The bias against "illegal immigrants" here in Dallas amazes me .
My amazement is magnified when I am in churches where I often hear the most adamant opposition to the presence of immigrants in our community.
I find this amazing for two reasons--one theological and one practical.
First, the Bible clearly embraces the cause and the plight of the immigrant or, to use scriptural language, the "alien."
Consider this reading from the Law of Moses: "Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt." (Exodus 23:9)
The prophet Jeremiah echoes the Law of Moses by establishing the importance of not oppressing or mistreating aliens or foreigners in the land (Jer. 7:6). At one place in his writing Jeremiah lists the oppression of the immigrant alongside the prohibition of murder (Jer. 22:3).
Talk about national values!
The point is so obvious no explanation is called for: the ancient Israelites are enjoined to remember their own status as immigrants in the land of promise. The same injunction could be urged on every American, with the exception of Native Americans who lost their land to the likes of the rest of us who immigrated and ravaged their homes. We are indeed a nation of immigrants.
Second, the practical reality is that Dallas could not funciton without the labor, creativity and vitality of immigrants, many undocumented from south of our border.
Over the last weekend I read an article in The New York Times ("Science vs. Culture in Mexico's Corn Staple," March 27, 2005, A11) describing one of the unintended consequences of the combination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the increasing use of genetically modified corn seed has been the removal of countless rural Mexicans from their farmland. Without land there is no way to make a living.
Guess where many of these displaced rural Mexicans migrate? If you guessed California, New York or Texas, you guessed correct!
People want to work. People everywhere want better lives for themselves and their families. As a result, people come to America. Nothing new there. My ancestors and yours came here for this very same reason.
Last time I looked there was a lady with a torch standing in the open waters of a rather magnificent harbor just off Manhattan Island inviting the nations of the world to send us anyone who longed to be free. Fairly open-ended invite, wouldn't you say?
Thanks to our strident quota system, folks who come to Texas from Mexico usually come illegally.
What these hard working newcomers bring to our city, especially to our inner city communities feels and looks like anything but something illegal. I can't bring myself to refer to these friends as "illegal." About as far as I can go is "undocumented."
The Bible helps me here. The words of Moses instruct me to recall my own immigrant past.
The spirit of Jesus teaches me to be open-hearted to everyone.
Frankly, obeying these rules is not hard to do with the immigrants I know.
Question: in our recent national values debate, where is the space reserved for a serious discussion of this important issue? Where is the guiding word from the church on this serious national matter?
Sorry, but I just had to ask.
5 comments:
Of course, you are right: we are all aliens. We are all here on this Earth as nothing more than visitors; we are away from our eternal home.
We forget that we are here merely as stewards over His earth. We are so quick to forget that we are not the kings, the we do not own the land; we chop it up and call it our own, forgetting that we have a higher landlord simply because he charges no rent.
Who are we to set up walls? Do they keep others out, or merely lock us in to this world, and out of heaven?
I am not sure what the solution is. But I am fairly certain that isolationism is not it.
I agree with everything you said, especially the lady with the torch inviting anyone who wants to be free. I hate to bring up the negative but here goes, the language, when your ancestors and mine came from other countries the first thing they did beside get a job was learn the language and did not expect America to speak their language. When I hear people complain about the people moving here from the South I never hear any complaints about the people except the language fact. I think Gods tells us to get along in more ways then one but to punish the workers at Babylon he had them all speaking different languages? Did I miss the point of that story Larry and what about the language expectations from our new neighbors?
Sure, there are church people who resent undocumented aliens, and, yes, they are out of step with Scripture. The real story, however, is the one hinted at by your reference to the NYTimes article: the colloboration of the U.S. and Mexican governments and corporate elites to make a nation of producers (Mexico) into a land of enslaved consumers like the U.S. They don't give a damn where these consumers work as long they're working cheap and pumping their wages back into consumption. Lacking a biblical foundation, we might still have compassion for these undocumented aliens - they're caught up in the same game the rest of us are, disinherited from the land, working for less and less, and paying 2 bucks a gallon for gasoline.
Of course, the immigrants who come here in an attempt to feed their families are not the only or main culprits in violating law--law that our government at every level officially and unofficially turns a blind eye toward(I have many examples from here in Dallas). Those who employ the cheap labor violate the law and exploit the workers. Double whammy, huh? I think most of us have no conception about the reality of poverty.
Oh, yes, and one other thing. Immigrants today are learning English, I would suggest, at an even faster pace than the typical 18-19th century folks from Europe. The second generation of any immigrant group achieves a better grasp of English than the first wave. New immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, for example, are struggling with the language, but many, many are attempting to learn English and their children are as well. In many cases these latest immigrants are rural and uneducated in their homeland. So, many are illiterate in Spanish which makes their ability to master English even more challenging. Of course, our nation resists adequate ESL funding, even for school children. In the case of Spanish, it seems to me that we miss a real opportunity to teach English speaking kids Spanish in a cooperative venture with those children of immigrants who need the English. Mexican families who have been here for more than a generation master the language. Put yourself in the other's shoes for a moment. How about we move you to China--that's where all the jobs are headed! Now, you learn the language in your spare time after working long, long hours due to the substandard pay. And while you are at it, jettison your English culture--don't be concerned to preserve a bit of it. How does that feel?
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