SOME THOUGHS ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

The "immigration problem" is not confined to California and the Southwest. It is a problem universal to America and it is easy for right-wing extremists to take the position held on the streets, "if you can't do the time; don't do the crime." Others are outraged about the real cost in dollars to American citizens by people who do not pay taxes but significantly impact on the cost of social institutions such as schools and hospitals. Still others are appalled at what they see as the perversion of what it means to be America by people who speak Spanish and who sometimes look different from them. Some are concerned that people born in America are unemployed simply because the jobs they should have are "stolen" by people illegally in the country.

All of the above are immutable truths to those who believe them. However, as Christians we are held to a greater truth: the Holy Gospel and teachings of Jesus. What Jesus and the Gospel calls us to do is live a higher standard of morality than that predicted on human law, societal cost, and xenophobia. Matthew 25: 31-45 makes it absolutely clear that to Jesus salvation is relational. It is relational in that salvation; moreover, building the kingdom of God on earth, is predicated on how we relate to our fellow human beings as the manifestation of God both within ourselves and others.

Consequently, enforcing man made law that inhibits or denies our innate humanness is always a serious moral evil. Thus, enforcement of laws designed to deny a man or family from traveling to a destination, even if that destination is outside the nation in which they were born, to find work and earn enough money to sustain themselves as well as to send a portion of that money back to their extended families to assist in sustaining them, is morally wrong in light of the teaching of Jesus.

Once an immigrant family arrives it is not only immoral that families are torn apart due to deportation of one or more members, it is unconscionable to do so for a nation that was built on the premise that all it took to succeed in America was the willingness to work. If the words on the Statute of Liberty are to have any meaning, America's word must be its bond.

However, if what Lou Dobbs and his followers believe, if the kind of America we want is predicated on the beliefs I stated in the first paragraph, then I know the next target for Islamic Terrorists to destroy. In fact, I implore them to do it. Destroy the Statute of Liberty. It would not be a crime. It would be a service because if we do not believe the words written on it, if we do not live the words written on it, then we are not the America that welcomed my ancestors and yours - or for that matter Lou Dobbs' ancestors either.

WAP (with out papers) was the term used to describe the ancestors of many Americans of Italian heritage. However, WAPS of all nationalities were as common as immigrants with papers. If what the purveyors of immigration purity want is to purify America by deporting everyone here illegally, what they need to do is to go back to the Old Testament's Jewish Law concerning bastards. A bastard and any progeny of such a bastard were prohibited from being a member of the Jewish community for ten generations.

Let the purveyors of immigration purity purify America in the same way the Jewish community was purified. Deport the descendents of the last ten generations of Americans who have an ancestor who came here as a WOP. That should do the trick.

However, before such deportation begins I feel compelled to give a warning to those who champion deportation: be careful what you wish for. It might just come true and you will find yourself on the next airplane to Timbuktu. Of course if you do the only true native Americans, Native Americans, can sing an old Woodie Guthrie song to serenade you as you leave:

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting.
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
Your flying 'em back to the Mexican border.
To pay all their money to wade back again.

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita,
Adios, misamigos.
Jesus y Maria:

You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
all they will call you will be deportees.

My father's own father, he waded that river.
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the trucks till they took down and died.

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita,
Adios, misamigos.
Jesus y Maria:

You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
all they will call you will be deportees,
all they will call you will be deportees.