STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
Spiritual Reflections on the Issue of Immigration And Some of What We Might Do About It
James Ishmael Ford
2 April 2006

Text
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
Marge Piercy

I lived for several years in Wisconsin and served a UU congregation there. I came away from my sojourn in that state with a profound respect for it and its long held traditions of commitment to social justice. But it also spawned Joe McCarthy. And I am decidedly uncomfortable that after half a century another Wisconsin legislator has joined in that terrible assault on human dignity which lives as a cancerous shadow to our American ideals. This anti-immigrant impulse is, as best I can see, the unpleasant, the unhealthy shadow of American populism.

The bill authored by Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin will, by my best lights, simply continue and, indeed, harshly reinforce our already disastrous decades-old border policy. If passed by the senate and signed by the president, which frankly, and to my mind, thankfully, is unlikely, HR 4427 would result in mass violations of civil rights for citizens as well as non-citizens. In pursuit of an ill-conceived and, frankly, heartless policy of border enforcement Congressman Sensenbrenner’s bill would simply continue the frightening erosion of our civil liberties, and strip away one more thread of our already endangered common understanding of American civil rights. If you don’t get my drift, I find this bill evil.

As I look at it, I find the House votes on this bill particularly disconcerting. HR 4427 passed the House by two hundred, thirty nine votes to one hundred, eighty-two. This included thirty-six Democrats joining two hundred and three Republicans voting for it. Seventeen Republicans, one hundred, sixty-four Democrats and the single House independent voted against the measure, one of the, perhaps the harshest anti-immigrant bill in history. As one looks at it, obviously this anti-immigration attitude isn’t just a Republican issue, although in various forums we’re already seeing the possibility of it becoming the next wedge issue in American presidential politics. In fact Senate opposition to this bill has produced some interesting if unlikely bedfellows including our own senator Ted Kennedy working with Republican moderate Arlen Specter and Republican gadfly and presidential hopeful John McCain seeking some realistic compromise.

These political divides and complexities acknowledged, the overwhelming majority Republicans elected to the House of Representatives have publicly stood against Mexican and other economic immigrants and have gone on to vote their willingness to make such immigrants felons. This is the simple truth. And from this partisan perspective the strongly Republican dominated House has now voted one of the harshest anti-immigrant bills in American history, including, amazingly, a provision to make any illegal presence in America a felony, as well as to criminalize anyone who would help these putative felons. Including, I need to note, any church or other social service workers who might feed them or give then a night’s rest. Felons: for feeding the hungry, for clothing the naked, for housing the homeless. Have I yet used the word evil for this bill and what it stands for?

All this noted, here we are, people of faith, not as some might suggest, simply the Democratic Party at prayer, or as others would correct; the left-wing of the Democratic Party at prayer. We’re not. We are, simply, truly, a people of faith – faith in reason, faith in human possibility, faith in deep and pervading connections beyond any artificial boundaries including those of nation-states. So, what does all this mean for us? What moral and spiritual questions should we try to address here? Well, bottom line, as I see it, the question for us is fairly simple: By what right do citizens of one nation exclude immigrants of another nation? And what informs our decision as UUs to engage in the debate or not?

I understand this is difficult and setting aside briefly draconian suggestions like Congressman Sensenbrenner has thrown on the table, questions of boundary and culture, of identity and safety are certainly legitimate. And they do coalesce in a consideration of immigration, legal and otherwise. Starting with our recollection we are deeply connected, all of us on this planet, perhaps we take a moment to consider some of the expressed concerns about restricting immigration into our country.

One response is found in the “zero sum” analysis. We only have so much space and wealth and what goes to foreign and illegal workers does not go to our own. This is a popular argument. Among others it is used by some African-Americans who feel squeezed at the bottom of our economic ladder and see immigrants competing for those lowest paying jobs in our country. While there is some truth here, it doesn’t allow for the dynamic reality of economics that appears to suggest the larger a nation’s labor pool, the greater is its productive potential. Indeed, most contemporary economic analysis would suggest the larger the pool of workers, the greater the possibility of economic growth, the greater the likelihood of an increasing job market.

Another argument against immigrants, and particularly illegal immigrants, is how they drain our social resources, drawing upon social security and other welfare mechanisms. Former president Regan loved to produce newspaper clippings about “welfare queens.” We need to be wary of anecdote as proof. Certainly one can find examples of foreigners abusing our systems, but the statistics point in other directions. Quite simply the overwhelming majority of so-called illegal immigrants in fact pay taxes as well as into the social security system, while rarely drawing upon our social benefits. For the most part they’re afraid to.

Of course there is a larger question, which is who is “us?” who are “we?” For Americans this is a particularly difficult question, when we’re not bound by a specific ethnicity, religion, or really, even a specific language. What defines us as people born more the most part in a specific region, but not another? Where is the divide simply economic oppression or even raw racism? This is the stuff for our conversation. Here the hard questions of the spiritual condition begin to rise. Are we not all sisters and brothers? Are we not all bound together in the web?

I suspect most of us in this hall, at least those of us who own some property, will agree there needs to be some definitions, some boundaries of who gets what, who can justly claim what and where. But what are the real limits? Where do national boundaries fit into any authentic sense of justice, of separation, of identity? Manuel Velasquez, a professor of business ethics at Santa Clara University, in California, upon whom I draw for several of these questions, challenges the whole idea of a “nation-state” and beyond that suggests our “Immigration policies must be carefully crafted so that they address human needs while remaining sensitive to the importance of absorbing any influx of newcomers. Such policies cannot be based on the covert racism sometimes lurking beneath claims that citizens have an absolute moral right to exclude whomever they want.”

Criticizing Velasquez’s contentions, Martin Cook, observes “His (Velasquez’s) criticisms of the international system of independent states – with their rights to territorial integrity and political sovereignty – are well-founded. Given the obvious artificiality of states and the historically arbitrary and morally dubious ways in which those states came to have their boundaries, one might be tempted to wish them away in favor of a universal human community of individuals, equal in their economic and political rights.”

He then adds, “But there is a history to the current arrangement that might give us pause.” Cook then recounts the rise of the modern nation-state in Europe’s sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While often badly done, these states have created the first situation in the world’s history where the majority of people might flourish. In most cases these states have been created along ethnic or religious lines. But, America has been different. Our nation has been open to many creeds, and if slowly, to many colors. This has made us as Americans particularly interesting as a social experiment, and also has made us vulnerable to questions others might not even begin to consider.

Cook goes on to suggest economic hardships must be addressed by individual countries. He argues “taking on the responsibilities for foreign citizens can (in fact) be morally counterproductive. Insofar as immigration provides an escape valve for political and economic grievances, one might just as often be protecting oppressive or incompetent governments, which, if their citizens had no option but to live under and suffer from them, would be replaced.” I find this an interesting argument.

But I also find myself reminded of the debate within the social justice community regarding hands-on help or addressing systemic issues. Those who are committed to the larger issues often dismiss those who work to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked and to house the homeless as simply putting band-aids on the problems. Instead of worrying about this so-called illegal immigrant or that, shouldn’t we be worrying about larger social and economic issues? Shouldn’t we be striving for that time when there are no national boundaries and people are free to move from this place to that unimpeded by governments? Big issues, no doubt; and worthy, I believe.

So, given all the complexities, given the possibility of one’s most cherished opinion being wrong, how do we act? From what do we take our direction? I suggest we have one clear north star – our spiritual knowing we are all one. Karen Musalo, while acting director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the American University in Washington wrote to this issue and how we might best address it by telling the story of Chinue Sugihara, “a Japanese diplomat assigned to his country’s consulate in (Kaunas,) Lithuania in the early 1940s. Jews who fled from Poland into Lithuania needed permission to pass through the Soviet Union and Japan in order to continue to other destinations.” One day not long after he took up his post Sugihara found three hundred desperate people, some who had walked all the way from Poland, standing outside his consulate, begging for his help.

He had already been officially forbidden to help any Jews seeking to escape the Nazis. He knew to act was to endanger not only his own life, but the lives of his family. And for what? He wasn’t being presented with a chance to change the world. Rather he was given an opportunity to help a few desperate people. Musalo wrote about how Sugihara decided what to do. He “made his decision after consulting with his family and listening to his five-year old son ask, ‘If we don’t help them, won’t they die?’” Out of the mouths of babes, out of the mouth of babes... Before his arrest and deportation Sugihara issued more than two thousand exit visas. At one point his hand was so worn from signing these documents he had to put on ice packs to continue. In fact, even after being dismissed from his post and the family was ordered to an internment camp, while riding on the train to his imprisonment he continued to write those exit visas. One small paper at a time.

Musalo summed her observation up with her own comment, about where he found the authority to do what he did. “He also,” she wrote. “Listened to his own conscience.” Today there are an estimated fifty thousand people who claim descent from what are called “Sugihara’s Jews.” I have one take away from this. Perhaps we can never know what is merely some band-aid and what is in fact a revolutionary act on behalf of the whole world.

I’m of Irish descent. I often eat lunch at a local pub run by an Irish immigrant. He’s fond of prominently posting, from its time a common enough Boston sign, that reads, “No Irish need apply.” It’s hard not to notice how Irish immigrants were depicted throughout most of the nineteenth century – as monkeys. Even our own and my UU hero Henry Thoreau describes in excruciating detail his disgust with the Irish in a harrowing incident in Walden. Today, one need only be gay or lesbian to understand how ambivalent we can be to those who are not precisely like us. Today I won’t go to the issues of class, and its poison in our common life. The lessons are all around us. Here’s the bottom line: we all belong to each other, we all belong to one family.

Here I call you to a statement in Leviticus, not a text I normally cite, but truth is truth. And it speaks to the deepest knowing of our true heritage. Chapter nineteen, verses thirty-three through thirty-five in my slightly adapted version: “I say this as your Lord, your God. When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress that person. Rather that stranger who resides with you shall be to you as an authentic citizen. Even more: you will love that person as your very self. Do not forget you were strangers and aliens when you dwelt in Egypt.” Ah, strangers in a strange land, and our fundamental obligations to them, as Exodus would remind us.

I think this is the story for us, for you and me. Here I think we find the moral, the ethical, the religious context - that should drive us in our social decisions. We need to accept the stranger as our very selves. I humbly suggest we throw open the borders. Such action is consonant with the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, about our place within an interdependent web. We are one family. It is both our spiritual message as religious liberals and it is the message the nation established on our spiritual principals presents to the world. It is the message carved on our behalf by admirers of our highest and most profound possibility on that statue which greets everyone who sails into New York harbor: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

We ask ourselves, how shall we act? How shall we deal with the stranger among us? How do we deal with the illegal immigrant, such an ugly and unseemly use, don’t you find, the immigrant seeking a home and possibility in this great and generous and good nation. The answer to the question how shall we act isn’t difficult. Not if we recall our intimate connection, how we truly belong to a single shimmering web of relationship and possibility and dream. These days I rarely find myself in solidarity with Roman Catholic clergy. But here I am happy to join with the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahoney, and clearly and publicly announce I will joyfully become a felon if Congressman Sensenbrenner’s evil bill becomes an evil law.

I hope you’ll write your congressman from that perspective.

Amen.