Advertisement
Holy Week resources and reflections

At the border of church and immigration

 c. 2006 Synod of Living Waters.

Used by permission.

 

A Kentucky church gives free legal advice to explain complicated federal law and hear grievances that otherwise go unremedied. A Tennessee parish gives rides to the hospital and help with college preparation. An Alabama congregation offers Spanish-language worship and a sympathetic ear.

Slowly, the synod's churches are finding ways to put their stamp, and their values, on one of America's biggest controversies, an issue that stirs alarm, confusion and compassion.

 

An ESL class

The controversy is immigration, pressing the nation to fix a system that oversees the more than 30 million foreign-born workers -- about 11 percent of the U.S. population -- now living here legally or illegally.

Churches are stepping in to put a human face on a messy political debate  about how (or whether) to grant legal status to more immigrants, acculturate them into American life, or increase deportations and secure the borders.

c. 2006 Synod of Living Waters.

Used by permission.

 

A Kentucky church gives free legal advice to explain complicated federal law and hear grievances that otherwise go unremedied. A Tennessee parish gives rides to the hospital and help with college preparation. An Alabama congregation offers Spanish-language worship and a sympathetic ear.

Slowly, the synod’s churches are finding ways to put their stamp, and their values, on one of America’s biggest controversies, an issue that stirs alarm, confusion and compassion.

 

An ESL class

The controversy is immigration, pressing the nation to fix a system that oversees the more than 30 million foreign-born workers — about 11 percent of the U.S. population — now living here legally or illegally.

Churches are stepping in to put a human face on a messy political debate  about how (or whether) to grant legal status to more immigrants, acculturate them into American life, or increase deportations and secure the borders.

At Maxwell Street Church in Lexington, Ky., the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic serves 350 to 500 immigrants each year, answering questions, giving people hope. “We’re not doing it to make Presbyterians out of them but because God would have us do this,” says Marilyn Daniel, an attorney who is moderator of the Transylvania Presbytery and a director of for the clinic.

 

A family from the Nations Ministry Center

Since its start in 1999, the clinic has served 2,500 foreign-born people, mostly Hispanic, although the range of clients represents 60 countries, a hint at the sweeping diversity of today’s national immigration population. The clinic specializes in family-based immigration issues affecting low-income people who have nowhere else to go. Clients are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents who have questions about visas or the court system, or who hope to improve the legal status of family members, or who have wage claims or other grievances.

Services are free or low-fee. The issue hit home to Daniel a few years ago when an Africa-born woman came to the clinic deeply in debt with hospital bills and health problems and not knowing where to turn. When Daniel found her a bankruptcy attorney who could help her, the woman burst into grateful tears. Daniel recalls: “She cried out, ‘God really does love me!’ It certainly confirms that God does care through people who respond to these needs.”

But the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic, staffed full-time by an attorney, is a rarity. Most churches have no ministry to immigrants even though immigration is changing the American landscape, with consequences for church life.

The current immigration wave, in progress since 1965, is considered a historic era in the making, the third great wave of immigrants in the nation’s history. The other two were the period of 1830-50 and from 1880-1924. This one is different for four reasons.

 

“¢        This is the first massive immigration in U.S. history that has not been made up of white people from Europe.

 

“¢        This is the greatest movement of immigrants into the South in U.S. history, except for the forced migration of slaves between 1607 and 1807.

 

“¢        This immigration is happening in “second-tier” cities and smaller towns in the heartland, notably the South, challenging communities to meet the needs of newcomers across language barriers. The population of Nashville, for instance, is now 10 percent foreign-born. The Kentucky horse industry, observers say, would collapse if not for immigrant workers there.

 

“¢        A massive, coast-to-coast protest by legal and illegal immigrants last year against harsher deportation laws dramatized the scale of their presence and their passion for staying. The protests moved immigration to the forefront of the national agenda.

 

One issue is how to reform immigration law and create an orderly process for legalizing millions of illegal immigrants who have lived here and paid federal taxes for years. Currently, quotas for permanent residency are small, regulations are cumbersome, and backlogs of applicants are years behind. A typical challenge is the plight of immigrants who can no longer obtain a driver’s certificate under policies that demand specific proofs of legal status.

Without a driver’s certificate, they cannot get car insurance, and so thousands drive to work now as uninsured motorists. Some mothers, worried about getting caught, won’t drive their children to school. Instead, the kids walk long (and dangerous) distances.

So far, most congregations have been tentative about how to respond to the debate or make contact with the newcomers. Julia Thorne, legal counsel for the denomination’s Office of Immigration Issues, is blunt.

“There’s so much misinformation out there that spurs people to the wrong conclusions,” she says. “But there’s so much churches can do. Educate yourselves. Are we going to hole up in dying churches or reach out to the new community?” She points to churches nationally that have responded positively. The Presbyterian Women organization has made immigration a study theme through 2009.

At Center Hill Church in Birmingham, Ala., Mexico-born pastor Horacio Quiroz leads a Spanish-speaking service on Sunday afternoons for about 30 worshipers. His work puts the church at the center of the lives and ordeals of immigrants trying to adjust to U.S. bureaucracies.

“They come to us with problems,” he says. “There’s a lot to be done. It’s hard for many to open a checking account if they can’t get proper ID. We translate for them at the courthouse if there’s a traffic ticket. We go with them if they get an appointment with the consulate.”

With church-start experience in Arkansas and Texas, Quiroz came to Center Hill congregation last year to augment the church’s Hispanic ministry. Immigrants hear about the worship services from ESL (English as Second Language) classes that are taught at the church. Quiroz also gets the word out the old-fashioned way, knocking on doors at apartment complexes.

“I preach acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior and teach Scripture, and hear the needs of people and encourage everybody to help one another,” he says. “Churches that want to reach out need to learn about the challenges of immigrants, their cultures, how they survive without papers, and what the government should do. People might say, ‘they should go back.’ But there’s no chance of surviving back home. That’s why they came here, to provide for their families.”

Marie-Aimee Abizera, an immigrant from Rwanda, knows something about the disorientation and difficulty of the newcomer. She runs the Nations Ministry Center, based at First Church in Nashville. It tends to an ever-changing range of immigrant needs. The ministry and its volunteers offer English language classes, a clothes closet, summer camp, employment counsel, computer skills, rides to the hospital, help in filling out college applications, and help in managing the dizzying array of choices in American grocery stores.

“It’s hard to adjust to a new culture,” she says. “One thing people can do, or churches can do, is help them understand the dos and don’ts of living here, how to go to the store and buy baby formula and all the other things, and show them it’s not so hard after all.”

Nations Ministry Center was founded in 2002, and is aided by a small handful of local Presbyterian churches, but few others know much about it.

More of everything is needed, Abizera says. “You don’t need to know foreign languages to teach English to the immigrants. … Don’t let them feel so lonely. Invite them to church, invite them to tea. They’re used to living in countries where villages are filled with people always in community. Here people stay in their houses. Say hello. Love one another.”

 

Ray Waddle is a freelance writer presently residing in Bethel, Conn. He served as religion editor for the Nashville Tennessean for 17 years and is the author of two books. He is a regular columnist for The Presbyterian Voice.

LATEST STORIES

Advertisement