wfn.org | NCCCUSA-U.S. Churches Reach Out to Immigrants,

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

Refugees

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: Carol J. Fouke, NCC News, 212-870-2252
Internet: carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

NCC4/9/97                           FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

U.S. CHURCHES REACH OUT TO IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES;
Church World Service Offers Resources for Year in Solidarity 
with Uprooted People

 NEW YORK, N.Y., April 9 ---- Barbara Gere, George 
Eisele and Joan Maruskin are among the thousands of ordinary 
people across the United States whose lives have been 
enriched and transformed because they reached out to an 
immigrant or a refugee.

 Ms. Gere, of Fredericksburg, Va., and her congregation 
welcomed a Bosnian refugee family of four.  "The most 
important thing was my privilege to touch another life and 
to have that person touch mine," she said.  Mr. Eisele, of 
Antelope Park Church of the Brethren in Lincoln, Neb., 
participated in sponsoring a Kurdish refugee family from 
Iraq.  He reflected, "There's the satisfaction of helping 
somebody else get out of a bad situation and helping them to 
be comfortable and safe."

 The Rev. Maruskin, pastor of Christ United Methodist 
Church in Yoe, Pa., started a prayer vigil outside York 
County Prison on behalf of the nearly 300 Chinese men and 
women imprisoned because they came to the United States on 
the Golden Venture seeking political asylum.  "The United 
States detains its asylum seekers.  That's against God's 
law," she said.  "God wants us to welcome the stranger."

 The decision of these three persons and of thousands of 
other Americans to "welcome the stranger" - especially in 
today's increasingly anti-immigrant climate - is being 
celebrated as U.S. churches join in observing the 1997 
Ecumenical Year of Churches in Solidarity with Uprooted 
People.

 Church World Service, the relief, development and 
refugee assistance ministry of the National Council of 
Churches, is challenging congregations across the United 
States to join the observance and to offer a welcome to 
newcomers in their own communities.

 A CWS resource packet can help congregations take the 
first step.  It includes resources for seminars, Bible 
studies, worship and action.  Contact: CWS Immigration and 
Refugee Program, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 658, New York, NY 
10115; phone 212-870-3153; fax 212-870-2132; e-mail 
jane@ncccusa.org.  Cost is $3 per packet, or $2 each for 
orders of 10 or more.  

 Church World Service works with ecumenical partners 
worldwide to assist persons who have been uprooted from 
their communities because of violence, war, persecution, 
hunger and hopelessness.  In 1997, the number of refugees 
and internally displaced persons worldwide is more than 50 
million.

 Resettlement of refugees in the United States is part 
of that ministry.  U.S. churches working through Church 
World Service have helped to resettle more than 400,000 
refugees in the United States since CWS was founded in 1946.  
CWS coordinates resettlement in the United States of about 
7,000 refugees a year, placing most with a sponsoring 
congregation.

 Dr. Elizabeth Ferris, Executive Director of the CWS 
Immigration and Refugee Program, acknowledged that getting a 
sympathetic ear for the concerns of immigrants and refugees 
is harder these days, as an anti-immigrant sentiment sweeps 
the country and manifests itself in new, more restrictive 
policies.

She urged churches to stand up against that tide.  
"First, consider the biblical mandate to 'welcome the 
stranger' and to 'love your neighbor as yourself,'" she 
said.  "Then, get your facts straight.  For example, 
immigrants in the U.S. pay $30 billion more in taxes 
annually than they receive in benefits, such as health care, 
education and welfare.  And the U.S. resettles less than one 
half of one percent of the world's refugees - fewer than 
100,000 a year in a nation of 263 million.

"Finally, get involved," Dr. Ferris said.  "Ask who are 
the 'strangers' in your community, and what do they need?  
Your congregation might start with something as simple as 
inviting an immigrant to dinner and listening to his or her 
story."  She made a special plea on behalf of the least 
visible - and least popular - of immigrants, those who are 
"undocumented" and "those in detention in U.S. prisons and 
jails, including many asylum seekers."

The Rev. Maruskin of Yoe, Pa., offered dramatic 
testimony of the harsh conditions that asylum seekers endure 
in prisons and in more than 900 county jails across the 
United States - including poor food, shackles and other 
physical abuse.  "No one in our country is more voiceless 
than an immigrant who doesn't speak English who is put in 
detention and no one knows they exist," she said.

She spoke during CWS's launch of its own observance of 
the Ecumenical Year of Churches in Solidarity with Uprooted 
People, March 25-26 in Washington, D.C.  CWS has issued a 
strong call to its 33 member denominations "to open their 
churches and their hearts to the foreigners among us and to 
seek to become the church of the stranger, recognizing that 
Jesus Christ may come to us as a stranger in need of 
welcome."

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