July 21, 2009

• “I Am Immigrant America”

  Believe it or not, but I have finally written something important (or so I think).  Last spring I was a member of our church’s minister’s Preaching Practicum class.  In this class, the minister tried to teach us how to write a sermon.  (We have many lay-led Sundays in our church.)

  I had always been interested in the class but avoided taking it because I felt that I had nothing important to say.  If you read the sermon I gave on July 19, 2009 below, you will see that I have some rather passionate opinions about current U.S. immigration policy.  Not only did I give the sermon, I organized the entire service (which we actually offered two times – once at 9:00 a.m. and again at 11:00 a.m.).

  Organizing the service was much easier for me than writing the sermon and standing up in church to give it, but I feel proud that I actually did it without freaking out in front of the congregation.  A member of the Worship Committee helped me a lot, especially since he handled the beginning of the service for me; i.e., parts like Welcome and Announcements.  The music director couldn’t have been more helpful and supportive.  My son-in-law read “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus for the Reading; my daughter read “A Day’s Work,” by Eve Bunting to the children for Family Focus.  I doubt any guest speaker has ever had such support from her family.

  We even had to rearrange the entire room in order for me to give the sermon, so that the fragrance-free section was in front.  The candle in the chalice was a little electric one, and we had Virtual Candlelighting (instead of lighting actual candles); all this was to accommodate my special asthmatic and allergic needs.  I feel grateful that the congregation went along with all this so willingly.

  Also, the minister was out-of-town on Sunday, but he could not have been more supportive of my service.  I know the sermon would not have been as good without his insightful suggestions, plus he always had time to help me with logistical problems.

  I am very fortunate.

  The sermon, with some of the identities masked and various links added, appears below.  It is pretty much what I actually said.  If anyone chooses to comment, please be polite.  You do not have to agree with me, but let’s keep it civilized; okay?  Thank you.

  Good Morning.

  Many of you probably do not know because my allergies and asthma force me to hide out in the protection of the fragrance-free section, but I have attended SMUUCh since 1993. This winter I was a member of Rev. Thom’s Preaching Practicum class. I thank him for sharing his expertise; I thank my classmates for their helpful input; I thank everyone who is helping with this morning’s service; and I thank you for allowing me to speak to you today.

  The philosopher George Santayana originated the phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” Today I will discuss how those who choose to forget or never learned about the past are surprised when history repeats itself.

  As you know, most of the people in this room do not descend from the oldest group of immigrants to the New World. The ancestors of the Native Americans crossed the land exposed in the Bering Strait between some 15 to 35 thousand years ago. In contrast to this, the first ancestors of those of European descent earliest New World arrived in the New World sometime during the past 500 years.

  When I decided to preach about immigration, I wanted to start in a place I know: my own family history. Those of you who know me are aware that I am interested in genealogy. But, don’t worry; my sermon will not be a myriad of details about who begot whom.

  My father’s ancestors mostly started arriving in America with the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Therefore, through the accident of circumstance, his family belonged to the class of people who made the rules of American society. These rules, of course, often hurt others who did not belong to this group. And, because of the custom of patrimony determining one’s so-called place in society, I belong, through no intrinsic merit of my own, to this privileged class.

  On the other hand, I can also count myself among the 50 per cent of present-day Americans who have at least one ancestor who passed through Ellis Island in New York City. My mother’s parents settled in the United States because of their lack of economic opportunities in Finland in the 1920s. Luckily for my existence, most Americans in the 1950s did not consider it wrong if a mostly Anglo-Saxon married a Finn

  Thus, I stand here today before you as an American of the privileged class who is half ethnic minority.
  The Immigration Justice Advocacy Movement, or IJAM, is one of the groups across the country sympathetic to unauthorized immigrants. Many of these groups held prayer vigils last May 12th. These vigils were intended to show that the immigrants rounded up in the federal government’s 2008 raid in Postville, Iowa were not forgotten. At the prayer vigil in Kansas City, IJAM handed out stickers, much like the ones given out to voters at the polling places. Instead of “I voted today,” IJAM’s stickers said, “I am Immigrant America.”

  I wish I had been clever enough to come up with that phrase. I think it describes us all perfectly. “I am Immigrant America,” and so is every other American.

  Last November many of you heard Rev. Thom’s sermon about my daughter’s husband, IMO. IMO left Mexico for the United States in 2000. In 2008, IMO re-entered the United States legally and is now a permanent resident. IMO, too, is Immigrant America.

  My life has been much richer culturally for all my past and present connections with recent immigrants.

  After my grandparents arrived in Chicago, they were eager to earn money, so they could pay their friends back for their travel expenses. Until 1924, a non-Asian immigrant who had a steamship ticket could enter the United States at Ellis Island if he or she passed the health examination. That was all that was required to enter the United States legally back then.

  I said “non-Asian” because of laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the so-called early twentieth-century gentlemen agreements between the governments of Japan and the United States. An exception to these racist laws was that wives and children could join their husbands and fathers in the United States. This will probably sound familiar, but some people from China and Japan arranged for false documents and entered the United States as “paper daughters and sons” of friends who had already immigrated.

  Today’s reading, Emma Lazarus’s famous poem “The New Colossus,” has promoted an image of a welcoming America in the minds of millions of schoolchildren. Unfortunately, the lofty ideals of the poem do not always resound in the hearts of many Americans, nor do they influence the actions of those who are anti-immigrant. What these xenophobic Americans fail to remember is that they, too, are Immigrant America.

  Even in my childhood, cocooned by native birth and white privilege, I learned about xenophobic prejudice. This prejudice still makes me mad. Grandma and Grandpa were good, hardworking people. Yet, some of the people, who by the accident of fate were born in the United States, chose to categorize my grandparents as unworthy simply because of their foreign birth and accented English.

  Consider this example. My grandparents wanted my mom to speak unaccented English, so the three of them spoke only Finnish at home. Therefore, my mom was three or four when she began to learn English while playing with the other children in the neighborhood.

  One day during my mother’s prekindergarten years, a very angry native-born mother accosted my grandmother and berated her for letting my mom teach the woman’s son all sorts of swear words. Grandma asked the neighbor what language the swear words were in.

  “Why, English, of course!” the woman replied.

  “Well,” Grandma said. “Your son must have taught my daughter the swear words because in our house we do all our swearing in Finnish.”

  Grandma and Grandpa managed to give the incident a humorous cast, but it is illustrative of the insults to which they were subjected . . . just because they were not born in America. And, this, in a country populated mostly by immigrants and their descendants! The illogic of this prejudice is inexplicable to me.

  Unfortunately, even in this so-called more enlightened time, my son-in-law has it worse. This man, whom I am proud to have as a family member, has been the object of racial and xenophobic prejudice more than once. For example, sometimes when IMO and I have been together on his business, the person we’re talking to has only spoken to me and not even looked at IMO. Needless to say, IMO transacts his business elsewhere. But, unfortunately, he has been treated even worse when he is not with one of his more Caucasian relatives.

  This is craziness, especially since many of IMO’s distant cousins were standing on the shores of America while the European ships carrying my ancestors were arriving. Many of his relatives were in North America first, yet the immigration policy established by people like my father’s relatives has repeatedly been to keep people like Ivan out.

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he wished that his children would be judged solely by the content of their character. This is quite a commendable idea, but some Americans still have very unfair ways of looking at the diversity of people this country is blessed to have.

  Grandpa could play any instrument by ear. In a perfect world, he would have attended music school. However, Grandpa was a man of hopes, not expectations. Grandpa did not complain about his lack of opportunities for formal education but instead satisfied his love for music by playing his mandolin or accordion at parties. However, Grandma and Grandpa both worked many long hours to ensure that my mother, their only child, had all the post-secondary education she needed to fulfill her dream of becoming a registered nurse.

  My son-in-law, who graduated from high school in his hometown in Mexico, did not know English when he arrived, just like my grandparents. IMO began work immediately, just like my grandparents, because he had to repay the money he borrowed to finance his risky entrance through the desert of the southwestern United States. IMO also sought economic opportunity, just like my grandparents, since no job was available at home to raise his family out of poverty.

  In a perfect world, IMO would already be an electrician. Instead, when he did not have the money to continue college, he worked many long hours to enable his brother to become a mechanic and thus obtain a good job in Mexico. IMO is still supporting his sister through college. Rev. Thom did not mention in his sermon last November that IMO and my daughter worked together to help put her through college first. She has been teaching English as a Second Language to elementary school students since the fall of 2007. So, finally, it was IMO’s overdue turn, and he began the first steps in his long deferred path to becoming an electrician.

  According to Chuck Wills in “Destination America: The People and Cultures That Created a Nation,” 43% of foreign-born residents of the United States during the 1990s were born in Mexico. Admittedly, many Mexicans come here without passports and visas. IMO belonged to this category in 2000. Unfortunately, IMO had no hope of obtaining a work visa for the United States because he did not fit into the preferred categories.

  A recent report issued by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, estimated that there are seven million unauthorized Mexican immigrants in the United States right now. This number does not include the Mexicans who died trying to elude our Border Patrol, nor does it include those who were caught and sent to detention.

  The current preferential restrictions for visas favor those with marketable skills, especially those who are extraordinary in their professions, such as professional baseball players. If these same rules had been in effect when my grandparents immigrated, they, each of whom had only six years of formal schooling, would also not have qualified for admittance to the United States. I daresay that the immigrant European ancestors of many present-day United States citizens also would have been denied entrance. Yet today their children and grandchildren can wear the “I am Immigrant America” stickers.

  The Unitarian Universalist Association has a social justice initiative called Standing on the Side of Love. Standing on the Side of Love calls for “national humane and just family-based immigration reform.” It also calls for an end to unjust raids and deportations. Many of you may remember that the UUA held a rally in Salt Lake City last month as part of the General Assembly.

  At IJAM’s April meeting, we met a young woman who is going through deportation. Some of her children were born here and only know life in the United States. She and her husband are presently agonizing over whether to split up the family in order to give the U.S.-born children a more economically advantageous life. This family’s pain is not difficult for my family to empathize with because we just barely escaped a similar situation.

  One of IJAM’s goals is to share the stories of unauthorized immigrants, so the community at large can see them as the real people they are and not just as statistics. It is important to remember that the stories of these recent immigrants are just like those of our forefathers and foremothers. It is only fair that the beneficiaries of the past offer our contemporaries the same opportunities. I agree with IJAM that the United States must reform its immigration policies.

  Most of you probably know that the red ribbon has become a symbol for both drug prevention and AIDS/HIV awareness. Locally IJAM has begun to use red ribbons in another way. In order to show solidarity in the movement toward comprehensive immigration reform, IJAM has begun distributing red ribbons. We’re supposed to tie one of these red ribbons in a knot, with the streamers dangling, around a tree in front of our homes. The hope is that our neighbors will ask us about the red ribbon and we can advocate for unauthorized immigrants. Once comprehensive immigration reform is enacted, the streamers are supposed to be tied into a bow.

  For those of you who would like a red ribbon, some are available from my husband in the foyer of the church after the service. Those of you with trees with large diameters in front of your homes may want to take two ribbons, knot them together, and then tie the longer ribbon around the tree in a knot; this will enable your ribbon to have actual dangling streamers.

  I hope many of you want to help. After all, we are all Immigrant America.

  • 9:58 am
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