Guest Post: Feet

Today [written May 29]  I will start a 75 mile trek through the unforgiving Sonoran desert. I'll cross over the border in Sasabe, Mexico and travel to Tucson, Arizona with a group of people.

I've been in Arizona for a few days now and the reality of what I signed up for is starting to hit me. Walking for six hours a day under the scorching sun. No shower for a week. (I'm sorry in advance for whoever I end up sitting by in the airplane.) Being surrounded by creepy crawly things in the dead of night. I should mention the heat again.

It's hot here.  

Inferno hot. Set a cup of ice out at 8am and it's melted within minutes hot. Feel the sweat slowly creep down your lower back as you're simply standing in the shade hot. 

Oh yeah, it's hot.

But then I remember. Thousands and thousands and thousands of others have made this same walk under the same sun and under worse conditions. Way worse conditions. No food, water, protection.

Oh yeah, and at the end of this journey I get to go home. I get to love on my family. I get to laugh with friends. I get to eat whatever I want.

This seven day walk is to remember and stand in solidarity with those who have crossed the same desert. Many of the feet who have plowed the road before me never made it home. Their feet never reached their friends and family. 

Precious feet of our brothers and sisters, made in the image and glory of God, are gone. Too many have needlessly died crossing this border. There is absolutely no reason anyone should perish for lack of water. Seriously. No reason. 

As I look down on my feet shuffling along in the desert I will intentionally choose to be thankful for feeling the sun burn my skin, my tired muscles ache and my dry throat cry out for rescue. Why? Because when I feel, I know I am alive. 

When you look down at your feet, what will you be thankful for?

Sarah Jackson lives in Denver, Colorado with immigrants from El  Salvador. She is striving to be the hands and feet of love, justice and  mercy as she lives with the poor and marginalized in the community.  Every day she intentionally believes in the intoxicating love which  travels beyond borders. Follow Sarah's blog, Piece of Paz or connect with her on Facebook.

Please  note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own  personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with  Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be  affiliated.

Guest Post: How Can the Law Assure Social Order?

By Robert Chao Romero

A key biblical principal is that God has established the institution of government to maintain social order (Romans 13: 1-7).  How is the follower of Jesus to respond, however, when government knowingly violates the legal guidelines it has created for itself in order to guarantee this social order?  This is one of the central issues involved in the immigration debate in America—though not in the way that many Christians typically frame the issue. 

According to the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case of De Canas v. Bica, “[p]ower to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power.”   This important case stands for a simple, and uncontested, legal principle:  it is the job of the federal government to regulate immigration.   States and local governments do not have this authority.  Only the federal government can create laws and policies which determine who gets to stay in this country and who can be forced to leave.  Only the federal government has the authority to check the immigration status of individuals and make decisions about visas, asylum, and deportation.   With limited exception, states and local governments cross the line into unconstitutional territory every time they try to engage in these types of activities.  One basic exception to this rule is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is allowed to enter into special agreements with local law enforcement agencies which authorize them to enforce immigration laws.   According to these “287(g)” agreements, ICE provides basic training to local police and then delegates to them some of its authority to regulate immigration.  Outside of these special agreements it is illegal for states and cities to engage in the regulation of immigration.   This is the current state of immigration law and it is uncontested.  It is really that simple.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, and the 14 copycat bills which have been introduced in states such as California, Illinois, Florida, and Texas, knowingly violate existing federal law and Supreme Court precedent.   SB 1070 and its modified version, House Bill 2162, empower Arizona police to investigate a person’s immigration status as part of a "lawful stop, detention, or arrest."   This provision flagrantly violates federal law because it takes the regulation of immigration out of the hands of the federal government and places it unconstitutionally in the hands of Arizona state authorities.    It basically says, “we the state of Arizona, by our own prerogative, authorize all of our police officers to regulate immigration by checking peoples’ immigration status.”   Again, this is not contested legal territory.  Regulation of immigration is entirely a federal prerogative. 

Hazleton, Pennsylvania provides another recent example of the way in which this legal principle has been blatantly disregarded.   By passing the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” in 2006, the city tried to take the issue of undocumented immigration into its own hands by fining landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and suspending the business licenses of people who hired them.   In other words, as reflected in the name of this legislative act, Hazleton sought to regulate immigration through the implementation of fines and the revocation of business licenses.   As the federal District and Circuit courts have since ruled, Hazleton’s “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” represents a clear unconstitutional attempt to regulate immigration. 

How is the Christian to respond to the Arizona state legislature, the city council of Hazleton, and other government authorities who consciously violate the legal norms which the U.S. government itself has established to ensure social order? Ironically, they themselves are breaking the law.  I leave this question for you to reflect upon and decide.  It is my hope that this brief discussion has provided a different angle on the immigration debate for you to consider and that through the legal perspective offered we might all be sharpened. 

Bio:

Robert Chao Romero is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies.  He received his J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Latin American History from UCLA.  He is the author of The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 and various articles related to race in Latin America and the United States.   He is Founder and President of Christian Students of Conscience, a ministry devoted to training and mobilizing university students around issues of race and justice from a biblical perspective (cscrevolution.org).  

This article is cross posted from
UnDocumented.tv blog by permission of the author.

March 8, 2011

Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.

Guest Post: How Do Our Trade Policies Force People to Migrate?

By David Schmidt - Creating Alternative and Fair Enterprise (C.A.F.E.)

 Comedian Dave Chappelle featured a skit once in which he played the President of the United States. In response to the problem of millions of Americans without health insurance, Chapelle’s character offered a simple solution: since Canada offers universal health care to its citizens, he proposed Canadian identification cards for all US citizens. Americans could receive their medical treatment in Canada, free of charge!

Many people view immigration to the United States in similar terms. “Why do they have to come and use our resources, take our jobs, deplete our public services? Why don’t they just fix their own country?” Immigration reform is often couched in similar terms: legalizing undocumented immigrants is described as “amnesty”, which is, by definition, forgiving a crime that has been committed. Immigrants’ rights are often described as charity for people who have “stolen” something or “entered illegally”.

Guest Post: A Better Life [Movie Review]

Movie Review: A Better Life, by Cindi Peterson

A Better Life, PG-13, a drama released in limited theaters on June 24, 2011, is insightful, authentic, engaging, and much more than a search for a truck. My heart broke and my stomach grabbed in enough scenes to move me to a fresh appreciation of the value of life and the suffocation of certain inhumane limits.

Carlos Galindo, a father, from East L.A. works hard to provide for his son, Luis, in a story that unfolds to engage the viewer in the emotional, complicated layers of life lived as an undocumented immigrant in current times. The story communicates the heart’s cry for dignity torn apart by the hardship of reality, peppered with the fear and stress of making a living and keeping familia safe. No cliché resolutions and without fairytale endings, this is a powerful, evocative glimpse into the controversy and compelling nature of the lives of the strangers among us. Love and hope are ever present in the pain.

The film is getting some great reviews from critics, and deserves attention. Director Chris Weitz, who also directed New Moon (Twilight series) and About a Boy, brings out some subtle and powerful performances. Actor Demián Bichir, who played Fidel Castro in Che: Part 2, gives a brilliant performance in the role of the father, Carlos Galindo. His 14-year old son, Luis, is played well by actor José Julián. Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries, a business run by former gang members, contributed by working with the crew to make the film as authentic as possible. The script includes language and differentiated slang true to various Los Angeles neighborhoods. The film is set in Hispanic neighborhoods with predominantly Hispanic cast members, unusual to many Hollywood productions.

I recommend this movie for several reasons: 1) The film as art is well done; 2) If you can spend the money, support a film that shares truth on the issue of immigration from a perspective of empathy and understanding, moving past pity and prohibitive posturing; 3) Continue to learn and increase awareness about the everyday lives of real people in our communities; 4) If you reside near Los Angeles, as I do, you may also enjoy the broader exposure to local culture and appreciate the familiarity of local geography in scenes throughout the movie; 5) Find the common ground aches and angst as parents working to secure a life for family.

I sensed and emotionally engaged in the anger, desperation, strength of character, the search for respect, the fight for integrity, and the tension between parent and child to provide and protect in a difficult situation. One scene gave me chills as it paralleled for me images from other films portraying people arriving at Nazi concentration camps, and the scene was not exaggerated in A Better Life. Yet, it was an accurate, objective portrayal of the experience of an undocumented community member. There is much more to say, but I do not want to give away too much of the plot development.

A Better Life is a tribute to a group of marginalized people in our culture. If you are not marginalized, this film may break your heart in new ways and promote more compassionate insight, or it could leave you confused, at a point of disequilibrium, trying to filter what you believed hours ago with new awareness of everyday reality for some within the current limits of broken justice.

Good people, like the father in this film, with the will to contribute and provide, deserve a more dignified path to a better life. This film does not make conclusions or recommendations. It just shines a light on the struggle. The subtle communication in images and facial expressions, communicate as much as the dialog. The story will be familiar to those of you most involved with this issue, either personally or professionally. The film may help to open the minds of others who need to investigate the value of compassionate comprehensive immigration reform.

On my journey, stories in films and books have moved me into a place of inquiry and perspective, and helped me overcome my own personal prejudice and stereotypes. Along with the movie Under the Same Moon, and the book, Enrique’s Journey, this film is now part of my understanding, as I work with others to provide a gentle invitation for sincere consideration of the complexity of immigration.

Cindi is a writer, educator, and student advocate in Southern California. She is passionate about the DREAM Act, issues of human trafficking, and economic disparity. She leads Women Against Global Hunger and blogs at Seeds and Sensibility.

Opinion: Scapegoating behind anti-immigration laws

Yet another state, populated largely by people who consider themselves Christians, has apparently criminalized Christian behavior toward illegal immigrants. At least according to the Associated Press which says in an article published in my local newspaper June 10 that Alabama’s new immigration law makes it “a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.”

This an excerpt from Associated Baptist Press' Travis Loller.

Several states, mostly in the South, have recently passed laws criminalizing humanitarian aid to illegal immigrants. True, some of these laws (perhaps all of them) contain exceptions for government regulated humanitarian organizations and for emergency responders. However, where does that leave the average Christian who feels called by God to reach out and help an illegal immigrant in need?

Read the whole article here. 

A journalist commits to asking the questions ...Let's talk.

What would you do to survive? What would you do to feed your child?

On Wednesday I heard something about this story and then a friend of mine sent me a text telling me I needed to read it. I am glad I did. Jose Antonio Vargas has selflessly gone public with his story this week in order to help many others. Jose was brought to the United States as a child without his consent or approval. He has done some amazing things. "'It's get exhausting,' he said. 'I came forward because I couldn't do it anymore. If I can't do it anymore imagine how many millions of other people out there can't do it anymore?" Vargas wrote his own story that was published in the New York Times: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant. A more detailed story it to be published this Sunday in the New York Times.



Mr. Vargas has started a website to help tell his story, Define American.

NPR's Michele Norris interviews Vargas on All Things Considered this afternoon, Jose Antonio Vargas: 'If I Didn't Tell Those Lies ... I Couldn't Have Survived.'

Undocumented.tv's Juliana Martinez has some comments about the story here, What Will You Do Now?

I repeat the question that Jose asks all of us: What will you do? Feel free to leave some comments.

From a Birmingham Jail to Georgia and Alabama

Guest blog: Lessons from “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”

From Robert Chao Romero

“I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all’… I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?’… Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church.”

 These words, penned by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, still ring unfortunately true today. In his day, Dr. King was the leading Christian voice protesting the unjust Southern laws which enforced unbiblical segregation between blacks and whites.   Citing St. Augustine, Dr. King asserted that unjust laws are not really laws at all because they stand in contradiction to God’s eternal Law.   He found himself deeply disappointed with most evangelical and fundamentalist churches of the South because they failed to  publicly   challenge the southern segregation laws which stood in direct opposition to the biblical truth that all men and women, regardless of ethnic background, are made equally in the image of God.  

Many applications from “A Letter from Birmingham Jail” can be made with regards to undocumented immigration issues in the South today.   The state legislatures of Alabama and Georgia have once again penned some of the most hateful and unbiblical laws targeting ethnic minorities—in this case, undocumented immigrants from Latin America.   These laws are like Arizona SB-1070 on steroids.  The Alabama laws, passed earlier this month, bar undocumented immigrants from attending college, prohibit undocumented immigrants from applying for or soliciting work, and criminalize the rental of residential property to undocumented immigrants.  The Georgia legislation, signed by state governor Nathan Deal in May, authorizes police officers to question individuals about their immigration status in certain criminal investigations and threatens to fine undocumented immigrants $250,000, or send them to jail for 15 years, for using fake identifications in search of employment. 

This mean-spirited racist legislation from Alabama and Georgia violates both the letter and spirit of several biblical principles: 

1. God commands that immigrants are not to be mistreated or oppressed.  Exodus 22:21
2. God loves immigrants.  He provides for their needs.  Deuteronomy 10:18;
3. God calls us to advocate for immigrants and to defend their rights.  Proverbs 31:8-9. 
4. Jesus teaches that if we love him we will love immigrants.  When we love immigrants, we are actually loving him.  Matthew 25: 34, 35, 38, 40. 

 It is immoral and unjust to benefit from the labor of undocumented immigrants and simultaneously to blame them for all of our society’s social ills.   Undocumented immigrants contribute more than 2 trillion dollars to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product every year.  Our economy is entirely dependent upon them.   They pick our fields, raise our kids, and clean our homes.  They mow our lawns, fix our drywall, and renovate our homes.  They cook our food at American, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian restaurants, and when we’re done they wash our dishes as well.  They work in our factories, coffee shops, and every fast food establishment you could imagine.  They clean our workplaces and office buildings long after everyone has gone home to have dinner with the kids.

It is a sin to be ungrateful.  I think that it is especially a sin to benefit from all of the hard work and economic contributions of undocumented immigrants  and at the same time to scapegoat them for our nation’s, or our state’s, economic woes.   This is biblical mistreatment and oppression.  

It is also immoral to deny a university education to the children of undocumented immigrants.   Although this may be a popular position in Alabama, such denial of educational opportunity is utterly unbiblical and unjust.  A fundamental biblical principle is that no one should be punished for an action for which they had no control  (Deuteronomy 24:16).   To use a biblical analogy, if the parents eat sour grapes the children’s teeth should not be set on edge (Jeremiah 31:39).

In the same way, undocumented college students should not be punished for  crossing a border when they had no decision in the matter.   Most undocumented college students were brought to the United States when they were just small children or infants.  In fact, 60,000 such undocumented students graduate from high school each year in the United States.   Many of them are valedictorians and at the top of their class.  Tragically, thousands of these students are denied a college education because of state laws which bar them from the university.

As in Dr. Martin Luther King’s Day, I ask, where is the Southern Church?  “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of [Governor Deal] dripped with words of interposition and nullification” in May? “Where were they when [Governor Bentley] “gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred” less than two weeks ago?

Like Dr. King, I weep for the Southern Church.  I am a pastor and the grandson of a pastor.  I love the Church. My heart breaks, however, when I see the name of Jesus misrepresented by Christians who support or fail to challenge unbiblical laws such as those recently passed in Alabama and Georgia.

On a positive note, I am encouraged by the Southern Baptist Convention, which recently passed a resolution in support of  "a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country."  The resolution falls short of explicitly condemning the racist laws of Georgia and Alabama, but it is a step in the right direction.   As the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and a prominent religious institution in the South, the Convention’s statement will hopefully prompt many Southern Christians to reconsider their perspectives on immigration in light of the biblical admonition to love immigrants and speak out on their behalf.

Robert Chao Romero is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies.  He received his J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Latin American History from UCLA.  He is the author of The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 and various articles related to race in Latin America and the United States.   He is Founder and President of Christian Students of Conscience, a ministry devoted to training and mobilizing university students around issues of race and justice from a biblical perspective (cscrevolution.org).  

Please note that the views expressed by guest bloggers represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of everyone associated with Loving the Stranger or any institutions with which the blogger may be affiliated.