-- Robert Frost
Reading: by journalist Maria Hinojosa from the Ware Lecture she delivered in front of several thousand Unitarian Universalists at the General Assembly in Phoenix, AZ, this past June.
… The reason why the stories I'm going to share with you matter to me, [is] not because I'm a Mexican immigrant, but rather because I'm an American citizen. And because I chose to become an American citizen, this matters to me. So I want to give you these facts. And I want to let you do with those facts what you do in a democracy….
...There is another America that is operating parallel to this one. In fact, it is here in Arizona where these two Americas have come face to face. This is an America where people live in fear of any kind of authority.
Imagine looking at police officers and feeling fear because they have the capacity to tear your family apart… you fear the police all the time.
I met a woman here in Phoenix two years ago who told me that she couldn't drive her kids to school anymore after SB1070 was signed by the governor. And that if her American born son were to drive her to work, he would be arrested for smuggling his mother and she would be placed into deportation. That's what that fear looks like for a family, an American family. It's not a judgment, it's a fact.
Right now, people today, just blocks from where we're gathered, people are living in fear. So imagine if you're the victim of a crime. Would you dare report it? Can you imagine that happening in your town or in your neighborhood or in your city? You're held up at gunpoint and you don't tell anyone. Or you're raped and you don't tell anyone. Or you're burglarized and you don't say anything.
Is this really happening in our country? In fact, it does happen. Or here in Arizona, you'll be stop for a broken tail light and that will land you in jail for breaking state law, for driving without a license. You'll end up in an un-air conditioned tent that can get as hot as 139 degrees. Wearing pink underwear and pink socks to humiliate you and make it harder to run away. Is this who we are? Is this who we are?....
Reading: by Henri Nouwen from Reaching Out – The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (p. 47)
At first the word “hospitality” might evoke the image of soft sweet kindness, tea parties, bland conversations and a general atmosphere of coziness. Probably this has its good reasons since in our culture the concept of hospitality has lost much of its power and is often used in circles where we are more prone to expect a watered down piety than a serious search for authentic […] spirituality. But still, if there is any concept worth restoring to its original depth and evocative potential, it is the concept of hospitality.
… Old and New Testament stories not only show how serious our obligation is to welcome the stranger in our home, but they also tell us that guests are carrying precious gifts with them, which they are eager to reveal to a receptive host. When Abraham received three strangers at Mamre and offered them water, bread and a fine tender calf, the revealed themselves to him as the Lord announcing that Sarah his wife would give birth to a son. When the widow of Zarephath offered food and shelter to Elijah, he revealed himself as a man of God offering her an abundance of oil and meal and raising her son from the dead. When the two travelers to Emmaus invited the stranger, who had joined them on the road to stay with them for the night, he made himself known in the breaking of bread as their Lord and Savior.
When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of a new found unity.
Thus the biblical stories help us to realize not just that hospitality is an important virtue, but even more that in the context of hospitality guest and host reveal their most precious gifts and bring new life to each other.
Reading: by Louis Jenkins a poem entitled “My Ancestral Home”
We came to a beautiful little farm. From photos
I'd seen I knew this was the place. The house
and barn were painted in the traditional Falu
red, trimmed with white. It was nearly mid-
summer, the trees and grass, lush green, when
we arrived the family was gathered at a table
on the lawn for coffee and fresh strawberries.
Introductions were made all around, Grandpa
Sven, Lars-Olaf and Marie, Eric and Gudren,
Cousin Inge and her two children… It made me
think of a Carl Larsson painting. But, of course,
it was all modern, the Swedes are very up-to-
date, Lars-Olaf was an engineer for Volvo, and
they all spoke perfect English, except for
Grandpa, and there was a great deal of laughter
over my attempts at Swedish. We stayed for a
long time laughing and talking, It was late in
the day, but the sun was still high. I felt a won-
derful kinship. It seemed to me that I had
known these people all my life, they even
looked like family back in the States. But as it
turned out, we had come to the wrong farm.
Lars-Olaf said, "I think I know your people, they
live about three miles from here. If you like I
could give them a call." I said that no, it wasn't
necessary, this was close enough.
A Secure Homeland
A Sermon Delivered on September 9, 2012
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
At the General Assembly in Phoenix, AZ, last June, I was one of Maria Hinojosa’s listeners, who considered himself reasonably well-educated on the issue of immigration, but was nevertheless surprised by some of the stories and facts she shared.
For instance, I knew that the United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per capita incarceration rate among industrialized nations. What I didn’t know is that the eleven million so-called “illegal immigrants” in this country have little to do with the criminal justice system.
The term “illegal immigrant” is misleading. It sounds as if we are dealing with criminals. But in fact, living in this country without appropriate documentation is not a crime, it is only a civil offense. You would think this would be a good thing. You would think that because undocumented immigrants are not criminals, they would be afforded the same legal protections as all the millions of non-criminals in this country. You would think they would surely enjoy better treatment than criminals.
But here’s the catch: it turns out that those of us accused of a crime are granted more protections than those who are accused of a civil offense. If you are detained for a civil offense, you are not read Miranda rights, you are not entitled to make a phone call, and you are not allowed to contact an attorney. Once you are detained, your detention can drag on for days, or weeks, or months.
I knew we had the world’s largest prison population. What I didn’t know is that we also have the world’s largest population of civil detainees. These are men and women who are not incarcerated because of a crime they committed, but who are detained. They aren’t in jail, but they are still locked up, all the same.
We have the world’s largest population of civilly detained people, but we don’t have a system in our country to run civil detention. Civil detention centers are not subjected to accountability and oversight the way prisons are. Many of them are privately run. So, for instance, in Willacy County, Texas, thousands of men and women were held in ten circus tents, with no windows. People were supposed to be held for two or three days, but instead some were held for two years.
Maria Hinojosa, who visited this place, said, “Imagine that this is a place where there was no clean drinking water. The water from the tap was sulfuric. So every time—imagine, every time in the desert in Texas in that tent, you'd be thirsty, you would have to go to the guard and ask for a cup to drink water. And maybe that guard would give you the cup, maybe not. No TV, no windows, no books. Warehoused.”
* * *
Once when Maria Hinojosa was working at CNN, she met the Jewish holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. Talking in the hallway, he explained to her why it is important to question the use of the term “illegal immigrant.” Don’t use the term “illegal” when talking about immigrants, he said, because there’s no such thing as an illegal human being. It’s dangerous to use this term, Wiesel knew very well. He remembered when the Nazis declared the Jews to be illegal people. That was the beginning of the Holocaust. Six million men, women and children were first declared illegal, and then killed.
* * *
Over eleven million people live in this county as undocumented immigrants. This is not just an issue in Arizona or Texas, and in states that share a border with Mexico. This is an issue right here in Champaign/Urbana. Concerned citizens locally have been working to support our immigrant community. Locally, our police officers had been enforcing a so-called “Secure Communities” program, that was promoted as a way to identify and deport dangerous criminals “who pose a threat to public safety, such as aliens with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.” However, in fact, the vast majority of individuals detained under the program were non-criminals. Here in Champaign County 70% of those detained had no criminal record, but the impact on local families has been devastating.
Our local Champaign/Urbana Immigration Forum has been reaching out to our local immigrant community, sponsoring consulate visits, helping obtain passports, and educating local immigrants about their rights under the law.
Unitarian Universalists across the country are turning their attention to our country’s immigration practices. “Immigration as a Moral Issue” is the way this effort is being framed. Congregations across the nation are educating themselves and finding ways to take action. In our own church, Pat Nolan and Claire Szoke have been active with the local Faith Allies of the CU Immigration Forum. Religious communities are coordinating interfaith activities, next month in particular, since October has been designated as Immigration Awareness month. And leading up to this, Pat and Claire will be leading a six-session course on “Immigration as a Moral Issue” right here at our church, beginning tomorrow evening. And if I understood Pat correctly, there is still plenty of room for participants.
* * *
September 11th is an auspicious time to be thinking about how we handle the issue of immigration, and how we treat those who live among us, but who are not American citizens. Homeland security became a hot issue after 9/11/2001.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks, we created a new government entity called the Department for Homeland Security. In order to more effectively protect us from terrorist activity, dozens of government agencies were reorganized and placed under its umbrella.
Customs and border protection, citizenship and immigration services, immigration and customs enforcement, and the Secret Service, among many others, all merged into one department.
According to the Department for Homeland Security website, “The vision of homeland security is to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and way of life can thrive.”
This is a worthy goal, for sure. But I wonder whether the way we have been going about attaining this goal has really been effective. Is our homeland more secure? Do we feel safe?
* * *
It seems as if eleven years ago our immigration policies and procedures suddenly changed. But actually that is not the case. Our policies have always been in a state of flux.
Last week I was talking with an Urbana neighbor, who, like me, is a native of Germany. She happens to be a historian here at the U of I, and last year she published a book on migration and citizenship in the U.S. (Crossing Borders – Migration and Citizenship in the Twentieth Century United States, by Dorothee Schneider).
Immigration policy in this country, I learned, didn’t change radically a decade ago. It changed radically a century ago. It wasn’t until early in the twentieth century that the federal government first began to control immigration. Before that, the flow of immigrants had more to do with international commercial interests and local customs. Then the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which limited the annual number of immigrants from any given country to 2% of the number of people from that country already living in the U.S. in 1890. The Immigration Act of 1924 was designed to restrict the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Jews fleeing pogroms in Poland and Russia, as well as immigrants from the Middle East and Asia. As one historian put it, “the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.” The racial subtext of the Immigration Act was unmistakable.
In the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, the racist character of immigration law was no longer accepted. A new Immigration and Naturalization Bill of 1965 was passed, which ended four decades of “racialized nationality quotas.” Under the new law, no more than 20,000 immigrants from any given country were allowed to enter the United States. While this new quota system didn’t liberalize immigration policy, it did make it more diverse.
An unintended consequence of the 1965 bill was that, for the first time, federal immigration law affected immigrants from Mexico. Ever since the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, when the formerly Mexican territories of Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and some of Colorado were declared part of the United States, hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants moved back and forth across the U.S.-Mexican border.
In 1965, the new bill made this tradition of migration illegal. Rather than wait for years to be granted a visa according to the new law, many Mexicans chose to cross the border without documentation. The number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico grew and grew. So in 1986 yet another immigration act was passed – the Immigration Reform and Control Act – which financed border fortification systems and more border personnel. For the first time, crossing the Mexican-American border involved evading guards and border patrols.
Today over eleven million undocumented immigrants live in this country, most of them from Mexico. These are men, women, and children, who live and work in this country, who support our economy and pay taxes, and yet are in many ways virtually invisible. They live in a state of constant fear, families perpetually in danger of being torn apart. Eleven million people ignored and excluded make me wonder: is this the kind country that reflects our interests and aspirations? Is this the kind of country in which our way of life can thrive?
* * *
Henri Nouwen reminds us that the practice of hospitality, reaching out to strangers and inviting them into our lives, belongs to the very core of Jewish and Christian spirituality. Nevertheless, he writes, “it is important to realize clearly that our spontaneous feelings toward strangers are quite ambivalent. It does not require much social analysis to recognize how many forms of hostility, usually pervaded by fear and anxiety, prevent us from inviting people into our world.” (p. 48)
The most common way to cope with our fear of the stranger, is to engage in familiar forms of self-protection. As Nouwen sees it, “strangers have become more and more subject to hostility than hospitality. In fact,” he writes, “we have protected our apartments with dogs and double locks, our buildings with vigilant doormen, …our subways with security guards, our airports with safety officials, our cities with armed police and our country with omnipresent military.”
Religious practice teaches us to challenge these habits of fear. Because the experience of the human race has shown, that actions driven by fear only serve to be beget more fear. We hope to create a sense of safety and security when we lock our doors ever more tightly. And yet closing our eyes and ears to the stranger, only serves to make us all more anxious and afraid.
When we open our doors, when we open our eyes and ears, we will realize that those we fear are actually bearing precious gifts, which they are eager to reveal. When we dare to move from a stance of hostility to hospitality, we will discover the stranger brings blessings, and the possibilities of an unimagined, new life together.
Our homeland, our home, which we think we know, perfectly well – the house and barn, the trees and grass – and our family and friends – we may realize, are not so familiar after all. And faraway strangers may look and act just like family – or close enough.
When we open our homes and hearts to those too long ignored and excluded, our fear will be transformed. And we will have helped in the holy of work of transforming strangers to friends.
May we have the wisdom and courage to do this work.
Amen.
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