Immigration Issues

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, October 8, 2006

Reading

The New Colossus
By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
“keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I life my lamp beside the golden door!”

Meditation

Holy Spirit of Life

We offer prayers of support for the Amish community in Pennsylvania
As they mourn the loss of their daughters in the tragic schoolhouse killings.

We pray also for those touched by the killing of the school principal in Wisconsin.
And those who are grieving the violent abuse of teenage girls and the killing of one young girl in Colorado.
Three times already this year.
Shooting and School used in the same sentence.
Three times.

How could this happen? Again?
What can we do?
First we can share a moment of silence in honor of those young lives…
And all that has been lost.
And pray that we can learn lessons of forgiveness from the Amish community.

May we not grow insensitive or accustomed to violence
May we always be shocked and disturbed.

For only then can we recommit ourselves to lives of kindness and gentleness.
Let us resolve together to teach our children the ways of peace.
Let us resolve to protect all of the children…to cherish all of the children,
To nurture and care for all of the children.

And may we continue to work toward a more peaceful nation.
May we work for more and better gun control.
May we counter violence wherever we find it…

And strive in all we do to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So May It Be/Amen

This is America and most of us have an immigration story somewhere in our background.

The issues of immigration are both historical and current…both political and personal. This morning I ask you to care about immigration…to care about immigrants in America. Really, I’m asking you to care about family.

My husband’s father emmigrated from Russia in 1920. His Russian Jewish family fled the pogroms- the attacks on Jews…of their day. They left everything behind. They lost all possessions, all money, along the way in their flight to freedom. It was a long, arduous and complicated route. It took years to get to America.

Like many families…the elders did not talk to the younger members of the family about their experiences. Much of the story has been lost.

When Dave’s father, Abraham, arrived at Ellis Island at the age of nineteen…other relatives had already given up their Jewish sounding name for the more German name of Strauss. Our children say they would prefer the original name of Strokophski. Things might have been different; I might have been Reverend Strokophski.

There are many reasons to care about the issue of immigration in America today. I think it is important that we care. For the issues of immigration, citizenship, assimilation, migrants, day laborers, amnesty, deportation, death in the desert….and the building of a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border affect us all.

Immigration policy is a moral issue. It always has been.

And like all moral issues, it is complex and difficult to know where to stand on the significant questions involved.

Let me tell you why I think it is a moral issue.

It is basic really…America was founded on the democratic principles of freedom and equality. The American colonists chose religious and political freedom rather than remain loyal to a king. They crafted a different covenant…one based on the rights of citizenship and participation in government.

These democratic principles remain the guiding foundation of our nation. Freedom, equality and citizen participation are the principles that we want to take to the rest of the world.

Therefore, how we live these principles at home- how we extend freedom and equality and participation to those who come to our shores really matters. By what policies and principles we include- and by what policies and principles we exclude, is a moral and ethical matter.

Immigration policies and practices in America have always been imperfect. We have never fully lived up to our founding vision. There has always been debate and struggle over who is in and who is out…who is welcome and who is turned away…what group is eliminated and what group is assimilated.

Today we are at yet another crossroads on these questions. Because of a global economy requires a global community, because of Sept 11th and terrorist threats, because we Americans are afraid…because of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor world wide, because of deterioration of the environment and increased pollutions, droughts and famine…we are experiencing another immigration crisis.

Each of us must decide where we stand on the issue, where we cast our vote, what we will support and what we will challenge- because there is a strong anti-immigration movement in this country. Sadly there are members of my own extended family who are caught in the grip of hate and fear of people different from themselves. They are captured by the vitriolic attacks on immigrants and citizens of this country who speak Spanish- they are being seduced by the internet propaganda. I know this because they forward these diatribe emails to me…I can’t even read them they are so hateful and so false and so intentionally geared to arouse fear and anxiety.

A leading voice in the anti-immigration movement is Patrick Buchanan, the title of his new book says it all; “State of Emergency: the Third World Invasion and Conquest of America”. He promotes inaccurate prejudices saying that Mexican and Central American immigrants are driving down wages, contributing to increasing violent crime, not assimilating as quickly as former immigrant groups, and that they are bent on taking back Texas and California! His constant complaint is that they don’t speak English. His repeated fear is that Spanish will become our new national language.

To his credit, President Bush does not share these extreme views. President Bush has said that he views Mexican immigrants as hardworking people trying to provide for their families.

Why else would migrants leave their wives and children…leave the cities and towns and villages where they have spent their lives, leave with nothing but the shirt on their back…and travel into unknown dangerous territories to a country where they have no place to live, no job, no idea where the next meal will come from …why would they risk everything including their lives.

There was a photo in the Post that captured my attention. It showed a row of men huddled in blankets, sitting in a row looking off into a blank distance. The caption read…”more African migrants risking open seas… African migrants shiver in Red Cross blankets on a beach on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura after arriving this week on a small boat crowded with 30 people. So far this year, more than 24,000 West Africans have been caught in open boats trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, about five times the number for all of 2005. Yesterday at least 20 migrants drowned when their boat split in two. A South Africa ship picked up 11 survivors.”

Immigration is a moral issue. How can we look away. How can we do nothing. How can we allow the anti-immigration forces here in our country to dictate policy out of a zenophobic hysteria. How can we stand by as parents die and children starve?

The Christian Century magazine tells of a Mexican woman who tried to cross the border into Texas…all the safer crossings have been gated or monitored…the only places left to cross are the most dangerous. She walked for days across the desert and became so dehydrated that she almost died. She spent a week in the hospital before she was sent back to her village in Mexico. When the writer interviewed her after her ordeal…all she said was…”Well, I’ll just have to try again.”

The zenophobic hysteria touches close to home. In September two day laborers, at a work pick-up site, were killed in Prince Georges Co. – one black, one Mexican. A friend of one of the slain men said, ”We’re out here for one thing- to make ends meet.”

In Herndon where there have been protests against a day labor center…there are some who want the city to begin training local police officers to enforce federal immigration law…in other words to detain anyone they believe might be illegal and ask them for proof of their legal status. In a suburb in Illinois there is consideration of a measure to penalize employers who hire illegals and landlords who rent to them.

Last month a 7 year old boy traveled from Chicago to Washington DC seeking an audience with President Bush in order to fight the deportation of his mother. He is a U.S. citizen , his mother is not.

Scenes like this are being repeated all over the country.

There is some hopeful action on the liberal side. Some cities and counties are calling for sanctuary within their boundaries…seeking to forbid social service agencies from asking questions about legal status, and to prevent local police from immigrant profiling.

But whatever the laws and policies…people continue to risk their lives to come to America. Because we are a land of plenty. Because we are a land of freedom and opportunity. Because here, all citizens can have a voice in the democratic process.

So who gets to be included? Who do we welcome as potential citizens or workers…and who do we turn away? These questions have been with us from the founding.

The book I read for background for this sermon is “A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America” by Aristide R. Zolberg, professor of political science at the New School for Social Research. His carefully researched analysis of immigration policies and practices in America from 1670 to the present challenges anti-immigration impulses with two major points.

First, the data proves that “it has always been thus”. His hypothesis is that the United States of America is a nation by design.

As a nation we have consciously and consistently made decisions about who gets in and who doesn’t. Most often these decisions were made on economic grounds. How much and what kind of labor was needed? Who could bring in revenue by purchase of land? Who would be a drain on government resources? Who would work cheap? Who would be capable of contributing to the civic and electoral processes? Who were good farmers?

From the violent elimination of the Indians through the Asian exclusion and the Slave trade, through quotas of indentured servants, and incentives for western settlement, and bargains struck with shipping companies, and regulations to keep out paupers (which began in 1670 Virginia) to enticing Businessmen and investors away from Britain…the founding fathers began and subsequent administrations continued to create a diverse America by design.

Did you know that in colonial America everyone could vote, whether they were citizens or not, no matter how long they’d been here, everyone could vote…Oh, no, wait, not everyone…only all land-owners.

And just as there have always been quotas and incentives and competition for legal status and citizenship in America, there has also always been prejudice, hatred, inequality and fear of the other…of those who speak a different language, practice a different religion, eat different kinds of food, follow different customs.

The Irish, the German, the African, the East European, the Russian, the Jew, the Italian, the Polish, the Asian and now the Arabs…all these groups have been demonized and feared and stereotyped. The stereotypes don’t change, only the targets of fear and prejudice change.

The concerns about learning English and about fitting in culturally, about following a strange religion, about taking away jobs, about participating in criminal activities, about not being smart enough to participate in the electoral process…all the very same stereotypes have been applied…and now it’s Latinos. It has always been thus.

Throughout our history there have been three essential means used to influence and control the flow of immigrants. Internal controls, external controls and border controls. The federal government can control internally with quotas, visas, amnesty, deportation, or citizenship. There can also be external controls…taxes on passenger ships was common through much of our history…fees and sponsorship were often required at the point of origin. And finally control at the borders…which has taken on a sense of imperative In the current climate of fear of terrorism.

The maze of immigration law and the current legislative proposals of the 109th congress are exhaustive in their complexities…but there are some basic categories to understand.

First, as many of you know from personal or professional experience…there are may kinds of visas with annual quotas on each…There is a visa lottery program…which includes employment-based and family sponsored visas. There are student visas. And foreign worker visas…and agricultural guest-worker visas… there is a category called lawful permanent resident…or LPR.

Presently, Visas for skilled workers (H-1B) visas are frozen at 65,000 per year…which is a hardship for companies and universities and research facilities needing scientists and engineers.

One conservative legislative proposal is a call for a moratorium on all immigration until the Department of Homeland Security gets this all sorted out.

The basic questions in American have always been. How alike must we be? How different can we be? Who is in, who is out?

So Zolberg’s first point is historical perspective and acknolwedgement that government has always controlled the face of America.

Zolbergs’ second point addresses the terrorist fears of today…of course, he says, we must craft sensible immigration policies…we can’t have a complete open door, no questions asked…we can’t take in all the suffering peoples of the world.

But the way to ensure good policy he says is in good implementation. We already have quotas and categories…but they are poorly administered, he suggests more effective implementation of current laws…more effective screening of foreign visitors, better accessibility and sharing of relevant information…priority given to consular staffing…make consular work more valued and more expert…better training and availability of senior consular officers. Visa work, he suggests, must be treated as a career specialty…better advance passenger information …rather than holding people up at the airline gate.

We must separate our concerns about terrorism from our intentions regarding immigration. They are not the same category.

As Zolberg puts it: “ Immigrants who feel welcome rarely set out to destroy their new home”.

If we are a nation by design as Zolberg suggests…what design are we working on today…what do we want our nation to look like? How do we see ourselves within the global community?

Do we want a closed country or an open country…a walled or fenced in country or a country of free choice and safe movement…

The moral dilemma exists because we hold a competing hierarchy of values and commitments: We need safety and security and comfort

We need freedom and openness
We desire equality and value diversity
We feel compassion for the suffering of the world’s people

How will we reconcile these seemingly conflicting values and commitments?

For myself, as a person of liberal religious commitment…I need to stand first for equality and diversity. I want to always be on the side of including rather than excluding. This is my highest value. If it means I must sacrifice some security and comfort, so be it. I believe that diversity and inclusiveness is compatible with freedom and openness and that inclusiveness is act of compassion.

The terrorists have made us afraid. Our government has made us afraid. But I do want to live in fear. I don’t want to keep people out of my country because of what they might do…or how they might take something away from me. I want to live with more trust than that ….with more trust than fear.

I am grateful to the America that took in my husbands’ ancestors and before that my own…great grandparents…I am grateful to the America that took in all of you and your ancestors….

To borrow a phrase from Langston Hughes, I want America to be America again…I want the rich potential of diversity to be part of my life and the lives of my children and of my grandchildren.

I hope that I have made you care just a bit more about the issue of immigration. I hope that as you encounter the immigrant neighbors of our community , you will greet them and appreciate them and welcome them into your schools and your neighborhood, your home, and yes, of course, into our church.

So May It Be/Amen