I talked tonight for about 30 minutes with a woman at Salvation Army who is a "legal" Mexican-American. Her boyfriend is in Tijuana right now after being deported and she is still here in the States, although in San Diego now instead of her native Ohio. She is in San Diego so that her kids can be in the States but close to both parents.
the question that keeps running through my mind is: what are we deporting? you may want to get me to say "who," and it is of course true that we are deporting people, but we are deporting families, too. People are more than themselves. they are all the systems that make them themselves--as the South African saying goes, "People are people through other people." So are we deporting individuals? no. we are deporting fathers and mothers and income sources and emotional attachments. we are telling those who need a job desperately that they are not allowed to work here. They have to work in a place where they can only make 100 pesos a week.
What should the church's response be to this? I wish i knew of options for the church, of ways for the church to engage in a response to the immigration crisis. this fence that we are building in between our brother country is destroying lives and families, not to mention the environment (there are actually severe environmental impacts from the construction of the fence. just goes to show that this fence is built on land that does not belong to nation-states or governmental agents, but to the Creator of the earth). how do we engage? how do we help? what actions can we take? does anyone have any helpful suggestions or thoughts?
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I was listening to NPR a few months ago and heard a story of a man from California with a mental disability who was deported. He couldn't communicate that he was a US citizen because of this disability and his mom ended up sleeping in her car on the streets of Tijuana for weeks just to find him and show the border patrol his papers...the same border patrol that rejected him everytime he tried to come back into his home country.
I have no answers, no creative solutions. it's complicated, and to fix it requires power and authority from a higher position than you or I have. and so we're left with people. In compassion Nouwen talks about the sufferings of the world, and how they become real to us when they involve people. not characters on the news or faces on the front page...but someone we know...a friend who knows someone. Love the people you come in contact with. Love the woman at BOL. Go to the border and hand out water, and vote against injustice. but stay with the people. if our frustration with injustice ends in our frustration then it's meaningless...but if we're moved to love even one person, than I think God's will has been done.
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