on to found an important monastery in Kildare or Cill-dara, the “church of the oak.” Her symbol is the Saint Brigid’s cross, representative of a time when she wove some reeds together to form a cross in the house of a dying peasant in order to teach him the Gospel story.
Driving into Postville, Iowa, on Saint Patrick’s Day, I was immediately struck by the ghost-town feel of the western half of this town that used to boast a population of 2,000. Dozens of chicken-coop semi-trucks were parked outside the abandoned Agriprocessor’s slaughterhouse. Hundreds of coops sat outside, vacant, waiting. A piece of heavy machinery was driving through the property, disposing with some of the tons of junk littered around the lot. With the whine of its engine, it seems to be disposing with the evidence of what happened here last May.
Agriprocessors slaughterhouse
On this dusty day, one can hardly imagine the cacophony of sounds here before the ICE raid on May 12, 2008. Chickens squawking, machines whirring, blades thudding, trucks chugging, people shouting to be heard over the din of machinery. Spanish mixed with Yiddish mixed with Arabic numerals preceded by $ signs.
In this abandoned slaughterhouse site, though, it is all too easy to imagine the eerie silence when the machines stopped, when 900 ICE agents increased the town’s population by 40%, when 389 immigrants were detained and interned in a cattle barn, when the chickens lived to squawk some more and this peaceful Iowa town screeched to a halt. Only five immigrant workers had prior criminal records, but all were sentenced with working under false documents. (Bobo, Kim. Religious Leaders Protest Postville Raid) The public defenders, the translators, the immigration judge – everyone had been told to keep this date open on their calendars, ensuring a speedy process where nearly all the immigrants from Central America pled guilty to charges they didn’t understand in hopes of reduced sentences. Professional interpreter Camayd-Freixas was so appalled that he published his eyewitness account with the New York Times.
Just down the street, I sit with Father Ouderkirk for a half-hour. He is the father of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church here in Postville, a safe haven for many of the terrorized families still remaining after that fateful day in May. “You should have been here earlier,” this once-retired priest tells me. “On Tuesdays and Thursdays, this turns into the best restaurant in town.'” Taking his job seriously as pastor to this reeling community, Ouderkirk serves Latino food to needy families on these days, in addition to working to provide housing funds for the scores of families who lost dads, moms, and children in this raid. “You wouldn’t believe how much we spend each month, trying to keep a roof over their heads.”
Some of the women he serves at St. Bridget’s have been wearing an ankle bracelet for 10 months. Some of the children haven’t seen or heard from their fathers for almost a year. Many of the mothers are torn between returning to Central America to reunite with their husbands or staying here so their citizen children can receive a good education. These families are facing excruciatingly difficult choices, choices one should never have to make. Father Ouderkirk wipes with his handkerchief and tells me what we really need is comprehensive immigration reform.
As I leave Postville on Tuesday, the day after the mayor announced his resignation, the boarded-up windows and streams of For-Sale signs are a constant reminder that this town was dealt a devastating blow last May. With a new administration and new DHS Secretary Napolitano, many are hopeful that the days of Postville and Oxford, Mississippi raids are over. It is not enough, though, to merely hope that this administration will make the hard choices it must to ensure that comprehensive immigration reform wins out over high-profile, low-impact raids such as this. We must make it very clear that criminalizing immigrant families is useless and inhumane, while opportunistic employers who lure workers under false pretenses (and, as here, actually provide the false identification documents to their unknowing workers) is the appropriate focus of workplace reform. We must remind Obama that, if he is really attempting to out-do the New Deal, he should learn from FDR’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins who shut down the Department of Labor division that was then carrying out workplace raids (Bobo, Kim). We must encourage Napolitano to ensure that such Sinclair-like Jungle conditions never occur again, where immigrants are both victimized and criminalized. We must urge our judicial department to reexamine current immigration policies which allow such a rushed, clandestine mockery of Due Process.
Father Ouderkirk will be traveling to my home in Rochester on April 2, to give a presentation at Pax Christi Catholic Church. I encourage anyone and everyone to come and hear this man of faith who is earnestly working for immigration reform. For all those afar, it is vital that we do not forget such tragedies as Postville. We must stare at such instances with unblinking eyes and learn from them. Please urge our administration to do the same.
As school budgets dry up and the immigration debate remains tabled for the moment, immigrants are often left without the resources needed to integrate into American society.A long article in the New York Times this past week highlighted some schools in the Northeast that are struggling to overcome the isolationism of immigrant students, but this is an issue in every state in the U.S.Without an effective English-as-a-Second-Language program and a school that actively works to engage immigrant students with the entire student body, these new Americans often feel isolated, discriminated, separate.Currently more than 5.1 million students are ESL or ELL learners – 1 in 10 of all students enrolled in public schools- a number which has increased by 60% from 1995 to 2005. (Thomspon, Ginger. “Where Education and Assimilation Collide”)
Some of the immigration influx is from Mexico’s downturned economy in the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the Mexican baby boom that followed on the heels of the American one.But this only explains a portion of the immigration phenomenon in the United States in 2009.Our immigrant population is growing more and more diverse, with refugees coming from Somalia, Sudan, eastern Europe, Central America, south Asia.Our workforce is now made up of new Americans from India and China, Liberia and Guinea, Iraq and Laos.
ESL teacher Ms. Cain explained the current situation succinctly. “I used to tell my students that they had to stay in school, because eventually the laws would change, they would become citizens of this country, and they needed their diplomas so they could make something of themselves as Americans.I don’t tell them that anymore.Now I tell them they need to get their diplomas because an education will help them no matter what side of the border they’re on.” As the Obama administration nears its two-month mark, immigrant advocates and international families are growing worried that some of his campaign promises might get overshadowed by the economic times, that comprehensive immigration reform might get side-staged by stimulus checks, although immigration reform arguably promises a more sustainable and enduring change for our economy. (Thomspon, Ginger. “Where Education and Assimilation Collide”)
One of the groups who could use some comprehensive immigration reform is Liberian-Americans.If their temporary protected status [TPS] is not renewed by President Obama, they could be deported beginning March 31.President Bush extended TPS in 2007 to this group of 3600 refugees who fled Liberia two decades ago during a grisly civil war.Here in Minnesota, nearly 1,000 of the 3600 Liberians who call Minneapolis “home” could be deported in March, sent back to a country that held elections in 2006 but is far from stable.Many of these families have lived in the U.S. for almost 20 years and are active members in the community and local economy.Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., previously introduced legislation that would provide Liberians with an opportunity to apply for permanent residency, but it has not been passed yet.Therefore, it’s up to President Obama to ensure that these refugees are not only permitted to stay in the U.S. until their country is repaired but also extend to them the hand of permanent residency, an act that would greatly aid in this community’s integration into American life. (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/editorials/41056182.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:UthPacyPE7iUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr)
Similarly, some 30,000 Haitian immigrants face deportation in the coming months, despite the fact that their country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, is ill-equipped to handle such an influx.Already short on water, food, housing and natural resources since the tropical storms last summer, some say such deportations could tax the tiny country beyond what it can handle.Despite appeals from the Haitian government to stay such deportations, the Department of Homeland Security has stated it intends to continue deporting undocumented Haitian immigrants. (Thompson, Ginger. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/us/04brfs-HAITIANDEPOR_BRF.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y)
Recent news highlights our failure to adequately integrate certain immigrant groups into our nation.This past week, several Somali leaders from Minneapolis testified at a Senate Homeland Security Meeting in Washington, DC.The meeting’s purpose was to probe the mysterious disappearance of several Somali youths over the past few months, including one Shirwa Ahmed who was a suicide bomber in Somalia.Osman Ahmed, president of the Riverside Plaza Tenants Association, and Abdirahman Mukhtar, youth program manager at the Brian Coyle Community Center both testified at the DHS meeting. The concern arises from the alleged recruiting of Al-Shabaab — meaning “the youth” or “young guys” in Arabic – which has been able to attract some disaffected, un-integrated, jobless youth in the Somali community.With more than 200,000 Somalis living in the United States, Al-Shabaab poses a problem; however, it is paled in comparison to a failed integration and immigration system which creates such easy prey for extremist groups.While homeland security demands we investigate such terrorist recruiting claims, it is vital we do not forget that empty hands are very easily formed into closed fists. (Star Tribune)
Our government has not totally forgotten this root tenet of community integration. Congress recently passed Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance and Continuing Appropriations Act of 2009 (Public Law 110-329), creating the Fiscal Year 2009 Citizenship Grant Program. Awarding approximately $1.2 million of federal funding in the form of $100,000 individual awards, this grant program is aimed to support citizenship programs for legal permanent residents (LPRs).When LPRs make the shift from residents to citizens, everyone wins.The naturalized citizens gain the right to vote and receive benefits; our communities gain involved members and a greater constituency; and our nation integrates one more immigrant family.This grant for community-based organizations will do more than facilitate ESL classes, civics review sessions, and N-400 applications – it will serve to more fully involve and integrate denizens into American life.We can all hope to see more initiatives like this through the Obama administration. (USCIS)
When we speak of homeland security, it is vital we define our terms.“Homeland security” must not mean defending the buildings and properties of the United States, or else the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be busy repairing bridges, condemning buildings, and fireproofing houses.It is impossible for “homeland security” to mean protecting the American people, because what we mean by the “American people” will have grown and changed by the time you finish reading this article.“Homeland security” cannot even mean preserving our nation’s heritage and culture, or else its name would be homeland taxidermy instead.
No, “homeland security” rightly understood must mean the protection of our nation’s laws.If society is a social contract, then people come to the United States and remain in the U.S. because they agree to live by the law in a land where others do the same, thus gaining civil rights while submitting to the authority elected to enforce those laws.Defined as such, the biggest threat to homeland security today could very well be the Department of Homeland Security.
Since the 1990s, and more aggressively since 2006, DHS has been militarizing the border.Having lived in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, I can personally attest to the effects this militarization has had on local residents from California and Arizona to Texas.I have had a gun pulled on me by a Border Patrol agent as I ran on a dirt trail along the border, not unlike so many cross-country trails here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.Countless friends of mine have faced aggravation and humiliation as they crossed the secure border checkpoint more than 30 miles north of the Rio Grande.Third and fourth-generation Americans have been followed and questioned by police in every one of these border towns, simply because of the color of their skin or their fluency in Spanish.
With the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the law which mandates nearly 700 miles of border wall for our nation’s southern border, these dehumanizing factors were magnified in border communities.The Department of Homeland Security has used the REAL-ID Act to waive 11 laws in Arizona and more than 30 environmental and local laws in the Rio Grande Valley in order to expedite the construction of an eighteen-foot wall between the U.S. and Latin America.With the REAL ID Act, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, an unelected official, has been granted the unconditional power to waive any and all laws “necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section;” in effect, this gives Chertoff the power to undo countless laws voted on by elected officials in our nation’s Legislative Branch, thereby undermining the very “homeland security” it purports to protect, not to mention our system of checks and balances.
Despite the dour state of affairs in our nation’s handling of the border region and immigration, we have all seen real homeland security take place in our communities.Leaders like Father Paul Oderkirk in towns like Pottsville, Iowa, have offered support and banded together with immigrants after the terror of an ICE raid on their Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse in May.Organizations like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the University of Texas at Brownsville, and the Texas Border Coalition of mayors have all sought to defend homeland security by opposing the Secure Fence Act which divides rather than cooperates with our neighbors and the REAL ID Act which negates our nation’s checks and balances.We have seen homeland security in the integration of our community sports teams, English-as-a-Second-Language classes, hospitals, and churches.Every time a recent immigrant is welcomed, each instant someone takes the time to help another get involved, there is homeland security.Please show your solidarity by supporting immigrant resource centers like Rochester’s Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement and the Advocates for Human Rights, as well as writing your encouragement to beleaguered Americans on our southern border.Additionally, a letter to our senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar could go a long way to encouraging real “homeland security” instead of distracting and costly excuses for real immigration reform.
When Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he had in mind several prominent preachers, including Episcopal Bishop C.C. Jones Carpenter. When King wrote, “The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people,” he was envisioning these men of faith who had their hands on the levers of hundreds of thousands of consciences. While C.C. Jones Carpenter legalistically disagreed with King’s direct action strategies, he was in effect weighing in with support for the segregationists. One of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr‘s best friends, Bishop Will Scarlett, had attempted earlier to rouse Carpenter’s conscience for integration. Scarlett wrote that integration was “…in line with my suggestion years ago that the sight of the great Bishop of Alabama ridden out of his State on a rail because of courageous and enlightened speech, would be one of the greatest events of many years…I still think so: I think you have an opportunity of a hundred years.” (Parting the Waters, 742)
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the shockingly un-Constitutional waivers of 30 laws this past week in order to hasten the wall’s construction provide American citizens and residents the civil rights opportunity of the century. The Secretary of Homeland Security’s waiving of border citizens’ rights and due process is shocking in its blatant disregard for morality and basic human rights; however, we must not let this, the largest waiver so far in the construction of what would eventually be a 2,000-mile border wall, enervate us and cause us to falter.
No, this mass waiver and the thoughtlessness of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 must serve as a rallying cry to unite Americans and to call for real immigration reform with solidarity. I must admit that when I first heard of the waiver on Tuesday, I trembled with shock and disbelief. Having walked 126 miles with 300 people but a few weeks before in the No Border Wall Walk here in the Rio Grande Valley, I had felt we had made a difference. UTB Professor Eloisa Tamez’s case had been a partial victory, and the UTB decision on Wednesday, March 19, had made all activists and citizens begin to believe that perhaps the lines of dialogue were open and our leaders were willing to listen to reason and conscience. My hopes were jarred this April Fool’s Day 2008, but I have now come to understand that this is merely a call to action.
And so to oppose the foolhardiness of this Fool’s Day decision, people of faith must say to the fool there is a God and he is on the side of the stranger and the migrant. People of faith, from Baptists and Methodists to Mennonites and Lutherans and Quakers, from Catholics and Unitarians to Jews and Muslims and Buddhists – all these people of faith are united around the idea of protecting the sanctity of human life and defending the rights of immigrants. All people of faith must therefore unite in solidarity against a border wall which threatens the way of life and the basic human rights of the millions who live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. People of faith must join in opposition against a double-layered, 18-foot wall which would be economically destructive, environmentally unconscionable, politically backward, socially devastating, and morally reprehensible. If we do not step up in this moment of opportunity, then Dr. King’s words from prison will ring true.
So often [the church] is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent – and often even vocal – sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century (Why We Can’t Wait, 92)
People of faith, and in fact all citizens, must come together today. The REAL ID ACT holds the potential to waive any number of laws in constructing a border wall. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 stands as a deterrent from positive immigration reform and a detriment to the border region, Mexico, and our entire nation of immigrants, both legal and extralegal. Please speak with your faith leader and urge them to adopt a strong resolution against the border wall. The Church is strongest when it is a check of the State, and our nation’s power imbalance must be righted by people of faith today. It is no longer our place to discuss whether or not this is a church issue or a moral dilemma – the time is ripe to do right right now.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
Emma Lazarus put these words on the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, years before it would become the beacon of hope which drew over 12 million immigrants to Ellis Island. Despite the fact that Lady Liberty and Ellis Island are now only museums, 12 million men, women, and children today are within our borders, floating on the sea of insecurity that comes without papers. They came from war-ravaged lands, they came to give their children hope, they overstayed visas in attempts to get a job deserving of their education, they came to work menial manual labor jobs because it represented the first rung on the Ladder of American Dreams. They came because they heard Emma Lazarus’s words in their own language, calling them to come to the United States.
The sad thing, though, is that too many corrupt individuals are also voicing these words. Coyotes on our southern border are whispering “Dame sus Cansados, dame sus Pobres.” Too many American employers send recruiters to equate the American promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” with the underpaid, overworked conditions in their factories and fields. Countless individuals without scruples see these people without papers as easy targets for bribery, coercion, and corruption.
A headline in the Brownsville Heraldyesterday stated that over 20 immigrants were hurled from the back of a pickup truck in an accident on March 27 near La Joya, Texas. Three men and women were killed when the F-150 wrecked. The driver, as usual, fled the scene and is probably whispering his smuggler’s promises to a new batch of hopeful Americalmosts.
It is vital that our nation begin to shift its treatment of extralegal immigrants from one of a “lawbreaker” to one of “victim.” The same shift happened in the American Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King did not overcome segregation despite his jail sentences; John Lewis did not lead students to prisons across the South by accident. No, the breaking of these unjust laws was vital to the Civil Rights Movement because it highlighted the fact that these men and women were victims not violent criminals. As Thoreau so eloquently wrote back in 1849, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison” (Civil Disobedience). If virtuous men and women are being punished for living on the other side of a law, the American public must come to the realization that this law must be changed.
Extralegal residents, and those who might currently be contemplating a risky transaction with a coyote smuggler because the waiting list for citizenship is 10 years long and growing, do not break the law because they have no respect for America, no respect for the Border Patrol or our polices, no respect for our way of life. In fact, they are coming to America precisely because they honor these traditions and institutions of ours. No, if and when they break laws in order to become residents of this great nation, they are doing it only because they cannot recognize the validity, Justice, or Morality of a broken immigration system.
We must push our nation’s leaders to return to the Table of Immigration Reform which they were seated at two years ago. We must charge them to strike the Secure Fence Act, the only piece of legislation to emerge from those talks. We must call for them to dialogue seriously about real immigration reform so there will be no more immigrants thrown from the backs of pickup trucks, no more residents coerced into corruption in hopes of a green card, no more victims at the hands of our unresponsive immigration laws. The time for change must be now – it is far too late to dismantle Lady Liberty and that poem on which she stands.
“People in the detention centers are treated as things,” an ACLU attorney stated to me at tonight’s meeting at San Felipe de Jesus Church in Brownsville. “In Raymondville, they referred to people as ‘bodies’ and their quarters as ‘pods.’ It is the most dehumanizing thing.”
As Martin Luther King, Jr., began moving outside of the realm of segregation and began working on the integration he envisioned as a Beloved Community, he quickly realized that the United States was moving in a direction where people were devalued assets and machines or things were becoming increasingly prized. He wrote,
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing- oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. (Autobiography of Martin Luther King, 340)
40 years ago, Dr. King could very well have been envisioning the current immigration stagnation of our nation today.
Racism, materialism, and militarism are all occurring in our nation around the issue of immigration. There is a racism inherent in a border wall that only keeps out people from certain countries rather than an immigration reform which would begin positively impacting individuals of all races and backgrounds. There is a racial bias apparent when legal Latinos are stopped and searched because the police see their skin as “probable cause.” In today’s thing-centered world, racism exists in our schools and our communities and our national policies because people are taken out of the picture. Instead of human rights issues, these are simply “dollars and cents” issues.
Materialism exists in a thing-centered society where people can be terrorized by talk-show hosts and media sources so that they clamor for the deportation of 12 million people working and residing within our nations borders (an action which would cost almost $100 billion). Materialism drives companies like CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) to run for-profit immigrant detention centers at places like Hutto and Raymondville. Thankfully the ACLU and other organizations have been legally opposing these organizations, gaining considerable rights for children detained in the Hutto detention center this past year. However, detention centers like Raymondville are adding more tents and facilities every year, and therefore treating more and more people like things.
Militarism is one of the worst effects of a thing-centered society. When peace is a word instead of people, a wall might seem like a logical idea. If a border were only a line on a map instead of a living river or a fertile Valley or a child’s backyard, then a border wall might make sense. If people were not inherently good, if immigrants did not give so much to a thankless U.S., if walls actually worked, then maybe the Secure Fence Act of 2006 would not be the unconscionable legislation it is. The fact is that our borders are militarized since 2006. I have had a gun pulled on me as I jogged legally on the border. The gun was not held by a drug smuggler or an immigrant; no, it was held by a Border Patrol agent. If this is how people are being treated all along la frontera, it is obvious that our increasingly militarized borders are becoming decreasingly humanized.
Amidst the rhetoric about a border wall and immigration reform, it is all too easy to get distracted by numbers or logistics and forget the human element. Joseph Stalin once said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” We have come to a point where the 400 reported deaths of immigrants attempting to cross the desert is merely a statistic; in fact, we are willing to sentence more to die by building walls which will only reroute people to more dangerous border-crossing zones. We are to a point where we have forgotten that, at its heart, immigration legislation is affecting real souls in real time.
We must not forget that the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was not being discussed as a solution to drugs or terrorism at first. No, it was being discussed alongside several other immigration reforms which would have positively impacted people’s lives. Legislation like the DREAM Act, a bill which would have given students like my own the opportunity to utilize the scholarships they have already earned at some of the best universities in the country. Mcain’s proposal for a path to earned citizenship (dubbed amnesty) was also on the docket, a law which would have given hope to thousands and thousands of working immigrants hoping to one day “earn” their place as the Americans they already are.
As we campaign against the border wall and advocate for true immigration reform, we must never lose sight of the fact that this is important because it will change people’s lives. Yes, immigration legislation will affect the environment, the economy, our society, our politics, our consumerism, our language base, our schools, and our communities, but more importantly it will change the lives of people like Yadira, Celina, Mayra, Alexa, Daniel, Jesus, Perla…
Tomorrow begins the March Against the Wall. Hundreds of People will be participating in the 120-mile walk from Roma to Brownsville, Texas. This interfaith nonviolent demonstration is campaigning for a moratorium on the border wall and calling for support for immigrants and borderlands.
Please pray for all individuals involved in this walk and for a change of heart for those individuals currently opposed to real immigration reform and currently in favor of a border wall. Please pray specifically for:
Safety as we walk 12-14 miles a day along busy Highway 83 and 281.
Love as we seek to convey a nonviolent message and positive demonstration against the border wall but for immigrants and border towns.
Solidarity as we aim to embody Martin Luther King’s idea of the Beloved Community by uniting all people in the Rio Grande Valley and the rest of the United States.
Guidance as we interact with international media and local communities.
Real Outcomes as we encourage landowners to legally oppose surveyors for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and as we appeal to the conscience of the nation.
Your prayers and support are a vital part of this endeavor, and I earnestly ask you to uphold us in your thoughts and prayers. If you are interested in being involved in a more direct way, please return to this site where I will be blogging daily about the walk. We are still seeking volunteers, endorsements, comments, and donations. It is never too late to get involved.
In his Autobiography, Martin Luther King writes, “Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds” (189). And yet that is exactly what we have today. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there are some 12 million extralegal residents within our borders, all of whom have minimal rights of citizenship, justice, or recourse. As long as our restrictive immigration system perpetuates this sort of criminalization of its working class, our nation will continue to house millions of outsiders who could become even more of an asset to our society if only granted the basic rights we citizens take for granted. Though economic, historic, and sociological arguments have been and will continue to be made successfully, ultimately the immigration issue is a moral and a personal one. These are people who are being affected by this legislation, not numbers or statistics like our border checkpoints would have you think on their signs.
The United Methodist Church is at the forefront of pro-immigrant actions here in the United States. Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago was in the headlines all last year as they gave sanctuary to undocumented Mexican immigrant Elvira Arellano. From the moment she was first arrested at a 2002 immigrant sweep at O’Hare airport, Sra. Arellano sought refuge with the United Methodists. Despite the fact that Elvira Arellano has since been deported to Mexico, Adalberto UMC continues to pro-actively campaign for immigration reform through its nonviolent acts of civil disobedience in providing sanctuary to another extralegal immigrant, Flor Crisostomo.
Like so many Christians, these United Methodists took to heart Matthew 25:34-40
Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. (NIV)
In showing Christian love to these immigrants on the wrong side of a broken system, these Methodists are showing solidarity for the plight of the stranger, of the disadvantaged, of the voiceless and right-less.
Twelve years ago, the United Methodist Church committed its stance on immigration to paper in a resolution dealing specifically with illegal immigration. The following clearly lays out this 1996 official statement of the United Methodist Church.
WHEREAS, the Holy Scriptures call us as the community of God to give shelter, protection and help to sojourners living amongst us, reminding us that we, too, were foreigners in other times; and
WHEREAS, the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church through its document To Love the Sojourner has given the various boards, commissions, and agencies of The United Methodist Church direction as we relate to undocumented persons that live in our communities; and
WHEREAS, undocumented persons possess certain inalienable rights named and lifted in the International Declaration on Human Rights, the United Nations charter, as well as the documents concerning immigration of the Geneva Convention, and the Constitution of the United States Bill of Rights; and
WHEREAS, one of the most critical issues facing the Hispanic community today is the need for amnesty for the undocumented immigrants living within the United States; and
WHEREAS, being an undocumented person is NOT a crime;
Therefore, be it resolved, that we, The United Methodist Church, declare that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Resolution Act is evil and unjust, and that the enforcement thereof results in immediate and insufferable human rights violations, discrimination, and oppression.
We call the United States government to accountability and insist upon:
1) changes in, and possible abolition of, the 1996 immigration law;
2) the continued existence of a unified Immigration and Naturalization Service, rather than a division into administrative and enforcement prosecutorial branches, and
3) the development of an amnesty program for undocumented persons to be implemented immediately.
*The UMC commitment to immigrants is laudable, extending well beyond the words of this document and into the world of nonviolence. In addition to civil disobedience in the form of sanctuary churches, the United Methodist church is also participating in the 2008 No Border Wall Walk from Roma to Brownsville, TX. Pastor Juan Sales and his parishioners in Rio Grande City should be applauded for their brotherly love and their willingness to work for the immigrant.*
Smart Borders 