Love the immigrant as yourself?

It's been a while since we blogged here. With all the noise, I don't like to add to it unless I feel I have something really important to say. With what we're seeing happen in our country with immigrants right now, the time has come. I have to say some things.

I want to tell you guys a story about an immigrant family that we sponsored for humanitarian parole, and then share some stats to combat the lies and misinformation being used by certain politicians to manipulate voters, including Christian ones. It grieves me deeply to see some of our brothers and sisters falling prey to a form of nationalism and xenophobia that does not embody the Gospel to the hurting and needy.

First, the story. 

I invite you to put yourself in the shoes of this family, and imagine how much bravery and strength and perseverance it would take for you to survive what they do.

A family from La Carpio, who shall remain nameless, contacted us to ask about the humanitarian parole program in 2023. This was a program developed to allow temporary legal immigration of two years for citizens of 4 countries beleaguered with violence, corruption, and economic destitution (Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua). The idea is to allow them to get a hand up by working in the U.S. for two years, to improve their situation upon their return home. These countries have suffered wars, despots, and gangs that have deprived their citizens of the opportunity for any kind of a life beyond subsistence. To qualify for parole, you need a US-citizen sponsor to vouch for you and your situation, and to accept financial responsibility so that you don't cost the government a penny (parolees are not eligible for any form of public assistance).

We agreed to sponsor this family, submitting mountains of paperwork to get them approved. They qualified, as the mother is a Nicaraguan citizen who lived in La Carpio from age 8 as a result of the dictatorship in Nicaragua. When she had her third child in 2007, her husband began the violence. When he threatened to kill her, she pressed charges, which only escalated the threats. She got help from the government's gender violence organization and a restraining order, but the assaults continued and by 2009, they were placed in a shelter so that he couldn't find them.

They stayed in shelter for a year, receiving counseling and trauma therapy. Upon arrival, no one could sleep from being terrorized, and they constantly were on the lookout for this man. Despite emotional recovery necessary, she also took advantage of the time to finish her high school degree so that she could better support her family. After that year, they had to return to La Carpio, since they did not have the financial resources to choose to live elsewhere. Once back in the community, this mother began to take classes as a vocational institute on a scholarship provided by our ministry, studying to be a legal assistant. They hoped the hardest time in their lives was over.

But an even harder time was coming. In 2019, it became dangerous for them to stay in La Carpio again when the single mother crossed the most vicious local gang. They were setting up a bunker (of drugs and guns) next door to her home. She didn't want their customers coming around and bringing danger, and the rival gangs attacking the area that included her family's home. Worried for her children and neighbors, she threatened to tell the police what they were doing if they didn't move along.  Most of her neighbors saw this as lunacy -- you don't threaten the gang under any circumstances if you want to live. But she had had enough, and finally snapped. She paid for her bravery with a gun in her face that, thankfully, failed to go off when the trigger was pulled by the gang-banger sent to kill her. That assassin was her own nephew.

Again, her family was evacuated from the community, this time by the witness protection services. Again, the kids were pulled from their schools and their social support systems. Life in La Carpio was hard, but it was, after all, all they knew. During this time, the whole family was given therapy and treated for anxiety. Her son developed depression and threatened to kill himself. Again, they lived in terror that the gang would find them and finish the job that her nephew failed to complete. She developed a rare facial paralysis from the stress and was hospitalized for two weeks. Despite the upheaval and disruption, her two daughters finished high school that year, and her son finished primary school.

After a year, they again had to return to the community. She returned with a GPS ankle bracelet, to help witness protection monitor her safety, and the police were sent regularly to patrol the area around her home. By 2022, the threats were continuing. Another nephew was now a leader in the gang, and they had a score to settle. The newspapers regularly wrote about this gang and their terrorizing of the community of La Carpio, citing the worst gang violence and death toll in the history of the community, and their ability to slip the police (or bribe them) to avoid prosecution. This gang told her to leave the community and go somewhere, anywhere else, or face the consequences.

This was when she contacted us to ask about help with humanitarian parole. Thankfully, the case was deemed "sufficient," after months of waiting and doubting, and wondering if they would live long enough to come to the US. Oddly, the letter didn't really say "approved" at all. They were to go ahead and come, and it would be at the discretion of a Border Patrol officer at the airport whether they would be admitted or not. They ran the apparent risk of spending all they had on plane tickets to get here, only to be turned around and sent back home upon entry.

About a year ago, they arrived, full of hope for a new life, and ready to work for it. They left behind extended family (grandmother, aunts/uncles, cousins), with kisses and tears and promises to send back money to help them. They each had one small suitcase. They used a portion of that space to bring some food from home, every immigrant's cure for homesickness. Thankfully, they were granted entry, and allowed to start a life from scratch, in a land where they didn't speak the language or know all the unspoken rules. They weren't here to grab hold of the American Dream or take people's jobs or prey on anyone else - they were here to survive. They do not want to deal with the difficulties of an international move to a foreign country any more than you would. The difference is that they had to.

We (and many of you!) helped them with work permits and other fees to get established, connected them to a church, helped them find housing (with no credit record or referrals!), furnished their new home with donated furniture, and drove them around to appointments, job interviews, and the market (no public transportation and no car is so hard for the newly arrived, AND those trying to help them!). The three adults found jobs, and the high school student went to school and started to get acclimated after several mental health crises in the first six months, after having another major life transition knock away everything familiar to him. After a hospital stay for him, his mother set up a monthly payment plan with the hospital since she had no insurance and did not qualify for Medicaid.

Just a few months into their parole, Trump was re-elected, promising to rid our country of the dangerous hordes of Central American migrants. I thought, "well, good thing this family came here legally... at least they won't be at risk of deportation." I reassured this family in their fear that someone would throw them out of the U.S., among all the vitriol about migrants being rapists and eating people's pets. I said, "You have been given permission to be here, and our government will not dishonor itself by changing its mind once you are here. They may not renew your parole at the end of the two years, but you will have the two years here, no problem." Then Trump cancelled their parole program and issued a mandate for expedited removal of over 500,000 legal immigrants on parole with no notice. They received an electronic notice that their parole would be cancelled in less than a month, their work permits cancelled, and that they were to leave the country at their own expense.

This family was terrified of being deemed illegal immigrants, or losing their jobs in shame when their work permits were cancelled. How could they leave? They didn't even have the money for plane tickets home. They didn't come here to be vilified as criminals. They began looking into other options. Could they apply for asylum? A judge suspended the cancellation temporarily, but no information was given about whether that extended their departure timeline or not. The date came and went, while I assumed that more time would have to be given to the people being forced out once the case was decided. This family lived in fear that they would be caught and deported. People under the same program at their workplaces began to lose their jobs. Every day, this family expected the call into the office to be fired next. Ultimately, the Supreme Court affirmed Trump's right to make the order. The new notice said that their stay and work permits were cancelled immediately. There was no recourse, due process, or ability to appeal the decision. They were officially rendered (against their will) undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation.

They have since spent every minute of every day trying to figure out how to keep their family safe, and every dime they could find to pay a sympathetic and affordable attorney to submit a petition for asylum. None of us have ever had to do this, or can understand what it takes out of a person. Now that they have a petition in progress, they are allowed to stay awaiting their hearing, but their work permits are not reinstated. Every week, they told me stories of the pregnant Haitian girl who was dismissed that day, or the kind Cuban friend that helped them with rides to work that had to leave the country. They worried every day that they would be next. If they lost their jobs, how would they survive here? How would they eat and pay rent and make their payments to the hospital and the lawyer, who agreed to a payment plan as well?

Then the worst happened. One lost her job three weeks ago. Mom lost her job last Friday. She spent this past week in ICU in the hospital after having emergency surgery for an aggressive infection. The surgeon says the stress of her life right now likely contributed to her body's inability to fight the infection. More hospital bills to figure out how to pay back on a payment plan, and less income to do it with.

This family lives day-to-day, now on only one income and whatever the other two can make informally, on a razor's edge of financial, physical and emotional disaster, with no access to credit or safety nets of any kind, because politicians pray on constituents' base fears of "the other" to get votes. Families like these are not here to harm anyone or take what is ours. They are here to work, often doing jobs Americans don't want anyway. But these jobs still need doing so that we can continue to live comfortably, eating out at our favorite restaurants, receiving our mail order deliveries, putting on our new roofs, harvesting our crops, sexing our chickens, or getting our houses cleaned and our children nannied.

This story makes me ashamed to be an American, ashamed that we would do this to any law-abiding human being. That my government would go back on its word, to vulnerable people who have lost everything to come here legally, who have survived everything that each of these immigrants has to get here, is reprehensible and morally bankrupt. There is no legitimate argument that can be made otherwise. The U.S. has done this not only to those here on humanitarian parole, but also to refugees approved for settlement, and with foreign aid programs that help to keep people thriving where they are so they don't have to migrate in desperation. Cutting those programs will only increase the pressure on our own doorstep. Our government lacks integrity and breaks its promises to vulnerable people in unforgivable ways without concern for the consequences to those people. People who did all the right things and followed all the rules. People who are braver and kinder and more hard-working than plenty of our own American citizens. 

Now for the statistics.

There is a lot of unsubstantiated rhetoric out there about immigration. Here are some facts: 

• Jobs: When Reagan amnesty gave green cards to 2.7 million undocumented people in 1986, wages went up, tax revenues increased, and crime went down 5%. When Mexican farm workers in the 1960s were sent back after a "guest worker" program, they were not replaced by American workers - they were replaced by technology and less labor-intensive crops. Unskilled migrants actually increase wages for the rest of us - for example, if we can have an immigrant nanny care for our children for a fraction of our income, we are freed up to work in a skilled position and make more money than we would caring for our children. For every three seasonal workers, one American job is created, either to manage them or to serve them in manufacturing and retail, because they become consumers too.

• Crime: Immigrants commit fewer (not more) crimes than native-born Americans. In Texas in 2016, the criminal conviction rate for citizens was 2.4 times that of illegal immigrants and 7.2 times that of legal immigrants. Incarceration rates for immigrant men in the 18-39 year old age group are a quarter of those for native-born men. For every 1% increase in the undocumented population, there are 49 fewer violent crimes per 100,000 people. 

• Work ethic: 86% of first-generation immigrant males participate in the labor force, a higher rate than the native-born. Immigrants are only 13% of the US population, but they started a quarter of all new businesses and won a third of all the Nobel prizes in science given to Americans. Of the 25 biggest tech companies in 2013, 60% of them were founded by immigrants or their children. Same with 43% of the Fortune 500 companies. In 2016, 83% of the winners of the Intel Int'l Science and Engineering Fair were children of immigrants. According to the Social Security Administration, undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion in payroll taxes in 2010 and received only $1 billion in benefits. Sounds like they (80% of immigrants are under 40) are propping up our aging population. Our economy does better, not worse, when we welcome immigrants.

• Miscellaneous: immigrants are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and cancer, experience fewer chronic health conditions, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of obesity, fewer functional health limitations, a lower prevalence of depression and alcohol abuse, and get divorced less.

If you find this information surprising, I recommend to you the excellent and well-researched book that they were pulled from: This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, by Suketu Mehta, an Indian American journalist. It was a Time magazine Top 10 nonfiction book of the year, and it's so enlightening, covering the reasons that immigrants come our way (many of them actually caused by us), why we are afraid of them (again, mostly because of our own false narratives), and why they should be welcomed instead. It's an important book to counter the made-up and hysterical claims of some of today's talking heads.

Finally, I leave you with a Scripture for those of us who are Christ followers: 
Leviticus 19:33-34: "When immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them. Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens. You must love them as yourself."

Would we do these things to Americans? Would we be okay with them being done to us? If we went to live in another country legally and were treated like this, wouldn't we be outraged and hurt and furious? Then we can't in good conscience be okay with the things being done right now, by our government, to others.