Immigration issues

Here's a link to a PBS article about Alabama's immigration law and the impact it's having on people there. I especially like the interviews with people on the street, in particular the guy who said:

MAN: Oh, I'm all for it. I feel like what's taking place in America right now is a slow-moving invasion. Our country is being taken advantage of and being exploited.

Slow-moving invasion. So unless this guy is a native American, he or his forebears are guilty of perpetuating one of those slow-moving invasions themselves.

This is crazy to me that people are so self-centered. Since my ancestors from Europe won a war, I have a God-given right to say who belongs here or who doesn't.

No you don't, not if you're going to follow that God in the Bible, the one who loves the "quartet of the vulnerable"--orphans, widows, the poor and the aliens.

If your family was part of the "founding" of this country, they were illegal immigrants.

If your family came to this country between 1776 and 1950, they came under laws that favored west Europeans, often to the exclusion of other nations.

There are families of "illegal immigrants" along the border with Mexico whose ancestors lived in that land hundreds of years before anyone of European descent even came looking for a passage to the Indies.

It is time to fix the immigration system here in the US. It's time for real decisions and leadership on this issue, not the broken-down rhetoric of political expediency. Families are suffering, children separated from parents, people are having their basic rights stripped.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Immigration the legal way?

Okay, summer is winding down, and I'm going to start writing more again (thanks for the cheers, faithful 3.5 readers!). In fact, I want to write some thoughts about last weekend's prayer rally at Reliant Stadium in Houston, but I don't have the time at the moment.

What I did want to do is give you a link to a short but well-written piece about immigration, and why those in the country without documentation today don't hop in the lines to legal immigration. Let me know what you think.

Here's the link...

Another thought on immigration...

This morning I was listening to the news about the judge overruling implementation of pieces of Arizona's new law. They (and I) have been talking about the impact this will have on a person who gets pulled over or does some other minor infraction having to prove their citizenship.

But what about victims of crimes? Will someone whose house was burglarized no longer call the police because their abuela is living with them and she is undocumented? What about a woman whose work visa expired but she hasn't left the states because she has a job that provides food for her kids, and she gets raped. Will she want to report that to the police at the risk of being deported? Will an undocumented man assaulted by gang members want to report that crime?

Will this law inadvertently allow for unscrupulous characters to even further exploit that without current legal status? Definitely something for consideration.

So to make sure I'm putting my money where my mouth is...

Here is a well-thought out viewpoint of immigration by a believer. I would not agree with a couple of the applications of his points, but I've been saying all along that we need to listen and dialogue. That includes me to.

Read it and provide some comments.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/julyweb-only/58-21.0.html

Immigration Reform

I just finished looking at my friend Laura Cadena's pictures from the recent rally in downtown Dallas protesting the recent immigration laws in Arizona. There's been plenty of news coverage about the laws, and the Arizona governor has made a couple of needed changes, a step in the right direction at least. So my goal isn't to regurgitate the news -- there's plenty of places you can do that. My goal is to think "out loud" on my computer screen, and see what might come to the discussion as I do. Maybe nothing valuable, who knows. It's certainly not a polished piece of prose. But we'll see.

So in no particular order, some musings: first, my thoughts are mostly about responding to immigration in general, and undocumented immigrants in particular. Border security is important, and needs to be dealt with. But IMHO it's not the primary issue behind the AZ law, or behind most people's anti-immigrant stance. If the undocumented folks I have met are indicative of the group, then I believe the vast majority of undocumented people in the US pose zero security/safety risk. Immigration laws--and their enforcement--are also important issues, but again, not so much what I want to deal with here.

Second, I'll try to admit my biases. I think there are too many laws already, on virtually every issue, not just immigration. The problem is we don't enforce what we already have with any degree of consistency. If someone is a drug dealer or terrorist, changing immigration laws will not deter what they do. It's not like they think "Oh, now there's 2 laws against me, I guess I better stop." If someone is a drug dealer or a terrorist, they should go to jail, regardless of their country of origin or their citizenship.

I think that most undocumented persons in the US are not terrorists, drug-users or dealers, or any type of law-breaker, other than that they either came to or stayed in the US in violation of some immigration law. Again, if my experience is any indication, virtually all current undocumented people are hard-working, productive folks who are not trying to "game" the system and get free stuff. They are doing what they believe to be in the best interest of their children, and their children's children. They are working and paying taxes, albeit to SSN accounts that are not theirs, which means they will not draw social security themselves some day. They love this country and do not like being lawbreakers, but they see it as the lesser of two evils, so to speak.

I think that some immigration laws are unjust, and that followers of Jesus should be just as passionate about just immigration laws as they are about just marriage laws or just taxation.

I think that the word "amnesty" is being thrown around too much by anyone who disagrees with immigration reform that doesn't deport any and all current undocumented people. If I get stopped for speeding and ask for deferred adjudication, pay a sizable fine and keep my record clean for 90 days, and in doing so have my record not reflect the speeding ticket, I did not get amnesty. So too a solution that involves fines and law-abiding life for a period of time before being granted permanent legal status but does not include deportation is not amnesty.

I don't think that everyone who opposes dealing in this way with the current undocumented folks are racists. I know some are, but I also know that there are good and godly people who believe we do need to deport all people here illegally. This gives me pause and makes me want to be even more humble and careful in how I put forth my thoughts. I don't take it lightly when godly people disagree on an issue. I also think those who disagree should not take it lightly either.

I think if there is racism rearing it's ugly head (it's certainly not dead in the US, by any stretch of the imagination), it should not be accepted nor tolerated by any follower of Jesus. Period. We the church have been on the wrong side of that issue before, and should never be again.

I think that we don't pay enough attention to history. Winners of wars get to write the laws in our world, but I find this diametrically opposed to Jesus' admonition to the disciples that they should not be the kind of leaders who lord over people, like the world does, but they should put others first and be servants of all, with him as the example of what that looks like. This is a whole other blog topic I plan to write on, and probably one of the more controversial things I muse about, so I'll try to be brief. Did winning a war 170 years ago make us right in setting the borders as we did? Have we for 200 years now practiced "might makes right" as a nation in violation of Jesus' command?

Okay, I'm stopping now. I told you this was a bunch of random thoughts, but for now it's the best I have. I look forward to the dialogue, so please feel free to comment.