RBWords - Volume 19 - Number 5: May 2006
Something to Think About
An amusing cartoon appeared on one of the bulletin boards here recently. It shows two Native Americans standing on the beach watching the Mayflower pilgrims row ashore. One of the Native Americans says to the other: “I dunno! They look pretty undocumented to me!” This is a rare amusing moment in a subject that is very serious – immigration. It’s not as if this subject is new. This country has gone through periods when, figuratively speaking, the Statue of Liberty faced outward and welcomes the “huddled masses yearning to be free” and periods when she turned her back and refused any newcomers. Franklin Roosevelt infuriated the Daughters of the American Revolution when he addressed them as “my fellow immigrants.” One of the most blatant legislative pieces of prejudice in our history was the “Chinese Exclusion Act.” There are other examples. Immigration seems to bring out the best and worst in the American character.
The current debate has all the elements of xenophobia (fear of foreigners, secure borders), economic self-interest (agricultural and service workers), politics (are all those newborn children of undocumented folks likely to be Democrats or Republicans – since by birth in this country, they are citizens!)and, quite frankly, racism. The House of Representatives wants to make illegal entry a felony! (Imagine declaring literally millions of people felons!) The Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles has warned the House that he would instruct his priests to defy that law!
Our nation is not the only one wrestling with this problem. Freedom and security are uneasy “bedfellows.” We all want to be free to do what we want but we also want to be secure from others who may want the same freedom! Thus, the benefits of being an American citizen become basically like a consumer product which we Americans have declared to be in short supply and must therefore protect and hoard! We become “owners” of the “American dream” instead of good stewards. It’s not a pretty picture and the current legislative muddle as well as the misguided people building their own fences along the border are making the picture uglier by the day. The “golden door” in Emma Lazarus’ poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty appears to be made of barbed wire now. One wonders where our faith has gone. Jesus may have tested the Syro-Phoenician woman, but he welcomed her, and ignored the disciples who asked him to “send her away for she keeps bothering us.” The whole subject should have us examining our consciences as Christians, let alone as Americans. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
\"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!\"
From THE NEW COLOSSUS – the poem by Emma Lazarus which appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty
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