Borders, alienation and church

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony at the beginning of the Lenten season called on priests to defy proposed U.S. laws that would require churches to check for immigration status. How would you counsel members of your religious organization to deal with such proposed laws?

Immigrants are simply people who have come to the United States hoping to share in the American dream ? to make a better life for their families by hard work. They are not criminals. As we well know, most of them come here because they can readily find work at jobs that our society wants them to do. Anyone who has hired a Mexican or Mexican-American worker because they got a good deal or could find no one else to do a job should be honest about this issue and then consider what is fair and decent treatment of our neighbors. To be in the U.S. without proper documentation is a civil offense calling for deportation. The proposed new law, passed by the House but awaiting action by the Senate, would make it a criminal offense to be in the country without documentation. Even worse, it would make the humanitarian assistance given by churches, ministers, doctors, nurses, teachers and social workers to undocumented workers a criminal offense.

Harsh penalties will not stop people from leaving their homelands to escape miserable conditions. As long as rich nations profit from global economic power and poor nations get poorer, the motivation to migrate will exist. As long as there are jobs to be had, people will come for them. Despite fears that undocumented immigrants drain our social services, the truth is that the majority of undocumented immigrants are making economic contributions to our society. But if they do sometimes need social services, we should not try to stop community and church organizations from giving food, shelter and medical care by making humanitarian assistance a criminal offense.

Fear of terrorism should not be used to justify criminalizing people, building fences and walls or sending the National Guard to the border. Any realistic solution must take into account three factors: That people have the need and right to migrate; that nations have a right to regulate their borders and control migration; and that the dignity of the human person must be upheld through just and merciful policies. We need to reform our immigration procedures by using guest-worker programs, by legalizing undocumented workers and by developing a more realistic and humane immigration policy.

As far as counseling others, I would share my views as a personal perspective with those who practice at the Zen Center, and I would ask our other Zen teachers and practitioners to contribute to the discussion. Each Zen practitioner is encouraged to apply his or her practice of awareness meditation to the issues of the day, and to take responsibility for whatever action is called for. I do not think that I know best what decisions people should make, especially when they may involve the serious consequences of civil disobedience. For voters to contact their representatives and senators would be another option. Some people in L.A. are fasting. My role as a Zen teacher and pastoral counselor is to help those who practice at the center to listen with awareness to their lives and to respond as authentically as possible. Special attention should be given to the vow to serve others, the emphasis upon compassion and the reality that each person has “Buddha nature” or “true self” regardless of country of origin, ethnic or racial background or immigration status.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center

of Orange County

Costa Mesa

For people of faith in the God of grace, growth of tensions over immigration is a moral and theological issue about human rights rather than a political issue. It’s about health and drugs and labor and economics, and more. Like an onion, you peel one layer and cry, then you realize you have to peel another layer and cry some more. When thinking about comprehensive labor reform, Christians must remember that Jesus calls us to attend to strangers in our midst and that Christ as a model transcends politics.

Politicians on one side insist in emphasizing illegal immigrants and illegal immigration, and think that inclusive faith communities are concerned only about increasing their own membership. They laud the legislation in question, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005 and is now making its way into the U.S. Senate. They call it the “Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Act” and emphasize cracking down on border coverage by using a state-of-the-art fence and surveillance technology and by increasing punishment. The other side calls the bill the “Sensenbrenner-King Bill” and characterizes it as inhumane in criminalizing 11 million “undocumented” permanent residents in family relationships and communities of support, neighbors, employers, co-workers and friends. They emphasize that this bill would criminalize a landscaper who drives his workers to a job, a soccer mom who drives her neighbor to soccer practice, a counselor who assists victims of domestic violence, and a church group that provides shelter or assistance to immigrant community members.

I think that this debate is based on fear of those who differ from us and fear that what we have isn’t enough. “If we let them in, who of us will be left out?” sounds like many human-rights debates of old. I wonder how hearts and minds who don’t feel what it’s like to cross the desert when it’s 130 degrees are going to be changed? I believe that we don’t need to regressively act on anti-immigration prejudices, and that we do need to realize new and creative shiftings of the people of our world.

Last month was a month of prayer and fasting for comprehensive immigration reform. Some of us prayed: God we cry out to you to give our leaders compassion for the most vulnerable among us. We cry as your people in Egypt thousands of years ago cried out to be liberated from their slavery. You heard their cries for help. You were present. You saved them. We need you again, and always. Please listen to our cries for help now. Be present when our leaders meet to create laws that affect those newly arrived in this great land. We cry out to you, almighty and gracious God, to make us a compassionate people.

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

What business does the government have requiring churches to do anything, let alone check for immigration status for people we serve? I have not heard of these laws, nor of Cardinal Mahoney’s recommendation. I do stand with him though. We serve people on a weekly basis who are illegal immigrants. We do encourage them to do the right thing in relation to the laws. Years ago, we had an illegal family attending our congregation. They were a promising couple with two children. We came to love them and became confident in the call of God on their life to serve in ministry. We encouraged them to return to Guatemala and seek legal entry in the U.S. While they were back in Guatemala, we paid for their theological education. After he graduated, they were able to get visas and eventually U.S. citizenship. Now Erwin Marroquin and his wife Margie serve as the pastors of our Hispanic sister church El Camino. We didn’t include the government, but we gave “unto Caesar what was Caesar’s.”

SENIOR ASSOCIATE PASTOR

RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

I cannot imagine a more reprehensible law. If you’re a Christian all you have to do is ask: would Jesus have checked your immigration status? It is almost as reprehensible as some of the changes the Costa Mesa City Council has made in allowing local law enforcement to function as immigration officers. Or the possible changes being suggested that would make every business in Costa Mesa have to apply for a conditional-use permit. As one local Costa Mesa real estate person recently told me, “This means we could get rid of the soup kitchen and other charitable groups.”

I am appalled at such attitudes. The level of self-serving and self-absorbed people who are so self-centered that they can’t look beyond their own narrow-minded prejudice is amazing. I visited the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, and it’s a wonderful service provided for those in our community who don’t have anything to eat. Many of those there were seniors who I know appreciated the home-cooked meal delivered with such dignity and grace. I wonder how many of those seniors were struggling to make ends meet on limited incomes trying to decide whether to eat or buy their prescription drugs. Or, what about the unfortunate drug-addicted person kicked out of his or her home by parents practicing tough love. I know people who are now sober who might not have made it if it wasn’t for the soup kitchen.

For those who favor laws that discriminate against Latinos, the poor or seniors, I urge you to stop living in your prejudice and start living in your humanity.

SENIOR PASTOR

JAMES TURRELL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

Costa Mesa

Just as I believe criteria are mandated for admission to Heaven, so I believe standards should govern the right of entry into America. The condition that should apply to both celestial and earthly destinations is a judgment of the applicant’s qualifications for admittance. The great difference between the two realms is that while the deceased cannot slip unnoticed into Heaven, the living can not only sneak into America but remain here unpunished.

People of faith bear responsibility to obey the law, with the possible exception when that law compels a violation of Biblical commandments and values. Does enforcing legitimate and understandable statutes governing legal immigration contravene Scriptural teaching? Welcoming the stranger is an ideal in religious traditions, but a stranger who enters like a thief in the night, circumventing the law of the land, should be treated as any other criminal: on the basis of justice.

Even if conjectured that Jesus would today advocate the unrestricted movement of peoples in a borderless world, without regard to national integrity, I presume most Christians would disagree. After all, who would counsel a battered woman to accept Jesus’ advice to turn the other cheek when confronted by a spousal abuser attempting to take a second shot? Jesus’ rarified ethics, noble as they are, are not always congenial to real-life situations.

My wife counts Emma Lazarus as an ancestor. This Jewish woman wrote of “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and lifting a lamp “beside the golden door.” I represent a faith that authored the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” I am heir to an American Jewish history that began 350 years ago when a boatload of 23 Jews arrived in New York seeking refuge from persecution. I am a son of a people often denied permission to immigrate, resulting in multitudes of murdered men, women and children. I know well that nativist prejudices and xenophobic intolerance have periodically poisoned the political landscape and social culture.

But I am also commanded by the Torah’s injunction, “You shall not respect the person of the poor (simply because he is poor) nor honor the person of the mighty (simply because he is wealthy), but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” The rule of “equal justice under the law” must prevail. Accepting millions of undocumented immigrants within our borders hands a reward to the scofflaw. We have a right to secure borders and cannot afford to forfeit control of how one may enter our country. After all, the proper designation for one who trespasses sovereign borders is “invader” and the only meaning of “illegal” is “illegal.”

Judaism embraces an inclusive vision of residence in Heaven, claiming that the righteous of all nations have a share in the afterlife. They must, though, present their credentials at the gate. Entrance into paradise is governed by a clear policy that does not countenance smuggling or evading detection. Like that system, America’s immigration policy should be generous, lawful, orderly and just.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

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