Mega March solidarity

We must stand in unity. When one person’s voice is silenced, it is up to the rest of us to cry out. Justice is not a flexible tool. It must be applied to all and it must be applied equally. This is a shared planet, and until we can learn to respect and tolerate one another’s differences, we risk the continued loss of our freedom, our dignity, and the chance to create a peaceful world for our children.
~Leonard Peltier, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse



As I walked from the bus stop to the front of the march, I could feel my chest tighten as it does when I get emotionally overwhelmed. The signs I saw and the chants I heard had such big messages for being so concise. "Obama, Escucha, estamos en la lucha!" (Obama, listen, we are in the fight!) was chanted throughout the march.

"Which one is the illegal one?" with three shoes drawn (photo below) struck me as Arizona considers arresting people who "look" illegal.

"My husband supports us. If he's deported, America will." (photo below) made realize how silly our arguments can be for splitting up families just to make our point.

I always learn about people when I attend events like this. Listening to their voices instead of my own arguments for or against seems to have so much more rationale and reasoning than I can come up with. It's important to listen to the people who are affected by these laws. Maybe by listening to them, we might understand how we can do a better job of helping out the country they left as well as helping them in the country they immigrated to.

Dream Walkers

Some of our DREAM Act kids, Monica and Anabeli, are headed to Washington D.C. as I write so they can attend the Immigration March on Washington on Sunday. I wish them the best and hope their actions Sunday will move people to action.

Disappearing into the shadows

With the help of Monica, Anabeli, and Gracie (my young adult friends) and their techology expertise, we have created this video to illustrate the disappearance of immigrants and their forced anonymity.

The photos used are a combination of photos from the Immigration march here in Dallas in April of 2006 as well as photos taken by our three DREAM Act students when they went to Washington to talk to their state senators about passing the DREAM Act. I find their choice of pictures interesting and telling about what is important and meaningful to them.

The voices you hear are interviews I did with Monica, Jesse, Jose, and Anabeli....four potential DREAM Act candidates. Anabeli is the oldest at 22 years old. The others are 19 and 20 years old...yet their words...their voices...speak of struggles many of us rarely, if ever, have to think about.



I'm interested in your reactions.

Immigration--the face that cannot be seen

For the last year and a half, several of us have been advocating with and for our three DREAM Act students--Monica, Jose, and Jesse. (to find out more search for "DREAM Act" in the blog search line...or go to Larry James' blog and search for "Monica.").

As the three of them have gone through multiple deportation hearings, they have also taken their time to speak to groups of people, helped initiate the DREAM Act coalition, worked toward getting the word out about immigrants' rights, and even traveled to Washington D.C. to talk to their state Senators. They also attend college and work to help their families.

Recently, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson filed a private bill on their behalf. The Dallas Morning News wrote about it, which has now caught the attention of the national media.

To me, that sounds like progress. I want more people to hear the stories of kids like Monica, Jose, and Jesse. I think it's important that the public understand more about the DREAM Act and who it would benefit. I want people to understand that the only crime kids like Monica, Jose, and Jesse committed was staying with their family and the only crime their family committed was to over-stay their welcome in a place they knew would provide their children with possibilities and options they didn't have in Mexico.

People need to hear that "illegal" children who have been here since a very young age are desperately trying to get an education and work in order to be productive and contribute to the good of our country, but we are preventing that...which not only hurts them, but hurts us as well. For example...our schools are taking time and money to recruit and legalize bilingual teachers from places like Puerto Rico when we have bilingual educators right outside our back door who would love to be able to use their degree. Unfortunately, our fear of being "soft" on illegal immigration will not allow us to accept the very people we need.

Though I can write about what I know, the people who could articulate these arguments the best are the people who are most affected...the children. Their voices are powerful. They help us see illegal immigration from a different perspective.

But they are scared.

Our country, the "land of the free," has scared our children into hiding.

They are afraid that telling their story and showing their face might create repercussions for them from hateful people at school. They fear underhanded tactics that could be used against them to deport them.

But most of all, they fear for their families. They are afraid that speaking out about their situation may bring hate crimes to their back door. They are afraid that the pressure of immigration officials would intensify. They are afraid that the knowledge of where they live and places they frequent would become public knowledge and they would become targets.

They are Americans in every sense of the word, but cannot be considered American.

They are upstanding citizens who are considered criminals because they crossed an imaginary line that we created.

They are stripped of their language in our "English only" schools...only to be told in high school that we all need to learn a second language.

They are people with faces who cannot show their face.

More than 60,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year. Until more of us speak out and create more of a momentum, they will continue to remain in the shadows.

Ramiro, a friend of mine, is working on his dreamact.com website that will put all of the DREAM Act resources in one place and make it easy to find out how to get involved with the group in your community. But, until then, you might contact your local National Council of La Raza group to seek out DREAM Act groups in your community then click here for four ways to help pass the DREAM Act. Help us create the groundswell that will allow people like Monica, Jose, and Jesse to come out of the shadows.

Faith

Today is Jose's 3rd deportation hearing.

Though it's been on my calendar for a few months now, the reality of the situation didn't hit me until I was driving to work. As I called my friend to ask for prayers, my heart was heavy and it took a lot of effort to hold back tears. I pray that his lawyer (who has become a good friend to us all) has made some good progress and we will have a positive outcome.

I know this involves faith.

Pray for Jose. I can only imagine that he must be anxious.

DREAM on, my friends!

This week, the DREAM Act didn't quite make it past the Senate floor. It was close, but wasn't enough.

I'm not quite sure I understand the fear and repercussions of allowing immigrants drivers licenses and legal stays here. And I REALLY don't understand preventing children who didn't choose to be here from getting an education and working. I think it has something to do with, "If we allow it for the people here now, people will continue bringing their kids over here illegally knowing that we'll give in eventually." I don't know if that is the rationale or not. But I would like to dispel some myths.

Myth:
Immigrants don't pay taxes. Immigrants pay taxes just like we do...on income, property, sales tax at the store, and anywhere else we all pay taxes. Even undocumented immigrants pay income taxes, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration's "suspense file" (taxes that can't be mathced to workers' names and social security numbers), which grew $20 billion between 1990 and 1998. (National Academy of Sciences, Cato Institute, Urban Institute, Soc. Sec. Administration)

Myth:
Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries. In addition to the consumer spending of immigrant households, immigrants and their businesses contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S., federal, state, and local governments. (Cato Institute, Inter-American Development Bank)

Myth:
Immigrants take jobs and opportunities away from Americans. The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers. (Brookings Institution)

Myth:
Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy. During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. that means we haven't spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years. (National Academy of Sciences, Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, Federal Reserve)

Myth:
Immigrants don't want to learn English. Within 10 years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply.

Myth:
Today's immigrants are different than those of 100 years ago. Today's foreign-born population stands at 11.5%. In the early 20th century it was approximately 15%. Today's immigrants face the same challenges and discrimination as back then. Every new wave of immigrants has been met with suspicion and doubt yet, ultimately, every past wave of immigrants has been vindicated and saluted. (U.S. Census Bureau)

Myth:
Most immigrants cross the border illegally. Around 75% have legal permanent (immigrant) visas; of the 25% that are undocumented, 40% overstayed temporary (non-immigrant) visas. (INS Statistical Yearbook)
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The DREAM Act would provide an opportunity for U.S.-raised students to earn U.S. citizenship. The DREAM Act would allow certain immigrant students to adjust their status to that of a legal permanent resident on a conditional basis for six years based on the following requirements:

• Age. Immigrant students must have entered the U.S. before age 16.
• Academic requirement. Students must have been accepted for admission into a two or four-year institution of higher education or have earned a high school diploma or a GED at the time of application for relief or served in the U.S. armed forces for at least 2 years.
• Long-term U.S. residence. Students must reside in the U.S. when the law is enacted. In addition, those eligible must have lived in the U.S. for at least five years preceding the date of enactment of the Act.
• Good moral character. Immigrant students must demonstrate good moral character, a defined term in immigration law. In general, students must have no criminal record.

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One of my friends, an 18-year old, goes to court on Monday. He was brought here by his parents when he was a young boy. He did not make the choice himself. He knows the United States as his home.

He is facing deportation. ...to a country of which he is unfamiliar.

Although we have hope that the DREAM Act will continue to move forward and, with all of our efforts, eventually pass, I am not sure if it will be in enough time to keep Jose from being deported.

I am anxious for Monday morning and knowing that whatever happens Monday will likely be the same fate of my other friend, Monica, later this month.

Please pray for justice.

Monica has said she will accept whatever happens because she knows that her fight now, no matter what the outcome, will help others behind her.

Sounds like Martin Luther King, Jr. to me.

Much love, Monica and Jose. I'm behind you all the way!

No room to be a teenager...if you're an immigrant

There is no room to mess up if you are an immigrant. The consequences are high.

My friend, Monica, who I wrote about on March 11 and March 13, was 5 years old when she came to the United States. She lives and understands U.S. culture. Yet now she faces the possibility of deportation to Mexico because of the mistake she made to attend a senior skip party. (How many of us have skipped school...or tried to...at some point in time??).

I recently watched an Independent Lens documentary that focused on Cambodian refugees who had escaped their country, fleeing to the United States with their parents at the young age of two or three. After getting involved with the wrong crowd or making a bad choice as a teenager (many were forced to live in low-income, high crime areas due to their poverty here in the United States...which made good choices all the more challenging), they now wait, with much consternation, for their name to come up for deportation to a country and a culture they have never known....even if they had grown into productive, community-oriented adults.

Is it reasonable to expect that teenagers won't make mistakes?

Even teenagers in the most comfortable and safe neighborhoods make mistakes. Teenagers who were born and raised here make mistakes. But they are allowed that luxury.

Many immigrant children have grown up here from a very young age and have been enculturated into this country...not excluding the mischievousness, and sometimes wrecklessness, of American teenagers. Yet immigrant teenagers are expected to be perfect or face deportation.

These teenagers are Americans, for all practical purposes, who are being forced to return to an unknown country...a country with different music, different lifestyles, different customs, different language, etc.

There has got to be a better way.

Building walls internally and externally

"You have got to be kidding me!" was my first thought as I read the title of the New York Times article: U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart.

Is that our new solution to everything?? If we can't get along or if we don't want to deal with them, build a wall. Talking to and listening to people is too difficult, I suppose. It takes too much time, effort, understanding, and (God forbid!) possibly some compromise about what we have always thought is the "right" way to do things!!

Walls allow us to block people from our view...We don't have to see them. We don't have to deal with them.

Do walls work??

Creating walls and distance seems, to me, to have started in the 60s. People moved out of the city fleeing people who looked different than them without any desire to even try to get to know the people they were running from. People moved out and built large houses with alley garages and privacy fences. But the walls, gates, and backdoor entrances did not keep them from having problems...drugs, domestic violence, and homocide still exists in their homes, too.

Despite the failure of creating barriers from our fears, we still continue to create walls...only now they are bigger, more obvious, and very deliberate...We can't figure out how to deal with immigration, so we create a wall....We don't know how to handle the Shiite and Sunnis, so we create a wall. The way we're going, I wouldn't doubt if the next wall built separates inner city communities from suburbia. (I'm only being slightly sarcastic here. The rate we're going, it honestly wouldn't surprise me. It scares me to think we would do that, but wouldn't surprise me.)

What's worse than a physical wall, however, is that those physical walls help create and allow us to justify our emotional walls. We have created these walls in our own country, and now we are projecting our fears and our unwillingness to listen and compromise onto the global society. We avoid people we don't know and/or don't understand. We say that "they won't listen to reason," but the reality is we haven't taken the time to listen to them. We say that "they're taking over our country," but we haven't sat down with them to listen to their delimmas and asked them to help us create a solution. We say that "our inner cities are violent and uneducated," yet we want to be selfish and keep all of the resources for our own children and our own communities.

We ignore and refuse to believe the intelligence and capacity of people who are different than us.

Walls ostracize people. They create barriers between people. They create anger and resentment because people do not know each other.

For those of us who recognize this, we have to actively work against this...in our own hearts, in our communication with our politicians, by our actions, and by our choices. Walls do not eliminate our problems; they exacerbate them.

Where does all of the hate and fear come from??

In a January letter to the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Texas House Representative Leo Berman wrote that,

We have 22 million illegal aliens in our country. They have brought with them Tuberculosis, Polio, Leprosy, Dengue Fever, Chagas Disease and Malaria. ...As of last August, the Texas Prison System [sic] is housing 12,500 illegal aliens. That many more are incarcerated in county and municipal jails. Finally, according to a detailed report produced by the Lone Star Foundation in Austin, Texans are spending $3.5 billion each year to support 1.5 million illegal aliens in Texas.

The Texas Observer writes:

Maybe people have difficulty joining Berman in his fears because they are unfounded. Texas reported two cases of malaria in 2006, and none of polio in the last five years. Of malaria cases in the U.S., most occur among residents traveling abroad, not foreigners immigrating, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of reported cases in the U.S. of Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, has declined each year since 1988. Though more than half the reported cases are among immigrants, the rate of tuberculosis has been decreasing among both foreign- and U.S.-born residents for 10 years.

I never have quite understood how Americans (United States Americans, that is) can be so quick to attribute certain characteristics of people of color to ALL people of color. Because there are some immigrants who are criminals, we start making statements that ALL immigrants are criminals or disease carriers. Because some African-American teenage boys participate in illicit behavior, we attribute that behavior to ALL African-American teenage boys. Because Middle Eastern men organized the fall of the Twin Towers, ALL Middle Easterners must be suspect.

It's quite interesting to me that I, as a White person, have never been labeled or profiled because Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh organized the Oklahoma City bombing. ...and I even grew up in an area where anti-government groups took residence...I even heard that Nichols and McVeigh had tried to buy land there!

After watching De Nadie, the story of a Central American immigrant's difficult journey to the United States in search for a better life, I wish you could have heard the comments 10-year old Ricky, who came as an immigrant with his parents. As he raised his hand to speak, I expected a child-like comment. Instead, he was more articulate than many adults! Through tears he reflected on the film and spoke eloquently for probably 5 minutes on immigration, how people are treated, and how unfair and wrong it is. He spoke about Christian responsibility. He continued to wax eloquently as he compared our current immigration issues to the Civil War. Sheepishly, I must admit that can't remember all of his comments because his knowledge about these issues were so intelligent I had never thought about them before and was unable to soak in and remember all of his great points!

Ricky is who is coming into our country. A person with a name and a story. He is not diseased. He is not a criminal. His parents want a better life for him. They want to foster his amazing intelligence. If we destroy that, we are missing out on the greatness that Ricky has to offer.

For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in. Matt. 25:35

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. Exodus 22:21

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:34

Monica and Jose are home!

I've been extremely busy and haven't/don't have time to post, but I wanted to let everyone know that Monica and Jose made it home safe late last night. Words cannot explain the homecoming. There were tears, gut-wrenching emotions, and tight hugs. As Monica hugged me, the first thing out of her mouth was, "I'm sorry, Miss Janet."

*She's* sorry?!

Sorry for what???

Sorry for not being born in the United States? Sorry for being a typical teenager and making a bad decision (Come on! What teenager has not skipped...or at least tried to skip...school???)? Sorry for not carrying her ID with her (she wasn't driving!)? Sorry for being in a town where prejudice is an accepted form of treatment toward people different than them?

Yes, Monica made a mistake. Trust me...she knows that. Unfortunately, her mistake (unlike many of mine) became (and still is) a life-changing and lifestyle-threatening one.

As the evening went on and we all enjoyed a wonderful reunion with Monica and Jose, you could see her begin to release some of her fear and apprehension that had begun to affect her interaction with others. By the end of the evening (which nearly ran into the next day! :) ), Monica was talking non-stop...explaining everything that had happened--who was nice to her, who was rude, how she had come up with different survival skills to get messages to her family, the quick thinking she had done each time they shuffled her off to a new place, and many other things. I have to hand it to her. She kept her wits about her!

Of course, Larry has posted about this as well. If you would like to read his post, click here.

My friend, Monica

I'm not sure how you feel about immigration issues, but regardless of how you feel, I hope you read Larry's blog (click here) and think about how lives are dramatically being affected and families being torn apart...all because some people are more concerned about getting rid of Mexicans (even when they've been here most of their lives) no matter what the cost. I fail to see how the dramatic actions to rid us of Mexicans help our country. What bothers me even more is the fact that these Minutemen-types claim Christianity. I see no Christian behavior in targeting teenagers and ripping families apart as has happened with Monica and so many others.

Please pray for Monica and their family. I have known them for the last 12 years. They are such a wonderful family and deserve none of this emotional toil...and now fear...that will likely stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Thank you

My friend, Olga Rodriguez, sent me this link. Although I know there are many disagreements about what should be done about immigration, I would think we could at least agree to acknowledge the way immigrants have contributed to our society. No matter what we believe, I think it's important to stop and take notice of what they have done for our society and for us individually.

NPR : Thanking Immigrants for the Myriad Jobs They Do
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5325714>