Border Issues Call Episcopalians to Action
Episcopal News Service. August 22, 2005 [082205-1]
Pat McCaughan
Amid growing tensions over illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, a gathering of Episcopalians in Scottsdale, Arizona, August 19-20 called for comprehensive reform and urged people of faith everywhere to shift the public debate by claiming it as a human right, rather than a political issue.
About 100 people, some from as far away as New York, Chicago and Hawaii, attended the second "Bishop's Initiative on Border Issues," designed to educate and train congregations locally and, hopefully, nationally, said the Rev. Carmen Guerrero, who is both Canon for Peace and Justice and Multicultural Ministries in the Diocese of Arizona and National Jubilee Officer at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.
"This is not about politics, this is about human lives," said Guerrero. "This is a theological and moral issue, especially for those of us who claim to be Christian. So many times we decide not to get involved because something is 'political'. This issue is about a lot of things, immigration and perhaps immigration reform. It's about human rights, health care, drugs, labor laws. It's like an onion; you peel one layer and you cry. Then you realize you have to peel another layer and then you cry some more."
Bishop Kirk Smith of Arizona said such gatherings are hopeful. "What's been really good is that the word is spreading. The challenge for the church is to present a well thought out alternative to negative media and public opinion."
Earlier in the week, the governors of both New Mexico and Arizona declared states of emergency over illegal border traffic and crime and unsuccessfully urged their counterparts in California and Texas to follow suit. The emergency declarations freed up more than $3 million in disaster aid for local law enforcement.
"This isn't a Republican or a Democratic issue," said the Rev. John Denaro, staff officer for Church Relations and Outreach for Episcopal Migration Ministries. "It's a human rights issue. I just hope the church can be unified around a vision to address it. It's obscene that people are dying 30 miles away while others just go about their daily lives as if nothing's happening."
Added Peter Fabre, a parishioner at St. Andrew's Church in Glenville, Arizona: "I'm a conservative Republican and that's not likely to change anytime soon, but that's beside the point. This whole issue should be depoliticized. What we need is comprehensive immigration reform and to focus on the fact that we are Christians and to draw upon the knowledge that Christ as a model transcends politics."
Deaths in the Desert
One by one, those who died while crossing the desolate Arizona-Mexico border this fiscal year were remembered aloud by conference-goers during August 19 evening prayers:
"Rosella Cruz Gonzales, 26-year-old female from Mexico, died in May of this year from dehydration, near Yuma."
"I ask your prayers for Number 140, unknown man, age unknown and place of birth unknown, who died June 17 of this year of hyperthermia, 1.8 miles southwest of Silver Bell Mine"
By August 17, the death toll in border crossings was 246, up from last year. In the entire fiscal year October 1, 2003-September 30, 2004, an estimated 233 such deaths were reported.
The names or numbers of the dead dropped heavily into the weighty silence at the Franciscan Renewal Center here. Some were as young as 15; others were 53 and older—men, women and children. Many died of dehydration and hyperthermia, victims of the desert's brutal heat. Still others faced another kind of brutality -- dying of gunshot wounds, motor vehicle accidents; blunt force trauma; a hanging death was reported. Some of the dead carried no clues to their identities and were listed as unknown, by numbers, rendering notification of relatives impossible.
"I met a man the other day in Chiapas who was looking for his sister," said Deborah Noonan, delegations coordinator for BorderLinks, a not-for-profit organization that conducts travel seminars focusing on the issues of Mexican border communities. "She called him months ago. She was in Altar and told him she was going across. That was the last time he heard from her."
Noonan said she has led delegations from all over the world into Mexico. "People farther away from it are always shocked by the poverty, but their hearts are touched by the generosity of the people. They realize people are crossing the border because they're desperate to feed their families and there's no legal way for them to come."
The Most Rev. Martin Barahona, Primate of Central America and Bishop of El Salvador, said about 700 Salvadorans cross the border daily. Many are victimized by corrupt coyotes who charge as much as $12,000 to take them to the U.S. Often, they are apprehended and deported. Worse, many are disabled while attempting to jump aboard trains, he said, sharing such stories in a video, Meridiano89.
"Our challenge as a church is to find a response, an orientation and treat them as God's children," he told the gathering. He said the Church in El Salvador is creating a "love your country" campaign in addition to supporting institutions offering immigration advice and helping youth find "hope opportunities" in their own country.
"But the socioeconomic reality is our country has a high level of unemployment, a very low minimum wage -- 60-cents an hour -- with a high cost of living," said Barahona. A proposed Central American Trade Agreement "will only bring more poverty to our country and the large transnational companies will be the only ones who benefit," he added.
Praying the names and circumstances of the border deaths gives a human face to an often overlooked aspect of the illegal immigration debate, Guerrero said.
She compared it to the ritual of naming the murdered and the disappeared during the war in El Salvador. "When the names of the dead were called out, people answered 'Presente' for them. The dead weren't there, but in a sense, they were and that's what we're doing," Guerrero told the gathering.
"As Christians, we believe in the communion of saints and we pray for the dead. They're with us. Some of us are here, some of us are there and some in the middle and some yet to come."
But U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton said he believes the numbers of deaths in the desert, based on Border Patrol reports in areas near Tucson and Yuma, and upon newspaper accounts, are vastly underreported.
"There are other deaths taking place, in Mexico, for example," said Charlton, an Episcopalian. "There are an extraordinary number of individuals dying on that side of the border."
Charlton said Arizona shares 370 miles of border with Mexico, about one-sixth of the total 1,950-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Last year, about 588,000 illegal immigrants were detained by the Border Patrol in Arizona. "That's over 50 percent of all the illegal aliens detained in the entire country," Charlton said. "We are at the vortex, the center of this issue and I'm grateful to the Episcopal Church for beginning a dialogue about it."
Charlton said that law enforcement agencies, from the border patrol to the federal prison system, are woefully understaffed and ill-equipped to stem the rising tide of illegal immigration. They are able to prosecute only those who have also committed felonies, such as trafficking in drugs or humans, especially children. About 4,000 such detainees were prosecuted last year, he said.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor offense and those apprehended are simply deported, he said. Statistics regarding detainees may reflect those who have been previously deported who are making another border crossing attempt.
'Shifting the Public Debate'
Luis Gonzalez told the group that amnesty programs do work. In an emotional testimonial, he described being separated from his parents at seven years old in order to cross the border illegally from Mexico into the U.S.
He was given another name, "George," and told to practice what to say if stopped by the border patrol. "We crossed the line sweating bullets," he said tearfully.
"We weren't criminals; my parents were desperate for us to have an American education, more opportunities," he said. But he recalled a life lived in the shadows, always in fear of being discovered and deported. When he graduated high school, he was unable to apply to college without legal documentation. But the family received amnesty in 1996 and he subsequently graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now an engineer.
Petra Leija Falcon, lead organizer for the Pima County Interfaith Council in Tucson and the Arizona Interfaith Network, said change begins with education and by shifting the public debate.
"If you close your eyes and just listen to the public debate, it sounds like Mississippi all over again, in the days of the civil rights movement," said Falcon, a community organizer for 15 years. "It's fear-based, it comes from a fear that there isn't enough. If we let them in, who'll be left out?"
"It's going to get worse, it's not going to get easier, the question is, how do we respond? Right now, it's beginning to look like Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists here are galvanizing around this issue, but is that enough? The real issue is, how do we change hearts and minds who don't feel what it's like to cross the desert when it's 130 degrees."
The Rev. Josie Beecher said feeling the overpowering heat of the day, with temperatures soaring around the 100-degree mark, brought her spiritually closer to the challenges faced by many of her parishioners in the Diocese of Olympia who are undocumented.
"When I got off the plane and the heat wave hit me, it touched me on a whole different level," she said. "Especially when I've heard children in my congregation who are eight years old talking about walking across the desert. Every year, we celebrate the Day of the Dead and we name the relatives. There's always someone's relative who died crossing the frontier. There are always friends and relatives who didn't make it. And there are those who thought they were going to die and those whose faces glaze over and they don't want to talk about it."
Phillip Mantle, Province V Jubilee Officer, and a Chicago City College employee, said he is planning a similar provincial conference for early next year, "because this isn't just a border issue, it's an interior issue. People cross the border here, but they end up in Chicago and without documentation they can't access any services. The church doesn't know what to do with them."
The Midwestern town is most affected currently with newly arrived Sudanese and Colombians, but he added that population projections indicate that by 2010 more than 70 percent of the city will be Latino.
The Rev. Tom Buechele, vicar of St. John's, Bisbee, a border town, called for comprehensive immigration reform, a just trade agreement with Mexico, and economic development. He encouraged people to familiarize themselves with the McCain-Kennedy "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005," as well as the Kyl-Cornyn "Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005," and to write their congressional leaders and talk to their families and friends.
"The border has always been a place of tension and even more so now. The strain is almost palpable in Bisbee. It's not just the helicopters flying overhead; people live in fear. But the church has a great opportunity here," said Buechele, who organized the first diocesan conference to examine border issues.
He said that last year, 54 million Mexicans visited and spent money legally in Arizona. "Shutting the border doesn't make any sense," he said, adding: "not to mention to damage it would cause to cross-border relationships between churches and families."
He said that NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, damaged an already fragile Mexican economy. "By the year 2012, the U.S. will need 3 million workers we don't have," he said, citing "Immigration Proposals from the Heartland," a report by Doris Meissner and others from the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, an independent forum for public learning on global affairs. "The shifting of the people of the world needs to be realized. We don't need to shut the borders down. We don't need to regressively think anti-immigration, but that's what's happening from New York to New Jersey to Arizona."
Beecher said that while the church is talking about the right issues, more needs to be done.
"It's time for the church as a whole, not just the Episcopal Church, to be the moral voice of the country," she said. "It's a role we've given away. The church is primarily saying that we need to help poor people, our brothers and sisters who are dying trying to cross the border, that we need to be welcoming and concerned. What we're not saying is that the church is made up of people who have arrived in this country without legal documentation, people who are being denied basic human rights. We the church must say that we the church are being denied our human rights and we will speak from our experience as church. So, the time has come for the church to say it, too, is illegal."
For more information about border issues or training, contact the Rev. Carmen Guerrero, who is both Canon for Peace and Justice and Multicultural Ministries, Diocese of Arizona, and National Jubilee Officer at the Episcopal Church Center at: cguerrero@episcopalchurch.org