Take the challenge!

Consider taking the "I Was A Stranger Challenge" today!  The effort began last fall, but it continues and our efforts are needed.

Begin by viewing the video below.

To find out about the "challenge" click here.

Jose in Mexico

If you've been reading here for very long, you've "met" Jose. If you've been around for several years, you'll remember how Jose and his cousin, Monica, while high school students, were picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to be deported to Mexico. Jose and Monica have been through a lot. Their status and situation call for passage of the DREAM Act. Brought to the United States by their parents as minors, they, and countless other young persons, face deportation every day.

Several weeks ago, my friend Jose journeyed back to Mexico by order of the immigration court here in Dallas.

Jose knew no one really when he left home here in the U. S. He managed to arrange for housing in the home of a relative he doesn't really know. The small town where he "lives" offers no employment options, no higher education, no real community life that he feels apart of.

What is very present every day in this fine young man's life is danger.

Here's an email message that I received just last week from Jose:

Good morning Mr James, I was only contacting you to let you know that yesterday March 1st I got beat up when I was on my way to one of my uncles house I had only been driving less than 5 minutes away from home and I got stopped by a truck and four guys started hitting me and warn me not to mess with them and that I didn't know who they where. The good thing is that I'm fine and at home thank God. Ill keep you updated of my situation. Jose

Jose sent me these two photos documenting the assault that he described in  his message to me. 

I'm not understanding the policy of our nation when it comes to fine young people like my good friend, Jose. 

Pray for Jose.

Research the DREAM Act. 

Contact your congressional leaders and the President. 

Speak up for passage of the DREAM Act, as well as comprehensive immigration reform.  I don't think the average American understands what is going on around these important issues. 

[To read more on this site about Jose and his struggle over the past several years use the search tool on the  page or for starters read the entries for these dates:  3/11/07, 3/13/07, 4/13/07,7/16/07, 7/19/07, 10/25/07, 1/4/08, 3/3/08, 4/21/09, 8/19/11, 8/21/11, 8/23/11, 10,17,11.]

Lost in Detention

Watch Lost in Detention on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Jose, Alabama and Federal Court

Last week I had a meeting with Jose.  [Use the "search" tool to read more about his case and that of his cousin, Monica.]

Jose came to the United States when he was a very young child.  No one in the family had the documents needed to be in the country legally.  Like almost all  immigrants to the U. S., Jose's family came to find and to make a better life. 

Today, Jose faces deportation.  Recently, Jose married his sweetheart, an American citizen.  He is in the process of working through the system so that he can stay in this country.  He will be required to leave and go back "home" to Mexico, even though he won't know anyone when he arrives.   He is nervously trying to line out his plan with high hopes of returning to his wife as soon as possible.

Like in the case of lots of controversial issues, once you know someone personally who faces a very difficult situation like Jose's you just look at things differently.  Jose is a fine young man.  He comes from a very fine family of extremely hardworking people.  He has never been in trouble with the law.  He has been a good young man.  He is exactly the sort of person we need to stay in the country. 

I'm wondering why our leaders can't step up and deal with immigration reform so that we create a new way for our neighbors to the south to come and go to the benefit of all concerned. 

Because of my friendship with Jose and his family, the following story about a federal court's ruling on the very harsh immigration laws now in force in Alabama caught my eye. 

We've got to find a way to do better and to do the right thing by our fellow human beings.  After all, we are a nation of immigrants. 

Court Rules Alabama Can Detain Illegal Immigrants

by The Associated Press
October 14, 2011

A federal appeals court issued a ruling Friday that temporarily blocked parts of an Alabama law requiring schools to check the immigration status of students but let stand a provision that allows police to detain immigrants that are suspected of being in the country illegally.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order after the Justice Department challenged what is considered the toughest immigration law in the nation. The opinion also blocked a part of the law that makes it a crime for immigrants to not have proper documentation.

A final decision on the law won't be made for months to allow time for more arguments.

Since a federal judge upheld much of the law in late September, many frightened Hispanics have been driven away from Alabama, fearing they could be arrested or targeted by police. Construction workers, landscapers and field hands have stopped showing up for work, and large numbers of Hispanic students have been absent from public schools.

Read the entire report here.

Hybels on Immigration

Bill Hybels founded the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago.  Church leaders by the hundreds of thousands have made the pilgrimmage to Willow Creek across the past twenty-five years or so to glean wisdom on church growth and effectiveness from Hybles. 

Now Bill and Lynne Hybels participate in Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform as advocates for the millions of immigrants who find themselves in the U. S. without the documentation that they need to function fully and freely. 

I find the statement made by the Hybels before Congress both surprising and encouraging. 

Here's the beginning of a longer statement:

I, Lynne Hybels, would like to submit this testimony on behalf of myself and my husband, Bill Hybels … Even though the issues of immigration can often be viewed as a political, economic, or security issue, our perspective on immigration has been formed at the community level as local church leaders. In this capacity, we are continually confronted with immigration, not necessarily as a policy issue but as a personal issue in which we witness the human consequences of a broken immigration system every day.

Our faith informs us that we were all strangers and aliens once, separated from God. Because God was willing to include us in his redemptive plan, we “are no longer strangers and aliens, but [we] are fellow citizens” (Ephesians 2:18-19a). As Christians, we accept the biblical perspective that we are all sojourners on this earth, commanded to steward it while we await the full arrival of God’s eternal kingdom. Recognizing that we are all sojourners on this land, no matter what our legal status, compels us to extend solidarity to all. This deep sense of solidarity with others is a foundational truth of our country. We are a nation with historical roots grounded in immigration: out of necessity, many of our ancestors came to this country, and then found a home here.

This perspective can help inform our current perspectives on immigration. Remembering our own history as immigrants, we must take God seriously when, in Scripture, he repeatedly calls on his people to remember their past as sojourners and to treat the aliens among them accordingly. “The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Throughout the Old Testament, God repeats the command to love the alien just as he himself does (Deuteronomy 10:18), and makes clear his desire for us to emulate his special concern for the foreign-born who, along with orphans and widows, are recognized as particularly vulnerable (Psalm 146:9, Zechariah 7:10).

To read the entire statement click here and follow links to all of the material. 

Bravo, Hybels!  Bravo!

While you're at it, take a look at the editorial comment that appeared in The New York Times last Sunday, October 11, 2009 by clicking here. 

Ten Things You Can Do to Support the DREAM Act!

Want to stand with the millions of children/students brought to the USA by undocumented parents through no choice of their own who now need to receive documentation so that they can continue their education or service to the nation as members of the U. S. Military?

Support the DREAM Act!

Here are 10 things you can do RIGHT NOW!

Let us know how many of them you check off by your action!

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Living on the move

"The crops failed, and there was no food anywhere in the land. So Abram and his wife Sarai went to live in Egypt for a while." Genesis 12:10 + Hebrew Bible

All the factors line up here, don't they?

Disaster hits the economy. The crops fail.

Conditions grow so severe that no food can be found. . .anywhere--talk about depression!

The father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam starts out broke and on the move, a stranger, an immigrant.

He and his wife journey to Egypt looking for options.

You know, work, opportunity, a way to survive, to do better, to find and build a life.

Immigrants.

Abram and Sarai were immigrants.

Sort of like another Jewish couple a few thousand years later who fled to Egypt as immigrants fleeing political terror and seeking to preserve the life of their young son and possibly their own lives.

When times grow hard and options evaporate, people tend to live on the move.

Immigrants.

If the Egyptians had known who Abram and Sarai were and were to become, had they known who Jesus was and was to become, how might they have treated them? How might the reception have been different?

Immigrants.

I'm surrounded by immigrants here in East Dallas, people living on the move, most without "papers."

Wonder who they are and who they will become?

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Helpful resource on immigration

Looking for solid material on immigration and faith?

Click on the title line above to be directed to the Interfaith Worker Justice website and the study guide, "For You Were Once a Stranger: Immigration in the U. S. Through the Lens of Faith."

Would be a great resource for a study group.

"You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Exodus22:21

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