Tag: asylum

Thank You

by Mike Lonergan, minister of Church of the Painted Hills UCC

Rev. Michael Lonergan at the SaveAsylum event.

Our event, SaveAsylum: Protesting the Dismantling of Asylum, had just finished. The event took place in Nogales on both sides of the monument to hate and fear on our southern border. As the master of ceremonies on the U.S. side I offered an opening prayer and read a statement reminding everyone that U. S. law gives people the right to apply for asylum. Then we heard the testimonies of six children of God whose quest for asylum was being held up because the republican administration refuses to obey the law and is now using COVID 19 as a cover for its bigotry.

We listened to a recording of a Guatemalan woman’s testimony. She fled her home after she and her family received death threats and the authorities would not help her. She still fears for her safety and would not appear publicly to tell her story.

After listening to that recording we heard directly from our neighbors from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico who shared their stories of fleeing violence and persecution at home and suffering abuse as they tried to reach the U. S. to apply for asylum. After each testimony was offered on the Mexican side, an assurance of support was offered by the people gathered on the U. S. side, who then heard the English translation of the testimony.

The event ended with a call to action, followed by a powerful reading of a modern statement of blessings and woes. This reading listed the blessings the asylum seekers will receive and it offered warnings to those responsible for the horrendous treatment these asylum seekers receive.

After the event concluded I was talking to a colleague on the other side of the wall. When my conversation with the person on the other side of the wall finished, the woman standing next to them placed her hand on the mesh between the posts. The mesh, an additional layer of cruelty added to prevent divided families from sharing meals with each other or children of God from sharing communion. The woman placed her hand on the mesh, and with a look of gratitude I will never forget, looked in my eyes and said “thank you.” I put my hand on the mesh against her hand and looked back and said “you’re welcome.”

In that instance the mesh failed. The mesh that is intended to add to the dehumanization of people on the southern side of the border did not stop me from experiencing my common humanity with the child of God whose hand was on the mesh against mine.

That simple, humble act of gratitude will stay with me. It will be my motivation to submit a comment against yet another rule change proposed by the republican administration to prevent children of God from seeking asylum as U. S. and international law permits and to keep contacting our senators and representatives demanding that they make public statements opposing the republican administration’s suspension of the processing of asylum applications. My common humanity with the child of God whose hand was against mine on the mesh requires this of me, at a minimum.

images credits: Leslie Carlson and Mike Lonergan.

Lazarus Must Be Rolling Over in Her Grave!

by John Indermark

In case you were wondering: the title is not mistaken in its gender pronoun usage. I do not have in mind the Lazarus, beloved brother of Mary and Martha, who already experienced rolling out of his grave according to John’s gospel. No, the Lazarus I have in mind is Emma, beloved daughter of Moses and Esther – and the poet who penned the words engraved on a bronze plaque that now (at least for the time being) stands displayed in the museum at the Statue of Liberty. Its closing words, taken from a longer poem of hers, would once have been the stuff of Fourth of July picnics and elementary school recitations and civics classes. 

“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 say “once would have been” because some Very Important People in Very High Places have definite ideas about who should be let in and particularly who should be kept out of our nation these days, ideas that seem to take a sand blaster to Lazarus’ inscription. The most recent rule put forth by the Trump administration regarding immigration reinterprets provisions of “public charge” in Draconian ways – or, given its likely architect, Millerian ways. Mind you, the rule aims not at illegal immigrants, but LEGAL immigrants. If you need most any form of public assistance to help get your feet on the ground, fugetaboutit. All such objections go away, of course, according to the fine print of the rule, if you can show your income is 250% or more of the federal poverty line. If it is, c’mon in! If it’s not, maybe the deportation venues will at least have the honesty to play Ray Charles (“Hit the Road, Jack, and don’t you come back . . .”). And perhaps the National Park Service will be directed by Mr. Miller to update Emma’s plaque:

Give me your hired, your secure,

Your globe-trotting investors yearning to be regulation-free,

The targeted folk of north European shores,

Send these, the classy, upper-crust to me.

As I said, Lazarus must be rolling over in her grave, and not just because of the words of her poem with which we are most familiar. Did you know the title she gives to the Statue in the poem is not Lady Liberty, but Mother of Exiles? What would she say to those who seek asylum today, driven by violence and despair literally into exiles – only to be met with pejoratives of “murderers” and “rapists?” I believe Emma’s answer can be discerned in the phrase she used in the poem: “From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome.” 

Today, in addressing the new rule, the administration’s Director of Immigration Services was asked how this policy set with the Statue’s invitation to “your tired, your poor, your, huddled masses.” His answer? “I’m certainly not prepared to take anything down off the Statue of Liberty. We have a long history of being one of the most welcoming nations in the world.”

Unfortunately, history is no guarantor of the future, and befogged nostalgia can be the future’s worst enemy. The question is: Are we NOW to be who we advertise ourselves to be? Hypocrisy is not a problem limited to the church. It gnaws away at national identities. If this rule stands, Lazarus’ poem and its “Mother of Exiles” will cease to be our aspiration –and be transformed into our self-inflicted indictment of nativism and greed.