HAS THE LAMP GONE DARK?
June 4, 2006The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
When the massive demonstrations for immigrant rights took place on May 1st, I didn’t attend. Several of my friends did, and they invited me to join them; I know that some of you were there as well. But I declined to participate. Each time I was asked to go, I’d give some excuse about too much work or some other commitments; it’s an easy excuse to give, since it’s usually true!
But the real reason I didn’t join those amazing marches downtown was that I just didn’t know where I stood on the issue of immigration. I couldn’t shout with full voice, “Si, se puede!” – because I wasn’t sure I agreed with the sentiment of the protests. And so I stayed home and watched it on TV. Yet I kept wishing I was there.
On my desk in my office, next to a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., sits a photo of the Statue of Liberty – the same photo that graces the cover of today’s Order of Service. It’s a picture that I took some twenty years ago while on my first visit to New York City.
I remember I could not take my eyes off of her as the ferry drew closer, so unprepared had I been for her grandeur. She stood so proudly on that tiny island across from the city, holding her beacon of light high for all to see.
I remember caring very little about going inside the pedestal of the statue. All I really wanted to do was stand at the base, gazing up and trying to imprint every detail on my brain. To this day, I am quite sure she wears Birkenstocks!
I took a number of photos that day, knowing of course that my tiny camera could never do justice to the statue. But this particular one has been sitting on my desk ever since, keeping in front of me the vision she holds out – not only to immigrants, but more importantly, to our country. For we seem to have strayed far from the vision Ms. Lazarus described in her poem. Her lamp seems to be going dark; and as it does, I, too, struggle to see by its light.
While certainly the earliest foreign settlers of this country – Columbus and others – came looking for riches and opportunity, and stole the land from the Indians and later the Mexicans; others were often fleeing religious or political persecution. The early Unitarians and Universalists, such as Joseph Priestly and George DeBenneville, were no different. This was the country where they could practice their faith openly.
By the time the Statue of Liberty was given to this country by the government of France back in 1885, we were viewed as the land of freedom and of opportunity, and she became the symbol for both. Her flaming torch served as a welcome, beckoning all to come here for a better life.
By the mid-19th century, there was a significant increase in the number of people crossing the Atlantic to seek that better life. As one such immigrant wrote: “When they were sickened of poverty, bigotry and kings, there was always America.”
And this is how we saw ourselves as well. An American of Polish descent wrote, “Other lands grant only asylum; this land recognizes the immigrants as sons and daughters, and grants them rights!”
But the issue of immigration has become more complex today. Our population has mushroomed, particularly in California, and that population growth has been driven largely by immigration. The foreign-born doubled in 1970, then doubled again in the ‘80s, and has continued to rise since. And an estimated 10-to-12 million of these immigrants are in the United States illegally – which means they are both unaccountable to and unprotected by our laws.
It’s not necessarily true that immigrants burden the economy; indeed, there are indications that because they tend to pay taxes, they are paying their way. But according to a Rand Corporation study in 1997, the cost to California residents of educating the children of immigrants outweighs the economic benefits usually linked to immigration.
Still, California’s economy also thrives from the agricultural business; we provide one-third of the nation’s agriculture, and 90% of that is harvested by Mexican laborers. According to writer Carlos Fuentes, things would come to a standstill in this state if Mexican workers were to stop working, even for a day – which was the whole point of the May 1st “Day without Immigrants” protests.
But I’ve also been concerned about jobs that once were held by unskilled citizens of this country – mostly African Americans – that now are being given to primarily Latino immigrants – some here legally, and some not. One example of that is highlighted in a documentary called The New L.A., which indicates that until the mid-1980s, most of L.A.’s janitors were Black; indeed, my former father-in-law who came here as a young man from Jamaica was one of them. He had retired by the 1980s, but had he continued to work, chances are that he would have been laid off – as many African American janitors were – so that the owners of the janitorial services could hire Latino workers at half the wages and with fewer benefits.
The documentary was actually about the “Justice for Janitors” movement that sought to regain the better wages and benefits for the Latino workers. But African American writer Erin Aubry Kaplan asks: “What happened to all those Black janitors? Where was the justice of that?”
It is generally not true that Americans aren’t willing to do the work that Latino immigrants are doing. What is true is that immigrants are willing to work for extremely low wages – because those wages are still better than what they can earn back home. But I have to ask myself: Is it the immigrants we should be angry at for taking those jobs? Or the owners of hotels, restaurants, nursing homes and other businesses who exploit their workers in order to make higher and higher profits?
Unfortunately, it’s the immigrants who bear the brunt of the resentments; African Americans feel pushed out of the low-skilled job market, and they blame the immigrants who have replaced them, not the employers who replaced them.
It pains me to see the discord and distrust between African Americans and Latino immigrants. According to Kaplan, another reason for the tension is that Blacks in L.A. are alarmed by what they see as a steady erosion of their neighborhoods by the growing presence of Latino immigrants. She notes that the immigrants aren’t intentionally pushing Blacks out; they are simply living in the only area that’s affordable to them. And indeed, many of the Black residents, as their lives have improved, have moved to better areas of L.A. Still, she says, it feels as if they’re being replaced, just as they’ve been replaced in the job market; and I can sympathize with that.
I wish there were some way to ease that tension and unite these two groups, for the truth is, both continue to be exploited and oppressed by the dominant culture; both have a disproportionate number of young men in our jails; both lack the kind of educational opportunities that would eventually allow them to get better paying jobs and join the middle class. Says Kaplan, “They should be able to augment one another’s strengths into one formidable front of people of color better able to effect the changes that benefit them all….But first must look unflinchingly at the forces” that are keeping them apart.
I long to see that happen.
I did not join the demonstrations for immigrant rights because I felt too conflicted. But then I look at that photo of the Statue of Liberty – our “Lady of Exiles” – and she reminds me of the immigrants in my own family – the most recent being my sweet niece from China who was born the same week as my granddaughter over 10 years ago, and adopted a short time later by my brother and his wife in New York.
More reflective of the many immigrants we meet in L.A. are my granddaughter’s other grandparents who migrated here some 30 years ago from Mexico, worked in factories, became citizens, bought a home and raised a wonderful family. I do not think they originally came legally, and what a shame it would have been had they been slapped with a felony as the legislation currently before the House would have done; or if they’d died on their journey, as thousands of others have in the past. They have become friends of mine, and I admire them greatly.
As mentioned earlier, there are my former in-laws who came here from Jamaica – again, looking for a more abundant life than what they could expect in the impoverished country of their birth; and again, immediately finding jobs, becoming citizens, and contributing greatly to this country.
And then there’s my grandmother, Gladys Van Deerlin, who came to this country from England at age 2 with her family. They settled in Oceanside, as did many of the immigrants from England. At age 18 she married my grandfather, also an English immigrant, who had become an American citizen (grandmother had not). In those days, a person could become a citizen automatically upon marriage; my grandfather simply had to fill out some forms for my grandmother to become an American citizen.
When she was in her 90s and my mother was applying for MediCal assistance for my grandmother, Mom had to show proof of citizenship for her. It was then that we learned that my grandfather had never bothered to submit those forms 75 years earlier, and dear Grandma had been an “illegal” all those years! And not just any illegal; she served on the Oceanside School Board for 10 or 15 years! And she voted – even had a son who became a United States Congressman! My uncle’s response when he heard this news: “Subtract one vote for Herbert Hoover!”
I imagine that most of us have stories to tell about friends, family members, or employees who have immigrated here from somewhere else – some legally, and some not. And I suspect that most of these stories would be about people who had come here for a better, freer life for themselves and their loved ones, had worked incredibly hard, and had given more to this country than they had taken.
We need to have some kind of immigration reform, but that reform should reflect our nation’s earlier attitudes of welcome to the immigrant, as well as the very real benefits we derive from immigrants – especially those from south of our borders. It should not be simply laws that mete out harsh punishments to those who are here illegally, and anyone who provides services to them. While there are some problems with the version the Senate has proposed, it far surpasses the House version in compassion and practicality.
Indeed, if punitive measures are to be taken against those breaking immigration laws, perhaps those measures should begin with the companies that knowingly hire undocumented workers – the farms, restaurants and construction firms. Not to mention all of us who hire gardeners, plumbers, maids, and nannies without ever verifying whether they have proper documentation; and of course, those who pick up day laborers gathered on corners to do work around our homes, knowing full well that they’re probably here illegally.
I wonder how many of the Minutemen keeping watch along the borders have also been knowingly hiring undocumented workers? I imagine quite a few of them. The hypocrisy of those calling for punitive measures against quote-unquote “illegal aliens” needs to be named.
I would hope that we Unitarian Universalists – who believe in “the worth and dignity of all people” and in “justice, equity and compassion” – would ground our conversations about this issue in those two Principles. For if we are honest, we must acknowledge that those who come to this country for a better living are doing exactly what we would do if faced with the same situation. They know they are risking their lives by coming here, yet they come anyway. How can we begrudge them that?
And I would hope we would be honest about our own country’s participation in the circumstances that compel people in Latin America to escape to the U.S. According to the National Farm Worker Movement, in their brochure called Harvest for Justice, the situation in Latin America has only gotten worse since 1993 when NAFTA was enacted. Corn and other grains alone from the United States have flooded the Mexican market, bankrupting nearly one million Mexican farmers. Yet we blame them for our economic woes when they come here for a better life.
Carlos Fuentes said during an interview: “The border is an exciting opportunity to create a culture of understanding between two nations. It is a meeting ground…, and can either foster understanding, interchange and culture, or condemn each other to suspicion, violence…, xenophobia and genocide.” Which are we going to choose?
I hope we choose understanding and interchange. I hope we keep our minds and our hearts open to the immigrant – and keep in front of us the vision of our “Lady of Exiles” lifting “her lamp” of hope “beside the golden door.” For to turn our backs on her now would be to turn our backs on our history, and on the hope that became our symbol to the world.
To paraphrase a prayer from the “Harvest for Justice” brochure: May we see God in each person, including the immigrant, and may we learn to love and welcome them as members of one people, one world, one God.
And may we know it is Holy.
Amen.
© 2005 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
