It’s Becoming a Movement
It started as a bunch of protest rallies in different cities. This past weekend (and today) it looks like it’s becoming a movement. The rallies in support of immigration reform are spreading and growing. Even here in the good, old upper Midwest, 30,000 marched in St. Paul. And they didn’t gather at the Capitol. They gathered at an even better place- the Cathedral.

There is a real scary sense of anti-foreigner going on right now that disturbs me greatly. We have become afraid of the “outsider.” This is not new, of course. The Irish and the Germans and the East European Jews (among others!) all faced similar issues and attempts at controlling their immigration into the US. The economy of the country is built on the need for new workers coming in and filling jobs other more long-time resident groups don’t want to do any more. It is true today.

This current uproar against immigration is scary because it is coming at a time of national security sentiment (important!) but it ignores the fact that many, many, many of the10 million undocumented immigrants have come here for the same reason we all have- security and a chance to make something of themselves. They are hard workers without whom we would not be able to have such a standard of living.

But even more importantly, they are people seeking hope. We have to find some way of working with them or the words on the Statue of Liberty will become a bit of history that has no relevance to the United States of the 21st Century.

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Don’t put out that lamp or close that golden door!