On May 1st 2006 I left work to show my solidarity with the plight of illegal immigrants in America. I am not to naïve to believe that I have a full understanding of all of the issues involved in the contentious debate around illegals, but having known people who have been deported to third world countries after having visas expire I understand the heart behind the desire to live in America.
I am a fifth generation American; my forefathers came from eastern European, from Czechoslovakia and the Ukraine to seek a better life in America. My great-great grandfather left a Jewish slum in the Ukraine and worked his passage to America on board an Italian ship bound for New York, then worked his way across the Northeast until he settled in Chicago to work in the stock yards.
In the Ukraine he was a skilled tradesman, but in Chicago he worked shoveling dung and helping to butcher the hundreds of thousands of cattle that would feed America at the turn of the century. My forefathers worked hard, and lived hard. They raised their children on the bare minimum, with the hope that their children would reap the benefits of their labor. Our family was lucky, as are many others that have immigrated to America over the past two hundred years. After a few generations some of us moved beyond blue collar work, received college educations and moved into the upper middle class; a very stark contrast with our poor ghetto roots.
It didn’t happen all at once, my maternal grandfather worked his entire adult life in a cannery, and my paternal grandfather worked as a carpenter building houses in the housing boom after WWII and continued to build houses until his retirement while buying a modest farm. Both of my grandfathers fought against the Japanese in World War Two, my maternal grandfather stormed the beaches in the Philippines and was wounded for this country. My father fought for our country in Vietnam.
What was the difference between my forefathers and those ‘illegal immigrants’ who now enter our country across barb-wired borders and hidden in container ships? They had the same desire for a better future, to give better opportunities to their children. They have the same work ethic, blue collar attitude. They came speaking different languages (and in the case of my family didn’t start using English for a generation or two). The difference is our laws.
I am honest about my roots. My family was poor, for the most part uneducated, uncivilized. They entered a country that at that time was racists against them (if you don’t believe me, go to the library and read some magazines from the turn of the century). Eastern Europeans were regarded with the same disdain that we now regard Mexicans. Before that it was the Italians, and before that the Irish… America has always had someone that they’d want to keep out, but for the most part it has been racially motivated. Several times the concept of ‘Caucasian’ has changed to include groups that were formerly excluded.
I believe that Illegal Immigration will be looked upon in future generations (pending rapture) as the ‘slavery’ of the 20th and 21st centuries. We treat illegals as little more than slaves. It’s one of those dirty little things that we need to keep our economy going, but we won’t emancipate them and give them the same rights and privileges as everyone else.
Some of the greatest Christian men in history stood up against the Goliath that was slavery in England and in the United States. Men of spiritual fortitude like William Wilberforce challenged the conventional accepted doctrine of the day –and in history they are heroes. Today we face similar issues, which side will the church take? Which side will the men of Christian conviction take in this pressing hour?
We need to have a biblical response to this issue in our country, not an Old Testament Judgment, we need to see these Mexican men, women and children through the eyes of Christ and desire for them the things that Jesus desires for them, which is to have a relationship with him and have the opportunity to worship him freely. We need to see these people as a harvest, not a plague!
