Immigration
The United States has a long history of blaming immigrants for our problems. This misplaced blame fuels the fears of “invasion” and creates a false image of a deadly war between innocent native-born populations and corrupting foreigners. Instead of “welcoming the stranger,” we project our problems on those who are vulnerable. We perpetuate scapegoating instead of investing in the transformation needed to save lives.
According to the website FiveThirtyEight, more than half (54 percent) of older white evangelical Christians see immigrants as a burden on American society. But 66 percent of young white evangelical Christians (age 18-34) say that the U.S. is strengthened by immigrants. Only 32 percent of older white evangelical seniors (age 65+) agree.
“Amor Eterno,”or Eternal Love, was written in 1984 by the famed Mexican singer and song writer Juan Gabriel, or JuanGa, after his mother passed away. It has become a standard that is played at funerals, wakes, get-togethers, and even restaurants across the U.S., Mexico, and the world to remember family and loved ones who have passed away.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unveiled a sweeping rule on Monday that would limit legal immigration by denying visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor.
Some Latinx people have known — and others have suspected — this land is not safe for us, but the extent to which that suspicion has been confirmed in El Paso is terrifying. The perpetrator in this massacre was deliberate in his plan to counter the “Hispanic invasion.” It’s tempting to believe all this has been incited by the current president’s violent rhetoric. But while that rhetoric has added much fuel to the fire, the fire has been burning for a long time.
Though Juarez is known as a center of cartel- and smuggling-related violence, El Paso is rated on various websites as one of the safest cities in America and among the best places to retire or raise a family. According to KVIA, a local ABC affiliate, it averages 16 murders a year.
Several proposals in Congress are competing to address the backlog of more than 900,000 approved employment-based green card applications by changing the way they are distributed. The House has passed and sent to the Senate a measure that would end country-based caps, which would significantly increase the number of Indian and Chinese green card holders.
Sr. Carol Zinn, executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, summoned the image of the Good Samaritan. She said nations will not be judged by their GDP or success on Wall Street, but how they treat the most vulnerable and marginalized.
If we hear silence from white people of faith, we are in deep spiritual trouble. Christian moral objection to the president’s racist language must grow every day and from many quarters, but so farno word at all from the president’s most prominent evangelical supporters. Those Trump supporters have other issues and moral concerns, including differences with Democrats on abortion (as others of us do too); but will they call out the President on racism? That has now become an urgent moral and theological test.
How can someone who claims to stand on family values possibly support a policy of family separation that, in many cases, leaves no possibility for future reunification? How can someone who claims to follow a man who taught us to love our enemies possibly support an administration that refuses to provide children with basic necessities like soap, toothbrushes, or even a decent night’s sleep? It doesn’t add up, and it’s time Christians stood up and took notice because the religiously unaffiliated already have.
The president of the United States has recently unleashed a barrage of racist and anti-immigrant tweets that are, in my opinion, in perfect alignment with who we have known him to be. While outrage is the appropriate societal response to such childish and harmful behavior, I do not believe that focusing our attention on tweets and xenophobic rhetoric is what will move us forward as a nation. What will move us forward as a nation is for everyone in this country to begin to understand the role that race plays in our white-dominated society, and the many ways in which most of us are complicit with this system of domination.
It’s not a matter of if, but when, a federal court will strike down the Trump administration’s latest attempt to rewrite laws governing who can receive asylum in the United States, immigration and legal experts said Monday.
The Trump administration on Monday said it would take steps to make it more difficult for immigrants arriving on the southern border to seek asylum in the United States, putting the onus on them to ask for shelter in other countries.
A Univision poll found that millennial (ages 18-33) Latinx voters believed that Julián Castro did the best among all presidential candidates in the first Democratic primary debate. This demographic is important because nearly half of all Latinx voters in the U.S. are millennials. Castro is connecting with this emerging generation because of his shared experiences and shared convictions.
Juanita Cabrera Lopez, executive director of the International Mayan League and one of the organizers of the rally, said conditions have worsened since the nationwide protest against family separation last June. After the photo of a drowned Salvadoran father and daughter was published last week, Lopez said, the community became even more outraged.
These retablos reflect on the faith that people had to begin the journey of migration, entering a foreign land. Often leaving family and home into the unknown, on a journey that is fraught with peril but also promise. Young fathers and mothers, children of families who will pray for them daily as they go. As the exhibit description mentioned, these retablos "depict a side of migration usually not told in statistical reports or even in detailed interviews of migrants."
Shelter and Storm
Seeking Shelter: A Story of Place, Faith, and Resistance is a 30-minute documentary on the personal history of the late Christian activists Daniel Berrigan, William Stringfellow, and Anthony Towne. Using firsthand accounts, the film follows their work for civil rights, social justice, nuclear disarmament, and environmental action. Seekingshelterblockisland.org
As a student of the history of biblical interpretation, the rhetoric employed by Dobson and other evangelical leaders is frighteningly similar to that of German pastors and theologians in the Third Reich. It appears that Christians have either forgotten or are ignoring the dark history of Christianity’s marriage to partisan politics and nationalist agendas.
Advocacy groups MoveOn, United We Dream, the American Friends Service Committee, and Families Belong Together collectively hosted peaceful protest gatherings across the U.S. on July 2, calling on members of Congress to defund border detention centers immediately and #CloseTheCamps. The masses who protested outside the White House were not daunted when heavy rains greeted their chants.
“ICE is coming into our communities and tearing apart families and tearing apart our community on a regular basis, and they did so just again last week,” Sanctuary DMV organizer Ben Beachy said. “We need our D.C. elected officials to make D.C. a real sanctuary city, which means severing all ties with ICE.”