Immigration Reform, Workers' Rights: Arizona Diocese Sets August Summit
Episcopal News Service. June 3, 2005 [060305-1-A]
Pat McCaughan
The Episcopal Diocese of Arizona is hosting an Aug. 19-20 summit to help empower local congregations as advocates for immigration reform and the rights of undocumented workers, Diocesan Bishop Kirk S. Smith has announced.
The conference is a faith-based response to existing anti-immigration sentiment, which is often fueled by misinformation, fear and racism, said Smith, the Bishop of Arizona.
"Economic survival is a basic human right. It comes right out of the Biblical imperative about how we treat the stranger in our midst," Smith said.
An earlier Bishop's Initiative on Border Issues conference held in Tucson in February drew an estimated 200 people and included discussions about outreach, advocacy, and empowerment ministry on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico Border, said the Rev. Carmen B. Guerrero, who is the diocesan Canon for Peace and Justice and Hispanic Ministry.
Guerrero credits the conference's success to its organizer, the Rev. Tom Buechele and a conference organizer. Buechele is vicar of St. John's Church, Bisbee, located about eight miles from the Arizona-Mexico border. He also serves the diocese as border missioner.
The August session, set for the St. Francis Retreat Center in Scottsdale, will focus on developing base communities to recruit and educate parish advocates, bridge-building between political and social sectors, and human rights and border issues as part of Christian formation, she said.
Guest speakers will include: the Rt. Rev. Martin Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate of the Anglican Province of Central America, a member of the Central American Human Rights Commission, who will discuss the human rights perspective. U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton will address the politico-legal perspective, and interfaith representatives will focus on empowerment and organizing, she said.
"The bottom line is, the workers have human rights that we as Americans need to learn about and to be advocates for them," Guerrero said.
The anti-immigration sentiment has resulted in a tightening of the border and subsequent breakdown in family relationships on both sides of it, said border missioner Buechele. "It puts the squeeze on families who've lived here hundreds of years with family on both sides. Just being able to cross the border to visit relatives, to shop is more difficult."
Buechele said that the collapse of the Central American coffee market has sparked a northern migration of workers from Central America and as far as Brazil to find work in the U.S.
"You can't understand the immigration issue until you go to the other side of the border, stand in the hot sand in Mexico, and look north. In that process, one gets a whole other kind of perspective," said Buechele who as diocesan border missioner organizes trips to Altar in Sonora, Mexico, a gathering spot for those preparing to cross the border.
"You soon discover that the people attempting to come here are not terrorists," he said. "They're not coming to take anybody's job away. They're coming to get jobs that here in the U.S. nobody else wants to do or we don't pay people to do."
Noting a U.S. Bureau of Labor projected 3 million worker shortage by 2012, Buechele added: "This country has always depended on immigration, whether it's been legal, illegal, temporary or permanent. We can't outsource dishwashers, landscapers or chicken coop cleaners and those are all the kinds of jobs the immigrants do."
Conference-planners also intend to garner support for the McCain-Kennedy Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005 introduced May 12 in the U.S. Senate, he said.
The McCain-Kennedy bill and the Kolbe-Flake-Gutierrez companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives would overhaul immigration, allowing a multi-step path to citizenship for undocumented workers and a new program that could yearly increase legal immigration by 400,000 people.
"The proposed legislation brings to an end the disconnect between law and reality," Buechele said. "It offers an effective system to manage immigration realities of today. And it would go a long way to stop the disgraceful loss of life in the desert. Already this year, 70 people have died in the desert simply trying to cross the border to come to work in the U.S. that needs them here working and while will need them even more in the future," he said.
Buechele said the migrants are "economic refugees who cross the border seeking a better life. And the faith-based principle is always that people have a right to migrate to exist."
Bishop Smith agreed, adding that the McCain-Kennedy bill is a welcome relief to Proposition 200, passed in Arizona in the last year's general election, which mandates that no public services be provided to anyone without proof of citizenship.
Anti-immigration sentiment sparked passage of the bill, along with myths that undocumented workers take jobs away from citizens and strain local economies by sapping social services and not paying taxes, he said.
"The reality is, undocumented workers bring in more money to the economy than they take out. They have a higher employment rate than any other group," Smith said. "They pay taxes, sales tax and withholding tax.
"Our economy needs them. Our service industry and lower-end industry is staffed by them in substandard conditions, for less pay with no benefits," Smith said. "[Many] are blackmailed to take the jobs or be sent back across the border, blackmailed to work in conditions that no American worker would tolerate.
The McCain program would allow them to be guest workers, to work legally and offer protection, he said.
"Once we make them legal, they'd have to be paid minimum wage, receive health benefits, and operate in safe working conditions. Employers don't want to do that, because it will cost them more money. They have a vested interest in keeping them as illegal immigrants. Why not find a way to treat them humanely, where they can come and earn an honest day's wage through an honest living. But it won't happen as long as we're ruled by our own economic self-interest."
Further information about the conference may be obtained from the Rev. Canon Carmen B. Guerrero, at: 800.334.7626, ext. 6052 or via email at: cguerrero@episcopalchurch.org Guerrero is also the Episcopal Church's staff officer for Jubilee Ministries.