Who’s counting?

Unbelievably, I started blogging exactly one year ago. Just in time for the Hispanic Heritage Mass then and now. This year’s Mass will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 11 at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. Cardinal Justin Rigali will be the celebrant, and as in past years, he’ll be joined by many priests from across the Archdiocese that minister to the Latino community.

And a growing community it is.

Pennsylvania is one of 16 states with at least a half-million Hispanic residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (The others are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.)

The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2008 is 46.9 million, making people of Hispanic origin the largest ethnic or race minority in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics are 15 percent of the nation’s total population.

And to these totals you can add the 4 million residents of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (which is included in the U.S. Census report’s “national summary” data, but not in its “national totals”).

The Hispanic population in the U.S. is younger than the population as a whole. Hispanics comprise 22 percent of children younger than 18 in the nation, 25 percent of children younger than 5. The U. S. Census Bureau projects that by July 1, 2050, the Hispanic population of the United States will reach 132.8 million, and be 30 percent of the nation’s total population.

There were 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses in 2002, and the rate of growth of these businesses between the census of 1997 and 2002 was 31 percent. The national average rate of growth for all businesses during the same time period was 10 percent. Hispanic owned businesses generated revenues of $222 billion in 2002, according to census sources, up 19 percent from 1997.

Still, if you read my blog, or other Latino blogs, you already know that the violence, hate and animosity toward Latinos has increased markedly in recent years. The FBI reported a 35 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos from 2003 to 2006 and a 3.3 percent increase in 2007 alone. Certain communities (Suffolk, N.Y., for example) have become something like hunting grounds where gangs of ruffians target their Latino neighbors for death, and juries and elected officials look the other way. Mainstream Latino advocacy organizations such as the NCLR have been vilified, and the first Latina Supreme Court justice was lampooned with openly racist caricatures during the period preceding her confirmation.

The vitriol in the immigration reform debate has contributed greatly to anti-Latino sentiment.

It is faulty logic to presume that all immigrants are Latino and all Latinos are immigrants, but nativists and commentators with nativist sympathies have reinforced this spurious syllogism. Ongoing air time devoted to the “invasion of America” (commentator Pat Buchanan) by hordes of “primitives” and “women with mustaches” (radio host Jay Severin) who are “changing the complexion of America” (Bill O’Reilly) and are “invaders” and carriers of “leprosy and tuberculosis” (Lou Dobbs) has had its effect on people’s ideas about Latinos and immigrants.

Even those who don’t wholeheartedly buy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric express irritation at Spanish-language phone options, or celebrations and parades wherein flags of Latin American countries are flown alongside the U.S. flag. Would the same level of irritation be manifest if the language option were German, say, or Polish? Do the St. Patrick’s and Columbus Day parades with their Irish and Italian flags proudly flown generate the same animus? Clearly not.

Much of current anti-immigrant rhetoric centers around the differences between new waves of immigration and historic ones – but the differences are largely myth.

Earlier immigrant groups also initially settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their own languages, went to church at personal parishes where Mass was celebrated in their native languages and set up businesses that not only served their fellow immigrants but contributed to the growth of the U.S. economy. They eventually learned English, became naturalized citizens, gave birth to U. S. citizens and grew to be integral to the weave of contemporary America.

It has been said that new immigrants don’t want to learn English, yet demand for English as a Second Language classes for adult learners far exceeds supply. With classes or without, more than 75 percent of current immigrants learn to speak English proficiently within 10 years of emigrating.

We’ve also heard that the new immigrants, unlike their predecessors, don’t want to become citizens. But according to U.S. Census Bureau and Bureaus of Citizenship and Immigration Services data, more than 33 percent of immigrants become naturalized citizens. This, of course, can’t begin to reflect the number of immigrants who might want to become citizens if a path to legal residency and citizenship were open to them.

The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born stands at 11.5 percent currently. In the early 20th century, it stood at 15 percent. Immigrants in those days also dealt with anti-immigrant fears about the number of them coming to America, and the same derogatory attitudes about people “without papers” -- the genesis of at least one ethnic slur.

Myth has it that most immigrants today are undocumented. But the Immigration and Naturalization Services statistical yearbook records that 75 percent of current immigrants have legal permanent visas. And they pay U.S. taxes – between $90 and $140 billion a year. (Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes – as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” -- taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers -- which drew $20 billion between 1990 and 1998.)

Current immigrants, like their predecessors, contribute to the U.S. economy through their consumer spending and through the income generated by the businesses they set up. According to the Cato Institute and the Inter-American Development Bank, consumer spending of immigrant households and business contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S. federal, state and local governments.

And Alan Greenspan, while he headed the Federal Reserve, pointed out that 70 percent of immigrants arrive to the U.S, in prime working years. As part of our workforce they will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years.

An enduring myth about current immigrants is that they emigrate to receive public benefits. There is data from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Urban Institute that shows that immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they receive.

Recent surveys have shown that new immigrants are actually much healthier than longtime immigrants (who in turn are healthier than native citizens). Which is lucky because legal immigrants are restricted from accessing any public health benefits for the first five years of their residence in the United States. Undocumented immigrants are precluded from accessing any public benefits at all.

It is hard to believe that any of us want to see our fellow human beings ill and suffering and barred from receiving any medical treatment; just as it is hard to believe any of us want to see people dying while trying to be reunited with their families, or while trying to escape violence or poverty. And yet, existing health care legislation and immigration policies compound these problems while offering no solutions.

Fortunately, we are heirs to a system of governance that permits us to challenge standing legislation. We can pass better laws. Laws that create a path to citizenship for people who desperately want to be here. Laws that ensure that U.S. citizen children aren’t separated from their undocumented parents. Laws that reflect compassion for our brothers and sisters in need, and that open to hope rather than a wall.

In the year I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve shown you signs that read “Hispanics keep out” and “Speak English.” I’ve posted videos that portray immigrants the same way blacks were depicted in early minstrel shows, and have referenced news about a teen who endured ethnic taunts while being dragged with a noose around his neck. I’ve written about a young man who was snatched right off a train platform on the basis of his Spanish accent, and linked you to horrifying stories about hate-crimes against Ecuadorian and Mexican immigrants in this and adjoining states.

But I’ve also written about people who stand for more and better.

Peter Pedemonti and his cohorts at the Catholic Worker house and in the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia who believe they are “entertaining angels” when they welcome the stranger.

Msgr. Hugh Shields. Anna Vega, Tim O’Connell, Sister Lorena and countless other unnamed religious folk and laypeople who believe we are all one family under God and so extend to immigrants the love we usually reserve for blood family.

Robert Nix, who journeyed to Shenendoah, Pa. after Luis Ramirez was killed to publicly urge community reconciliation.

I’ve pointed you to El Diario/La Prensa, which reports stories about immigrants and Latinos the mainstream media doesn’t even venture to cover.

And I’ve quoted the words of the U.S. Bishops, including our own Cardinal Justin Rigali, who have consistently sought to remind us that, in the words of Christ, “whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

Going into my second year of writing this, I’m not sure what effect, if any, blogs can have in our thinking about issues as complex as immigration or the upswing in anti-Latino sentiment in the nation. Particularly blogs like this one, with a small readership that, in all likelihood, already recognizes popular immigration myths for what they are and finds the words of the nativists and anti-immigrant commentators as repugnant as I do.

But I have to think it’s worth it.

There are local voices here that are too quiet to be heard in the nasty national debate. There are voices of local immigrants, and the voices of local people of faith who walk with them. There are voices of those who have overcome unbearable hardship and the voices of those who have taken up their advocacy. Not all of those voices are in the blog posts – some are in the comments, both public and private, made in response to the posts.

And despite the bad news and bad feelings I sometimes point to in my posts, it is the wonder and awe of knowing there are good people out there -- willing to protect and love and do for their fellow human beings -- that really keeps me writing.

Soni-from-the-block

OK -- I confess that I stole the title of this post from a college friend, Rafael Pizarro, who as a Bronx native and long-time community organizer has probably earned the right to call Sonia Sotomayor -- President Obama's nominee for Supreme Court Justice -- by a nickname that admixes pride and affection and familiarity.

But truth is, even those of us who had before only heard of Sotomayor in passing are feeling proud that a Hispanic -- the first -- has been nominated to to the U.S. Supreme Court. I am sure that in the weeks until her confirmation hearings we will hear much about her -- good and bad, maybe even really good or really bad. But for today, I'm leaving you with a link to a video exclusive from the newspaper El Diario/La Prensa in N.Y., which honored Sotomayor as a distinguished Latina a few days before her nomination was made public.

It is a charming Sotomayor, passing from English to Spanish and back again like so many of us Latinas do. Reminiscing about family, and food, and cooking together -- again, like so many of us Latinas are in the habit of doing. And acknowledging the support and the prayers that have brought her to where she is now -- poised to make history:

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/6zc_PUGI8B?pid=atjwybKx9WE1tpkM9IznVIJa6SrgG_Ux

¡Enhorabuena!

Of swine and flu

It was inevitable I suppose.

As soon as the media started barraging us with information about the swine flu pandemic, anti-immigrant commentators and talk radio hosts started in on their favorite targets.

And I don't mean pigs.

Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, ALI PAC's William Gheen, CCIR's Barbara Coe have all weighed in on the airwaves or through mass e-mails. There is no doubt in their minds who is to blame for the flu -- Mexican immigrants.

But wait, there's another.

You might want to think of what follows as stage 5 in the anti-immigrant epidemic of the past few days:

Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended indefinitely from his afternoon drive-time show on WTKK-FM radio for, as The Boston Globe reported, 'calling Mexican immigrants "criminaliens," "primitives," "leeches, and exporters of "women with mustaches and VD," among other incendiary comments.'

Here are those comments, in full context:

“So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico — women with mustaches and VD — now we have swine flu.”

“We are the magnet for primitives around the world — and it’s not the primitives’ fault by the way, I’m not blaming them for being primitives — I’m merely observing they’re primitive.”

“It’s millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America.”

“We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here.”

(Thanks to El Diario/La Prensa for alerting me to the story in the first place and to the Southern Poverty Law Center blog for including the unexpurgated comments in their post.)

We've all gotten plenty of advice from broadcast news, both local and national; the CDC; the NIH; WHO; President Obama; even the U.S. Catholic Bishops, on how to best protect ourselves from the swine flu -- wash our hands often, cover our coughs and sneezes, stay home if we're sick.

But how do we protect ourselves, our nation, from the outbreak of virulent anti-immigrant flu?

I don't have the answers but I know it's not by washing our hands.

A few possibilities:

• Advocate. If you live in Pennsylvania, join your voice to those of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. They will be gathering at the State Capitol in Harrisburg on Tuesday, May 5, from 10:30 p.m. until 5 p.m.to lobby lawmakers to ensure that immigrants' rights are protected and their dignity respected in the Commonwealth. (For more information, call 215-459-2456.)
• Stand up and be counted. Join the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Stand Strong Against Hate" campaign (http://www.splcenter.org/center/petitions/standstrong/).
  
• Unite in community. Download NCLR's tool kit for community engagement (http://www.wecanstopthehate.org/site/what_you_can_do).
• Vote with your dial. When the hatemongers take to the airwaves, turn them off.
  

(Pig photo is from Wikimedia Commons' public domain images.)

Work and pray

There are times blogging comes easily. Some others, not so much.

I’m struggling now with whether I want to write about proposed legislation in California. It proposes issuing different birth certificates to the U.S.-born infants of undocumented immigrants than to any other U.S.-born infants. It would thus become material proof of “second class” status and would sweep away the 14th Amendment’s jus solis category of citizenship for those the state deems “undesirable” [http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2009/04/15/news/sandiego/z3a7cb4466b4507ce882575970077d470.txt].

But no, as much as the proposal alarms me – and should alarm any child or grandchild or great-grandchild of immigrants whose citizenship was granted by virtue of having been born on U. S. soil – I just don’t want to delve into what such a proposal means. What it says about the type of nation we are contemplating becoming.

Neither do I want to examine the fact that anti-immigrant groups such as FAIR [http://www.splcenter.org/intel/nativist_fair.jsp and http://www.splcenter.org/intel/nativist_lobby.jsp] have responded to the President’s readiness to begin addressing immigration reform by pledging renewed and increased talk radio and internet attacks [http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-immigration-lobbying-041509,0,446373.story]. Or the fact that the nativist group, according to information on its web site, has been called to testify before Congress on immigration proposals more than any other organization in America.

I don’t even want to write about the illuminating but depressing Catholic News Service article about the Pew Center’s recently released “Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants” [http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901738.htm] or any of the excellent articles on immigration I read daily in El Diario/La Prensa [http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/].

Instead, I’m tempted to blog Catholic.

It is not something I do often, though faith underpins every entry about immigration and torture and sanctuary and all the personal stories I’ve ever posted here. It’s just that – it may as well be said upfront – I’m hardly the poster child for Catholicism. I was away from the Church almost as long as I’ve been in it, and am no more capable of deep theological thought than your average bear. Forget apologetics or eschatology or whether I prefer Aquinas or Augustine (though an amusing Facebook quiz tells me I’m in Aquinas’ camp) I want to write about a far more mundane aspect of being Catholic.

May 1 is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

This memorial looks not at the saint’s exalted moments of angelic guidance, but at his day-to-day labor as a carpenter and the tradition that, as Jesus’ foster father, he taught Him his trade.

The memorial acknowledges the dignity of work – no matter that it be accomplished with sweat and physical exertion or without formal education – and of the dignity of the human beings performing that work.

It is good to be reminded of this. Our society doesn’t much value certain types of labor, or see artistry in what it considers ordinary. We hardly notice those around us who keep the roads paved, the fields yielding or the shelves stocked. We probably wouldn’t have noticed this simple village carpenter either.

Through this memorial, and in her papal encyclical about the dignity of work, the Catholic Church honors what many of us forget – that nations would founder without laborers, and that they are due every bit as much respect as the white-collar workers who make it onto the pages of Fortune magazine.

A column that will appear on the bilingual page of the Catholic Standard & Times’ April 23 edition [www.cst-phl.com] talks about St. Joseph the Worker and also notes that May 1 marks the national “Day without an Immigrant.” Though the rallies associated with the day have dwindled in recent years, at their peak hundreds of thousands of people gathered in a visible reminder of how many immigrants labor side by side with us; how many of them pray for justice and redemption side by side with us as well.

The author of the column in the CS&T reminds us that in addition to a laborer, St. Joseph was an also immigrant, seeking refuge with his family in lands other than his own. It fits so perfectly, don’t you think? Work and pray. That is what we do together.

On May 1, let’s promise to notice those who labor around us. Let’s notice not the color of their skin or the quality of their language or the status of their documents, but the work of their hands. To paraphrase a U2 song, those are the hands that build America.

Painting of St. Joseph by Georges de La Tour at the top of this blog is from Wikimedia commons' public domain images.

Binghamton lament

Yesterday, the Southern Tier city of Binghamton, N.Y. literally shot into the news. I followed the tragedy as it unfolded – 14 people dead at a center that provides services for immigrants and refugees; the presumed shooter also an immigrant, also dead.

Immediately the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin’s online news site, pressconnects.com, was flooded with comments from readers: some hate filled, others keyed to retaining focus on the tragedy rather than anti-immigrant rhetoric. (See editorial about this in El Diario/La Prensa: http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/opinion/2009/4/4/tragedy-in-binghamton-117746-1.html.)

We don’t know why this happened, and no matter how much more coverage the story gets, we never will. The heart can be a dark place, and it can fill as readily with despair as it does with hope. I write a lot in this blog about the hopes of immigrants – how this virtue drives the desire to emigrate in the first place, and how it fills people after immigration – even when the new living situation seems almost as difficult as the one left behind.

But hope can die hard, in ugly ways.

Already the news reports are saying that the presumed shooter had recently lost his job. For Southern Tier cities like Binghamton – much of Central New York State really – the current economic crisis is no new experience. The region has been struggling economically for decades. Once-thriving corporations like Endicott-Johnson in Binghamton and Proctor and Gamble in Norwich filled cities and towns in this part of the world with architecturally splendid houses and buildings during prosperous times – and then, as they closed or abandoned the area, left an unfillable void and a hardscrabble reality. The family farms that also contributed to the economy of the region are artifacts of a bygone era – though some hang on, with the stubborn, admirable tenacity that is a hallmark of people there.

If it seems to you that I write about this region of New York with love, it is because I do love it. I have led a peripatetic life – but came close to finding a true home during the 14 years I lived in the Central New York towns of Earlville and Hamilton. It is a region filled with down-to-earth people, forthcoming and unpretentious, who will, quite literally, open up their wallets and give you their last 10- or 20-dollar bill if they believe you are in need.

They are, also, far more likely than people in more worldly regions to be upfront and unsubtle about their prejudices. I’ve only ever been called “spic” (to my face anyway) in Central New York. I thought about that a lot as I kept tabs on the Binghamton story yesterday. Could it be that the shooter had heard that sort of casual derogation to the point where he despaired of ever being considered a human being first – and an individual rather than a walking representation of ethnic stereotype? It is certainly possible, though Binghamton is more ethnically diverse than other towns along that stretch of Route 12, and by all accounts, fairly welcoming of the immigrants who have settled there.

It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss this as a tragedy tied solely to its region, as some of the comments posted to the Press & Sun-Bulletin web site try to do. Even in more heterogeneous communities, it is hard to escape the derogation all immigrants feel at this particular moment in U. S. history. Public figures such as Sen. Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Sheriff Joe Arpaio – and our own Joey Vento here in Philadelphia – have so vilified immigrants and stoked xenophobia that it is impossible to be an immigrant and not feel criminalized. Or devoid of hope.

And still, there they were – the victims of this shooting – studying English as a second language and learning the civics and history necessary to pass their citizenship exams. They were the very emblem of immigrant hope.

As days pass, I count on learning more about them – so that their faces, their lives, are what I come to remember.

Economic catastrophe, the cloud of fear and persecution immigrants live under, mental derangement – ensuing reports will no doubt bring more details about the shooter and his possible motives and circumstances to light.

None of which will justify his actions or make them any easier to understand.

But perhaps understanding isn’t necessary. Just a promise. That we will not let hope die in ourselves, in those around us, or upstate from us. That when we know hope is dying, we will reach into our wallets or past our prejudices, and extend a very real hand.

In charity. In love. In the promise of hope resurrected.

Two immigration-related events scheduled in Pennsylvania

Two events announced today by the Pennsylvania Immigration & Citizenship Coalition (the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition is a diverse coalition of organizations and individuals that represent the needs of immigrants, migrants, refugees, and other new Americans living in Pennsylvania. They seek to educate the public and develop support for fair policies that welcome and sustain immigrants):

On April 4 Esperanza, the Hispanic Clergy of Philadelphia, and the PICC will host the "Familias Unidas" (Uniting Families) immigration community gathering here in Philadelphia. This gathering seeks to educate the community and encourage policy makers to advocate for legislation that promotes comprehensive immigration reform. Congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), who has led immigration gatherings around the country, will attend this event as the final stop of his "Familias Unidas" campaign to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Families affected by the current immigration laws will share their testimonies and the Hispanic Clergy of Philadelphia will offer prayers for the undocumented. This event will be held at Iglesia Internacional at 191 W. Hunting Park Avenue. The program runs from 1 to 4 p.m., with musical selections by salsa singer Anthony Colón and Gospel singer Jessica. The program will conclude with musical selections by Gospel singer Ricardo Rodríguez and the Mariachi Flores. Call 215-324-0746 for more information.

And:

I'm excited to announce that PICC's first-ever PA Lobby Day is happening on May 5. On this day, people from immigrant communities -- and their allies -- across the state will have a chance to get their voices heard in Harrisburg. Unfortunately, we are seeing more and more anti-immigrant bills in the PA legislature. Last session, we were successful in keeping them from becoming law, but this session, we are again facing bills that would require government ID, make English the official language of PA, and require local police to enforce immigration law. It is time for our lawmakers to hear from us: Anti-immigrant laws weaken our state, our economy and our public health and safety.
Make your voice heard at Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition’s PA Lobby Day, Tuesday, May 5 from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the State Capitol in Harrisburg. For more information call 215-459-2456.

• • •

Some interesting reading:
• Fears about detention, raids, etc. may affect an accurate census count (in El Diario/La Prensa, in Spanish) http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/noticias/nacionales/2009/4/1/no-tema-al-censo--hagase-conta-117269-1.html
• New immigration raid policy (in the Hartford Courant) http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-tc-nw-immigration-0331.artmar31,0,4823465.story
• See how your senators and legislators voted on immigration-related bills -- go to http://capwiz.com/nclr/dbq/officials/ and type in your zip code.

Anti-Hispanic sentiment in – and on – the news

From El Diario/La Prensa’s March 14 edition:

This week, Dobbs ranted about President Barack Obama having the audacity to deliver a speech on educational reform to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He accused Obama of pandering to Hispanics.
Dobb's tone insulting to all Hispanic-Americans but he then went on to slur the Chamber in a truly hatefull manner.
Dobbs said: “Making a decision to talk about a national initiative on education from the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is effectively an organization that is interested in the export of American capital and production to Mexico and Mexico's export of drugs and illegal aliens to the United States. This is crazy stuff."
What is Looney Toons is Dobbs’ claim. Hispanic Americans are proud citizens who love their country and care about all the same issues that non-Hispanic Americans do. To impute that Hispanic American businessmen are working against American interests is demagoguery of the most vile sort. To associate them with the drug trade is slander.
[…]

Read the full editorial at:
http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/opinion/2009/3/14/lou-dobbs-latest-anti-hispanic-114145-1.html

'A degrading spectacle'

“It has come to this: In Phoenix on Wednesday, more than 200 men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past a gantlet of TV cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. They were inmates being sent to await deportation in a new immigrant detention camp minutes from the center of America’s fifth-largest city.

The judge, jury and exhibitioner of this degrading spectacle was the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants.”

That is from the Feb. 5 op-ed piece in the New York Times. It is worth reading in its entirety [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06fri2.html?_r=2&scp=9&sq=immigration&st=cse ]

Here is the Associated Press report about the event:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMMIGRANTS_TENT_CITY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

And the excellent report from El Diario/La Prensa, if you can read Spanish:
http://www.impre.com/noticias/nacionales/2009/2/5/encierran-en-carpas-a-220-indo-107447-1.html

Or, read the Catholic News Service report in the Catholic Standard & Times issue of Feb. 12.

The good, the bad and the ugly

For those of us tracking immigration issues, a roller coaster set of weeks. I’ll start with the positives:

• More than 200 religious leaders advocating comprehensive immigration reform gathered in Washington D.C. Jan. 21 – sandwiched between the inauguration on the 20th and the March for Life on the 22nd. Although the immigration advocates didn’t garner a lot of media attention, they signaled the need for a shift in the direction and tone of discourse about existing policies. "Immigration practices in this country have been undermined by severe and deep constitutional and human rights violations," said Rabbi David Shneyer, director of Am Kolel Sanctuary and Renewal Center at a Jan. 8 press conference announcing the gathering on the 21st. "Now is a time for healing and renewal." (Catholic News Service, Jan. 9)

• Two weeks ago, the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a partnership of faith-based organizations committed to enacting fair and humane immigration reform, announced a national effort to organize prayer vigils coinciding with the first recess of this session of Congress, February 13-22, when members will be home in their districts. The interfaith coalition is asking people to plan public prayer vigils for their communities of faith, to include prayers petitions concerning immigration reform within worship, and to ask clergy or lay leaders to offer a sermon focusing on immigration during this week. Go to http://interfaithimmigration.org for information about organizing a prayer vigil or to register an event on the event calendar. As I’m blogging this, there is one prayer vigil already scheduled in Pennsylvania: the Latino Ministry - Lehman UMC, Hatboro, Pa. will hold a prayer vigil Feb. 13 at 6:30 p.m. Call 215-470-2229 for more information.

• Senior Catholics officials attending the Jan. 14-18 Vatican-sponsored meeting of families in Mexico City expressed optimism that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama would usher in more favorable immigration policies that include putting an end to the workplace raids separating parents from their children. "We foresee and we hope that the new administration will organize migration in the right way, with contracts and limited-time (stays)," Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told Catholic News Service.

• Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers gave a speech Jan. 28 at the University of San Diego saying that integration of immigrants "is the responsibility not only of the immigrant but also of the host society" and is achieved through open dialogue. The speech was billed as a preview to an international conference April 15-16 at the Catholic university in California; the conference will discuss the relationships among migration, religious experience and national identity. (Catholic News Service, Jan. 29)

• Amid anecdotal accounts of people being assaulted for speaking on their cell phones in Spanish and the Mummers Parade “Speak English” anti-immigrant float (see my blog entry of Jan. 7, “Oh, Philadelphia!”) comes news that the people of Nashville, Tennessee have voted down a proposal by a councilman that would have barred government employees from communicating with businesses, tourists, hospital patients and crime victims in any language other than English.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090123/NEWS0202/901230395/1017/NEWS03

But, also in the news:

• New York’s governor appointed a new senator with an anti-immigrant voting record.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28immigration.html
El Diario/La Prensa, which covers immigration stories more fully than almost any other newspaper out there, has a terrific editorial about Gillibrand’s opportunities to rethink immigration policy now that she represents the entire state as senator. Lamentably, though the print and smart editions of the newspaper carried the editorial in both English and Spanish, the web site has it only in Spanish.
http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/opinion/2009/1/31/ayer-marchamos-mantilde;ana-cu-106472-1.html

• The U.S. children of an undocumented Nicaraguan woman in detention in Florida went on hunger strike trying to postpone the deportation of their mother – who was held in ICE detention for more than a month. The children, 9 and 12 years old, came home one day to find their mother gone.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=326572&CategoryId=13003

• Another immigrant died while in detention. The New York Times tracked reports that the death was a result of institutional medical neglect. The facility is the same one where, two years earlier, another detainee died after being denied medical treatment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/28detain.html?_r=1&em

• Anti-immigrant groups released reports this month blaming for Florida’s budget shortfall and the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure (“the potholes!” in the words of one immigration advocate) on undocumented immigrants.
http://www.fairus.org/site/News2/285758413?page=NewsArticle&id=19771&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1741 and
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/media/press_release_2009jan05.html


On a seemingly unrelated note, those of you who already know I’m a poetry geek will be unsurprised by the fact that I listened attentively to the inaugural poem “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander when she intoned it on that cold, blustery January day. I can’t say I thrilled to the poem. But I have to admit that lines from it resonate. Especially today, at the end of this particular post:

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

[…]

What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light

[…]

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.


I think about the sentences to be uttered at the prayer vigils in upcoming days, filled with love instead of hatred. And about the candles lit by leaders of many faiths and individuals of good will (and even by some newspapers) that will continue to shed widening pools of light on our human family.

Unexpectedly, without starting out to write about hope, I find myself there.

La Morenita in Philly

Millions of people throughout the Americas are celebrating the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe today. Catholics in Philly are no exception. Join Cardinal Justin Rigali for the celebration of this feast tonight at 7:30 p.m. at St. Thomas Aquinas Church on 17th and Morris St. in Philadelphia.

(La Morenita carried in the procession preceding the Hispanic Heritage Mass, 2007, Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia. Photo by Sarah Webb for the CS&T)














(La Morenita at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Philadelphia, Nov. 30, 2008. Photo by Joanna Lightner for the CS&T)








(La Morenita accompanied the Guadalupe torch from Mexico City to New York City on a two-month, 5000-mile journey. Here pictured at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia on Dec. 6, 2008. Photo by Carmen Alarcon for El Diario/La Prensa)











(La Morenita at St. Patrick Church in Norristown, Dec. 7, 2008. Photo by Sarah Webb for the CS&T)













(La Morenita at La Milagrosa Chapel on Spring Garden St. in Philadelphia. Photo by Sarah Webb for the CS&T)

A day in the life

(Photo above by Carmen Alarcon, courtesy El Diario/La Prensa)

Check out El Diario/La Prensa story by Carmen Alarcon following the Guadalupe torch runners from Philadelphia to New Jersey:
http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/noticias/principal/2008/12/9/un-dia-en-la-peregrinacion-gua-97353-1.html

Even better, check it out on El Diario's smart edition, with great layout and nice photos (the link to El Diario/La Prensa's smart edition is always at the bottom of this blog).

One caveat: The article is in Spanish. Good thing Joey Vento, Geno's Steak owner and Philly's unrepentant monoglot, isn't one of my readers.

Or, you can wait for Thursday, and check out two of Carmen Alarcon's photos of the Guadalupe torch at Philadelphia's St. Peter the Apostle in the Catholic Standard & Times (Thank you, El Diario, for reprint permission) with captions in English.

Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe.