Written from Advent 2010 to Independence Day 2011

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There’s this guy I know named Jesus.  He’s kind of selfless.  His days are spent helping the poor, hanging out in the margins and affirming everyone he meets.  Jesus is just that kind of guy.

Before he was widely known, Jesus had some struggles.  As a kid he spent time homeless himself.  Dude did not have a place to lay his head – not a sufficient place anyway; no one would take him in, a stranger in a foreign land.  It’s on these grounds that he is able to relate to the least of us.  Jesus has not always been “in.”

~~~

We’re fully into the season of giving, the season of hope.  It’s an odd time for a nation to be so focused on who’s in and who’s out.  It’s a season of love for crying out loud – for God so loved the world.

It requires a bit of psychosis to navigate the news headlines…the House of Representatives passes the DREAM Act…the Senate denies hearing it…Merry Christmas spending is down this holiday season…keep those people away from our jobs…but keep the ones who serve us well.

Who deserves the gift of hope?  All of us do…but not really all of us…only the “legal” among us.  The season’s greetings are a sausage factory of intent and meaning.  It results in spotty generosity of spirit, at best.

We are called to radical hospitality to the ‘least of these’ – but not to all of them, not the radical hospitality of the Old Testament.  The Son of Man needs a place to lay his head, but he had better be speaking English – especially if it impacts my wallet – unless I need some cheap labor.

Things are complicated.

~~~

I.  The personal

As individuals we come to this discussion with different levels of knowledge and experience.  What moves me is not the hard data but a feeling that amid the political sideshow something just isn’t right.

Here is part of the life experience that informs me:

• My paternal great-grandfather was an undocumented Italian immigrant.  Yes, he was a WOP, an Italian who came here with-out-papers.  Grandpa Viola arrived at Ellis Island with a few musical instruments in tow, no knowledge of the language and a healthy dose of determination.
• He and his offspring accepted the local mispronunciation of the family name; they drank the colloquial Kool-Aid.  Dad changed this when he moved two hours from home, yet he distanced himself from the Viola family immigration story.  As a result, I know little about our specific Italian roots.  His take: we are from Generic Mill Town, NC, and we cook a mean sauce.
• My mother’s people, the Blalocks, came from Great Britain to Virginia.  They are documented way back as simple, honest farmers who did the best with what they found upon arrival.  They, along with many others, moved into someone else’s back yard and set up agricultural shop.  In the South these are now generic White Folk.
• White bread British farmers + Italian gypsy musicians = Southern American brunette.
• My foreign language of choice in school was French.  Pour quoi, you ask?  Parce que c’est la langue plus impressive, n’est ce pas?  Yes, I was a junior-high language snob.  French seemed more cultured to me than Spanish, our two seventh-grade language options.  In short, I followed the cool kids, and my big sister, straight à la françe.
• College brought little exposure to people beyond Southern White Bread with a little Whole Grain mixed in for good measure.  Things changed my junior year when friends suggested I travel with them to Guatemala to work with Habitat for Humanity.  My initial response: probably not.
• The details are lost, but I remember standing in the Student Life office one day discussing “that trip” when I lost my composure about immigration and people who come here and expect us to learn their language.  I had a fit.  And in that moment I knew it was because I was intimidated by the fact that I, grammatically correct control freak, had no exposure to “their” language.  I was scared.  Further, I had no exposure to “them.”  Why would I ever go THERE?  I might not spell or speak exactly correctly.  I might not fit in.  Moi, vulnerable?  Jamais!
• One long walk and a few prayers later, I knew I needed to take the trip – and the journey.  I can’t claim the idea, but I heeded the voice.  My bi-lingual friend Val was soon inundated by my requests for conjugation of all the standard verbs and lists of basic vocabulary.  I had no language or relevant cultural experience, but I was not going unprepared if I could help it.
• I can summarize the good of the trip, and a similar trip to Peru the following summer, in three memories:

1. A woman named Maria cooked up the party of a lifetime for my 13-year-old friend, J, who traveled with us.  People who had little if anything to give set up the most generous fête.   No, they gave my young friend an extraordinary fiesta.  He and I even selected the guinea pig they would cook for us.  Really, it happened.  The birthday party opened the door for the gracious hospitality that followed on both trips.  Those who had little gave everything to virtual strangers, some of whom did not even bother to speak their language.  (!)
2. A guy named Jesus – a different Jesus than our opening character, mind you – ran 12 miles, barefoot, to fetch a bar of soap for the gringas helping to build his small cinder-block house.  That’s something.  Another selfless Jesus!
3. At the close of the 1990 trip, our host, Lucho, forced a gift upon me – a 1000-year-old burial urn from a pre-Incan culture on the northern coast of Peru.  Hombre gave me a rare antiquity he unearthed during a construction project the previous year.  I refused it out of respect for the country and culture.  I had no business accepting a gift that belonged in a museum in country.  Lucho was deeply offended, and it took a while for me to understand how much worse it would be to insult him than risk life in a Peruvian prison for being caught smuggling antiquities to the States during a period of Peruvian martial law.  With luck on my side and a winning smile, I breezed through customs unscathed.  The urn, a vessel that once contained burial offerings for the dead, Lucho’s ancestors, sits on a shelf in my living room.  I think about his generosity every day.

Needless to say, I returned home a reformed soul.  What made the difference is simple: personal experience and relationships.

~~~

That is my cultural tapestry – the lens through which I see conversations of immigration, hospitality and belonging.

To know what informs us as individuals on any issue is critical.  You and I have unique views that are formed by unique life happenings.  Our individual experiences are equally valid and important in dialogue.

For instance, if I were a Texas farmer living near the Valley of Juarez, my experience with sister Mexico would be complex.  Despite the beauty of our blended culture, the grotesque drug violence looming just over the Rio Grande might speak louder than hundreds of good-neighbor experiences.  King Negative, fear, might have the last word.  And rightly so.  How do you think upstanding Mexican parents feel raising children amid such unchecked violence?

To hear and respect a person’s history is the first step toward accord.  On second thought, a smile is the first; an open ear and mind are next.

Harper Lee said it well.  “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

It’s easy to have an opinion.  What’s hard is to suspend judgment long enough to hear and respect a person’s life experience when we happen to disagree.  We jump to our own opening arguments before bothering to listen.

The constructivist theory of mental health counseling I embraced in graduate school hinges on one simple principle: Tell me what it’s like to be you.  Listening to the answer is a powerful exercise.  It matters if we ever hope to get anywhere in mutual understanding.  And every single person has a different, necessarily correct, answer.

The idea is reinforced by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Know what informs you, and be open to others’ truth, even if you happen to disagree.

‘Nuf said.

~~~

It would be easy to paint a happy picture of all people who welcomed my friends and me with open arms during our Habitat travels two decades ago.  It would not, however, be true.  At least a couple of pick pockets got a piece of me, and one I am certain was a young woman with an infant tied to her back.  Others we met were distant and suspicious.

It would be equally unfair, and incorrect, to paint a picture of all Latino immigrants to the US as ambitious and noble.  Some are.  Others are just average folks.  Still others break laws.  No one is as troubled by this as fellow Latinos, documented and undocumented, doing the right thing.

A necessary assumption that allows debate on the issues of immigration is this: Not all people of any one ‘type’ are alike.  All groups of people contain the good, the bad and the just plain ugly.  It’s a mixed bag.

Another assumption required for further conversation is this Maya Angelou nugget: Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere.

And if you can reconcile these two gems – that we are all people(s) necessarily unique yet necessarily alike in our humanity – we can keep on talking.

It’s a tough row to hoe.

~~~

II.  The political

But whose country is it?

I do not mean to skirt the very real issues of governance, territory and economics.  It just seems to me there’s a basic truth that must be acknowledged up front.  I have a hard time with irony, so my thanks for letting me work this out.  Here goes: This ain’t our land, it’s their land.

Before the beating begins, hear me out, please.

We are a nation created by immigration.  That’s basic.  The rub is whose people are native to the Americas – that would be Native Americans in their diversity, literally thousands of distinct native cultures.

I’ll say it: “the Mexicans” and their kin were here first.  “Here” in this case means North America.  But the issue of exact boundary is not the point. They and others were here.  Some other folks came.  A nation was formed, at the expense of various others at various times.  And the very people now kept within artificial boundaries or held outside a border…you got it, the original Americans, created by God in the Americas.

It’s the truth.  Thanks for letting me say it.

~~~

Related, did you know the Navajo lacrosse team was denied admittance to Great Britain during the 2010 World Cup because the Navajo Nation, a sovereign nation, has a passport the Queen’s government found to be invalid?  Did you also know Native Americans invented lacrosse?  Our Secretary of State advocated for our sister nation, the Navajo, and failed.

~~~

So how about those concrete issues?

Wrapping one’s mind around it is like trying to wrap your arms around the sun.  It’s a lot to take in.

Let’s create a grid.   The columns might look something like this:

                                                      ECONOMICS | THE MORAL | THE PRACTICAL

Now add these rows:

1. PERSONAL

2. POLITICAL

The categories help.  For each issue there are at least two responses.  The personal is what informs my opinion, my lifetime of experiences.  The political defines the responsibility and limitations of the state.

Now the conversation feels more approachable.

Like my transformation during my college travels in the Americas, many of us come to the debate with very strong feelings.  That’s okay!  Others prefer to look at the numbers, the data.  That’s a-okay, too.  Both perspectives are valid and necessary.

The real value of the grid is it shows us what we already know but often forget.  Two (or more) things can be true at one time, and often are.  My moral opinion may contradict the common good.  Perhaps they are one and the same.  It’s complex.

People often say defensively of their immigration positions, “It’s not about race.”  Sometimes that’s true.  For our politicians, I hope it’s true.  Others of us with no political responsibility have only a personal platform.  Naturally our personal feelings and (positive and negative) prejudices reign.  Remember my pre-Guatemalan very real, raw anger about “them?”

For many US citizens – city council members, judges, business owners and the like – both the personal and the political are simultaneously engaged.  Once again, it’s a mixed bag of intent and viewpoint.  Sometimes it is about race, culture or class.  Sometimes it’s not.  We’re human, and our personal beliefs go with us everywhere.  Let’s just admit it.

The antithesis to this kind of detailed evaluation is called reductio ad absurdum.  But we’ll come back to that.

~~~

A quick Google search shows two fundamental present-day US/Latino immigration issues.  The first is The Math.  The second is The Money.

We’ll go with The Math first.  Only so many people can fit in this great land.  It’s true, and I believe it wholeheartedly.  What I cannot attempt to guess is what that number is.  Population study is not my thing.  Whatever the number, math never fails; there is always an answer.  Rest assured the whole world cannot relocate here.  Someone out there knows the tipping point, and I sure hope she’s watching her calculator.  I like my personal space.

The Money is more complicated.  On the one hand there are those who tout the financial burden created by Latino immigrants.  On the other side are those whose math shows the benefit immigrants, “legal” and otherwise, bring to our economy.  Either way, it’s clear the green matters, greatly.  Dark green all caps underlined and embossed in 20 point Arial Wide.

To me The Money and The Math are connected.  But before I explain, let me tell another story.

~~~

About a decade ago I was invited to attend a retreat, a Lutheran Wild Women’s Weekend.  Some ordained women and their friends rented a retreat space.  I do not remember where.  I do not remember when.  But I will never forget the opening exercise.

Two women were taken away from the group – one older and one younger.  Those remaining were instructed to form a circle.  This was to be our only task.  Then the “others” were brought back.  Their single instruction was given in our presence: try to break into the circle, do whatever you have to do to get in.

Just like that two dozen pastors, Christian educators and lay leaders became vile, vicious gate keepers, overpowering the two intruders.  The higher the outsiders jumped, the better our block.  We were a force of Lutheran woman-ness.  Here we stand.

Our facilitators let the not-so-graceful frenzy go on for a few minutes before instructing us to stop the madness and take a seat.

“What just happened?”

“We did what you asked us to do.”

“Your only instruction was to form a circle.  No one ever said to keep the others out.”

The guilt was quick and hard.  We were Lutheran woman-hating hags, elitist gatekeeper haters.  We spent hours breaking it down.  There might have been some wine.  The conversation strayed from who is “in” at our congregations to the widespread German Lutheran silence during the Holocaust.  We previously fancied ourselves the type who would speak out, even if it meant inviting Nazi danger.

But maybe we weren’t that woman at all.  Perhaps the group think that leads to mass exclusion is a natural phenomenon – part of the human condition.  It just creeps in.  One can be a church leader and a hater at the same time.  Maybe being in power brings its own prescribed baggage, for any of us, across categories of background or race.   Being “in” ain’t all that if you lose your soul to maintain your status.

The experience was deep.

~~~

Travel with me back to sixth-grade math class.  Take a cut-out circle and label it “The Math.”  Make the next “The Money.”  Finally, label one “The Lutheran Wild Women Haters.”  Place the three circles so that a portion of each orb overlaps.  This shared area is called Scarcity, and she is a bitch.

~~~

The fear of not having enough, of running out, is powerful.

I worked with someone once, a child of the Great Depression, who saved every object she found or that went unused.  Paperclips hung end to end in empty corners of her rooming house.   Newspapers were piled outside the door, just in case.  More startling was the food – eggs kept weeks out of date, and worse.  Needless to say, Ruth was not a big hit with her housemates.

Before I sound judging, I will tell you another story.  I went to the grocery store.  Yes, I did.  Two days later it snowed seven inches.  One day I was feeling fat and happy, satisfied with my full fridge and pantry.  In less than 48 hours I was all but climbing the walls at the thought of being trapped with my meager provisions.  What if?  What if?

Ever visit the store before a storm and wonder why exactly the milk and bread disappear?

Let’s talk about what drives people to fill underground bunkers with basic rations.

Like I said, scarcity, rather the fear of scarcity, is a bitch.

~~~

The reality of scarcity is far worse.  The resource triumvirate defining scarcity consists of water, food and energy.

• Water is increasingly scarce in the developed and undeveloped world.  Here’s what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has to say in its 2008 report, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.”  Experts currently consider 21 countries, with a combined population of about 600 million, to be either cropland or freshwater scarce.  (p. 51)
• According to the World Food Programme, hunger and malnutrition are the number-one risk to health worldwide – greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.  The number of human beings affected: 925 million, or 1 in 7 people alive and breathing on our planet.  (www.wfp.org/hunger)
• Energy concerns are well known.  Much of it boils down to who owns oil.  Add to economics the inevitable human conflict.  I’m talking war.  It has never been more important to develop sustainable energy sources.

A look into the world’s crystal ball shows disheartening trends.  Water scarcity will increase to affect 1.4 billion people by 2025.  Hunger and malnutrition rates will follow suit.  Energy diversification will remain a primary concern for the world.  The success of the countries expecting a rise in global power – China, India and Russia – will rely heavily on their success at developing renewable energy and their ability to keep other nations energy dependent.

~~~

It is often said we do not have a resource problem; we have a distribution problem.

We had a speaker in our Rotary club a few years ago who rattled off a series of figures.  In the United States we spend $x billion each year on soda, $y billion on beer and $z billion on ice cream.  In fact, we Americans spend some $31 billion each and every year on our pets.  The amount needed to relieve world hunger and inoculate every living being against every disease against which one can be immunized: $28 billion annually.

My friend Pete tells it differently.  At fund-raising events where he speaks, he is known to say, “The good news is all the money we need to solve Durham’s housing problem is right here in this room.  The bad news is it’s still in your pockets.”

There is no guilt intended for those of us who live with relative ease.  These are just facts.  There is enough to go around, but because of how the world currently works, it simply doesn’t go all the way around.  I am not challenging the benefits of capitalism; I am saying some starve while others grow fat.  It is a literal truth, and the response is not necessarily the extreme suggestion of socialism.  (More on reductio ad absurdum soon, I promise.)

Scarcity is very real, and it is only getting worse.

~~~

The migration of peoples is timeless.  Human migration is said to have begun in Africa some 90,000 years ago.  The reasons: climate change, water supply and food sources.

Sound familiar?

Though it’s easy to believe our current situation within the Americas is special, it is only the next chapter in a very long historical text scribed on the walls of caves and in books and computer hard drives for eons.

What propels people to migrate is the same as when migration began: NEED.  That’s right: people migrate because they have need.  Resources become scarce or dry up all together.  Often there is uncontrolled civil conflict.  Any number of things may define need, but it is real.

The degree of need for immigrants to the US, and everywhere, varies.  Some fear for their lives or their freedom and arrive as political refugees.  Others are economic refugees, only we tend to see these folks, in the absence of protected status, as competitors for our scarce resources.  Still others seek better opportunity, the American Dream that is simply not to be found back home.  They are doing okay but want more for their children.

People are home bodies by nature; we stick with what we know, with what works.  We generally like to have roots.  People move because the risk of staying in place is greater than the risk of rejection, exclusion, isolation or failure.  Migration is a choice, and there are very solid arguments in its favor.  It is basic survival instinct.

~~~

This is serious stuff.  Here’s a glimpse at the data…

• Nearly 40 percent of internally displaced persons in the world are living in East and Central Africa.  The primary reason for their displacement is conflict.

• The USA remains the top migrant destination country in the world, hosting around one fifth of all migrants.

• One in three of all international migrants lives in Europe.  Migrants represent 8.7 percent of the total European population.

(Source: “The World Migration Report 2010,” International Organization for Migration.)

~~~

While we’re taking a world view of migration, I will move from our shores to Europe to share some disheartening news.

The treatment of immigrants in other countries can be downright barbaric.  To be fair, the underlying problem is the tremendous refugee crisis facing many European nations.

There is no place more ‘hot’ right now for this conversation than Paris.  France’s iconic capital attracts immigrants, often political refugees, from many nations.  Of note are rising populations of children and families from Eastern Europe and North Africa.

As immigrant children rob tourists and lead riots to call attention to immigration reform, the country struggles with legislation that could separate children from their parents, forcing the deportation of one group or the other.  Meanwhile women and children are forced from tent encampments and detained.  Many of these women and children seek asylum in Paris to escape people trafficking in their homelands.

Compare the volatility of the Parisian migrant influx (and government response) with the gracious hospitality of Latin America.  It makes me embarrassed for my seventh-grade language choice.  Perhaps I got it exactly wrong.  Cliché #1: What’s done is done.  My optimistic inner core clings to cliché #2: It’s never too late to learn something new.

Not all people in any group are the same.  Each group contains some of the good, the bad and the just plain répugnant.  Maya Angelou whispers in my ear: Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere.

Just as I decide I no longer want to speak French, a simple Google search shows that many brave French families are putting themselves at risk by hiding immigrant children at risk of imminent deportation back to their dangerous native lands.  Vive la françe!

It is so very confusing.

~~~

Get your passport ready and travel with me due east to Germany.  Yes, I am going there.

Before our flight begins, I would like to call your attention to the video monitor above the seat in front of you.  We have one final language lesson, at last: reductio ad absurdum.

The phrase is Latin, and it means to reduce and argument to the point of absurdity.  It is a debate technique meant to shut down conversation.

Here’s an example: Dogs are carnivores.  Any parent worth her salt would not allow a carnivore near her children.  Clearly people with children should not have dogs.  (In response to the suggestion that dogs might be okay in some circumstances, “So you think eating human children is okay?”)

The frustration of this type of thinking is it disallows gray and even defies logic.  It’s not true to real life.  It halts complex thinking and understanding.

I offer this language lesson now because I stand to lose people with our upcoming jaunt to Germany.  Resist the urge to simplify.  Rise up to 30,000 feet, and take a look at the trends.

Stay open.  Hang in there with me.

~~~

Let me start with a negative statement.  What I am not saying here is our current immigration discussion regarding the Americas = genocide, in this case the Holocaust.  I hope that helps.

Here is what I do offer.  Last year I attended a church service in which the pastor’s message was focused around the sixth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Just when you thought it might get less complex, this is what Wikipedia says, various traditions parse the commandments differently.  That’s right, not all of us number the commandments the same way.  If murder = #5 for you, I’m talking to you, too.  (Everyone else, peel your chin up off the floor.  It’s true – wiki knows all.)

Back to church – the pastor this day is a guy we will call Master Pastor (M.P.) as his reach is virtual and wide.  Dude uses bandwidth to reach the masses spread across multiple campuses of the same congregation.

M.P. stated it like this: there is more to the commandment of murder than actual killing; there is also the limitation of a human being through another’s murderous spirit.  He went on to describe a set of behaviors along a continuum.  Each steals from a person his or her individuality, rights or life as a unique human soul.

<-…genocide…pre-meditated murder…physical/sexual assault…political oppression…generalizations…->

Master Pastor did a downright masterful job of bringing this universally relevant commandment to the masses.

Yes, we all participate in some way or other, most of us every day.  The commandments, after all, were not written only for the extreme sinners of the world but for our everyday blunders.  M.P. shared the message calmly and effectively: we are they.

~~~

Returning to the Holocaust and the relationship to the murderous spirit of some vis-à-vis immigration, there was a time when I would have embraced M.P.’s concept of the continuum.  Some crimes are legally more powerful, more wrong, than others.  Morally they are equivalents, different shades of the same hue in the 64-color crayon box.  For purposes of discussion, let’s say each of the murderous variants is some shade of blue.  Each distinct shade along the color wheel represents the same bottom-line moral imperfection.  It seems to me the sins related to the sin of adultery would be coded in shades of red…and so on.

Sitting at my laptop today I see the continuum a bit differently.

To me all the situations in question represent “stuff” in a pressure cooker.  Let’s make it gumbo.

Throw in your rice, okra and tomatoes.  Wait a bit and add some critters from the sea.  Seal it up and turn up the heat.

• The U.S./Americas immigration issue is at about 200 degrees F, unless you happen to live in Georgia right now, or in Texas, Arizona or any state close to the border.

• Crank up the heat on the simmering stew, and you’re back in Paris, where children of undocumented immigrants are detained in an attempt to slow the tide of desperate souls pulling toward France.  Yes, folks, we are abusing children for the sake of teaching the parents a lesson or two.

• Medium-high on the pressure cooker knob is defined by the fact that Israel of all places will soon build a camp for the detention (detainment, imprisonment) of African immigrants, many of whom seek asylum to escape war.

• This is not far off from the high-pressure history of the Holocaust.  In fact, it is perilously, ironically, close.

I am generally not one to warn of the slippery slope.  Some black-and-white souls among us get nervous about this issue or that because even the slightest move down said path puts us at risk for escalating behavior.  Such thinking is generally motivated by fear.

In this case, I am afraid, and I do embrace the concept.  I own it.  (I am holding the line, however, in rejecting reductio ad absurdum.  )

Until we acknowledge the similarity of these seemingly different situations, we are at risk of repeating the most gruesome acts of our past, and our present.  It is important to call this out for what it is.  Those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.

Whether pre-Civil-Rights segregation of souls or war-time imprisonment based on background, race or faith, they exemplify the same process of dehumanization, whether intentional or unintentional.  The extreme nature of the process, its relationship to the boiling point, is different in each case.  Yet, the same timeless social practice is stirring in each unique pot of gumbo.

My Wild Women’s group did not kill anyone, but we sure as Lutheran Hell fell into an unconscious trap, driven by fear, to protect and defend our homeland.  No one was murdered or sent to Auschwitz, but we did not let anyone inside our accepted “inner circle” at the retreat.  We had very strong feelings about our defenses.  And not a single word was spoken to set our exclusion in motion.  It simply happened, as naturally as the act of breathing.

I have to believe the sale and separation of children from parents during slavery in our country was justified according to an accepted set of mores and values.  These beliefs were accepted by people of great faith.  They likely loved and cherished their own children.  None of this takes into account Christians justifying the ownership of other people.  We are complicated beings.

And so it goes.

~~~

If scarcity is a bitch, perspective is downright shameful.

Before linking the murderous spirit of genocide to other seemingly benign acts, I suggested that we take a step back, that we view things from 30,000 feet.  There are two things on my mind.

1. Immigration crises are not new.  We know this.  What is new is the close-to-home nature of the current debate.  Peoples have been moving for 90,000 years to follow resources, but it is only in the last decades that the dance, the crisis, has been enacted on our soil.  Let me put it simply: this is new to “Americans,” but it is by no means new.  Similarly, we benefit from never having fought a world war on our soil.  We have played in the game, and the game board has always been over yonder.  U-boats have come close.  Missiles have threatened.  Yet we have never seen our churches, schools and homes blown apart as collateral damage.  Air raid sirens are not part of our personal experience.  Friendly fire happens somewhere else.  While we now play in the major leagues with regard to migration, the game is by no means new.  We forget this.  I am not saying our current situation does not matter.  I am putting it in its proper place.  God loves the rest of the world as much as God loves us. The rest of the world has not been nearly as lucky in this regard.  If you have not given thanks today, do.

2. Retrospect is humbling.  There was a time being of African descent made one by legal definition less than human – three-fifths, to be exact.  The very good news is this still shocks and saddens most of us.  Imagine a time when women had to defend their right to vote.  I prefer to look forward on this one and never look back.  Likewise, I believe there will (soon) come a time when the ruckus over the DREAM Act will seem foreign (pun intended), even cruel.  The text books of the future will draw parallels between this mean-spirited limitation of the children of undocumented immigrants here by no choice of their own and the detention of children in Paris.  The difference is about 5 degrees F in the pressure cooker of life.  It’s just not that far off.  After all, good solid folks once justified Hitler’s actions.  If war-time sins that seem so clearly dark from 2011 were somewhat overlooked in the day, perhaps we need to take a second glance within ourselves and our current situation.  There may be something here.

The big picture is both clarifying and liberating.

~~~

I have literally been all over the map.  There are a few things left to say about the Americas.

The first is a confession.  Jesus, the good guy with no place to lay his head…well it’s not what you think.  The placement of this article during Advent was unfair.  Jesus is really my friend Jesus G., not Jesus C.  He arrived not at a stable by donkey but rather in California by way of a place he should not have been hiding.  That’s right.  I pulled a dirty trick.  He had no place to lay his head, for a while, and he was certainly not welcomed.

Hombre expected to be here one year, long enough to earn money and return south for college.  His preferred school was there.  The best opportunity for the cash was here.

A smuggler’s help led to an apartment and a job at Denny’s.  Soon he was in love with a waitress, and the rest is history.

Jesus G. chose permanent residency over citizenship.  He has his reasons.  In part he felt it was enough.  In part it is a statement.  There is no one more loyal to America than this guy, but he has also seen a lot of things between there and here.  He is also one of the most forceful proponents I know of the obligation of all people, without regard to background, to get off their butts and work.  Like all of us, his personal experience informs everything he sees.

Jesus’ Mexican-American children (‘all-American,’ for the record) attend a private school.  The younger was denied admission the first time around.  She is devilishly smart and sometimes unfocused.  The teacher tasked with the decision labeled her as not ESL-ready.  She was raised speaking Southern by her dad and a White mom from New Jersey.  The kid is not only a native English speaker, she is red, white and blue to the core.  She simply sports an unfamiliar last name.

Jesus works really hard for a local nonprofit and is paid below his salary range on the open market in exchange for the good feeling he gets from helping families receive the once-in-a-lifetime, equalizing opportunity of home ownership.

Needless to say, our friend Jesus has a lot to say about the current discussion.

~~~

There’s an important angle on the here and now that most of us do not know.  It’s not our fault.  We are simply not in a position to know all of the facts.  Life for many Latino immigrants in the U.S., the documented and undocumented alike, is often not that different from the women and children back in France.

All the facts you will (n)ever want can be found on the world-wide Web.  Instead I offer three stores much closer to home.

• Jesus G. knows of a couple expecting a baby.  They were stopped for a traffic violation, and she was found to be undocumented.  He was taken to jail and held indefinitely.  She, eight months pregnant, was sent, alone in an unreliable car with no money or means of communication, across the country for the Mexican border.  He would be released once she was home.  Really, put yourself in this situation.  Think of the universal excitement felt when expecting the miracle of new life, a first child.  This guy was imprisoned as a means of punishment for being born in the wrong country – literally for the color of his skin.  It is cruel and unusual, but not unheard of.  It is mean-spirited and orchestrated by people who likely attend church on a regular basis.  He did not know for days if his wife and baby made it through this cruel obstacle course alive and well.  There is no excuse, including the particulars of anyone’s immigration status.  The wellbeing of a mother and child were put at risk, and someone thought it was funny, or worse, deserved.  (How do you think God views this heart?)

• Within my circle of friends is a generous guy named Jose.  I know him through his volunteer work.  Jose is a documented immigrant with two beautiful daughters and one beautiful son.  He owns a successful construction subcontracting company and does quite well.  He is honest and generous.  He is good to his crew.  Most employees are childhood friends or acquaintances from the same town in central Mexico.  They found one another stateside by circumstance, and their loyalty is tight.  During an especially heated period of the silent immigration war (silent to us but a very frightening time to Latino immigrants), Jose decided to move home.  You see, his wife is not documented.  Each day she feared being stopped for some “routine” purpose and facing a fate similar to her 8-mo-pregnant sister described above.  Worse than the fear of being relocated from her family is the very real likelihood that how it goes down will not be fair.  Without regard to how you feel about immigration, we do not have to be savages.  Some of us choose to take the low road, not unlike my Lutheran sisters from the exclusion exercise.  We should be ashamed.  These kids were raised ‘American’ right here in this town and know nothing outside this experience.  They recently said goodbye to their friends, schools and culture and moved to a foreign land.  This is the cultural equivalent of my sisters and me being sent “home” to Italy at age 13.

• I once worked with someone I have held at a distance for some time.  In part the distance I created from her is because of this story.  Her husband is in law enforcement; his job is to protect and defend.  One day she shared a story that had her uneasy.  It seems her husband and his friends encountered the funniest thing at work the previous night.  There was a ‘Mexican’ who attempted to cross the interstate on foot.  He was hit by a car and left for dead.  The next several cars dismembered his body.  The reaction of the investigating officers, including her life partner: uncontrollable laughter.  That’s the story.  They thought it was hilarious, a joke.  This guy’s guts and limbs were strewn across I-440.  Pretty funny, no?  My former colleague was confused and disturbed by her husband’s response.  She could not resolve her feelings.  I judged him (rightly) and therefore her (wrongly).  He and I have no excuse.  It seems she did the only noble thing in offering her question and seeking conversation.  She opened the door to understanding; I shut it flatly in her face.

My life has been so easy.  Only a time or two have I known real fear.  Those times, however, are life markers I cannot forget.  Once I came home to find my house had been robbed, the front window missing and front door standing open.  At the time I did not know if the thief was still inside, or my dear dogs.  I had to make the choice to go in to check or leave their fate unknown.  I entered to find the robber gone and my timid creatures hiding in different rooms, one hurt and very scared.  My tiny house tucked away from the road had three marginally secure doors.  For nine months after this incident – until the day I moved – I did not sleep through the night.  Not once.

The intangible effect of fear as a detriment to quality of life cannot be overstated.  Think back to a time you were scared.  It would be easy to say, “If you did not come here, you would not have to worry about racism or traffic stops.”  By the letter of the law, this is true.  Here’s a question: would you choose to take one long, scary journey that separates you from family and all that is familiar if the potential benefit were not greater than the risk of staying in place?

A word to the naïve: DWL (driving while Latino) is alive and well in 50 states.  It doesn’t matter one’s immigration status.  Just like the ongoing DWB reality or the corporate glass ceiling for so many women, it is unspoken, often unrecognized and very real.

Ours is said to be the greatest nation in the world.  Step away from the law for a moment.  We can do better than plain meanness.

How we deal with immigration really is a human rights issue.  This is far more important than legal right fighting.  Our brothers and sisters are being hurt.

~~~

Before leaving the Americas, there are a few things I am compelled to share.  Keep in mind the next section will challenge ‘right fighting’ as the correct approach – the human tendency toward legalism and away from the complex.  Before offering another plane of examination, however, I will throw in my own facts.  (Fair?  No.  But it is my piece after all, and you are still reading.)

• Not all Latinos are Mexican.

• Latinos are Hispanic, not Spanish.  Spain is somewhere else.  Hispanic culture is a blend of European, African and many distinct indigenous “American” cultures.  The Spanish language made its way to the Americas by way of fierce conquerors who destroyed or stole everything they encountered.  (I, too, come from colonizing people.  I do not claim to be different.)

• Not all peoples in “Latin America” hold Spanish as their primary language.

• Latin Americans consider themselves Americans, members of the nations of the Americas.  Only citizens of the United States mean something exclusive.

• Mexico is in North America.  We share a continent.  The same goes for Canada, Greenland and a bunch of other neat places.

• The stereotype of the drunk or lazy Mexican is exactly that.  The reality, as for every group of people, is varied.

• The drug war in the northern region of Mexico is a specific tragedy.  The barbarism created by the drug culture does not reflect the character, values or wishes of Mexico at large.  Further, the good Mexican citizens living in the region suffer far more than any group of U.S. citizens.  It is awful.

• Some present-day Latino cultures, countries and towns are more refined.  Others are simpler.  In the same way there is a difference between Maine and California, Alabama and Wyoming or even Manhattan and an Upstate N.Y. hamlet.

• Most present-day Latino cultures are gracious and generous to travelers.  It is a stereotype, and it is also primarily true.  In fact, most anyone you encounter in Latin America will go to great lengths to welcome you and share the gifts that have been bestowed on them, even if those provisions are meager by our standards.  I can cite many examples from personal experience; I won’t.

• Contemporary Latin America was preceded by some of the most advanced cultures ever known.  These cultures are indigenous to the Americas.  Their mastery of science and mathematics is in ways deeper than ours, in spite of our trip to the moon.  Watch the descending shadow of the serpent at Chichen Itza at the spring equinox and tell me we know something about astronomy and its relationship to math.

• The fact is there is tremendous poverty in some Latin American nations.  The gap between the wealthy and the poor is huge.  As nations, some fare far better than others.

• Not all immigrant construction workers wish to work in construction.  Please hear up front I believe strongly in the rite of passage for immigrants.  They come here for opportunity, not a handout, and it must be achieved through hard work.  My great-grandfathers did this.  It is part of what defines our country.  I simply offer here that there is more to what is seen in regard to construction.  One of the men who framed my house is a doctor.  A colleague of mine went to law school in Honduras, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where his parents ran a thriving international business.  There is always more than meets the eye.  It does not pay to assume.

• Language is powerful.  Migration defines the movement of peoples.  Immigration places it within a political or legal context.  Similarly there is no human being, no child of God, who is “illegal.”  Out of place or in need of help?  Illegal?  Come on.  Even the worst law breakers among us are still human beings.

• A good number of Latino immigrants come to the United States through proper channels.  This is often overlooked amid American immigration discussions.

• This fact may seem out-of-place dropped here, but it fits a series of bullet points of misunderstandings about the Americas and various Americans.  The mental image of “immigrants” for many of us is a posse of brown-skinned people trying to sneak in.  It is also true that U.S. companies actively recruit Latino workers from a variety of countries in the name of cheap labor.  It is easy to demonize the workers, but the fact is many on both sides of the border are actively involved.  Worse, the political party of many of these corporate folks is also the party that readily touts the cost of illegal immigration to the U.S.  The truth is no one is innocent; we are all mired, neck-deep, in the current reality.

I think that is all that’s on my mind.  Thank you for allowing the detour.

~~~

III.  The transcendent

It is clear what we are doing is not working.

Now what?

Earlier I offered that ‘the personal’ and ‘the political’ are two rows in The Big Spreadsheet of Life.  They run across the columns of morality, economics and other fine subjects.  There is a third row I think is missing.  It is ‘the transcendent.’  To me it means more than anything spiritual, moral or religious.

My proposal is that all attempts at answering the question of how to move forward only on our present plane of existence will fall short.  By that I mean there is a 100 percent chance of failure if we continue along our current path of simple reasoning, legalism and right fighting.

Do you ever watch Dr. Phil?  Yeah, me either.  And what we all know is his insistence that right fighting does not work.  At some point you have to stop counting sins, and dollars, and deal with the underlying issues.  We must admit there are so many things going on at one time that all-or-nothing thinking will literally get us nowhere.  The considerations include business, drug cartels, human rights, social security, unemployment and dozens of other valid concerns affecting real people, on both sides of the shared divide.

The simple truth is people from Latin America will continue to come here in spite of our laws and our borders.  Here is how it was phrased earlier, “People move because the risk of staying in place is greater than the risk of rejection, exclusion, isolation or failure.  Migration is a choice, and there are very solid arguments in its favor.  It is basic survival instinct.”

As long as massive unemployment, human rights abuses and general quality of life languish for our sisters and brothers to our south, they will persist in seeking the hope of The North.  In spite of the possibility of failure, they continue to arrive because the risk of staying in place is so great.  For some the only failure is in not trying at all.  It is an all-American value we share in these parts.

Trying to stop illegal immigration to El Norte is like trying to stop the rain.  Good luck.

~~~

If migration north is inevitable, the next best question is how to face our current situation and our shared future.

I work in a profession that claims that what you do is not nearly as important as how you do it.  I subscribe to the belief.  I drink the fund-raising Kool-Aid.

What I will not offer in naiveté is the notion that personal experience and relationships across borders (including our own Native reservations) should be mandatory for anyone with a stake in the discussion.  It is true such relationships transform minds as narrowly set on truth as my own was some 20 years ago.  But we are talking about an international political, humanitarian and economic crisis.  Ideals are fine, but they are by no means required.

Having said that, I still contend there is a better way, and to delve into the realm of religion, a more excellent way.

~~~

The most practical consideration here – the realm of the excellent – is the admission that if we really want a solution, we will find it.

My friend Jesus G. believes if we charged $1,000 for admission at the border, with the understanding there’s a practical limit on the number able to cross each year, the income would outweigh the cost of illegal immigration to our government and tax payers.  Next argument?

I know – the situation is complicated, and this proposal is simple.  There are short-term and long-term considerations.  The economic factors driving the masses north are complex and grand.

Consider, however, Apollo 11.  Yes, the country that put people on the surface of the moon and brought them safely home seems stuck in place over the future of a host of fellow human beings, people.  Through the efforts of Rotary International, polio has almost been eradicated from the planet in a matter of decades.

Yes, I know.  I’m talking stars, disease and economics in the same breath.  I hear you.  But listen if you will to the kernel of truth.  Where is our beloved American resolve?  Is it perhaps true immigration is something we want to eliminate more than solve?  It is human nature to wish it away.  Sadly, this will not work.

A corollary is so many people really are working hard on this issue, running in circles tightening the restrictions on passage into our country.  They are fencing borders and proposing backward movement on the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution (birthright citizenship).  It is the legislative equivalent of my frightened Lutheran woman haters tightening our grip and blocking every attempt to offer passage to outsiders.  Remember, no language is necessary to stir the waters of fear.

Prohibition alone will get us nowhere.  We need only take a glance at the history books to learn this lesson, again.

~~~

Along the path of the more excellent way is the notion that recreating the wheel wastes time and resources.  Surely someone is doing this well.  Who and where?

Norway is known for its standard of living – the highest in the world they say.  This nation has ranked #1 eight times in the Human Development Index.  How do my Scandinavian Lutheran kin deal with human migration?

Google leads me to the news that Norway has the second highest rate of asylum seekers in Europe – more than twice this time last year.  As a result, the government is seeking to tighten its immigration policy.  Specifically, the country seeks to decrease the number of asylum seekers who do not need protection.  So many European immigrants are political refugees in real danger.

The proposed response is reasonable and fair.  What other models already exist among sister nations?

I do not doubt law makers are looking to the world for proven success.  Most of us, however, “armchair politicians” as my dear dad used to say, are fairly uninformed.  Yet our opinions are equally strong.

~~~

Another step toward excellence is the resistance to simple solutions – from all sides of the aisle.   Reductio ad absurdum and the slippery slope erode our platform for conversation.  They leave less space for dialogue.

Acknowledge the very big difference between the Mexican drug violence faced by Texas ranchers and the denial of residency to children who did not ask to come here and who have never known anything else.  There is a lot going on.  Keep in mind that these children are exploited daily by our left- and right-leaning political agendas.  Keeping children from advancing does not help them or us in the long run.  Parse it out rather than clumping.  More is more in this case.  Take apart the issues.

It’s okay to have strong opinions and fears.  It’s in fact the American way.  Understanding what motivates this for us personally is a responsibility each of us carries.  It is a necessity for lasting relationships with other people.  You are not ‘normal’ – no one is.  Before we can accept people for their quirks and fears, we have to first know what drives our own.  Dig deep.  And keep on digging.

~~~

The issue of faith must be raised.  It is perhaps the best ‘how’ we can use.

Across traditions there is a call to radical hospitality.  This is not easy hospitality but the kind that leads Christians to a manger each Advent.  Hosting strangers offers the hope and responsibility of hosting angels unawares.

Other simple messages include treating others as we wish to be treated.  Any Christian worth her salt knows Jesus would likely be found serving thirsty immigrants in the desert rather than enacting stricter immigration legislation.  He would also not be a White guy with blue eyes.

Every time I see a Facebook post requesting I ‘like’ being a Christian, I want to scream.  How about less talk and more action?  Have you fed a homeless person today?  Show me what you do, not the label you claim.

Every human being is a beloved child of God, equally valuable.  The teenager crossing the border in the trunk of the car might be the next Mozart or Einstein.  Is he not worthy of coming into his own in a place where he is most supported?  Does he not deserve to bloom?  His birth in a place of poverty or lacking in opportunity does not make him less treasured.  He is just less lucky.  (Once again, if you have not given thanks today, do.)

No, we cannot save everyone.  We sure as hell have to really, really try to be sure all of our brothers and sisters have what they need, wherever they are.  We forget our call is not to worship Jesus but to model Jesus’ actions.  Remember, he was not always such a popular dude.

p.s. Love, love, love.

~~~

In the spirit of saving everyone, perhaps all of us with strong opinions about the movement of people across a border should be required to spend as much time as we spend talking also working toward solutions for the underlying economic and human rights problems our brothers and sister face, or simply getting to know them and the realities of their lives.  I personally would spend much less time at my computer writing long blog posts.  Once again, less talk, more action.

~~~

I have been waiting for this transition.  Whatever your faith, there’s a community you should know.  It happens to be in the Christian tradition.  Its lesson is universal.

I have written it before.  In the spirit of not recreating the wheel, I offer this:

There’s a place called Koinonia Farm in southwest Georgia. It is the home of the theology that gave birth to Habitat for Humanity. A Christian community, literally a commune, founded in 1942, Koinonia remains a quiet but radical force. A full decade before school integration, this unlikely place served as the backwaters for the Civil Rights movement in the United States.

The theology of the “experiment in Christian living” can be crudely boiled down to this: live the Gospel. The small community of Christians made its daily decisions based on one question: “Does it serve the Gospel?” Sometimes you know you are doing the correct thing when something so easy causes a whole heap of trouble. That’s how you know a thing is True.  The town boycotted Koinonia, and the Klan even visited. Things got all stirred up just because some farm hands had lunch together, workers of different races sharing a noon-time meal, because color-blind hospitality is what the Gospel requires.

That’s it.  The good people of Koinonia simply went about their business each day using one question as a guide: does this action make my community look more like God’s Kingdom on Earth?

It seems simple, and it is.  It also changed the world.

Volumes could be written about this simple, unassuming place.  It ranks high among possible approaches to a more excellent way.

~~~

In the spirit of radical farmers, there’s one more person I would like to introduce.  William Bernard Blalock was a Chatham County tobacco farmer née 1880-something.  This chap was my grandfather, although he died many years before I was born.

He was known as the most honest man in his rural farming community.  His appointment to Most Honest Man came after repaying a debt to a store owner after the store burned and the records were lost.  Papa Blalock knew no one else would come forward to pay the man who had generously offered credit to struggling farmers in the community for decades.  He took a bus ride he could not afford to pay Mr. Wynn money he did not have because he knew Mr. Wynn would soon need it more.  Papa Blalock himself had nine children in need of clothing, and they were just barely getting by.  In fact, they were the poorest folks most neighbors knew.

In a 1947 letter to my dear grandmother, Papa Blalock wrote, “Well, I paid that money back today that we borrowed back in ’30. We are a little poorer yet much richer because we have done right. Tell the children I said that doing right is the greatest thing in this life.”

It is simple yet effective.  Do the right thing.

I end this epistle on July 4, Independence Day, at the same place I began last December.  Both days I listened to media reports on the DREAM Act.  Both days it is just too much for me.  Just below the surface lies a bitter irony.  We were mid-stream in the season of generosity and hospitality.  This evening I write to the sound of fireworks, the auditory celebration of our country’s freedom.  And our nation is still at war with itself over who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out.’

Something is just not right.

I wonder sometimes about Papa Blalock’s response to such matters.  He was simple, but he was known for profound truth.  His take is left to my imagination.

Here are some things we know:

• One in five kids in the U.S. is hungry tonight.
• Half the world lives below the poverty line.
• The distribution of resources, not the existence of resources, is the problem.
• There is not room for everyone who would like to be here.
• Prohibition alone rarely works.
• The seekers are going to keep on seeking.
• People migrate because they have needs that are not adequately met where they are; the risk of staying in place is greater than the risk of failure.
• We are rapidly approaching the point where the American majority is the ethnic minority; it behooves us to care deeply for the outcome of all people, without regard to ethnicity or country of origin.
• We are called to do the right thing, but each of us has a different interpretation; even the simple is not so simple.
• Personal experience and relationships are the best means of opening one’s mind and heart to anything.
• Multiple things can be true at one time, and often are.
• Not all people of any type or classification are the same.
• Generalizations and extreme thinking limit possibility.
• How we approach any problem is much more important than what we do; our spirit matters greatly.
• Love, love, love.

~~~

Have we solved anything at the close of this article on Independence Day in the year 2011?  I doubt it.  But if the discussion led to one question that led to one conversation that led to one accord, perhaps.  Maybe that’s the best measure of success for any complex issue.  Perhaps keeping the conversation open is the most appropriate and achievable goal.

I hope so.  I really hope.

God bless all the travelers who do not have what they need to feel safe and secure.  If your needs have been met and you have not given thanks today, do.

Much peace.

© Mitzi Viola, 7/4/11