Title: ELCA Bishops, LIRS President, Call for Fair and Just Immigration Reform ELCA NEWS SERVICE
March 27, 2006
ELCA Bishops, LIRS President, Call for Fair and Just Immigration Reform 06-048-AL*
WASHINGTON, D.C. (ELCA) -- The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Chicago, and Ralston H. Deffenbaugh, Jr., president, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), Baltimore, and 53 ELCA synod bishops, sent a statement March 27 to U.S. Senators, calling for fair and just immigration reform. The issue is to be debated the week of March 27 in the Senate, and the statement will appear in the March 28 issue of "Roll Call" -- the newspaper of the U.S. Capitol.
LIRS is a cooperative agency of the ELCA, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
"We are compelled by the spirit of Christian solidarity that transcends borders and by the life of Jesus, himself a refugee as a young child, to call on you to oppose immigration reform legislation as currently proposed," Hanson and Deffenbaugh said in an introductory letter sent to the Senators along with the statement.
The statement was written out of concern for language in the legislation currently under consideration in the Senate which would criminalize pastors, service workers and faith-based volunteers who provide humanitarian aid to undocumented immigrants. The statement also opposed language that would "[criminally] punish immigrants who seek only to work or remain with their families with sentences of up to two years."
Those endorsing the statement requested specific changes to the legislation currently under consideration: + oppose the criminalization of the church, its ministers and its members, who provide humanitarian aid to undocumented immigrants + oppose provisions which criminalize undocumented presence + provide a path to permanence for individuals currently residing and working in the United States as well as their families + ensure basic constitutional due process rights in the enforcement of our laws + include in the legislation the bipartisan "Agricultural Job Opportunities Act" for farm workers -- a measure negotiated by growers, agricultural employers and farm workers -- to create an "earned adjustment" program enabling some undocumented farm workers and H-2A guest workers to obtain temporary immigration status with the possibility of permanence, which revises the existing H-2A worker program
"As members of a church with immigrants, and with roots in immigrant churches in a nation of immigrants," the statement said, "we urge the Congress to make these corrections to the bill, or to reject it." - - -
The full statement is at
http://www.ELCA.org/advocacy/immad0306-5.pdf on the ELCA Web site.
Information about Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is at http://www.lirs.org on the Web. * Annie Lynsen is director for advocacy communications, grassroots and network development, ELCA Washington (D.C.) Office.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog