Thoughts, Questions and Our Own stories about Immigration

Even though the glare of media attention to Immigration has lessened in the past month, this is a week where that glare could be present again.  This is significant week for how Immigrants will be treated in the United States.  According to National Public Radio, 2,551 children age six and older who were separated from their parents as part of the government’s Zero Tolerance Policy are supposed to be reunited with their parents by this Thursday.  That was an order by Judge Dana Sabraw.  What happens will be widely reported.

I still am shocked that children were separated from their parents at all.  Separating children from their parents should have never been used as a deterrent to prevent people from coming to the United States.  No matter what a person’s view is on Immigration, I hope that we can all agree that separating children from their parents and then putting children in a cage is not acceptable in the United States.

But until we can talk, tell stories, and ask questions about Immigration my fear is not much will change.  It's extremely difficult to talk about Immigration.  These conversations almost force each of us to share our own opinions about President Trump, our thoughts on the morality of breaking the law when a person crosses the border without being a citizen, and our own views about the threat to safety from people who enter the United States without being a citizen.  These are all emotional issues.  And the emotion can overwhelm a conversation.  Add to this toxic brew of conversation the issue of race, and ...  

What’s lost in the recent glare about Immigration is that 11-12 million people currently live in the United States who don’t have citizenship papers.  That number has remained relatively stable for the past ten years.  Seventy-five percent of that population has lived in the United States for over a decade. Separating children from their parents has existed for a while, but it intensified in when Attorney General Jeff Session announced the Administration’s Zero Tolerance Policy in May.

Ultimately it's important to tell stories about how a person came to their views on Immigration.  My perspective on “Illegal Immigration” was formed when I worked for the farm workers in California in the late 80’s, early 90’s.  Then as now farm workers performed work that was extremely difficult; they received low pay and lived in conditions that many in the United States would not tolerate.  Most farm workers were Hispanic, some didn’t speak English, and some were not citizens of the United States. 

Whether a farm worker was a citizen of the United States or not didn’t matter to me.  Farm workers were performing work that many middle class Americans would never do.  They wanted to help their family, so they would endure very challenging conditions.  Their work allowed me to purchase fruits and vegetables in the grocery store.

When I served the Presbyterian Church in Plainview, Minnesota, I got in touch with some of the migrants who worked at Lakeside Food.  Lakeside Food was a local canning company.  Many of the people who worked there in the summer came from Eagle Pass, Texas.  They came to work and perform work that others in the community wouldn't do.  Lakeside Food would never have had people from Texas come into the community to work if enough folks from the community had done the work.  The community benefited from their work.  If Lakeside Food had left Plainview, the local property tax base would have been significantly lessened. 

I looked at farm workers or the people who came to Lakeside Food as people who were willing to work and who were willing to participate in the American Dream.  They were doing hard work to give their families a chance to a better life.

They didn’t bring crime, they weren’t rapists, and they didn’t bring drugs.  They were good people.  They aren't flooding the United States.  According to the United States Border Patrol the number of people who illegally cross the border is much lower in 2018 compared to 2014 and much smaller than in 2008.

An important part of developing an Immigration policy that is fair and just is coming to terms with how we view people who come across the border.  Are they criminals because they are here?  Are they people trying to make a better life for their families?  Are they people who are doing jobs that most people wouldn’t?  Are they making life better for the country?

I don't have the answers to that would develop a policy about Immigration.  But until we can tell our own stories about our views on Immigrants, it seems to be that the United States will be locked into polarizing views with little change.

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