By Sr. Denise Sausville, RSM [PDF Version] [Return to HomePage]
Denise Sausville, RSM has been ministering at the U.S./Mexico border for over ten years. Denise is the founder of MercyWorks, a non-profit resource dedicated to the works of mercy beyond borders. Denise’s border work embraces concern for immigrants, deportees, and maquiladora workers, as well as the elderly poor and handicapped. Denise is also a volunteer at ARISE, a community development agency that serves new immigrants in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Denise Sausville brings a theological, spiritual, and ethical perspective to her reflections on immigration.
"Part of the process of conversion of mind and heart deals
with confronting attitudes of cultural superiority, indifference, and
racism; accepting migrants not as forboding aliens, and terrorists,
or economic threats, but rather as persons with dignity and rights,
revealing the presence of Christ." Strangers No Longer, USCCB, 2003
INTRODUCTION
We all know about the violence that is now rife in every Mexican border town. Drug cartels are staking out their territories in nearly every colonia with mafia-style extortion and intimidation of small businesses along with shootouts within school zones. Twelve year old children attracted by money wear hoods and carry rifles in service of the gang. Kidnapping and extortion of immigrant (Central Americans) and citizen families of every income level are commonplace. The everyday lives of the community have been disrupted significantly. Persons do not feel free to move about. Indeed, the population of northern Mexico is a people under siege.
In the meantime, the US side of the border, the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas is a more subtle reflection of its Mexican neighbors. Human trafficking, or slavery, is unveiled in the discovery along Valley towns of whole houses full of kidnapped persons. Gang-members on both sides of the border partner in the trafficking of drugs. “Gentlemen’s Clubs” are proliferating throughout the Rio Grande Valley, where prostitution and trafficking of women are slippery issues which are hoodwinked by local law enforcement officials. All of this violence on both sides of the border is part of an overall industry that services the addictions and greed of both Mexican and US citizens. In the meantime, immigrants are caught in the crossfire.
The major point of the reflections in this paper, however, is about a violence that is both subtle and creeping, like the kudzu plant that overtakes whole counties while we are sleeping. The violence I am talking about is the violence of scapegoating, of racial profiling, and the more recent violence since 9/11 in which the image of the immigrant has become fused with the image of the criminal. Yes, I believe that much of the public no longer views those migrating from the south as simply field workers, low-wage construction workers, and people working in the service industries—persons seeking education for their children and a better life for their families—contributors to our economy and our society. Rather, the physical evidence of the militarization of our southern border including a wall, an army of foot soldiers (the border patrol, the national guard, and minutemen), along with infrared technology, drones and helicopters—tells us that not only drug-runners and traffickers of people, but also immigrants have become the enemy, because they are often times treated the same. This kind of xenophobia objectifies and dehumanizes the immigrant, making it easier for the general population to scapegoat him, holding him responsible for many of our social ills and economic problems, and now criminalizing him.
This paper will take a look at the phenomenon of scapegoating. Webster’s College Dictionary defines the scapegoat as “a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.” The focus of this paper is on documented and undocumented economic migrants from the south, specifically on new Mexican immigrants who represent the largest significant group immigrating into the United States in recent history. It is also the group with which the author has the most personal experience, having lived and worked on both the U.S. and Mexican sides of the Rio Grande River The methodology of the cycle of see-judge/discern-act, or ver-juzgar/discernir-actuar will be used in this paper as a way to track the conversion process which must take place for those who wish to involve themselves in pastoral work with new immigrants.
PART I: SEE/VER
The eyes are like the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are sound, then your whole body will be full of light. (Mt. 6:22)
Lord, that I may see. (Mk. 10:51)
The lead quote in this paper refers to a conversion of mind and heart. To step out into this journey of conversion requires that we first of all see concretely what is going on around us. When we truly see, which in the context of this paper means to draw on both the dimensions of mind and heart, a shift in consciousness takes place in which we ourselves become emigrants, as we encounter new and unknown territories that take us out of our comfort zones.
Stories
There is nothing that helps us get an inside take on a situation more than a story. Individual stories help us to know the inner experience of persons who are otherwise abstract statistics on a graph in a report in the New York Times. Or, as with reporters and talk show hosts such as Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh the immigrant is made into an object on which hate and fear can be projected so that we don’t have to do the homework of looking at ourselves. In his article, “Why Would People Migrate,” John J. Savant claims that “In attempting to understand what is just, we have to imagine real persons and their concrete situations.”
The Story of Juan
I met Juan during one of my regular forays to an immigrant shelter in a Mexican border town across from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. For eight years I had done volunteer work at the shelter where I had witnessed migrations of emigrants from the south of Mexico and Central America heading to the United States. After 9/ll, shelter staff began witnessing a gradual trend in which fewer and fewer immigrants seemed to be coming from the south and heading north with the intention of crossing the river. There are various reasons for this. One is because of stricter border enforcement on the U.S. side. Another is the frequency of kidnapping, extortion, and other abuse—sometimes even leading to murder, of Central American immigrants during their passage through Mexico. Instead of large numbers of immigrants heading north, in the past two years, shelter personnel were seeing greater numbers of deportees, persons who had been deported from U.S. prisons and deportation centers back into Mexico. The options for these persons were either to keep heading south, back to their people, or attempt to re-enter the United States, with the risk of apprehension and capture, long prison terms, and a second deportation. Hiring a coyote to guide and “protect” the immigrant in his return north would cost him and/or his family up to $4,000, with no guarantees.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here”, said Juan in perfect English with
little accent.
“But, you do know that you’re in a shelter, right?” I said.
“Yes, I know what this place is, and I know that I’m in a Mexican border
town, although I feel like I’m in some kind of war zone”.
“How did you get here?”
“After the long ride on the bus from the deportation center, we were dumped at the bridge and told to walk over here into this Mexican town. As soon as we set foot here in Mexico I was one of the ones who got beat-up and robbed. They took my belongings and what little cash I had. We were told by some men working on a street nearby that there was a shelter on this side of town, so we walked over here. So, I guess, here I am.”
Though a strapping man, Juan looked fearful, tenuous, disoriented, and dazed—as though the real Juan had been left somewhere far away. Juan’s was the face of trauma the archetype of a fresh and raw deportee with a new reality looming before his eyes. I had seen many men like Juan, sometimes a hundred and twenty arriving at one time.
“I am so sorry to hear about your experience at the bridge”, I said.
Juan had been one of the many victims of a set-up by local Mexican police, who, when they are aware that a bus of deportees is arriving, don civilian clothes and set up ambushes. Knowing the vulnerability of deportees, and the fact that deportees don’t report their victimizations to local human rights authorities because of a fear of reprisal—these otherwise law enforcement officials boldly strip the new deportees of whatever cash or valuables they may have.
Juan began to tell his story, explaining that less than three days before he had been living a normal life in the United States. He unfortunately was picked-up for a traffic violation and everything went downhill from there. The patrolman who had stopped him deciphered that Juan’s driver’s license was invalid, and Juan was immediately seized and put in jail. This is a common story. Although Juan may have been qualified to receive his permanent residency papers, he had probably lived with falsified documents all his life. Like many undocumented immigrants, he may not have been able to afford the lawyer’s fees and penalty or processing fees that are part of the legalization process.
“You speak such good English,” I said, “surely you must have lived
in the United States a long time.”
“It’s true. I’m forty-four years old now, and I came to the United States with my parents when I was twelve. I remember very little about my life in Mexico. I was just like anybody else ‘over there’ (in the United States), I went to school, got a job, got married and had kids. I’m not supposed to be here in Mexico. I don’t know anyone in here anymore. My life is in the United States. All of my family is in the United States. Besides, I have to get back to my job.”
“Does your family know where you are right now?” I inquired.
“I didn’t have anything I could tell them. I didn’t know where I would go once I crossed that bridge.”
“You can arrange to make phone calls from here. Do you have anyone in the United States who can work on your case? Can your wife get a lawyer?” I said.
At some level, I wondered why I was even asking him these questions. Was I offering false hope? Juan didn’t have a case, really. And, even if he did, good immigration lawyers are hard to find and often very costly. Juan had committed crimes. He had been driving with a false driver’s license. He was living in the United States illegally. Juan was a criminal. To stretch it a little farther, to some, Juan might even be considered a terrorist suspect. After all, he was dark-skinned, his first language wasn’t English, he was foreign-born, and, he crossed the southern border into the United States.
The Story of Alicia
And, then there’s Alicia. Forty year old Alicia had entered the United States from Mexico along with her two small children and without documents some fifteen years before I met her. After entry into the United States she married and had two more children, but the marriage didn’t last. Alicia was a member of a wellness class that I had taught at a community center in a small town in Hidalgo County, South Texas. When the class ended we continued to make contact, and I was able to link Alicia to a resource person who assisted her in pursuing legal residency status.
In visits to her home, I could see the depth of poverty she and the children were experiencing. Yet, Alicia explained that her life in Mexico was much worse, and that she had desperately wanted her children to have education and the ability to make a better life for themselves. When it rained, Alicia’s yard was mired in mud. The house was nothing more than a hovel. With no running water in the kitchen, Alicia improvised by running a hose through the window to the kitchen sink from a hook-up outside. There were no beds, only mattresses on the floor. Nonetheless, Alicia and her children were always immaculate, going off to school well-groomed and with freshly laundered clothes augmented by Alicia’s solar dryer, a clothesline.
For income, Alicia had taken a low-paying job in the refrigeration section of a large operation that prepared lunches to be sent out to local public schools. There were always a couple of inches of water on the floor in the area where she worked, and Alicia could not afford rubber boots. Eventually, she had to quit the job since with the cold and the damp she found herself in constant bad health. After this, she took a job scrubbing with Clorox the insides of empty industrial-size trucks after they were used to haul carrots, onions, or cabbages from the fields to warehouses. Because of the chemical fumes, and the wear-and-tear on her back, Alicia also had to let go of this job, knowing that it would be difficult to find something else.
On a later visit to the house, Alicia proudly flashed in front of my face what looked to be an official document. She had received a letter proving that after all the paperwork she had done and fees she had scraped together, she was now officially considered a legal resident. The letter began: Dear Alicia__________, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES.
There was something ironic about that greeting, “Welcome to the United States.” Reading it in the circumstances in which I was standing, an Anglo and citizen from birth, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. For fifteen years Alicia had lived an unnerving way of life, a low-profile life in the shadows. She never knew if she would someday be stopped somewhere and be deported. And now, for someone who had been unwelcome, it seemed strange, almost ludicrous, when that welcome finally came. I wanted to put words in her mouth, “I’ve been here all this time, but you didn’t want to know my story. I was working for you all this time in the shadows. I am giving to you (baby boomers) four good workers to subsidize your social security. I am not what you think, I wanted to be a citizen, I wanted to contribute.”
In Alicia’s story, we can see her persistence, and what measures some immigrants take so that their children might encounter opportunity where there was no opportunity. Some scholars go so far as to posit a Darwinian theory that the persons who emigrate illegally are some of the most intelligent, strong, resilient and resourceful people that could be found in their countries of origin. Having personally heard many first-hand stories of immigrant crossings, and knowing many new immigrants myself, I believe this is true.
After receiving her residency papers, Alicia obtained a scholarship to a massage therapy school, where she earned the top grades in her class. Her two older boys who are now legal residents work in a mechanic shop and on an oil rig, while her two younger daughters who are citizens are pulling excellent grades in school.
The Story of Sylvia
Forty-five year old Sylvia was someone I met when my office was located in a community center close to an industrial bridge leading over to the Mexican side of the border. Always animated and quite gifted in her ability to decorate and produce handicrafts of every kind, an extrovert and interested in learning, (she took every English class offered at the center,) Sylvia exhibited a high motivation to work. Now divorced, Sylvia had entered the United States illegally eighteen years previously with her then husband. She later bore three children each in different states where her husband had migrated to find work.
Some years later, after her divorce, Sylvia was ecstatic when she finally found work sitting with an elderly infirm couple who were able to pay her five dollars an hour. Besides caring for the elderly couple, both were wheelchair bound, her work included cleaning the house and preparing a noon meal. This little bit of salary helped Sylvia and her family to tread an economic tightrope that would keep them from going deeper below the poverty line. Sylvia received high marks from the elderly couple’s middle class professional children on the work she had done for their parents. Because of ill health, the couple needed to be moved to a skilled nursing facility. During the long time between jobs, Sylvia cleaned houses here and there for a couple of years. At one juncture, she took a job at a local restaurant, where the owner told her that she wouldn’t receive a salary, that she could only receive her tips. Being constantly placed to serve a section of the restaurant where there were few customers, Sylvia began to feel abused by this system, and she quit work. She tried working at a cleaner, but was ill-treated there also, and the conditions were very poor. After a long search she was connected to another elderly couple where she continues to work. The positive side of Sylvia’s story is that her three teen-age children are in a magnet school, and are college bound.
Sylvia has a real gift for working with the elderly and this has great implications for America’s baby boomers. In a recent phone call from an elderly friend from a northern state, I heard her discuss her concern about her long term retirement plans. “What am I going to do if Gary and I become incapacitated? Who will take care of us? We don’t want to leave our home to live in a facility.” “Beats me, I said. If my friend Sylvia were documented, she could come up and help you out. As it is, she’d never get through the checkpoint.” Not only that, I thought, but if Sylvia were documented she could demand just wages, too.
The above stories are common stories, with the exception that immigrant women are often far more isolated than immigrant men who often work in crews. Immigrant women often cannot drive, they don’t have significant connections, including extended family, that can help them find employment. They are often charged with the care of young children
Now that our eyes are a bit more open to the outer reality of the life of the immigrant, let us look at aspects of the system of immigration itself, by examining some recent laws and policies regarding undocumented immigrants.
Laws and Enforcement Policies
Persons working in ministries with and for immigrants throughout the United States are well aware of the escalation of laws and policies governing undocumented persons. Communities at our southern border see physical signs daily of activity involving border patrol wagons, the wall, helicopters and drones that is directed toward a drug war, yes, but also decidedly toward keeping the “alien” out. The draconian anti-immigrant laws instituted in the State of Arizona have leaked over into other states. Texas alone recently passed SB 9 which is directed toward “secure communities,” but which in essence “reduces safety for all Texans by undermining the authority of law enforcement officials to police their communities.” Texas also passed a voter ID law that requires that voters who appear at the polls must produce a photo ID or proof of citizenship. This legislation penalizes groups of people who already struggle to make their voices heard within our society.
At the federal level, now at stake is the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the right of citizenship to all who are born in the United States. A proposal forwarded by senators from Kentucky and Louisiana looks to amending the U.S. Constitution “to require that children born in America be considered citizens only if they have at least one parent who is a citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or an active member of the military.”
My own experience of the escalation of recent anti-immigrant laws and policies comes through my contacts with immigrants who have been affected by the lack of due process and the lack of reading of one’s rights in the deportation process. I have known stories of local persons whose motor vehicles have been stopped for no reason other than racial profiling. Through a Sisters of Mercy Immigrant Advocacy Group, I hear horror stories of the conditions of jails and for-profit deportation centers where undocumented immigrants are held with criminals, and some for months at a time before a hearing. To counter this, the U.S. Bishops both caution and plead that “Any enforcement measures must be targeted, proportional, and humane.”
That the undocumented immigrant has been criminalized is a fact. I believe that this phenomenon is, in part, a consequence of post 9/11 paranoia which has inadvertently fused in the minds of the American public “the image of the immigrant at our southern border” with “the image of the terrorist”. It is ironic that the 9/11 terrorists themselves crossed the northern border from Canada to enter the United States.
The Person in the Pew
In the meantime, ordinary Catholics are unaware that their own Church is addressing the issue of immigration as it unfolds. Recognizing the complexities surrounding the issue of the undocumented, the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States drafted a document that includes five principles that underlie their positions on comprehensive immigration reform. One of the five principles states that “persons have the right to migrate to support themselves and their families.” The Bishops acknowledge the impact of globalization, including the unfair balance wrought by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , which has displaced 1.3 million agricultural workers in the south of Mexico. The Bishops recognize that the root causes of migration exist in the global underdevelopment of the migrant’s country of origin, and that the ultimate solution to migration issues lies in the development of these countries. In the meantime, the Bishops acknowledge that the dignity of the human person must be respected.
It is now time to harmonize policies on the movement of peoples,
particularly in a way that respects the human dignity of the
migrant and recognizes the social consequences of globalization.
The Bishops insist on the dignity of the immigrant and they add that he is to be seen as “the presence of Christ,” who himself was a migrant at several junctures throughout his lifetime. “For the bishops”, says Andrew Rivas, the Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference, “the issue of immigration is not simply a political one, but a moral issue that impacts human rights and the very life and dignity of the human person.”
Significant work has been done by the U.S. Catholic bishops, in particular, who have made consistent efforts toward forwarding comprehensive immigration reform.
As our journey of conversion takes us to unknown territories where we hear stories of Mexican immigrants, become familiar with recent anti-immigrant laws and policies, and hear for perhaps the first time the prophetic voices of our Bishops on this topic, we hopefully begin to sense a small shift in consciousness. This shift is what I call seeing. It can be an uncomfortable place to dwell, yet we must dwell in it, since it is the uncomfortability born of new consciousness that can move us to the next place.
PART II: JUDGE/JUZGAR; Discern/Discernir
A second important movement in the conversion process is that of discerning. Discerning is the effort we exert to make discriminations about what is really happening. It is making a decision about how we want to view something, what we want to believe about it, or what standards we want to use to evaluate it. Discerning involves landing at a certain place on a certain issue, in this case on the issue of immigration. The kind of discerning we are talking about in this paper requires letting-go of all pre-conceptions and assumptions in order to be truly free to judge.
….and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (Jn.8:32)
The History of Immigration in the United States
Recently, I was starkly dumbfounded, not knowing how really naive I was, to find scathing caricatures of the Mexican immigrant in blogs following an on-line article in our local newspaper. The article was about a new Investors Pilot Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Under the program, Mexican nationals willing to invest more than $500,000 in U.S. enterprises would be granted permanent residency. The plethora of negative comments on this article were not objecting to the fact that the program only addressed wealthy Mexicans, without acknowledging the economic contributions of the many Mexicans who are already working here, but rather the comments were directed toward Mexicans in general. Respondants characterized their brothers from south of the border as, “lowlifes”, “parasites”, “problems”, and “cowards” to name a few. One blogger commented, “We don’t want them here!!!! Well…maybe their fiestas.” These kinds of diatribes would be devastating commentaries, except that they are nothing new. Mexican immigrants constitute the latest wave within a history of waves of immigrant groups entering the United States. Every significant new wave or group that has come here in the past century, including Italians, Slavs, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and more—have been called names similar to those given by our bloggers, and worse. This is not to condone these awful slurs, but rather it is to point out that there is something at work when a new group arrives at our shores (or borders)—when there is a need to somehow characterize or define the new group in certain ways. I want to say that what is at work is a kind of violence that undermines, that leaves little room for the immigrant group to redeem themselves in the eyes of the new country until they are totally assimilated into the new culture and a second group comes behind them only to be as downgraded as the previous group.
In an article entitled, “Unwanted: Immigration and Nativism in America”, by Peter Schrag, the author notes that nativism, zenophobia, and racism are not new in America, or in other countries. “What makes them significant in America is that they run counter to the nation’s founding ideals…[and] ideas in the founding documents…to be a nativist in this country…[is] to be in conflict with its fundamental tenets.’ [Emphasis mine.] The nativist is one who is always evaluating; ‘Who belongs here.’ They have been known to come up with the idea that only a certain kind of people belong, such as pure Anglo-Saxons (if these exist anymore), or people of northern European descent. Or, could we “include ‘inferior’ people, such as Southern Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Jews, or Chinese,” which was a major question during the nineteenth century. Nativist Benjamin Franklin even wrestled with the issue of whom to allow in and whom to shut out, when he “warned that Pennsylvania was becoming ‘a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our Complexion.’”
Recently, I heard a nativist statement that was very telling. I was eating lunch with two women, one, a younger Mexican-American woman who had had her citizenship papers for a number of years, and the other, an older Anglo-American. During the meal I commented that I wished I had a tortilla, so that I could make a taco with the food on my plate. This followed with a discussion about food, and the Anglo woman stated, “We Americans can make a sandwich out of anything.” Did she mean that Anglos are American and sandwiches are American? If so, it would mean that if Benjamin Franklin were here today, he might ask, “What will happen when the Mexicans Mexicanize us instead of our Anglifying them?” What will we do when the taco replaces the sandwich the way that salsa has replaced ketchup? This is the fear that is wrought by a nativist mentality.
Nativism—What makes a citizen?
Historically, immigration issues began coming to the fore in the 1880’s after the closing of the western frontier, which had served as a safety valve to assuage many social problems. Schrag claims that in the early decades of the Twentieth Century congressional debates were centered around the concern that, “In the face of inferior, low-skill, low-wage but high-fecundity [child bearing] classes from Southern and Eastern Europe, demoralized Anglo-Saxons would bring fewer children into the world to face that new competition.” Beneath these early fears, we can hear xenophobia and racism targeted at what were then the latest wave of immigrants. Today these same fears are at work, and are directed primarily at the undocumented Mexican immigrant.
Yes, xenophobia and racism are still with us, and in fact are on the rise. The Southern Poverty Law Center (the SPLC) has a reputable thirty year track record for documenting the establishment and growth of hate groups around the United States. In its Intelligence Report for Spring 2011, the SPLC indicated that,
Last year’s rise in hate groups was the latest in a trend stretching all
the way back to the year 2,000, when the SPLC counted 602 such groups.
Since then, they have risen steadily, mainly on the basis of exploiting the
issue of undocumented immigration from Mexico and Central America.
Last year, the number of hate groups rose to 1,002 from 932, a 7.5 increase
over the previous year and a 66 percent rise since 2000.
The report went on to indicate that antigovernment Patriot groups grew dramatically “on the basis of furious rhetoric from the right aimed at the nation’s first black president.” What the Mexican immigrant without papers is forced to face along with the exploitation of “the issue” of his undocumented status is that he, too, is a person of color. Among some hate groups skin color alone makes one a legitimate target for threats, harassment, and even death.
^All this information on nativism, along with zenophobia and racism, has led me to ask the question, “What, in the minds of the populace, constitutes a citizen?” Perhaps an even more important question might be, “Who defines or decides what constitutes a ‘citizen’?” From a legal perspective, the answer to this question is the INS. But, I might ask you, my reader, whether you are Hispanic, Asian, of African descent, or Anglo, when I say the word “American citizen,” what immediately comes to your mind? The answer to this question might be very telling. I present this question because of conversations I have had with citizens who do not in fact imagine themselves to be American citizens. One conversation was with a small group of Hispanic women all of whom I knew to have their citizenship papers. I now forget the topic of the conversation, but in the middle of it one of the women said, “And, then Sally who is a citizen came in to the meeting.” I knew Sally, and I knew in this instance that what the Hispanic woman was saying is that, “And, then this white, middle class professional woman, someone who is different from us, came in to the meeting.” I was pretty certain that for the speaker the word “citizen” was used here to capture “whiteness”, English-speaking, and advanced education. I said, “But, Rosa, you are an American citizen.” “I know,” she said, “but that’s different.” ^
In the ensuing discussion I discovered that everyone in the group believed that there are “citizens” and there are citizens. The real citizens are persons who are in seats of power, have had economic advantages and connections, and have had educational opportunities, and of course are Anglo. The other kind of citizen is a low income-low opportunity person, often a person of color, and in some cases non-Engilsh speaking. I asked these women if what I perceived to be their internalization of these nativist beliefs would ever change. They replied that they thought they would always feel like second-class citizens. In a similar conversation with a thirteen year old boy who is the son of undocumented immigrant parents, the youngster claimed that one of his friends was a citizen. I said, “Yes, Jose, but you are a citizen, too.” “Yes, but that doesn’t count.”
These two stories tell me that there are pervasive stereotypes of exactly who is a “real” American citizen, the one who is considered worthy of the bounties that this Country has to offer. The subtleness of this kind of thinking, like the creeping kudzu that I referred to earlier in this paper, is a kind of violence that can undermine the self esteem of not only the undocumented Mexican immigrant, but also whole groups of citizens within the society. This mentality, whose birthplace is the cauldron of nativism, zenophobia, and racism, is the violence that undermines and that manipulates to the advantage of dominant groups. Because it is often institutionalized, it is less visible, like low-intensity warfare.
The Insidious Phenomenon of Scapegoating
It is stories and experiences like those detailed in this paper that have led me to begin an investigation into the root causes of the violence of nativism, xenophobia, and racism, especially as they relate to the Mexican immigrant. There are many windows through which I could approach this topic, but for me the phenomenon of scapegoating best describes what is happening when hatred is directed toward the Mexican immigrant, or any other cultural group, in the United States.
For those of us who are Christian, we know that Jesus himself stands as the ultimate “scapegoat-hero-messiah”, as he faces his very human pain and mortality…” But, it is the earliest description of the scapegoat in the Hebrew Scriptures that gives us stark clues as to the meaning of the scapegoat as it is used in the context of this paper.
Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live
goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of
Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting
them on the head of the goat, and sending it away in
the wilderness by someone designated for the task.
Leviticus 16:21 (NRSV)
As far back as the earliest primal cultures, the existence of the scapegoat served a useful purpose in the society. The scapegoat represents the society’s efforts to push toward wholeness by splitting-off any negative attributes of its own, and projecting these onto an object, the scapegoat. The Book of Leviticus tells us that the community projected their “iniquities”, “transgressions” and “sins” onto the head of a goat that was then led out to the wilderness, in essence taking with it the shadow side of the community. The consequence of this is that the community itself never needs to look at its own negative attributes such as its greed, slothfulness, self-righteousness, or its propensity to violence, dominance and control. These were things that now belonged to the scapegoat. This example illustrates that it is much simpler for societies to find scapegoats than for them to do the real work of coming into wholeness, which would require that they withdraw their projections from the scapegoat and allow their own negative attributes to come into consciousness. The story in Leviticus helps us to see that when a group is making projections, the projections actually speak to what exists in the group itself, and not to what exists in the scapegoat. Thus, when we see a blog that expresses that members of a certain group are “lowlifes”, “parasites”, or “cowards”, at some level the blogger is talking about himself.
“It took me awhile to recognize the scapegoating mechanism as it operated in my own life. The clearest example I can give the reader relates to the first time that I lived singly, in housing apart from a convent of sisters. After living alone for a short while I began to notice that I was doing things around the house that I hadn’t recognized before. I noticed that I left cups of stale coffee on the kitchen counter, and stacks of bills on the desk. I failed to establish a routine and stayed up late at night, not wanting to get up in the morning. I had total control of the TV remote, which in any household is a sign of who’s in charge. I was finally free. However, what I ultimately found out about living alone was that if I was unhappy, I didn’t have anyone to blame. In living singly I could no longer have thoughts about my fellow sister such as, “If it wasn’t for her…the house would be clean, the bills would get paid on time, I could stay up as late as I wanted without waking anyone up, etc.” I could no longer project onto her that she was “controlling”, “lazy”, “messy”, and the like. Instead, I had to begin to admit that I was all these things, and I had to integrate these new found facts into my image of myself. It was a very painful process. Needless to say, most individuals and groups avoid doing this kind of work. We all like to think that we are good people beyond repute. It is much easier to find a scapegoat than to confront the negative or shadow side of our individual or group personalities.”
Myths take jobs away…crime culpability, etc.
PART III: ACT/ACTUAR
In the above section on discerning, I have chosen to view immigration through the lens of the phenomenon of scapegoating. In the context of this paper scapegoating is shown to be fueled by the societal ills of nativism, zenophobia, and racism. When we understand how these processes work we are then better able to understand the dilemma of the Mexican immigrant and the struggles he or she has to face in the larger society. For us, this newfound understanding born of “mind and heart”, must now guide our decision-making and hopefully lead us into pastoral action on behalf of the Mexican immigrant. Action is the third part of the three-part conversion process of “see-discern-act”. Without action, the conversion process is incomplete. Seeing and discerning, the first two parts of the process are rendered hollow when there is no action. Below are some examples of pastoral action in behalf of the Mexican immigrant on the part of a community service group named ARISE. Scripture… you must therefore go forth and bear fruit, fruit that will last. “whatsoever you do to the least” “rise up!”
Modeling
The impact of scapegoating on new Mexican immigrants affects them most profoundly at the level of self-esteem. Already vulnerable because of the trauma of a journey that has taken them away from family, country of origin, and the familiar, the immigrant is an easy target for groups that have a need to discharge hate, or what we now know to be the shadow material of the group. The new immigrant has neither the forum nor the language to interpret himself/herself to the new culture. Besides that, the immigrant has become a stranger unto him or herself, since the secure anchors they had once known have been ripped away.
The self-esteem of the new Mexican immigrant is also affected by the punitive law enforcement policies mentioned above in which the Mexican immigrant is profiled or criminalized. Along with this, in their everyday lives they experience exploitation by bosses, invisibility or humiliation in stores, at their childrens’ schools , and in the offices of professionals, as well. The little child of a young immigrant mother who was ill-treated by the receptionist in a doctor’s office inquired of his mother, “Mama, why don’t they like us?”
When I think of pastoral action that addresses the self esteem of the immigrant, I think about the staff of ARISE, a program in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. ARISE, is a non-profit community service agency that is co-sponsored by two religious communities , and that functions within the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. The agency sees itself as “neighbors, helping neighbors, in the neighborhood”. The women on the ARISE staff claim that the agency is an organization “of the people, by the people, and for the people” , the “people”, in this case being the new Mexican immigrant. What is notable is that the staff of ARISE work in the neighborhoods where they live. The staff is composed of first generation immigrants who have made their way to the United States with the same concerns, hopes and dreams as their clients. They are women who have broken through their fears and isolation in order to make a healthy adjustment to their new country. Staff members are now either U.S. residents or citizens who hold education as a high value, and who themselves have passed through hours of personal development and training in leadership and community organizing to enhance their work in local neighborhoods. Here, they visit homes, run educational programs, and organize for systemic change. The ARISE staff also work at developing cultural pride, knowing that the Mexican immigrant brings gifts to their new situation, including the values of family and community, the importance of education and celebration, their religious faith, and loyalty to their country.
Though ARISE is a neighborhood service agency, its workers see themselves as a community of women involved in a mission that takes them beyond the realm of mere social work. Each staff member readily recognizes herself in the new immigrant who comes knocking at her door, since the staff member has herself been on a similar journey. Thus, the staff member with conviction has much hope to offer the new immigrant, who struggles with fear, depression, a sense of isolation, and economic and language issues. The ARISE worker stands as a model and an enlightened witness, a figure who for the new immigrant demonstrates in her very person possibilities for the future, and who offers the challenge to the immigrant that Jesus’ offered to the bent woman of the Gospels, “rise up!”
Storytelling in a Safe Space
After a difficult journey to what heretofore was an unknown land, the immigrant finds himself/herself in a state of insecurity, both in his/her surroundings, and in his/her inner life. Indeed, he/her is a stranger in a strange land. It takes trust and courage on a grand scale for him/her to begin to open up to others, to recount the story of his/her journey and his/her life. Yet it is in the telling of his/her story that he/she can begin to release feelings that have perhaps been plaguing him/her since much before the time that he/she left his/her country of origin. She/he does not yet know that the story of his/her crossing is a sacred story that needs to be told and that needs to be honored in its hearing.
I believe that there are elements in the Mexican culture that contain important inherent kernels of healing that can hold the new immigrant in good stead. I will name two of the elements that I have observed. First of all, I perceive in both the Mexican and Mexican-American the ability to express a wide range of emotions. Whether it is great passion, the depths of despair, the height of celebration, or jealousy and anger, the culture provides permission for expression. I experience this over-against my own Anglo style of politeness, restraint, self-discipline, quieted exuberance, checked spontaneity, controlled suffering and anguish, seriousness, and task orientation. I find that my behavior is notably different when I am with Mexican and Mexican-American friends, in whose company I can let more of myself “hang-out”.
Along with this range of emotions, a second kernel of healing I have observed in the Mexican culture shows up in group situations. When an individual is telling her story in a group, she is automatically granted whatever time she needs. No one is counting the minutes, or feeling huffy because the individual speaker is not “sharing time” with the rest of the group. Here time is not a commodity that is parceled out on an equal basis, but rather time is opened up, and it can sometimes be open ended. Time is not to restrain or contain, but rather to allow for processes to unfold naturally.
When I think of the theme of storytelling in a safe space, I again think of the staff of ARISE. ARISE regularly conducts personal development classes for new immigrant women of the colonia communities of the Rio Grande Valley. These offerings provide safe spaces for immigrant women to come together thus breaking through the isolation that is so common in the lives of new immigrant women. In these classes, with the guidance of a staff member, women can both cry their tears, and they can take time to tell their stories. In this process, usually there is a hushedness that takes over the group. Every listener is with the speaker’s story, walking around in it, empathizing with the teller whose story so much parallels their own. Sometimes there are long silences in which the group simply sits in the sacred space constructed by the recounting of the experience. The consequence of the telling is that, no matter what the content of the story, the speaker feels valued, as the group reaches out in acceptance. However, the wisdom of the group knows that the story continues, and that the new immigrant’s journey is not over. The difference is that now there is a community walking with the new immigrant.
The Use of Ritual and Symbol
Part of the richness of the Catholic faith is the sacraments that it makes available to believers. However, beyond the seven sacraments that mark significant moments in our journey on earth, there are sacramental moments that occur in ordinary circumstances as points of intersection of the sacred with the divine. I believe these sacramental moments are taking place all the time, especially as I witness the effects of small gestures, occasions, and gatherings that bring healing, wholeness, and reconciliation to souls weathered by life’s inherent struggles. Participation in sacramental moments touch deeply the hearts and minds of the Mexican immigrant, since the Mexican psyche carries within it a deep understanding and need for both ritual and symbol.
The simplest example of this is the story of Rutila. Rutila was a regular participant in the ARISE programs. Being a great cook, she often helped out with food preparation when there was a big event for the community. A single mom of a large family, Rutila was always giving. One year when the ARISE staff members realized that Rutila’s birthday was coming up, they surprised her with a cake that said, “Feliz Cumpleaños Rutila”. When the staff went to Rutila’s house to sing to her and present her with the cake, Rutila cried and cried. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, until finally she could tell the group that she had never before received a cake on her birthday, much less a cake with her name on it, Rutila. Later the little group sat down with Rutila and her children and shared the cake together. The gathering together, the cake, a symbol of the community’s love for Rutila, and the eating of the cake, brought eucharist, with a small “e” into the life of the community that day, and inherent in that eucharistic moment was healing.
In a similar vein are the many celebrations that ARISE holds for its fin de ciclo, which is an event designed to celebrate the end of a cycle of classes, such as citizenship, English as a second language, or handicrafts. Here each woman is honored with a certificate of completion and a special dinner is held for the honorees.
I myself was able to use ritual in a satisfactory way when working at an immigrant shelter on the Mexican side of the border. Upon my arrival at the shelter one morning, the sisters in charge of the shelter signaled to me their concern about a twenty-five year old female immigrant named Perla. Like many immigrants at the shelter, Perla had made the long and harrowing journey from the south of Mexico to its northernmost border with hopes of making entry into the United States. Her desire was to find gainful employment and to be re-united with family members who lived on the USA side. Perla arrived at the shelter only to discover upon phoning back to her village that her maternal grandmother who had raised her had died in the last couple of days. The grandmother hadn’t been sick in the past, so the announcement of her death was a great shock to Perla. There was no effective way that Perla could return to the south for the funeral, which added even more to her grief. For several days she remained depressed and mute. Nothing could console her.
Before leaving work one day, I asked Perla if she would like some of us to have a special service honoring her grandmother. She said that she would like that, so the following morning I showed up at the shelter early, bringing with me Carmen and Josefina, two of my Mexican friends who were pastoral workers. We invited Perla and the remaining two women staying at the shelter to join us for desayuno at a downtown restaurant. At the restaurant we kept everything light, just visiting and getting to know one another. From the restaurant, we made our way to the central plaza and the main church, where there was an attractive side chapel. Here we spent time together, praying prayers for the dead, sharing scripture, and spending time in silence. Then we invited Perla to the front of the chapel and tell us the story of her grandmother. When Perla had done this, each of us walked to the front to give Perla a blessing and to offer her words of condolence. What we hadn’t known was that people had come in to the chapel and had been sitting behind us. They became part of the service, too. Later, that day I could see Perla smiling, a burden had been lifted.
The pastoral actions of providing modeling, storytelling in a safe place, and designing rituals and using symbols that are woven into the ordinary lives of immigrant people are simple to do and are not costly. What they require is awareness of the poignant moments when small gestures can bring healing and wholeness to individuals and groups who are at a place of vulnerability as they continue to be immersed in a new land far from their loved ones.
CONCLUSION
This paper has focused on the new Mexican immigrant who has come to the United States because of economic hardship. We began this paper with the stories of three immigrants and with information about some current laws, policies, and border security measures that cast the immigrant in the role of criminal. We went on to explore the issues of nativism, xenophobia, and racism as they feed into the overall insidious phenomenon of scapegoating. We then looked at some pastoral responses that church people could make to the plight of the new Mexican immigrant, including but certainly not limited to modeling, allowing a safe space for storytelling, and ritual and symbol. The methodology of see-discern-act was framed as a cycle that can lead the Christian to greater conversion. As we begin to be immersed in the stories of immigrants, and withdraw our preconceptions about him/her, we can begin to allow for a change of mind and heart in our stance toward him/her. A sign that the conversion process is complete is the pastoral action we have taken up on behalf of the immigrant.
While my readers may not have the opportunity to be in direct contact with Mexican or other new immigrants, I would encourage you to become involved in advocacy and systemic change measures on behalf of immigrants. Here, our church has done an outstanding job in both its documents and its practical information, as well as its action at both the state and national levels.
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with confronting attitudes of cultural superiority, indifference, and
racism; accepting migrants not as forboding aliens, and terrorists,
or economic threats, but rather as persons with dignity and rights,
revealing the presence of Christ." Strangers No Longer, USCCB, 2003
INTRODUCTION
We all know about the violence that is now rife in every Mexican border town. Drug cartels are staking out their territories in nearly every colonia with mafia-style extortion and intimidation of small businesses along with shootouts within school zones. Twelve year old children attracted by money wear hoods and carry rifles in service of the gang. Kidnapping and extortion of immigrant (Central Americans) and citizen families of every income level are commonplace. The everyday lives of the community have been disrupted significantly. Persons do not feel free to move about. Indeed, the population of northern Mexico is a people under siege.
In the meantime, the US side of the border, the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas is a more subtle reflection of its Mexican neighbors. Human trafficking, or slavery, is unveiled in the discovery along Valley towns of whole houses full of kidnapped persons. Gang-members on both sides of the border partner in the trafficking of drugs. “Gentlemen’s Clubs” are proliferating throughout the Rio Grande Valley, where prostitution and trafficking of women are slippery issues which are hoodwinked by local law enforcement officials. All of this violence on both sides of the border is part of an overall industry that services the addictions and greed of both Mexican and US citizens. In the meantime, immigrants are caught in the crossfire.
The major point of the reflections in this paper, however, is about a violence that is both subtle and creeping, like the kudzu plant that overtakes whole counties while we are sleeping. The violence I am talking about is the violence of scapegoating, of racial profiling, and the more recent violence since 9/11 in which the image of the immigrant has become fused with the image of the criminal. Yes, I believe that much of the public no longer views those migrating from the south as simply field workers, low-wage construction workers, and people working in the service industries—persons seeking education for their children and a better life for their families—contributors to our economy and our society. Rather, the physical evidence of the militarization of our southern border including a wall, an army of foot soldiers (the border patrol, the national guard, and minutemen), along with infrared technology, drones and helicopters—tells us that not only drug-runners and traffickers of people, but also immigrants have become the enemy, because they are often times treated the same. This kind of xenophobia objectifies and dehumanizes the immigrant, making it easier for the general population to scapegoat him, holding him responsible for many of our social ills and economic problems, and now criminalizing him.
This paper will take a look at the phenomenon of scapegoating. Webster’s College Dictionary defines the scapegoat as “a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.” The focus of this paper is on documented and undocumented economic migrants from the south, specifically on new Mexican immigrants who represent the largest significant group immigrating into the United States in recent history. It is also the group with which the author has the most personal experience, having lived and worked on both the U.S. and Mexican sides of the Rio Grande River The methodology of the cycle of see-judge/discern-act, or ver-juzgar/discernir-actuar will be used in this paper as a way to track the conversion process which must take place for those who wish to involve themselves in pastoral work with new immigrants.
PART I: SEE/VER
The eyes are like the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are sound, then your whole body will be full of light. (Mt. 6:22)
Lord, that I may see. (Mk. 10:51)
The lead quote in this paper refers to a conversion of mind and heart. To step out into this journey of conversion requires that we first of all see concretely what is going on around us. When we truly see, which in the context of this paper means to draw on both the dimensions of mind and heart, a shift in consciousness takes place in which we ourselves become emigrants, as we encounter new and unknown territories that take us out of our comfort zones.
Stories
There is nothing that helps us get an inside take on a situation more than a story. Individual stories help us to know the inner experience of persons who are otherwise abstract statistics on a graph in a report in the New York Times. Or, as with reporters and talk show hosts such as Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh the immigrant is made into an object on which hate and fear can be projected so that we don’t have to do the homework of looking at ourselves. In his article, “Why Would People Migrate,” John J. Savant claims that “In attempting to understand what is just, we have to imagine real persons and their concrete situations.”
The Story of Juan
I met Juan during one of my regular forays to an immigrant shelter in a Mexican border town across from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. For eight years I had done volunteer work at the shelter where I had witnessed migrations of emigrants from the south of Mexico and Central America heading to the United States. After 9/ll, shelter staff began witnessing a gradual trend in which fewer and fewer immigrants seemed to be coming from the south and heading north with the intention of crossing the river. There are various reasons for this. One is because of stricter border enforcement on the U.S. side. Another is the frequency of kidnapping, extortion, and other abuse—sometimes even leading to murder, of Central American immigrants during their passage through Mexico. Instead of large numbers of immigrants heading north, in the past two years, shelter personnel were seeing greater numbers of deportees, persons who had been deported from U.S. prisons and deportation centers back into Mexico. The options for these persons were either to keep heading south, back to their people, or attempt to re-enter the United States, with the risk of apprehension and capture, long prison terms, and a second deportation. Hiring a coyote to guide and “protect” the immigrant in his return north would cost him and/or his family up to $4,000, with no guarantees.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here”, said Juan in perfect English with
little accent.
“But, you do know that you’re in a shelter, right?” I said.
“Yes, I know what this place is, and I know that I’m in a Mexican border
town, although I feel like I’m in some kind of war zone”.
“How did you get here?”
“After the long ride on the bus from the deportation center, we were dumped at the bridge and told to walk over here into this Mexican town. As soon as we set foot here in Mexico I was one of the ones who got beat-up and robbed. They took my belongings and what little cash I had. We were told by some men working on a street nearby that there was a shelter on this side of town, so we walked over here. So, I guess, here I am.”
Though a strapping man, Juan looked fearful, tenuous, disoriented, and dazed—as though the real Juan had been left somewhere far away. Juan’s was the face of trauma the archetype of a fresh and raw deportee with a new reality looming before his eyes. I had seen many men like Juan, sometimes a hundred and twenty arriving at one time.
“I am so sorry to hear about your experience at the bridge”, I said.
Juan had been one of the many victims of a set-up by local Mexican police, who, when they are aware that a bus of deportees is arriving, don civilian clothes and set up ambushes. Knowing the vulnerability of deportees, and the fact that deportees don’t report their victimizations to local human rights authorities because of a fear of reprisal—these otherwise law enforcement officials boldly strip the new deportees of whatever cash or valuables they may have.
Juan began to tell his story, explaining that less than three days before he had been living a normal life in the United States. He unfortunately was picked-up for a traffic violation and everything went downhill from there. The patrolman who had stopped him deciphered that Juan’s driver’s license was invalid, and Juan was immediately seized and put in jail. This is a common story. Although Juan may have been qualified to receive his permanent residency papers, he had probably lived with falsified documents all his life. Like many undocumented immigrants, he may not have been able to afford the lawyer’s fees and penalty or processing fees that are part of the legalization process.
“You speak such good English,” I said, “surely you must have lived
in the United States a long time.”
“It’s true. I’m forty-four years old now, and I came to the United States with my parents when I was twelve. I remember very little about my life in Mexico. I was just like anybody else ‘over there’ (in the United States), I went to school, got a job, got married and had kids. I’m not supposed to be here in Mexico. I don’t know anyone in here anymore. My life is in the United States. All of my family is in the United States. Besides, I have to get back to my job.”
“Does your family know where you are right now?” I inquired.
“I didn’t have anything I could tell them. I didn’t know where I would go once I crossed that bridge.”
“You can arrange to make phone calls from here. Do you have anyone in the United States who can work on your case? Can your wife get a lawyer?” I said.
At some level, I wondered why I was even asking him these questions. Was I offering false hope? Juan didn’t have a case, really. And, even if he did, good immigration lawyers are hard to find and often very costly. Juan had committed crimes. He had been driving with a false driver’s license. He was living in the United States illegally. Juan was a criminal. To stretch it a little farther, to some, Juan might even be considered a terrorist suspect. After all, he was dark-skinned, his first language wasn’t English, he was foreign-born, and, he crossed the southern border into the United States.
The Story of Alicia
And, then there’s Alicia. Forty year old Alicia had entered the United States from Mexico along with her two small children and without documents some fifteen years before I met her. After entry into the United States she married and had two more children, but the marriage didn’t last. Alicia was a member of a wellness class that I had taught at a community center in a small town in Hidalgo County, South Texas. When the class ended we continued to make contact, and I was able to link Alicia to a resource person who assisted her in pursuing legal residency status.
In visits to her home, I could see the depth of poverty she and the children were experiencing. Yet, Alicia explained that her life in Mexico was much worse, and that she had desperately wanted her children to have education and the ability to make a better life for themselves. When it rained, Alicia’s yard was mired in mud. The house was nothing more than a hovel. With no running water in the kitchen, Alicia improvised by running a hose through the window to the kitchen sink from a hook-up outside. There were no beds, only mattresses on the floor. Nonetheless, Alicia and her children were always immaculate, going off to school well-groomed and with freshly laundered clothes augmented by Alicia’s solar dryer, a clothesline.
For income, Alicia had taken a low-paying job in the refrigeration section of a large operation that prepared lunches to be sent out to local public schools. There were always a couple of inches of water on the floor in the area where she worked, and Alicia could not afford rubber boots. Eventually, she had to quit the job since with the cold and the damp she found herself in constant bad health. After this, she took a job scrubbing with Clorox the insides of empty industrial-size trucks after they were used to haul carrots, onions, or cabbages from the fields to warehouses. Because of the chemical fumes, and the wear-and-tear on her back, Alicia also had to let go of this job, knowing that it would be difficult to find something else.
On a later visit to the house, Alicia proudly flashed in front of my face what looked to be an official document. She had received a letter proving that after all the paperwork she had done and fees she had scraped together, she was now officially considered a legal resident. The letter began: Dear Alicia__________, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES.
There was something ironic about that greeting, “Welcome to the United States.” Reading it in the circumstances in which I was standing, an Anglo and citizen from birth, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. For fifteen years Alicia had lived an unnerving way of life, a low-profile life in the shadows. She never knew if she would someday be stopped somewhere and be deported. And now, for someone who had been unwelcome, it seemed strange, almost ludicrous, when that welcome finally came. I wanted to put words in her mouth, “I’ve been here all this time, but you didn’t want to know my story. I was working for you all this time in the shadows. I am giving to you (baby boomers) four good workers to subsidize your social security. I am not what you think, I wanted to be a citizen, I wanted to contribute.”
In Alicia’s story, we can see her persistence, and what measures some immigrants take so that their children might encounter opportunity where there was no opportunity. Some scholars go so far as to posit a Darwinian theory that the persons who emigrate illegally are some of the most intelligent, strong, resilient and resourceful people that could be found in their countries of origin. Having personally heard many first-hand stories of immigrant crossings, and knowing many new immigrants myself, I believe this is true.
After receiving her residency papers, Alicia obtained a scholarship to a massage therapy school, where she earned the top grades in her class. Her two older boys who are now legal residents work in a mechanic shop and on an oil rig, while her two younger daughters who are citizens are pulling excellent grades in school.
The Story of Sylvia
Forty-five year old Sylvia was someone I met when my office was located in a community center close to an industrial bridge leading over to the Mexican side of the border. Always animated and quite gifted in her ability to decorate and produce handicrafts of every kind, an extrovert and interested in learning, (she took every English class offered at the center,) Sylvia exhibited a high motivation to work. Now divorced, Sylvia had entered the United States illegally eighteen years previously with her then husband. She later bore three children each in different states where her husband had migrated to find work.
Some years later, after her divorce, Sylvia was ecstatic when she finally found work sitting with an elderly infirm couple who were able to pay her five dollars an hour. Besides caring for the elderly couple, both were wheelchair bound, her work included cleaning the house and preparing a noon meal. This little bit of salary helped Sylvia and her family to tread an economic tightrope that would keep them from going deeper below the poverty line. Sylvia received high marks from the elderly couple’s middle class professional children on the work she had done for their parents. Because of ill health, the couple needed to be moved to a skilled nursing facility. During the long time between jobs, Sylvia cleaned houses here and there for a couple of years. At one juncture, she took a job at a local restaurant, where the owner told her that she wouldn’t receive a salary, that she could only receive her tips. Being constantly placed to serve a section of the restaurant where there were few customers, Sylvia began to feel abused by this system, and she quit work. She tried working at a cleaner, but was ill-treated there also, and the conditions were very poor. After a long search she was connected to another elderly couple where she continues to work. The positive side of Sylvia’s story is that her three teen-age children are in a magnet school, and are college bound.
Sylvia has a real gift for working with the elderly and this has great implications for America’s baby boomers. In a recent phone call from an elderly friend from a northern state, I heard her discuss her concern about her long term retirement plans. “What am I going to do if Gary and I become incapacitated? Who will take care of us? We don’t want to leave our home to live in a facility.” “Beats me, I said. If my friend Sylvia were documented, she could come up and help you out. As it is, she’d never get through the checkpoint.” Not only that, I thought, but if Sylvia were documented she could demand just wages, too.
The above stories are common stories, with the exception that immigrant women are often far more isolated than immigrant men who often work in crews. Immigrant women often cannot drive, they don’t have significant connections, including extended family, that can help them find employment. They are often charged with the care of young children
Now that our eyes are a bit more open to the outer reality of the life of the immigrant, let us look at aspects of the system of immigration itself, by examining some recent laws and policies regarding undocumented immigrants.
Laws and Enforcement Policies
Persons working in ministries with and for immigrants throughout the United States are well aware of the escalation of laws and policies governing undocumented persons. Communities at our southern border see physical signs daily of activity involving border patrol wagons, the wall, helicopters and drones that is directed toward a drug war, yes, but also decidedly toward keeping the “alien” out. The draconian anti-immigrant laws instituted in the State of Arizona have leaked over into other states. Texas alone recently passed SB 9 which is directed toward “secure communities,” but which in essence “reduces safety for all Texans by undermining the authority of law enforcement officials to police their communities.” Texas also passed a voter ID law that requires that voters who appear at the polls must produce a photo ID or proof of citizenship. This legislation penalizes groups of people who already struggle to make their voices heard within our society.
At the federal level, now at stake is the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the right of citizenship to all who are born in the United States. A proposal forwarded by senators from Kentucky and Louisiana looks to amending the U.S. Constitution “to require that children born in America be considered citizens only if they have at least one parent who is a citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or an active member of the military.”
My own experience of the escalation of recent anti-immigrant laws and policies comes through my contacts with immigrants who have been affected by the lack of due process and the lack of reading of one’s rights in the deportation process. I have known stories of local persons whose motor vehicles have been stopped for no reason other than racial profiling. Through a Sisters of Mercy Immigrant Advocacy Group, I hear horror stories of the conditions of jails and for-profit deportation centers where undocumented immigrants are held with criminals, and some for months at a time before a hearing. To counter this, the U.S. Bishops both caution and plead that “Any enforcement measures must be targeted, proportional, and humane.”
That the undocumented immigrant has been criminalized is a fact. I believe that this phenomenon is, in part, a consequence of post 9/11 paranoia which has inadvertently fused in the minds of the American public “the image of the immigrant at our southern border” with “the image of the terrorist”. It is ironic that the 9/11 terrorists themselves crossed the northern border from Canada to enter the United States.
The Person in the Pew
In the meantime, ordinary Catholics are unaware that their own Church is addressing the issue of immigration as it unfolds. Recognizing the complexities surrounding the issue of the undocumented, the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States drafted a document that includes five principles that underlie their positions on comprehensive immigration reform. One of the five principles states that “persons have the right to migrate to support themselves and their families.” The Bishops acknowledge the impact of globalization, including the unfair balance wrought by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , which has displaced 1.3 million agricultural workers in the south of Mexico. The Bishops recognize that the root causes of migration exist in the global underdevelopment of the migrant’s country of origin, and that the ultimate solution to migration issues lies in the development of these countries. In the meantime, the Bishops acknowledge that the dignity of the human person must be respected.
It is now time to harmonize policies on the movement of peoples,
particularly in a way that respects the human dignity of the
migrant and recognizes the social consequences of globalization.
The Bishops insist on the dignity of the immigrant and they add that he is to be seen as “the presence of Christ,” who himself was a migrant at several junctures throughout his lifetime. “For the bishops”, says Andrew Rivas, the Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference, “the issue of immigration is not simply a political one, but a moral issue that impacts human rights and the very life and dignity of the human person.”
Significant work has been done by the U.S. Catholic bishops, in particular, who have made consistent efforts toward forwarding comprehensive immigration reform.
As our journey of conversion takes us to unknown territories where we hear stories of Mexican immigrants, become familiar with recent anti-immigrant laws and policies, and hear for perhaps the first time the prophetic voices of our Bishops on this topic, we hopefully begin to sense a small shift in consciousness. This shift is what I call seeing. It can be an uncomfortable place to dwell, yet we must dwell in it, since it is the uncomfortability born of new consciousness that can move us to the next place.
PART II: JUDGE/JUZGAR; Discern/Discernir
A second important movement in the conversion process is that of discerning. Discerning is the effort we exert to make discriminations about what is really happening. It is making a decision about how we want to view something, what we want to believe about it, or what standards we want to use to evaluate it. Discerning involves landing at a certain place on a certain issue, in this case on the issue of immigration. The kind of discerning we are talking about in this paper requires letting-go of all pre-conceptions and assumptions in order to be truly free to judge.
….and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (Jn.8:32)
The History of Immigration in the United States
Recently, I was starkly dumbfounded, not knowing how really naive I was, to find scathing caricatures of the Mexican immigrant in blogs following an on-line article in our local newspaper. The article was about a new Investors Pilot Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Under the program, Mexican nationals willing to invest more than $500,000 in U.S. enterprises would be granted permanent residency. The plethora of negative comments on this article were not objecting to the fact that the program only addressed wealthy Mexicans, without acknowledging the economic contributions of the many Mexicans who are already working here, but rather the comments were directed toward Mexicans in general. Respondants characterized their brothers from south of the border as, “lowlifes”, “parasites”, “problems”, and “cowards” to name a few. One blogger commented, “We don’t want them here!!!! Well…maybe their fiestas.” These kinds of diatribes would be devastating commentaries, except that they are nothing new. Mexican immigrants constitute the latest wave within a history of waves of immigrant groups entering the United States. Every significant new wave or group that has come here in the past century, including Italians, Slavs, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and more—have been called names similar to those given by our bloggers, and worse. This is not to condone these awful slurs, but rather it is to point out that there is something at work when a new group arrives at our shores (or borders)—when there is a need to somehow characterize or define the new group in certain ways. I want to say that what is at work is a kind of violence that undermines, that leaves little room for the immigrant group to redeem themselves in the eyes of the new country until they are totally assimilated into the new culture and a second group comes behind them only to be as downgraded as the previous group.
In an article entitled, “Unwanted: Immigration and Nativism in America”, by Peter Schrag, the author notes that nativism, zenophobia, and racism are not new in America, or in other countries. “What makes them significant in America is that they run counter to the nation’s founding ideals…[and] ideas in the founding documents…to be a nativist in this country…[is] to be in conflict with its fundamental tenets.’ [Emphasis mine.] The nativist is one who is always evaluating; ‘Who belongs here.’ They have been known to come up with the idea that only a certain kind of people belong, such as pure Anglo-Saxons (if these exist anymore), or people of northern European descent. Or, could we “include ‘inferior’ people, such as Southern Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Jews, or Chinese,” which was a major question during the nineteenth century. Nativist Benjamin Franklin even wrestled with the issue of whom to allow in and whom to shut out, when he “warned that Pennsylvania was becoming ‘a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our Complexion.’”
Recently, I heard a nativist statement that was very telling. I was eating lunch with two women, one, a younger Mexican-American woman who had had her citizenship papers for a number of years, and the other, an older Anglo-American. During the meal I commented that I wished I had a tortilla, so that I could make a taco with the food on my plate. This followed with a discussion about food, and the Anglo woman stated, “We Americans can make a sandwich out of anything.” Did she mean that Anglos are American and sandwiches are American? If so, it would mean that if Benjamin Franklin were here today, he might ask, “What will happen when the Mexicans Mexicanize us instead of our Anglifying them?” What will we do when the taco replaces the sandwich the way that salsa has replaced ketchup? This is the fear that is wrought by a nativist mentality.
Nativism—What makes a citizen?
Historically, immigration issues began coming to the fore in the 1880’s after the closing of the western frontier, which had served as a safety valve to assuage many social problems. Schrag claims that in the early decades of the Twentieth Century congressional debates were centered around the concern that, “In the face of inferior, low-skill, low-wage but high-fecundity [child bearing] classes from Southern and Eastern Europe, demoralized Anglo-Saxons would bring fewer children into the world to face that new competition.” Beneath these early fears, we can hear xenophobia and racism targeted at what were then the latest wave of immigrants. Today these same fears are at work, and are directed primarily at the undocumented Mexican immigrant.
Yes, xenophobia and racism are still with us, and in fact are on the rise. The Southern Poverty Law Center (the SPLC) has a reputable thirty year track record for documenting the establishment and growth of hate groups around the United States. In its Intelligence Report for Spring 2011, the SPLC indicated that,
Last year’s rise in hate groups was the latest in a trend stretching all
the way back to the year 2,000, when the SPLC counted 602 such groups.
Since then, they have risen steadily, mainly on the basis of exploiting the
issue of undocumented immigration from Mexico and Central America.
Last year, the number of hate groups rose to 1,002 from 932, a 7.5 increase
over the previous year and a 66 percent rise since 2000.
The report went on to indicate that antigovernment Patriot groups grew dramatically “on the basis of furious rhetoric from the right aimed at the nation’s first black president.” What the Mexican immigrant without papers is forced to face along with the exploitation of “the issue” of his undocumented status is that he, too, is a person of color. Among some hate groups skin color alone makes one a legitimate target for threats, harassment, and even death.
^All this information on nativism, along with zenophobia and racism, has led me to ask the question, “What, in the minds of the populace, constitutes a citizen?” Perhaps an even more important question might be, “Who defines or decides what constitutes a ‘citizen’?” From a legal perspective, the answer to this question is the INS. But, I might ask you, my reader, whether you are Hispanic, Asian, of African descent, or Anglo, when I say the word “American citizen,” what immediately comes to your mind? The answer to this question might be very telling. I present this question because of conversations I have had with citizens who do not in fact imagine themselves to be American citizens. One conversation was with a small group of Hispanic women all of whom I knew to have their citizenship papers. I now forget the topic of the conversation, but in the middle of it one of the women said, “And, then Sally who is a citizen came in to the meeting.” I knew Sally, and I knew in this instance that what the Hispanic woman was saying is that, “And, then this white, middle class professional woman, someone who is different from us, came in to the meeting.” I was pretty certain that for the speaker the word “citizen” was used here to capture “whiteness”, English-speaking, and advanced education. I said, “But, Rosa, you are an American citizen.” “I know,” she said, “but that’s different.” ^
In the ensuing discussion I discovered that everyone in the group believed that there are “citizens” and there are citizens. The real citizens are persons who are in seats of power, have had economic advantages and connections, and have had educational opportunities, and of course are Anglo. The other kind of citizen is a low income-low opportunity person, often a person of color, and in some cases non-Engilsh speaking. I asked these women if what I perceived to be their internalization of these nativist beliefs would ever change. They replied that they thought they would always feel like second-class citizens. In a similar conversation with a thirteen year old boy who is the son of undocumented immigrant parents, the youngster claimed that one of his friends was a citizen. I said, “Yes, Jose, but you are a citizen, too.” “Yes, but that doesn’t count.”
These two stories tell me that there are pervasive stereotypes of exactly who is a “real” American citizen, the one who is considered worthy of the bounties that this Country has to offer. The subtleness of this kind of thinking, like the creeping kudzu that I referred to earlier in this paper, is a kind of violence that can undermine the self esteem of not only the undocumented Mexican immigrant, but also whole groups of citizens within the society. This mentality, whose birthplace is the cauldron of nativism, zenophobia, and racism, is the violence that undermines and that manipulates to the advantage of dominant groups. Because it is often institutionalized, it is less visible, like low-intensity warfare.
The Insidious Phenomenon of Scapegoating
It is stories and experiences like those detailed in this paper that have led me to begin an investigation into the root causes of the violence of nativism, xenophobia, and racism, especially as they relate to the Mexican immigrant. There are many windows through which I could approach this topic, but for me the phenomenon of scapegoating best describes what is happening when hatred is directed toward the Mexican immigrant, or any other cultural group, in the United States.
For those of us who are Christian, we know that Jesus himself stands as the ultimate “scapegoat-hero-messiah”, as he faces his very human pain and mortality…” But, it is the earliest description of the scapegoat in the Hebrew Scriptures that gives us stark clues as to the meaning of the scapegoat as it is used in the context of this paper.
Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live
goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of
Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting
them on the head of the goat, and sending it away in
the wilderness by someone designated for the task.
Leviticus 16:21 (NRSV)
As far back as the earliest primal cultures, the existence of the scapegoat served a useful purpose in the society. The scapegoat represents the society’s efforts to push toward wholeness by splitting-off any negative attributes of its own, and projecting these onto an object, the scapegoat. The Book of Leviticus tells us that the community projected their “iniquities”, “transgressions” and “sins” onto the head of a goat that was then led out to the wilderness, in essence taking with it the shadow side of the community. The consequence of this is that the community itself never needs to look at its own negative attributes such as its greed, slothfulness, self-righteousness, or its propensity to violence, dominance and control. These were things that now belonged to the scapegoat. This example illustrates that it is much simpler for societies to find scapegoats than for them to do the real work of coming into wholeness, which would require that they withdraw their projections from the scapegoat and allow their own negative attributes to come into consciousness. The story in Leviticus helps us to see that when a group is making projections, the projections actually speak to what exists in the group itself, and not to what exists in the scapegoat. Thus, when we see a blog that expresses that members of a certain group are “lowlifes”, “parasites”, or “cowards”, at some level the blogger is talking about himself.
“It took me awhile to recognize the scapegoating mechanism as it operated in my own life. The clearest example I can give the reader relates to the first time that I lived singly, in housing apart from a convent of sisters. After living alone for a short while I began to notice that I was doing things around the house that I hadn’t recognized before. I noticed that I left cups of stale coffee on the kitchen counter, and stacks of bills on the desk. I failed to establish a routine and stayed up late at night, not wanting to get up in the morning. I had total control of the TV remote, which in any household is a sign of who’s in charge. I was finally free. However, what I ultimately found out about living alone was that if I was unhappy, I didn’t have anyone to blame. In living singly I could no longer have thoughts about my fellow sister such as, “If it wasn’t for her…the house would be clean, the bills would get paid on time, I could stay up as late as I wanted without waking anyone up, etc.” I could no longer project onto her that she was “controlling”, “lazy”, “messy”, and the like. Instead, I had to begin to admit that I was all these things, and I had to integrate these new found facts into my image of myself. It was a very painful process. Needless to say, most individuals and groups avoid doing this kind of work. We all like to think that we are good people beyond repute. It is much easier to find a scapegoat than to confront the negative or shadow side of our individual or group personalities.”
Myths take jobs away…crime culpability, etc.
PART III: ACT/ACTUAR
In the above section on discerning, I have chosen to view immigration through the lens of the phenomenon of scapegoating. In the context of this paper scapegoating is shown to be fueled by the societal ills of nativism, zenophobia, and racism. When we understand how these processes work we are then better able to understand the dilemma of the Mexican immigrant and the struggles he or she has to face in the larger society. For us, this newfound understanding born of “mind and heart”, must now guide our decision-making and hopefully lead us into pastoral action on behalf of the Mexican immigrant. Action is the third part of the three-part conversion process of “see-discern-act”. Without action, the conversion process is incomplete. Seeing and discerning, the first two parts of the process are rendered hollow when there is no action. Below are some examples of pastoral action in behalf of the Mexican immigrant on the part of a community service group named ARISE. Scripture… you must therefore go forth and bear fruit, fruit that will last. “whatsoever you do to the least” “rise up!”
Modeling
The impact of scapegoating on new Mexican immigrants affects them most profoundly at the level of self-esteem. Already vulnerable because of the trauma of a journey that has taken them away from family, country of origin, and the familiar, the immigrant is an easy target for groups that have a need to discharge hate, or what we now know to be the shadow material of the group. The new immigrant has neither the forum nor the language to interpret himself/herself to the new culture. Besides that, the immigrant has become a stranger unto him or herself, since the secure anchors they had once known have been ripped away.
The self-esteem of the new Mexican immigrant is also affected by the punitive law enforcement policies mentioned above in which the Mexican immigrant is profiled or criminalized. Along with this, in their everyday lives they experience exploitation by bosses, invisibility or humiliation in stores, at their childrens’ schools , and in the offices of professionals, as well. The little child of a young immigrant mother who was ill-treated by the receptionist in a doctor’s office inquired of his mother, “Mama, why don’t they like us?”
When I think of pastoral action that addresses the self esteem of the immigrant, I think about the staff of ARISE, a program in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. ARISE, is a non-profit community service agency that is co-sponsored by two religious communities , and that functions within the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. The agency sees itself as “neighbors, helping neighbors, in the neighborhood”. The women on the ARISE staff claim that the agency is an organization “of the people, by the people, and for the people” , the “people”, in this case being the new Mexican immigrant. What is notable is that the staff of ARISE work in the neighborhoods where they live. The staff is composed of first generation immigrants who have made their way to the United States with the same concerns, hopes and dreams as their clients. They are women who have broken through their fears and isolation in order to make a healthy adjustment to their new country. Staff members are now either U.S. residents or citizens who hold education as a high value, and who themselves have passed through hours of personal development and training in leadership and community organizing to enhance their work in local neighborhoods. Here, they visit homes, run educational programs, and organize for systemic change. The ARISE staff also work at developing cultural pride, knowing that the Mexican immigrant brings gifts to their new situation, including the values of family and community, the importance of education and celebration, their religious faith, and loyalty to their country.
Though ARISE is a neighborhood service agency, its workers see themselves as a community of women involved in a mission that takes them beyond the realm of mere social work. Each staff member readily recognizes herself in the new immigrant who comes knocking at her door, since the staff member has herself been on a similar journey. Thus, the staff member with conviction has much hope to offer the new immigrant, who struggles with fear, depression, a sense of isolation, and economic and language issues. The ARISE worker stands as a model and an enlightened witness, a figure who for the new immigrant demonstrates in her very person possibilities for the future, and who offers the challenge to the immigrant that Jesus’ offered to the bent woman of the Gospels, “rise up!”
Storytelling in a Safe Space
After a difficult journey to what heretofore was an unknown land, the immigrant finds himself/herself in a state of insecurity, both in his/her surroundings, and in his/her inner life. Indeed, he/her is a stranger in a strange land. It takes trust and courage on a grand scale for him/her to begin to open up to others, to recount the story of his/her journey and his/her life. Yet it is in the telling of his/her story that he/she can begin to release feelings that have perhaps been plaguing him/her since much before the time that he/she left his/her country of origin. She/he does not yet know that the story of his/her crossing is a sacred story that needs to be told and that needs to be honored in its hearing.
I believe that there are elements in the Mexican culture that contain important inherent kernels of healing that can hold the new immigrant in good stead. I will name two of the elements that I have observed. First of all, I perceive in both the Mexican and Mexican-American the ability to express a wide range of emotions. Whether it is great passion, the depths of despair, the height of celebration, or jealousy and anger, the culture provides permission for expression. I experience this over-against my own Anglo style of politeness, restraint, self-discipline, quieted exuberance, checked spontaneity, controlled suffering and anguish, seriousness, and task orientation. I find that my behavior is notably different when I am with Mexican and Mexican-American friends, in whose company I can let more of myself “hang-out”.
Along with this range of emotions, a second kernel of healing I have observed in the Mexican culture shows up in group situations. When an individual is telling her story in a group, she is automatically granted whatever time she needs. No one is counting the minutes, or feeling huffy because the individual speaker is not “sharing time” with the rest of the group. Here time is not a commodity that is parceled out on an equal basis, but rather time is opened up, and it can sometimes be open ended. Time is not to restrain or contain, but rather to allow for processes to unfold naturally.
When I think of the theme of storytelling in a safe space, I again think of the staff of ARISE. ARISE regularly conducts personal development classes for new immigrant women of the colonia communities of the Rio Grande Valley. These offerings provide safe spaces for immigrant women to come together thus breaking through the isolation that is so common in the lives of new immigrant women. In these classes, with the guidance of a staff member, women can both cry their tears, and they can take time to tell their stories. In this process, usually there is a hushedness that takes over the group. Every listener is with the speaker’s story, walking around in it, empathizing with the teller whose story so much parallels their own. Sometimes there are long silences in which the group simply sits in the sacred space constructed by the recounting of the experience. The consequence of the telling is that, no matter what the content of the story, the speaker feels valued, as the group reaches out in acceptance. However, the wisdom of the group knows that the story continues, and that the new immigrant’s journey is not over. The difference is that now there is a community walking with the new immigrant.
The Use of Ritual and Symbol
Part of the richness of the Catholic faith is the sacraments that it makes available to believers. However, beyond the seven sacraments that mark significant moments in our journey on earth, there are sacramental moments that occur in ordinary circumstances as points of intersection of the sacred with the divine. I believe these sacramental moments are taking place all the time, especially as I witness the effects of small gestures, occasions, and gatherings that bring healing, wholeness, and reconciliation to souls weathered by life’s inherent struggles. Participation in sacramental moments touch deeply the hearts and minds of the Mexican immigrant, since the Mexican psyche carries within it a deep understanding and need for both ritual and symbol.
The simplest example of this is the story of Rutila. Rutila was a regular participant in the ARISE programs. Being a great cook, she often helped out with food preparation when there was a big event for the community. A single mom of a large family, Rutila was always giving. One year when the ARISE staff members realized that Rutila’s birthday was coming up, they surprised her with a cake that said, “Feliz Cumpleaños Rutila”. When the staff went to Rutila’s house to sing to her and present her with the cake, Rutila cried and cried. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, until finally she could tell the group that she had never before received a cake on her birthday, much less a cake with her name on it, Rutila. Later the little group sat down with Rutila and her children and shared the cake together. The gathering together, the cake, a symbol of the community’s love for Rutila, and the eating of the cake, brought eucharist, with a small “e” into the life of the community that day, and inherent in that eucharistic moment was healing.
In a similar vein are the many celebrations that ARISE holds for its fin de ciclo, which is an event designed to celebrate the end of a cycle of classes, such as citizenship, English as a second language, or handicrafts. Here each woman is honored with a certificate of completion and a special dinner is held for the honorees.
I myself was able to use ritual in a satisfactory way when working at an immigrant shelter on the Mexican side of the border. Upon my arrival at the shelter one morning, the sisters in charge of the shelter signaled to me their concern about a twenty-five year old female immigrant named Perla. Like many immigrants at the shelter, Perla had made the long and harrowing journey from the south of Mexico to its northernmost border with hopes of making entry into the United States. Her desire was to find gainful employment and to be re-united with family members who lived on the USA side. Perla arrived at the shelter only to discover upon phoning back to her village that her maternal grandmother who had raised her had died in the last couple of days. The grandmother hadn’t been sick in the past, so the announcement of her death was a great shock to Perla. There was no effective way that Perla could return to the south for the funeral, which added even more to her grief. For several days she remained depressed and mute. Nothing could console her.
Before leaving work one day, I asked Perla if she would like some of us to have a special service honoring her grandmother. She said that she would like that, so the following morning I showed up at the shelter early, bringing with me Carmen and Josefina, two of my Mexican friends who were pastoral workers. We invited Perla and the remaining two women staying at the shelter to join us for desayuno at a downtown restaurant. At the restaurant we kept everything light, just visiting and getting to know one another. From the restaurant, we made our way to the central plaza and the main church, where there was an attractive side chapel. Here we spent time together, praying prayers for the dead, sharing scripture, and spending time in silence. Then we invited Perla to the front of the chapel and tell us the story of her grandmother. When Perla had done this, each of us walked to the front to give Perla a blessing and to offer her words of condolence. What we hadn’t known was that people had come in to the chapel and had been sitting behind us. They became part of the service, too. Later, that day I could see Perla smiling, a burden had been lifted.
The pastoral actions of providing modeling, storytelling in a safe place, and designing rituals and using symbols that are woven into the ordinary lives of immigrant people are simple to do and are not costly. What they require is awareness of the poignant moments when small gestures can bring healing and wholeness to individuals and groups who are at a place of vulnerability as they continue to be immersed in a new land far from their loved ones.
CONCLUSION
This paper has focused on the new Mexican immigrant who has come to the United States because of economic hardship. We began this paper with the stories of three immigrants and with information about some current laws, policies, and border security measures that cast the immigrant in the role of criminal. We went on to explore the issues of nativism, xenophobia, and racism as they feed into the overall insidious phenomenon of scapegoating. We then looked at some pastoral responses that church people could make to the plight of the new Mexican immigrant, including but certainly not limited to modeling, allowing a safe space for storytelling, and ritual and symbol. The methodology of see-discern-act was framed as a cycle that can lead the Christian to greater conversion. As we begin to be immersed in the stories of immigrants, and withdraw our preconceptions about him/her, we can begin to allow for a change of mind and heart in our stance toward him/her. A sign that the conversion process is complete is the pastoral action we have taken up on behalf of the immigrant.
While my readers may not have the opportunity to be in direct contact with Mexican or other new immigrants, I would encourage you to become involved in advocacy and systemic change measures on behalf of immigrants. Here, our church has done an outstanding job in both its documents and its practical information, as well as its action at both the state and national levels.
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SOURCES
Book and Periodicals
Chang, Grace, Disposable Domestics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2000.
Chavez, Leo R., Latino Threat. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2008
Colman, Arthur D., Up from Scapegoating: Awakening Consciousness in Groups. Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1995.
Groody, Daniel G., Border of Death, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.
Kaufman,Stephen R., M.D., Guided by the Faith of Christ: Seeking to Stop Violence and Scapegoating. Cleveland, Ohio: Vegetarian Advocates Press, 2008.
Rodriguez, Richard, “What a Wall Won’t Stop,” Viva Mercy Magazine,
Savant, John J., “Why Would People Migrate?”, America Magazine, October 26, 2009.
Schrag, Peter, “Unwanted: Immigration and Nativism in America”, Immigration Policy Center, Perspectives, September 2010. www.immigrationpolicy.org
Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, A Pastoral Letter Concerning Migration from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States. Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003
Websites
www.justiceforimmigrants.org An official website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which features a range of informational and educational materials.
www.immigrationpolicy.org An excellent series of policy papers called, Perspectives.
www.reformimmigrationfortexas.org The Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance (RITA)
A statewide network of community organizations with allies in the business, law enforcement, and religious sectors, dedicated to the support of immigration reform.
www.splcenter.org Southern Poverty Law Center. One of their tasks is to document statistics and activities of hate groups in the United States.
www.TXcatholic.org The Texas Catholic Conference, sponsored by the Catholic Bishops of Texas, keeps track of state legislation that impacts various issues, including immigration.
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