In Immigration News This Week

Ian Danley writes that We are On God's Side in Huffington Post today. He says, "Believing that youth are partners in our community development work rather than problems to be solved, we have found profound leadership capacity in our young people. Our undocumented youth, along the way, have led us all." Read the whole piece here.

Pulitzer Prize winning Jose Antonio Vargas tells his story in My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant the New York Times.

"I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

"But I am still an undocumented immigrant."

Opinion on Associated Baptist Press has a piece called Scapegoating behind anti immigrant laws:

"Jesus said that insofar as people offer a cup of cold water to one of the least of these his brethren they have done it to him and insofar as they have refused to do it for the least they have refused it to him (Matthew 24). Does anyone really think Jesus didn’t mean illegal immigrants by 'the least of these my brethren?'"

In Whittier, CA we participated in an interfaith event on immigration sponsored by the Whittier Area Interfaith Council. I gave a talk on immigration and introduced one of my friends, a graduate of UCLA, to talk about his experiences in the US after he was brought to the United States when he was only 4 years old.

The Los Angeles Times featured an article on the problem of a lack of labor in states like Georgia where state laws on immigration have made it more difficult for employers to find workers to harvest crops in New Latino South: Fewer Hands in the Field.

The Los Angeles Times has also done op-ed pieces on immigration including: Immigration: Changes to Secure Communities are for the Better. "John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, deserves credit for acknowledging that the program is in trouble and for providing a fix." Also, Help for Young Immigrants, "By some estimates, nearly a million young people in this country are living in a kind of immigration limbo. The United States is the only home many of them have known, but because they were brought here illegally as children by their parents, they live in fear of deportation."

[Update: Pastor Ian Danley's On the Underground Railroad is posted on Define American.]