In November 2003, I attended a Mass in El Paso, Texas, along
the United States/Mexican border. We celebrated Mass in the dry,
rugged and sun-scorched terrain where the United States meets
Mexico. In this liturgy we remembered all the saints and all the
souls who have gone before us. We also remembered the thousands
of Mexican immigrants who died crossing over the border in the
last 10 years. Unlike other liturgies, however, a 16-foot iron
fence divided this community of believers in half, one side in
Mexico and the other side in the United States.
While Border Patrol agents and helicopters surrounded us and
kept a strict vigilance, lest any Mexicans cross over, we sang,
worshiped and prayed. We prayed for our governments. We prayed
for those who died. And we prayed to understand better our solidarity
as a people of God beyond our political constructions. I remember
in particular the sign of peace, when one normally shakes hands
or shares a hug with one's neighbor. Unable to touch my Mexican
neighbor except through some small holes in the fence, I became
painfully aware of the unity we celebrated but the divisions we
experienced.
A complex reality
For the last 15 years I have been talking to those involved
in the Mexican immigration drama. I have spoken to ranchers who
have seen their property trashed by immigrants who parade through
their land and leave behind water jugs, litter and discarded clothing.
I have spoken to educators and hospital administrators who feel
increasing financial pressure from the influx of newly arrived
immigrants. I have listened to Border Patrol agents tell stories
of being pinned down by gunfire from drug smugglers. I have seen
congressional leaders establish policies aimed at safeguarding
a stable economy and protecting the common good, especially since
September 11th. I have spoken to coyote smugglers, who guide people
across the treacherous terrain along the border and find some
profit in doing so. But most of all, I have spoken to immigrants
and heard hundreds of stories of what it is like to break from
home, cross the border and enter the United States as an undocumented
immigrant. I have tried to understand not only the physical terrain
of the immigrant journey but also the spiritual terrain of their
faith lives.
In speaking with these different groups along both sides of
the border, I have learned that each constituency believes it
has certain rights. Some speak of the right to private property,
American jobs, national security, civil law and order or a more
dignified life. Despite the legitimacy of each of these claims,
I have learned that not every claim has equal authority. From
a faith perspective, I have learned that those who suffer the
most deserve the greatest hearing, even though, ironically, their
voices are often the last to be heard, if at all. As some of the
most vulnerable members of society, immigrants themselves have
helped me see that whatever "rights" are at stake in this debate,
one of the most neglected is human rights. These rights have become
clearer as I have listened to immigrants tell their stories at
various points along the Mexican/American border, including detention
centers, hospitals, shelters, train stations, deserts, mountains,
and along rivers and highways and other places in Mexico and the
United States.
Their stories have helped me see that the journey of an undocumented
immigrant is a descent into the vast expanses of hell; they journey
toward a "promised land" through what author Luis Alberto Urrea
calls "the devil's highway."
The evolution of the Mexican-American border
Until the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, when
Mexico ceded what is now much of the southwestern United States,
people moved freely throughout the area that is now California,
Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. The border area remained
relatively porous and enforcement was relatively light through
most of the 19th century and 20th century. In 1924, the U.S. Border
Patrol was founded and began tightening the border through more
systematic enforcement efforts. In time, stricter border policies
emerged, especially in the 1980s when President Reagan declared
a war on drugs. This "war" made the border an increasingly militarized
zone, as American drug enforcement entities combated wealthy,
organized drug cartels for superiority in firepower and surveillance.
The devaluation of the Mexican peso in 1983 triggered an explosion
of foreign-owned factories along the Mexican side of the border.
U.S. companies took advantage of the exchange rate by moving their
assembly plants from the United States to Mexico in pursuit of
cheap labor. Hundred of thousands of Mexican citizens, many of
whom had lost their land due to Mexican agricultural policies,
came north to work in maquiladoras. In the last few years,
however, more than a quarter of these plants have closed, as companies
have discovered even cheaper labor in Asia. Hundreds of thousands
of jobs along the border have disappeared, digging the Mexican
economy into a deeper hole and making unemployment and underemployment
more the norm than the exception.
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration, fueled by anti-immigrant
sentiment that was brewing in California, further intensified
border control with such policies as "Operation Hold the Line"
in El Paso, Texas, and "Operation Gatekeeper" in San Diego. By
erecting walls and fences, by stationing border patrol agents
every quarter-mile along the border in the major urban areas,
and by the increased use of such military technology as drone
planes, infrared technology and motion sensors, crossing outside
of normal ports of entry became much more difficult. This, by
design, has significantly raised the stakes of migrating illegally.
While policies like "Operation Gatekeeper" were meant to deter
immigrants from crossing illegally, they have not changed the
flows at all but merely redirected migrants into the more life-threatening
territory of mountains and deserts, where temperatures can exceed
120 degrees in the shade. Many will walk 50 miles or longer in
treacherous conditions. Because it is physically impossible to
carry the food and water necessary for this type of trek, many
do not make it. I realized how extreme this journey was when one
day a coyote offered me a "scholarship" so that I could see what
the journey was like. Instead of paying the going rate of $1,800
to take me across the border, he said he would "teach" me what
it was like for free:
We'll walk for three or four days, and all you will have with
you are a few tortillas, some sardines and water. The food is
so bad you won't want to eat, and you will get so tired you won't
think you are going to make it. If you push on you can do it,
but if you fall behind we will leave you behind. And you should
wear high heel leather boots, because we come across rattlesnakes
in the desert at night, but if you have the right boots on, the
snake's teeth won't penetrate your skin and you'll be okay.
Every day immigrants dehydrate in deserts, drown in canals,
freeze in mountains and suffocate in tractor trailers. As a result
the death toll has increased 1,000 percent in some places. One
immigrant named Mario said to me, "Sure I think about the dangers.
I think about them all the time. But I have no choice if I am
going to move forward with my life. The fact is, amidst the poverty
in Mexico, I am already dead. Crossing the desert gives me the
hope of living, even if I die."
If they make it across the border, most immigrants will work
at low-paying jobs that no one except the most desperate wants.
They will de-bone chickens in poultry plants, pick crops in fields
and build houses in construction. As one person in Arizona noted,
"It looks like entering the U.S. through the desert as undocumented
immigrants do is some kind of employment screening test administered
by the U.S. government for the hospitality, construction and recreation
industries." Willing to work at the most dangerous jobs, an immigrant
a day will also die in the work place, even while for others the
work place has become safer over the last decade. Immigrants die
cutting North Carolina tobacco and Nebraska beef, chopping down
trees in Colorado, welding a balcony in Florida, trimming grass
at a Las Vegas golf course and falling from scaffolding in Georgia.
With an economic gun at their backs, they leave their homes
because hunger and poverty pushes them across the border. As Mario
told me in an immigration detention center:
Sometimes my kids come to me and say, "Daddy, I'm hungry." And
I don't have enough money to buy them food. And I can't tell them
I don't have any money, but I don't. I can barely put beans, potatoes
and tortillas on the table with what I make. But I feel so bad
that I sometimes will go into a store, even if it is two or three
blocks away, or even three or four kilometers away, or even another
country in order to get food for my family. I feel awful, but
nothing is worse than seeing your hungry child look you in the
eyes, knowing you don't have enough to give them.
Immigrants are pushed by economic poverty, pulled by the hope
of a better life in the United States and blocked by an iron wall
on the border. It is ironic that many Americans hailed the crumbling
of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and mourned the death of the 250 or
so people who died in 28 years, but many others have stood idle
as we have constructed a wall between Mexico and the United States,
even while 3,000 immigrants have died trying to migrate to this
country over the last 10 years.
Crossing the borders of our own minds
Despite the difficulties immigrants undergo in crossing the border,
perhaps the more difficult borders to cross today are the borders
of our own minds, especially those that guard our deep-seated
biases and prejudices, and those we put up when we encounter someone
we consider to be totally "other." Mexican immigrants bear some
of the worst of the stereotypes in today's society. They are often
looked at as illegal, non-taxpaying leaches who suck dry the funds
of the local communities while they sell drugs, commit crimes
and take jobs away from Americans. Some even lump immigrants into
the same category as terrorists, without ever realizing that the
terrorists of September 11th came in with legal visas and never
even came through the southern border. Nonetheless, in the popular
mind immigrants are perceived as a menace to the common good and
the preservation of "American" culture. (People who make this
argument fail to realize that European-Americans took away "American
culture" years ago, culminating in the last battle at Wounded
Knee against the Sioux Indians in 1890.)
Many immigrants begin to internalize some of the ways contemporary
society typecasts them. "We are constantly reminded that we are
less than everybody else," said Lydia, "that we are poor, that
we don't have an education, that we don't speak right, that we
are lesser human beings in one way or another. Sometimes, we even
begin to wonder whether God thinks that way about us too."
The more challenging road for many of those who are not immigrants
often means unlearning the negative stereotypes and seeing more
clearly the inner worth, dignity and respective contributions
that immigrants bring to this country.
A Day Without a Mexican
"Our nation virtually posts two signs on its southern border:
'Help Wanted: Inquire Within' and 'Do Not Trespass,"' says Pastor
Robin Hoover of Humane Borders. Without the help of immigrant
labor, the U.S. economy would virtually collapse. We want and
need cheap, immigrant labor, but we do not want the immigrants.
A few years ago, the documentary A Day Without a Mexican
tried to show what the U.S. economy would look like if there were
no Mexicans working here. There would be no maids in hotels. No
people to wash dishes in restaurants. No landscapers to mow grass.
No cheap hands to do construction. No one to pick vegetables in
the field. As a result, lettuce would cost more than $8 a head,
industries would shut down, various sectors of the economy would
be paralyzed. Even though the U.S. economy needs these immigrants,
and even though multinational corporations profit from their labor,
these immigrants are not afforded the same opportunities or open
door that some immigrants experienced in previous generations.
Instead of hospitality and openness, many immigrants find rejection,
hostility and fear.
Today, immigrants might be greeted by vigilante groups and civilian
border patrols who hunt them down, treat them like animals and
even threaten to kill them. In parts of the Southwest, racist
violence runs deep in such groups as the Civil Homeland Defense,
Ranch Rescue and American Border Patrol (not to be confused with
the U.S. Border Patrol). "If I had my way," one rancher reportedly
bellowed at a meeting with U.S. Border Patrol officials, "I'd
shoot every single one of 'em."
The fact is most immigrants are not stealing jobs from Americans;
they are doing work that other Americans do not want to do. Moreover,
not only are immigrants not a drain on the U.S. economy, but they
contribute with direct and indirect taxes. Immigrants collectively
pay more than $90 billion in taxes, yet many immigrants are afraid
to use social services for fear it will expose their undocumented
status.
Nonetheless, like previous immigrants from Ireland, Germany,
eastern Europe, China and Japan, these Mexican immigrants are
often valued for their cheap labor but are not afforded the human
rights due to them as contributing members of society, notes Jorge
Bustamante '70M.A., '75Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Notre
Dame They become a "disposable commodity" when they are no longer
useful. It is here in particular that the scriptures and Catholic
social teaching have had something important to say.
The relationship of immigration to revelation
According to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, immigration
is not simply a sociological fact but also a theological event.
God revealed his Covenant to his people as they were in the process
of immigrating. This Covenant was a gift and a responsibility;
it reflected God's goodness to them but also called them to respond
to newcomers in the same way Yahweh responded to them in their
slavery: "So you too must befriend the alien, for you were once
aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19).
Building on this same foundation, Catholic social teaching has
reiterated that the true moral worth of any society is how it
treats its most vulnerable members. John Paul II has consistently
underscored the moral responsibility of richer nations to help
poor nations, particularly with regard to more open immigration
policies. While some in America claim these undocumented immigrants
have no right to be here, the church believes that a person's
true homeland is that which provides a migrant with bread.
I remember talking to Moises in Tijuana. He told me he wanted
to come to the United States because he could barely put food
on the table with what he earned in Mexico. He said his ambition
was simply to provide "bread" for his family. A few miles away,
on the other side of the border, I was walking near a popular
resort hotel on Coronado Island. There I met a woman who said
she had come to the area because she was looking for a "specialty
bread" she could not find anywhere else. The contradictions of
the moment were striking. One need only to drive along the border
to see, in the same visual glimpse, the striking contrast between
the United States and Mexico, between the First World and the
Third.
The Catholic church recognizes the right of a nation to control
its borders, but it does not see this as an "absolute right,"
nor does it see sovereign rights as having priority over basic
human rights. While acknowledging the ideal of people finding
work in their home country, the church teaches that if their country
of birth does not afford the conditions necessary to lead a fully
human life, persons have a right to emigrate.
While border reform does not mean naively opening our borders
to everyone, as if there were no need to take into account other
political and socioeconomic factors, the church does put human
life at the forefront of the discussion. A community of faith
reflects on the fact that when it comes to commerce, we have borders
that are becoming more and more open. When it comes to labor,
however, we have borders that have become more and more restrictive.
In brief, we have created a society that values goods and money
more than human beings and human rights, which contradicts the
biblical narrative.
The gospel vision challenges the prevailing consumerist mentality
of American culture, which sees life as an endless accumulation
of goods, even while the rest of the world suffers. Jesus in his
life and ministry went beyond borders of all sorts -- clean/unclean,
saintly/sinful and rich/poor -- including those defined by the
authorities of his own day. In doing so, he called into being
a community of magnanimity and generosity that would reflect God's
unlimited love for all people. He called people "blest" not when
they have received the most but when they have shared the most
and needed the least. Christians, as such, distinguish themselves
not by the quantity of their possessions but the quality of the
heart, which expresses itself in service. Above all, this quality
of the heart is measured by the extent to which one loves the
least significant among us.
Many immigrants sit at America's door like Lazarus, hoping for
scraps to fall from the U.S. table of prosperity. They are seeking
not simply charity but justice. In Matthew, Jesus says,
"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave
me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed
me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." The
corollaries to the immigrant experience are striking. Hungry in
their homelands, thirsty in the treacherous deserts they cross,
naked after being robbed at gunpoint by bandido gangs,
sick in the hospitals from heat-related illnesses, imprisoned
in immigration detention centers and, finally, if they make it
across, estranged in a new land, they bear many of the marks of
the crucified Christ in our world today.
In part because of the Catholic church's lack of outreach to
Hispanic immigrants, it is not surprising that one out of five
Hispanics has left the church in the last 30 years. This crisis
has also been one of the reasons Notre Dame has created an Institute
for Latino Studies. Led by Gilberto Cardenas '72M.A., '77Ph.D., the institute studies
critical issues facing Latinos in the United States. Beyond addressing
the bleeding of Hispanics from the Catholic church, however, Notre
Dame felt a moral obligation to reach out to Hispanics, as it
had reached out to the Irish and other immigrant groups, and to
help them develop a sense of dignity and pride about their culture
and to help prepare them to become leaders in both church and
society of the United States and the world.
The institute's Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture examines
the theological dimensions of Latinos, many of whom are greatly
affected by the issue of immigration. As John Paul II notes:
"The immediate reasons for the complex reality of human
migration differ widely; its ultimate source, however, is the
longing for a transcendent horizon of justice, freedom and peace.
In short, it testifies to an anxiety which, however indirectly,
refers to God, in whom alone humans can find the full satisfaction
of all his expectations."
And the U.S. bishops recently released a document where they
sought "to awaken our peoples to the mysterious presence of the
crucified and risen Lord in the person of the migrant and to renew
in them the values of the Kingdom of God that he proclaimed."
It is on the margins where migrants live that the church is born.
Many immigrants offer a compelling witness of faith. I remember
meeting Maria, who came north from Guatemala and wanted to work
in the United States for only two years, then return home to her
family. I met her on the Mexican side of the border just before
her third attempt. In the previous 10 days she had tried twice
to cross over the border through a remote route in southern Arizona.
On her first attempt, she was mugged at the border by bandito
gangs. Though bruised and beaten, she continued her journey through
the desert and ran out of food. Just before she reached the road,
she was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol and put in an immigration
detention center. A few days later she tried again. This time,
her coyote smuggler tried to rape her, but she managed to free
herself and push her way through the desert once again. After
four days of walking, she ran out of food, water and even strength.
The border patrol found her, helped her and then sent her back
to Mexico.
I was curious about how Maria dealt with these trials before
God. "If you had 15 minutes to speak to God," I asked her, "what
would you say?" I thought she would give him a long litany of
complaints. Instead, she told me, "I do not have 15 minutes to
speak to God. I am always conversing with him, and I feel his
presence with me always. Yet, if I saw God face to face, the first
thing I would do is thank him, because God has been so good to
me and has blessed me so abundantly." Maria, and many others like
her, have reminded me that true faith reveals itself not during
prosperity but adversity.
The Catholic church itself affirms, again and again, that we
are one body in Christ. In the Eucharist, the church protests
against the walls and barriers we set up between ourselves. If
"migration" worked itself into the self-definition of all people,
we might then realize that before God we all live in the same
country, we all live on the same side of the fence. In reality,
death is the ultimate border, the journey of faith is the
ultimate migration, and God is the ultimate Promised Land. Christ
teaches that we will be able to cross over this final border to
the extent that we have been able to cross over the smaller borders
in this life and see interconnectedness to each other.
Although Latinos have had roots in the United States for centuries,
countless Latinos (many of whom are immigrants) fight for what
the Irish did only a few generations ago. Throughout Notre Dame's
history, its students often were from immigrant families. In particular,
the University became a place where the Irish -- discriminated
against in mainstream society -- came to get an education and
move their way up the social ladder. Most Latinos today are seeking
what the Irish sought in America: a more dignified life, political
or religious freedom and a decent standard of living that raises
them above the oppressive tide of poverty. Notre Dame today has
the same opportunity to reach out, educate and empower the children
of Latino immigrants, just as it the Irish immigrants more than
a century ago.
Father Groody is an assistant professor of theology at Notre
Dame, director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture
at the Center for Latino Studies, and the author of Border
of Death, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit.
(October 2004)
