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07752 November 19, 2007
On the Road to Find out
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me - Emma Lazarus, 1883
by Jim Nedelka Presbyterian News Service
HAZLETON, PA - It's the American Dream: find a good job, live in a safe neighborhood with good schools and churches, raise a family... Yes, the American Dream: for North Americans, Central Americans, South Americans and every other country we in the USA - a country founded by immigrants - use to hyphenate ourselves.
Yet, in this immigrant nation, immigration is a hot-button issue in 3-D: documentation, denigration, deportation.
While it has always been true that the plurality of immigrants have been the most economically challenged in their homelands - the 19th century wave of post-potato famine Irish immigrants and post-rice famine Chinese immigrants come quickly to mind - most immigrants have not arrived in this country looking for a hand out.
They have always been willing to start at the bottom and - despite resentment and outright discrimination, manifested through "Irish Need Not Apply" and "No More Chinese" postscripts to many 19th Century job listings - immigrants have worked their way in, and up, because they had the chance to do so.
Let me in, immigration man Can I cross the line and pray I can stay another day - Graham Nash, 1972
Sobered by the events of 9/11, the United States' heightened effort to seal the borders to those without the proper paperwork has created a new reality for many potential immigrants: the American Dream has become the American Nightmare.
This closer scrutiny, most frequently handled by lower-echelon diplomatic employees fearful of letting in the next international terrorist, has created years-long waits for those with the proper paperwork. Additionally, U.S. immigration rules place limits on the numbers of people "allowed in."
These limits [read quotas] restrict those seeking certain types of work, those from particular countries, married couples and those from the same family unit. In today's reality, you have a better chance of getting into the United States - and being allowed to work - if you're a Gold Glove Major League shortstop rather than an unskilled tomato picker.
Meanwhile, continued economic downturns in emerging nations, nations in political upheaval or religious strife and countries shattered by war create urgency in those with the basic yearning to breathe free through a better life in the United States.
And so, they enter the country illegally or they overstay their visa, creating an estimated population of 12 million undocumented people, numbers roughly equivalent to the size of Boston, Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C. combined.
These undocumented people have also created fear and loathing in many parts of the USA.
"The flow of illegal immigrants from [my] country cannot be stopped." ---Mexican president Felipe Calderon, to ABC News, October 2007
Enter the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
The 2004 General Assembly called for a "Comprehensive Legalization Program for Immigrants Living and Working in the United States" which directs Presbyterians to, in part:
Advocate the establishment by law of a comprehensive legalization program for undocumented persons already living and working in the United States; Advocate the reform of current immigration policies and procedures to ensure a more timely and humane process, with special attention to family reunification and to those persons who have been waiting for their immigrant visas and for naturalization; Adamantly oppose the exploitation of any and all workers as a violation of the humane and just treatment due to all children of God. Since July 2005, this directive has been embodied in Julia Thorne, an attorney who, in her position as an assistant stated clerk in the Office of the General Assembly, serves as the denomination's Manager for Immigration Issues/Immigration Counsel
Thorne has spent much of her first 30 months in this newly-created position "on the ground," listening, teaching and learning:
listening to the concerns of congregations and Presbyteries about undocumented immigrants and the impact on their pulpits, congregants and the businesses of many of these congregants teaching the often frustrating and convoluted realities of current U.S. immigration policies, separating the fact from the fiction learning about the new roadblocks set up by local municipalities to combat their perceived "illegal immigration problem." During the second weekend of November, Thorne's travels brought her to Hazleton, PA, Ground Zero in the fight by local municipalities against their perceived "illegal alien problem."
So on and on you go, the seconds tick the time out There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out - Cat Stevens [Yusuf Islam], 1970
On Friday, Nov. 9, a light snow is falling in Hazleton, a town of around 22,000 people located along the northern edge of the Lehigh Valley. With the temperature hovering just below 40 degrees and a noticeable breeze blowing along West Broad Street, conditions are just warm enough to keep the snow from sticking to the slag heaps of the surrounding coal mines but just cold enough to airbrush a white frosting on the trees and their gold and orange color-changing leaves.
The Rev. Philip Sanders joins his secretary, Barbara Chladon, in greeting noontime visitors at the door of the First Presbyterian Church, a terra-cotta-colored brick structure from the mid-19th Century. Both are equally excited and nervous about Thorne's visit. It's rare for someone from the GA level to visit their small congregation, where the necrology list often exceeds that of new members.
Sanders' call at First church, begun in January 2006, was a homecoming of sorts. "I grew up in a town just like Hazleton," he says, "only it was called Parkersburg, West Virginia."
The new pastor barely had four months of tenure under his belt when Hazleton's version of 9/11 occurred: Derek Kichline, a 29 year old citizen working on his car in his own driveway, was killed with a single gunshot to the head. The two men arrested for the murder were later proven to be undocumented immigrants with a history of gang activity.
The shooting death was shocking since the seeming weapons of choice for Hazleton's gangs are baseball bats and machetes.
The town's reaction was swift. Led by Mayor Louis Barletta, on July 13th, 2006, the Hazleton City Council passed Ordinance 2006-18 Illegal Immigration Relief Act, the first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation law making it a crime to hire - or rent to - illegal immigrants. In part, the law reads:
"[U]nlawful employment, the harboring of illegal aliens in dwelling units in the City of Hazleton, and crime committed by illegal aliens harm the health, safety and welfare of authorized US workers and legal residents in the City of Hazleton. Illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates, subjects our hospitals to fiscal hardship and legal residents to substandard quality of care, contributes to other burdens on public services, increasing their cost and diminishing their availability to legal residents, and diminishes our overall quality of life."
During the same legislative session, the Council also enacted a law making English the city's official language.
Under the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, Hazleton landlords found to be in non-compliance face administrative fines of $1000 per illegal immigrant rented to plus a loss of permits. Slated to take effect in September 2006, opponents quickly appealed. The town agreed to a moratorium against enforcement while the appeals were active.
On July 26, 2007, Federal judge James Munley struck down Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act as "an unconstitutional ordinance pre-empted by federal law." In his decision, Munley also wrote:
"The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community."
Hazleton is currently appealing; the full text of the legislation and information about the city's defense is available at Barletta's website while the July 2007 ruling can be found here.
In the time since Hazleton's legislative action , a handful of municipalities across the United States, such as the Texas communities of Irving and Farmer's Branch, has gone public with their own Hazleton-style laws.
Well in the end I'll know, but on the way I wonder Through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder - Cat Stevens [Yusuf Islam], 1970
Julia Thorne is on a walking tour of Hazleton's narrow Wyoming Street. According to Hazleton's Chamber of Commerce, the burgeoning Latin population and businesses - many located along Wyoming Street - have bumped up Hazleton's economy. The petite mother of three is accompanied by Sanders, Rev. Steve Shussett, executive of Lehigh Presbytery, who prefers the title "Teaching Presbyter" over that of "Executive Presbyter."
This trio is accompanied by several reporters and onlookers. Thorne smiles and comforts Sanders when he apologizes that work requirements prevented several Latino leaders from joining this group.
The tour stops across from a former firehouse transformed into the town's historical society and museum. It is immediately next door to the Hazleton Food Super Market, a grocery store featuring many products preferred by the Latin community. The two buildings share a common wall. Up the block, the 1922 Cohn building is now home to the Marvin Grocery.
Dominican flags adorn many Wyoming Street marquees and store signs; others have color schemes reminiscent of the Mexican flag.
"Why is Hazleton so upset? Phoenix has been like this for years!" Thorne wonders. "This is the way all towns should be!"
The group visits several other businesses, but the afternoon chill and the falling snow prompt the suggestion to seek a warmer place for further conversation, hopefully with more of the local population. Sanders suggests a place and the small group heads that way.
"When I speak with people about undocumented immigrants," Thorne offers, "I ask 'What has changed most about your life?'" She pauses to allow a listener time to hazard a guess, but extends this pause a bit longer to cross a side street, then answers her own question.
"Most people's response is 'Nothing.'" Then, with a twinkle in her eye, Thorne adds: "Their chief complaint is that their insurance has gone up." She tosses in an aside, "Whose hasn't?"
When you reach the broken promiseland every dream slips through your hand You'll know it's too late to change your mind Cause paid the price to come so far just to wind up where you are And you're still just across the borderline -Ry Cooder, 1987
Julia Thorne sees her role as the vanguard of an opportunity for the PC(USA) as a whole.
"What the Quakers were to the abolition movement, I want the PC(USA) to be to the question of illegal immigration."
Over cheesecake and afternoon coffee, Thorne emphasizes that the spreading of fear and misinformation by too many talk radio hosts have been the driving forces against undocumented immigrants.
"I can usually tell within the first three sentences if someone has a clue about what they're talking about."
She explains that the only thing illegal about many of the undocumented immigrants is that fact that they don't have documentation. They are mostly hard-working, tax-paying people. In the PC(USA) alone, the undocumented population includes:
99% of one North Carolina congregation;
a Brazilian-born minister in New York City with a doctorate in education from Columbia University whose paperwork has "gone missing" within the system; an African pastor who received bad advice from an attorney and is now being deported. Thorne and those around her table are working on their second cup of coffee when a young man enters the restaurant and pauses several steps away from the coffee drinkers' table. He is composed but also visibly upset. His story comes tumbling out to the waitress: he has just spent the last 90 minutes in jail.
The young man explains that he had wanted to get from point A to point B and, due to the snow and chilly conditions, had asked for a lift from a man he knew casually. At some point in the journey, the car was pulled over by a local policeman. Not having a current registration, the driver was arrested along with his passenger.
"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." -Matthew 25: 35
Sanders sighs.
The young man's story underscores what the young pastor had been discussing earlier in the afternoon. As a newcomer to town, at the time of the 2006 murder Sanders believed the ordinance was well-intentioned. He explains that the Hazleton ordinance grew out of people's frustration over the murder and their need to "do something about it."
But events during the past 15 months have changed his mind.
Sanders admits that fear may have been the driving force behind Hazleton's seemingly draconian measures surrounding undocumented immigrants. Yet, he adds, "Racism is much more insidious now, much more scary" than the ordinance.
"[The ordinance] is not the face of evil, but it has allowed people to act with evil." He cites several instances where "non-white" people, some of them his congregants - and U.S. citizens all - have been accosted on the streets of the small town by people asking "are you undocumented?" and "are you legal?"
Shussett, who has spent most of the afternoon listening, leans in with another example: the Romanian-born wife of a pastor from another denomination. When the couple is out in the community together, he says, everything seems fine. However, Shussett has been told that when she is out alone in the community, the pastor's wife is frequently the target of insults and other slurs.
Shussett poses the question: "If the Church isn't going to speak out against this, than what are we going to speak out against?"
And he does a little teaching. "It's a myth that most Latinos are Roman Catholic. This is why the Church must reach out to everyone."
Sanders sigh again. "I understand that 'illegal' means 'illegal.' If I were just an ordinary American, the argument would end there. Politically, I may be a conservative Republican, but I am a Christian first. The One I follow loved the outcasts."
"I must try to do no less."
How good and lovely it is To live together in unity - Psalm 133, from the Call to Worship, Lehigh Presbytery's November meeting
The scene shifts the morning of Saturday, Nov. 10, to Faith Presbyterian Church, tucked into a tidy, upscale neighborhood just off winding Route 309 that is Hazleton's road to Emmaus (PA). The damp, chilly night has given way to a day where the sun and clouds will race each other across the sky, the clouds eventually losing their many-hours-long lead to a late afternoon sun.
Emmaus is football country, specifically, Penn State Nittany Lions' country. With the hometown high school having lost the night before to Allentown's Parkland High, most area fans' now turn their attention towards Penn State's afternoon visit to the Temple Owls in Philadelphia.
And yet, as kick-off time comes and goes, Lehigh Presbytery's commissioners have tossed aside their football afternoon to do God's work in the inviting place that is Faith Church's sanctuary.
At any meeting, the first session following lunch often finds the speaker fighting an uphill battle to keep the interest of somewhat-sleepy attendees. On this particular Saturday afternoon, Julia Thorne is the order of the day after lunch.
She has the commissioner's firm focus and rapt attention. She is in the pulpit, a clicker in one hand, her eyeglasses in another, a video projector displaying her PowerPoint presentation on a screen just off her right shoulder.
Suiting today's occasion, Thorne has customized, combined and condensed several of her longer presentations. The screen images fill-in the thousands of words she would otherwise deliver.
Thorne's opening makes the commissioners' gasp: of the PC(USA)'s 273resbyteries, she has already handled immigration concerns from at least 125 of them.
"As Presbyterians, we have several things that inform us about immigration," she says. "What does Scripture say?" The presbyters chuckle. They are warming to her presentation.
"I'm going to show you what the Bible says - from Genesis to Revelation - about immigration. These stories sound like cases I could pull out of my files when I was in private practice."
"The immigration issue began with the Tower of Babel," she contends, "because that's where different languages and cultures came from. Scripture says the world had one language and God didn't like that. So, God came down and scattered the people all over the Earth."
She continues with Abram and Sarai. A famine in their homeland brought them economic hardship, so God told them to immigrate to Egypt, the superpower of the day, where God would bless them.
"At the border," says Thorne, "Abram and Sarai changed their names, lied to the government about who they were and lied about their relationship. Pharaoh didn't like this, so he sent his men to Abram, who sent him on his way."
"Thus," says Thorne, "we have the first deportation."
Her punchline gets the desired hearty laugh and the room relaxes in their pews. Her survey course continues with Moses being sold into slavery.
"The first case," says Thorne, wryly, " of human trafficking."
She recaps Exodus I and the Pharaoh's attempts to marginalize the Israelites growing population, clearly drawing parallels to the plight of Latino immigrants in the U.S.
Thorne's "Cliffs Notes" tour of the Bible's references to immigration issues highlights the story of Ruth; Jesus, Mary & Joseph's flight into Egypt; John of Patmos' vision of harmonious multitudes of people speaking multitudes of languages.
As an attorney she is an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the law. But she freely admits she did not quote from Romans and other passages where God and the prophets admonish us to "submit...to the government's authorities."
"Church History also informs us" about how people doing God's work can be agents for change in secular history.
"An estimated 18 million indigenous people" once inhabited North America. By 1640, nearly 25,000 mostly-white European settlers began expanding westward, uprooting the indigenous population. Around the time of the U.S.' founding, the U.S. Naturalization Act granted citizenship, the right to own land and the right to file lawsuits to white males.
Period.
1830's Indian Removal Act presaged the relocation of some 70,000 Native Americans along the Trail of Tears. Slavery, abolished by individual states during the 19th Century, was not outlawed at the federal level until 1863; the CSA didn't abandon Slavery until the Civil War ended in April 1865. Jim Crow laws weren't fully muted until the 1960s.
"All these laws were changed."
I got stopped by the immigration man He said doesn't know if he can Let me in
--Graham Nash, 1972
Thorne moves into a detailed explanation of current U.S. immigration policy. The presbyters sit up in amazement when she delivers her kicker:
"Today, the U.S. is currently reviewing applications for legal entry by non-married, unskilled workers filed in October 2001. If that worker decides to get married before coming to the U.S., that worker falls into a different category and has to go to the end of another line. If that now-married worker adds a child or children while waiting, that family unit moves into a different category and must go to the end of another line. Thus, you can see how it might take an unskilled worker who started out single, who adds a wife and family along the way, more than 10 years to gain legal immigration entry status."
And then only if that unmarried unskilled worker makes the cut since, as Thorne concludes, "The U.S. only allows in 5,000 unskilled workers annually...for the whole country. We could use 5,000 unskilled workers in Kentucky alone!"
"I don't care what side of the immigration debate you're on, the current policies are ludicrous. They are not what our country needs."
You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made And people whose skin is a different shade You've got to be carefully taught - Oscar Hammerstein II, 1949
The floor now opens for questions: one commissioner addresses the problems faced by churches involved in global mission work. Thorne agrees that a true partnership becomes complicated and difficult because foreign clergy visits here are purely at the discretion of consulate officials. Compounding this situation, in countries like Mali, the fee just to make an appointment to meet with a consular official to request a visitor visa is the equivalent of a 9-month Mali salary.
Thorne discusses her recent mission visit to the York (PA) Correctional Facility, where it's costing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania around $5/hr [$120/day] in tax dollars to hold undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation.
She concedes that true reform of immigration policy probably won't happen until 2009, when a new president takes office and a new Congress convenes. In the intervening timeframe, she believes the church can step up in one particular area.
"I'm hearing things I'd thought I didn't think I'd ever hear again in my lifetime, statements about people that really sound to me like right before the Civil Rights movement; targeted, race-related statements about groups of people that are not based in fact, that are just really, really horrible, ugly." She adds that our northern border is just as porous as our southern border.
The Rev. Laurel Brundage, pastor of Pleasant Valley Presbyterian Church in Broadheadsville, expresses the feeling of many.
"I've just been overwhelmed," she says, "by this surge of emotion that doesn't have any room for a rationale response. What do you do with that?"
Thorne empathizes with Rev. Brundage and points out that the portions of her presentation about Immigration procedures and law are currently up on the Immigration website. She adds that a DVD of her history piece is expected to become available for use in PC(USA) resource centers by the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. Presbyteries will be invited to copy them locally for distribution as needed within their bounds.
As the Q&A session winds up, one presbyter offers some numbers of his own: an unskilled laborer making $10 an hour earns roughly $20,000 a year.
"That's considered poverty-level. Who's going to pay for their health care? A myriad of things: their education, school systems...who's going to pay for that?"
Thorne replies calmly and patiently.
"One of the myths is that undocumented people do not pay taxes. Some do. But as long as you're not allowed to work and employers don't withhold taxes from you, there is no solution."
She then metaphorically scratches her head.
"I don't hear this discussion, 'How many workers does the United States need?' How many do we need? In what industries do we need people? I don't hear that discussion. That would be a good first place to start."
Thorne believes the U.S. should try to answer this question. Then, the U.S. should figure out some way under our laws to allow in those workers who fit the bill of those industries needing workers.
"Employers will then be able to legally hire them, the workers can pay taxes and they can pay into our healthcare system, into the education system."
"But as long as we don't have any way to deal with the issue, as long as the government refuses to act, we're just in a mess."
Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now? Kick out the devil's sin, pick up, pick up the good book now -Cat Stevens [Yusuf Islam], 1970
Jim Nedelka, an elder at West Park Presbyterian Church in New York City, has been a professional journalist for 35 years.
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