April 3, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 7Oakland, CA

COMMENTARY

• A pastoral call for justice for immigrants

•In immigration law, ‘legal,’ ‘illegal’ distinctions fairly recent

• Lenten reflection
Like Simon of Cyrene, we can be called to carry the cross

A pastoral call for justice for immigrants

“…for I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Mathew 25:35

Jose Peralta (not his real name) is a typical teenager; he enjoys soccer, pizza and spending time chatting on-line with his friends. He is an A student at George Washington Middle School in Oakland and oftentimes volunteers with his parents at St. Anthony Catholic Church.

There is one secret that threatens Jose’s current way of life. He is undocumented. Although, he was born in Michoacan, Mexico, he has lived in the Bay Area since he was one-year-old. The Peraltas have been living in the United States for 12 years without legal residency.

During those 12 years, they have had two additional U.S.- born children,. They own a home in Hayward and both have worked outside the home. It has been difficult living without documents, but the Peraltas don’t know how they would earn their livelihood back in Mexico, nor do they have a home to go back to.

Due to a new bill, H.R. 4437, the threat of being uprooted from the only life they know is very real, and this frightens Jose and his parents.

The Peraltas’ story is not unique to the American landscape; the reality is that there are as many as 10 to 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. Two to three million are children and about 70 percent of the undocumented immigrant population has resided in the country for five years or more.

Immigration is not solely an issue that affects the United States. It is a universal condition that impacts the entire world, and in any year more than 5 million people migrate.

The Peraltas and countless other families are worried and anxious about H.R 4437, which scapegoats immigrants, is divisive, and will polarize our nation.
That bill, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., passed through the House of Representatives, and currently is in consideration in the House Senate Judiciary Committee.

This bill would criminalize the act of being in the country without legal residence, which is currently a violation of civil, not criminal law.

This measure would put anyone who provides humanitarian assistance to undocumented immigrants at risk of prosecution and would penalize state and local governments if they do not enforce immigration laws, currently only a responsibility of federal agencies.

It would eliminate a visa lottery program that allows up to 50,000 people a year from certain countries to enter the United States and make it more difficult for immigrants to obtain resident status or citizenship.

It would also authorize a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Let us reflect on H.R. 4437 and its repercussions:
• Foremost, we fail to accept that undocumented immigrants are criminals; they have not broken a criminal law. They have only violated civil law, as we do, for example, when we violate a traffic ordinance.

• This bill aims to turn immigrants into potential terrorists in American society. Policies that unfairly and inappropriately confuse immigration with terrorism do not make us safer as a nation. They only serve to divides us and create a segregated society.

• Immigrants seek refuge and help in churches -- Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran alike. This impractical law will turn people who staff social service organizations, public and private, into immigration officers.

We shudder to think of the consequences. Will doctors not heal, teachers not give instruction or organizations fail to give service to the most needy?

And while the United States helped to tear down the Berlin Wall, it now ironically creates its own wall on the U.S. –Mexico border.

This is a good opportunity to think of our own personal histories.

Most likely, your ancestors experienced the same types of discrimination that today’s immigrants face. It was not uncommon to see “No Irish need apply” in the advertising columns of newspapers at the turn of the 20th century and although there was no general law barring entry into the United States, they still had to face mass discrimination and prejudices.

Perhaps, if we educate ourselves about our own histories, we will not feel so disconnected to this current wave of immigration, for at the heart of most of our stories lies migration from another country to the United States.
Jose’s parents brought him to this country to create a better life for him, just like immigrants of past generations with names like O’Donnell, Alioto, or Mankeweiz. It would serve us well to think about our own stories so that we can be more compassionate with today’s new generation of immigrants.

Immigrants, particularly the undocumented, are among the voiceless who need someone to speak on behalf of their human rights and dignity.

We, the priests who serve a predominantly Latino community, have united in speaking out against this bill because we have the responsibility to use active and vocal participation to draw attention to unjust bills such as H.R. 4437 and to ask people to work to defeat them while, at the same time, championing laws that will benefit all human beings.

We, along with the Catholic bishops of the United States, endorse the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. It upholds the dignity and rights of every individual.

The McCain-Kennedy bill includes provisions for border security, temporary visas and family reunification. It would require efforts by foreign countries to help control the flow of emigrants, covers costs borne by hospitals that provide emergency care for undocumented immigrants, promotes citizenship, and takes steps to prevent fraud.

We must stand firm with our beliefs and attitudes and make sure they are not at odds with the Gospel’s teachings. To do right by our faith is to have compassion for the millions of children like Jose and his parents and not turn our backs to their right to lead a dignified life.
It is time to educate yourself, your families, friends, and neighbors, and speak out. We invite and urge you to visit, www.justiceforimmigrants.orgwww.justiceforimmigrants.org , and make your voice heard, straight to Washington D.C.

It is our responsibility of ministering to many families like the Peraltas that we speak out and tell immigrants that they are not alone. Many of us have walked their path and understand their hardships. They are not criminals!

What is a crime, however, is to keep silent. What is a crime is to sit by and not take any action.

This is our moment to do the right thing and speak out against H.R. 4437 and other similar bills that might surface in the future. Instead, please support S.1033, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005.

Let us remember that the immigrants diversity and contributions have enriched us in the past and will continue to make us a better nation in the future.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to see me.

"…I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”
Matthew 25: 35-40

Submitted by:
Father Enrique Ballesteros
St. Peter Martyr Parish, Pittsburg

Father Francisco Figueroa
St. Clement Parish, Hayward

Father Marco Figueroa, OFM
St. Elizabeth Parish, Oakland

Father Ismael Gutierrez
St. Michael Parish, Livermore

Father Hugo Hernandez, MG
St. Bede Parish, Hayward

Father Jesus Hernandez
Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, Brentwood

Father Reynaldo Hernandez
St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Concord

Father Jose Leon
Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, Union City

Father Salvador Macias
Corpus Christi Parish, Fremont

Father Sergio Mora
St. Joachim Parish, Hayward

Father Ruben Morales
St. Louis Bertrand Parish, Oakland

Father Jesus Nieto-Ruiz
St. Anthony Parish, Oakland

Father Luis Perez
Queen of All Saints Parish, Concord

Father Olman Solis
St. Mary Parish, Walnut Creek

Father Antonio Valdivia
St. Louis Bertrand Parish, Oakland

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In immigration law, ‘legal,’ ‘illegal’ distinctions fairly recent

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Here’s a little-understood fact about immigration law: Until well into the 20th century, pretty much anyone who showed up at a port of entry or walked across a border got to stay in the United States.

In other words, one reason so many people today can say “my ancestors followed the law when they came here” is because until fairly recently there was no distinction made about whether someone arrived legally or not. With few exceptions, anyone who got here was admitted.

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said that during the mass migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- the years of those photos of boatloads of European immigrants being processed at Ellis Island -- only a small fraction of newcomers were rejected.

“The number who got sent back at Ellis Island was less than 2 percent,” Meissner told Catholic News Service in an interview, “possibly less than 1 percent.”

And those rejections were almost always because the people suffered from an illness that might make them financially dependent upon the community, she said. For instance, a then-common eye infection left victims blind and presumably unable to support themselves. People who had it were turned away.

There were some exceptions to the open-door policy, explains an immigration law history article provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau, as the agency Meissner headed in the 1990s is now called. An 1882 Chinese exclusion law that remained on the books until 1943 was originally aimed at limiting cheap labor.

Other laws of the era excluded polygamists, those with criminal records for “moral turpitude,” people with contagious diseases or epilepsy, professional beggars, anarchists and those who were insane.

Outside such categories, everyone else was presumed to be admissible. It wasn’t until 1924 that the U.S. government began requiring immigrants to obtain visas in their home countries in advance.

At that time quotas also were created for how many people could be admitted from each country, with the exceptions of Mexico and Canada. Within a few years, the Border Patrol was reformed and its focus changed to keeping out and deporting those who didn’t have permission to enter the country.

The 1924 law followed the country’s most dramatic influx of immigrants in history, with more than 14.5 million new arrivals in 20 years, with 60 percent from Italy, Russia and Austria-Hungary, the history article explained.

Meissner said in the 1920s the public was especially wary of immigrants from countries such as Germany, and other European nations against whom Americans had fought during World War I. During the Depression, immigration was largely self-limiting. In fact many people left the country during the 1930s.

But by the 1940s, with hundreds of thousands of U.S. men in the military overseas, worker shortages were becoming a problem. Beginning in 1942, the government began importing temporary workers. Most came from Mexico to work in agricultural jobs.

Gradually since then restrictions on immigration have increased, in response to concerns ranging from terrorism to lowering wages.

Currently, the wait for a visa to legally enter the United States is as long as a decade for some categories of people. National quotas, fingerprinting and background checks, income and sponsorship requirements, even the cost of applying for visas all act as filters in limiting who comes in legally.

The number of visas available for unskilled workers each year is just a fraction of the number of jobs for which unskilled, immigrant labor is sought, leading many to sneak into the country to take those jobs.

An estimated 500,000 jobs a year go to unskilled workers, who are largely illegal immigrants. The U.S. government issues 5,000 visas a year for unskilled workers.
Meissner said that in some ways the sense that immigration is out of control is a cumulative effect of laws that are not only recent in U.S. history, but in the history of governance.

“There’s far more regard to demarcations of boundaries” than ever in history, she said. And in an age when transportation among nations is readily available to more people than ever, there are more legal restrictions keeping them where they are.

With an estimated 12 million people in the United States illegally, Congress is being pressured on one side to increase immigration restrictions even more. On the other side are people who consider the number of illegal immigrants an indication of more fundamental problems.

Meissner said that as she travels around the country she often hears people say, “I can accept that these illegal immigrants are good, hard-working people, but they should follow the law and come in legally, like my great-grandparents did.”

Aside from the point that those great-grandparents probably came in at a time when everyone was admitted, Meissner sees a basic misconception about that possibility.
“People do not understand that there is no legal avenue for them to go through,” she said.

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Lenten reflection
Like Simon of Cyrene, we can be called to carry the cross

By Father Ron Roleisser

“It seems as though through purely earthly accidents we are made responsible for what is heavenly and divine.”

Karl Rahner wrote those words to describe what happened to St. Joseph when he was asked by an angel to be the husband to Mary and support her in the birth and raising of Jesus: “Take the child to yourself.”

Something of God was entrusted into his care, not because he wanted it, planned it, or because he himself was central to the event. He was asked to do something simply because of circumstance, because he was engaged to someone inside a great drama.

Moreover, what he was asked to do radically reshaped his life in a way not according to his own choosing.

Rahner’s words are just as accurate when applied to Simon of Cyrene, the man conscripted to help Jesus carry his cross. The Passion accounts tell us that, when Jesus was too weak and wearied to carry the cross, a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene was forced to help him carry it.

We aren’t given any details as to how this happened other than that Simon was someone who was incidentally there, a “passer-by”, a victim of circumstance. This was not something for which he had planned or volunteered.

No doubt too, being conscripted to help carry the cross was an irritation and something humbling and shameful for him (guilt by association with a condemned criminal). Helping a scorned person carry his or her humiliation in front of a jeering crowd doesn’t exactly bring the same reaction as helping Tiger Woods carry his golf clubs.

Whatever Simon’s feelings, there can be no doubt that helping Jesus carry his cross was something that was unwanted, unpleasant, and was experienced at the time as unfair and bad luck.

Yet, ironically, this would be the most significant thing he would do in his whole life, earning him a place in history and folklore that can only be envied by the most famous of athletes, entertainers, politicians, writers, and religious figures.

Simon of Cyrene will forever be famous. Thousands of years from now his name will still be remembered -- and for the right reason: he helped carry the cross of Jesus.

There’s a wonderful mystical image here, namely, the picture of a man or woman being victimized by circumstance so that he or she, simply by being at a given place at a given time, is conscripted to do a task that is unwanted, unplanned for, humbling, disruptive of his or her own agenda and dreams, and yet this unwanted thing becomes, in the end, the most important thing he or she will ever do.

How does that happen to you? How do you become a Simon of Cyrene, helping Jesus carry his cross?

The cross of Jesus appears in many forms:
Whenever you are the one who has to take care of an aging parent because circumstance arranges that you are the one who happens to be living close by;

Whenever you are the parent of a handicapped child and are asked to do things ordinary parents aren’t asked to do;

Whenever you are the one whose gentle nature makes it difficult to say no and people take advantage of you;

Whenever you are the one who is the first at the scene of an accident; whenever you are the one whom the drunk accosts on the sidewalk; whenever you are the one around when the less-glamorous work needs to be done;

Whenever you’re the one whose life is disrupted by unwanted circumstance, you are Simon of Cyrene, helping Jesus carry the cross.

Simon of Cyrene was not central to the drama or meaning of Jesus’ passion and death. He was an unimportant figure who happened to be standing at the edges of things when the drama accidentally enfolded him and forced him to play an un-glamorous, self-effacing, but needed, role.

His own agenda and plans had to be sacrificed. Yet this unplanned for, conscripted, humble service became the most important thing he ever did.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher, and award-winning author, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

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