{"id":1972,"date":"2013-03-10T17:35:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T00:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2013-03-10T17:35:37","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T00:35:37","slug":"march-10-2013-whats-on-your-mind-im-an-immigrant-youre-an-immigrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2013\/03\/10\/march-10-2013-whats-on-your-mind-im-an-immigrant-youre-an-immigrant\/","title":{"rendered":"March 10, 2013, "What's on YOUR Mind? I'm an Immigrant. You're an Immigrant!""},"content":{"rendered":"

Message 124, \u201cWhat\u2019s on YOUR Mind? I\u2019m an Immigrant.\u00a0 You\u2019re an Immigrant!\u201d, 3-10-13\"immigrants\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

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To listen to this message, please download here:<\/p>\n\n

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To listen to a message related song, ‘Rainbow Race’, performed by Ron Jandacek, please download here:<\/p>\n\n

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What do the following people all have in common?\u00a0 Elizabeth Arden, James Audubon, Irving Berlin, Sergey Brin – the founder of Google, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, David Hockney – a gay painter and artist, Aldous Huxley, John Lennon, Art Linkleiter, Joni Mitchell, Rupert Murdock – the owner of Fox News, John Muir, Joseph Pulitzer, Man Ray – an esteemed gay photographer, Knute Rockne, Igor Stravinsky, Lee Strasburg, Alex Trebek, Rudolph Valentino, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Bruce Willis and Neil Young…………to name just a few.<\/p>\n

Since you know the subject of this message, you have likely guessed that all of these individuals were immigrants to the U.S.\u00a0 It is unimaginable how different our nation would be had they not been able to immigrate here and become citizens.\u00a0 Indeed, most of us<\/span><\/i><\/b> would be very, very different – if we had been born at all – were it not for our own immigrant ancestors.\u00a0 I have a prized Bible owned and signed by my maternal great, great, great grandfather who immigrated here from England in 1832.\u00a0 On my father\u2019s side, I\u2019m descended from a long line of German stock.\u00a0 It\u2019s assumed some distant ancestor changed his name from the Germanic Schlegel to a more simple Slagle – perhaps persuaded to do so by Ellis Island immigration officials who often did not like complicated last names.\u00a0\u00a0 Like most of you, I am an All-American mutt – an amalgamation of many immigrant strains.\u00a0 While I am native born, the DNA of foreign peoples and distant cultures make up who I am.\u00a0 I\u2019m an immigrant.\u00a0 You are too.<\/p>\n

While many immigrants and most likely those whom I just cited came here or entered the U.S. with the permission of our government, a larger question remains why historically there has existed a distrust and dislike of immigrants.\u00a0 Today, the question is posed about what our nation should do with the approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants – those who are not here with official permission.<\/p>\n

Our topic today, as suggested by Don Fritz as a part of this month\u2019s message theme \u201cWhat\u2019s on YOUR Mind?\u201d, asks us to consider why our attitude as a nation regarding race, religion or immigrant status is often based on a fear of the other.\u00a0\u00a0 People who are different from the majority population, people who believe, look or act contrary to what is perceived to be a white, protestant and often male identity are often mistreated, shunned and excluded.\u00a0 Many of those who decry the number of undocumented people in our nation sincerely see them as a national threat – those who take jobs and use the benefits of our schools, hospitals and social welfare systems.\u00a0 But underlying such honest attitudes is a subconscious fear.\u00a0 As Bertrand Russell, a famous author, once said, \u201cCollective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.\u201d<\/b> <\/b>\u00a0We perceive safety in those who are most like us and danger in those who are different.\u00a0 Our fears then ignite angry and vindictive passions against the other.<\/p>\n

Indeed, this fear of the other is a human phenomenon and not just one of some Americans.\u00a0 We all tend to fear and thereby distrust and mistreat the other.\u00a0 Working class people disdain senior management as \u201csuits\u201d who never get their hands dirty.\u00a0 Many condemn people with wealth as thieves who prey on the poor and have run amok with greed.\u00a0 Managers look down on laborers as those with dirty fingernails.\u00a0 Urban elites consider those who live in rural areas as \u201ctrailer trash\u201d or, even worse, \u201cwhite trash.\u201d\u00a0 Gays label straight people as breeders while straights call homosexuals fags, dykes or worse.\u00a0 Northerners scorn those in the south and vice versa.\u00a0 Residents of the two coasts – in California and New England – look down on people in the mid-west.\u00a0 Middle America is called flyover territory and its people are rubes and culturally primitive.\u00a0 The Japanese often depict monsters in their children\u2019s books with round, blue eyes.\u00a0 Our children\u2019s monsters often have slant eyes.\u00a0 Liberals see conservatives as heartless, dull and dim-witted.\u00a0 Conservatives label progressives as elitists who pander to laziness and only want to spend other people\u2019s hard earned money.\u00a0 Muslims are all wild eyed terrorists.\u00a0 Jews are money hungry.\u00a0 Catholics have too many children and are under the sway of the Vatican.\u00a0 Evangelicals are religious zealots and Atheists are simply evil.\u00a0 Immigrants are lazy, dumb, dirty and brown skinned.\u00a0 Far too often we tell jokes at the expense of other groups.\u00a0 We distrust, stereotype and dislike anyone who is not like us – the other.<\/p>\n

There is a story of two villages in Ireland that are only six miles apart.\u00a0 And yet the residents of each village despise those in the other.\u00a0 They do not mingle and the depths of their feelings border on hate.\u00a0 The trivial reason for their animosity dates back to the year 1066 when William the Conqueror came through Ireland.\u00a0 His forces attacked one village and burned it to the ground.\u00a0 That village did not warn the other.\u00a0 And so these two villages, over a thousand years later, still deeply hate the other.<\/p>\n

We see the same in India where the Dalits, or untouchables, are relegated to the lowest caste or class level.\u00a0 They are permitted to work only in the worst of jobs – cleaning sewers, collecting garbage, spreading animal waste as fertilizer.\u00a0 Socially, they are excluded from the rest of society.\u00a0 They are among the poorest of the poor in our world and yet there is no outward or rational reason for their mistreatment other than they were born to parents also of the untouchable caste.<\/p>\n

As likely as I am to react in horror when I hear of racism or intolerance, I must quickly realize I am often no better.\u00a0 I too can be suspicious of people who are different from me.\u00a0 I too can fear them.\u00a0 I too fall far short of what my heart yearns for me to be – a person who always shows respect and compassion to anyone and everyone.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of our attitudes towards immigrants and especially undocumented immigrants is that we know better.\u00a0 As a so-called Christian nation, we know we are called to have compassion for the poor, the outcast, the weak.\u00a0 Sadly, too much of the antipathy towards undocumented immigrants comes from people of faith.\u00a0 Ralph Reed, a well known evangelical leader, echoed the thoughts of many conservative Christians.\u00a0 According to him, undocumented immigrants are criminals.\u00a0 As he interprets the Bible, only the so-called law abiding immigrants deserve our understanding, empathy and compassion.\u00a0 Sadly, in a Pew research poll, a majority of African-American church members hold similar views.\u00a0 The undocumented immigrant should be deported.\u00a0 Ironically, this is the result of how our nation has pit people at the low end of our economy against each other.<\/p>\n

As a nation that has prided itself for its spiritual beliefs, we\u2019re called to have empathy and understanding for the immigrant.\u00a0 Not only are we asked to understand their desperate situation, Americans above all people should understand and embrace any immigrant.\u00a0 We each have immigrant blood in us.\u00a0 Most Americans are descendants of people who arrived on these shores desperate, poor, and hungry.\u00a0 Our forebears indeed saw America as a promised land – a place of freedom and economic vitality.\u00a0 They came not with material wealth but with an abundance of courage and diligence.\u00a0 The undocumented immigrants of today are just like them and, as a result, just like us.\u00a0 The hopes that compel someone to risk their lives to take long treks across barren deserts or cross hundreds of miles over open ocean to live in the U.S. are the same hopes that compelled my English and German ancestors to come here.\u00a0 Had they not had that inner bravery and drive, I would not be here.\u00a0 If we are the progeny of huddled masses yearning to breathe free and reap the opportunity of a vibrant economy, then we are essentially no different from ANY immigrant today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We have NO reason to fear them.\u00a0 Indeed, we have every reason to empathize and celebrate them.\u00a0 They are us and we are them.\u00a0 I\u2019m an immigrant and so are you.<\/p>\n

While that is figuratively true, it is also literally true.\u00a0 Immigrants to our nation are in many ways just like most Americans.\u00a0 Over 74% of all immigrants to the U.S. – documented and undocumented – are Christian.\u00a0 They are what is driving whatever growth there is in American churches.\u00a0 They are also sustaining our national birth rate by helping to keep it at a level where the U.S. is replacing those who die.\u00a0 Without their numbers, our population would be in decline, depriving our nation of future workers and taxpayers to support an aging demographic.<\/p>\n

And, contrary to popular belief, undocumented immigrants pay taxes.\u00a0 Over thirteen billion dollars were paid by undocumented workers into the Social Security and Medicare funds in 2009, the last year when figures are available.\u00a0 Those wage earners will never see that money.\u00a0 Such payments continue today as most undocumented workers are able to obtain fake Social Security cards since they are necessary in order to find work.\u00a0 Billions of additional taxes are also paid by undocumented immigrants in the form of gas, sales, income and indirect property taxes.<\/p>\n

Undocumented immigrants also help keep many of our product costs low.\u00a0 By working in low pay jobs in agriculture and food service, we each reap the benefit of far reduced prices for agricultural produce and restaurant meals.\u00a0 If anything, our nation takes advantage of the undocumented instead of the other way around.<\/p>\n

Another persistent myth is that immigrant populations don\u2019t assimilate by learning English or adopting American cultural practices.\u00a0 While adults who immigrate often prefer many of the cultural practices they remember from home, it is their children and grandchildren who rapidly acculturate.\u00a0 Such has been shown throughout American immigration history.\u00a0 By the second or third generations in immigrant families, a vibrant blending of cultures takes place.\u00a0 Some practices of the old culture are still practiced but language, attitudes, dress and even social views quickly become Americanized.\u00a0 Most second and third generation immigrant populations hold social and political views nearly identical to the majority population.\u00a0 Attitudes toward gays and women among Muslim and hispanic immigrants under the age of 30 largely reflects their native born peers.\u00a0 Far from being locked into the conservatism from which they came, they identify and empathize with other people on the margins of life.<\/p>\n

That is what is unique about our nation.\u00a0 It\u2019s why we\u2019re called a melting pot.\u00a0 Since we are ALL essentially immigrants, we are not tied to old world ways and traditions.\u00a0 We innovate.\u00a0 We think outside the box.\u00a0 Our vibrant diversity is a strength.\u00a0 It\u2019s never been a weakness.<\/p>\n

Despite the many facts about why we should embrace undocumented immigrants, our attitude towards them indicates a poverty<\/span><\/i><\/b> in our souls.\u00a0 In Jewish, Christian and Muslim Scriptures, treatment of the outsider, the stranger, the visitor and the alien is considered a benchmark of goodness.\u00a0 Hospitality is a virtue.\u00a0 Muhammad was a migrant himself who sought kindness in new cities.\u00a0 He implored the faithful to \u201cdo good unto the neighbor from among your own people, and the neighbor who is a stranger and to the wayfarer…\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 The Jewish book of Leviticus commands, “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born.\u00a0 Love him or her as yourself.”\u00a0 <\/b>Indeed, the Jewish faith ought to have a special affinity for immigrants since Jews, according to their religious history, were mistreated strangers in Egypt.\u00a0 As a people, they were without a homeland for two millennia.\u00a0 They suffered the scorn of host countries and the holocaust all due to a hatred of their perceived otherness.\u00a0 American antipathy toward Jews even played a role in the holocaust.\u00a0 Congress in 1929 shut the door on immigration – particularly Jewish immigration.\u00a0 Indeed it was the National Origins Act of 1929 that coined the nasty phrase \u201cillegal immigrant\u201d – one that brands someone a criminal for the mere desire to live free and survive.\u00a0 While Americans did not know it at that time, our anti-semitism in 1929 echoed a more hateful strain in Europe.\u00a0 American closed doors to immigration prevented thousands of Jews from coming to the U.S. during the 1930\u2019s when escape from Germany was still possible.\u00a0 In one infamous episode in 1939, the MS St Louis, full of Jewish exiles, was forbidden from docking and forced to turn around even as it was in sight of the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n

Like the Jewish people, Christians have no Biblical excuse for their anti-immigrant attitudes.\u00a0 In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that those who hope to enjoy the approval of God should act in this way: \u201cI was a stranger and you invited me in…Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Indeed, the Christian New Testament tells us that our citizenship is not of this world.\u00a0 As a vision for a perfect earth, according to the Biblical book of Revelation, people from all over the earth, of every tribe, nation and language will one day unite together as one body for all eternity.<\/p>\n

The implied lesson from world religions is that we are not to shun the immigrant.\u00a0 Ethics of compassion, respect and tolerance for the migrant are taught.\u00a0\u00a0 When Jesus declared that the kingdom of God is here on earth, he encouraged a kingdom of goodness, compassion, and kindness.\u00a0 We all belong to this kingdom.\u00a0 We are to help build a kingdom of goodness.\u00a0 We\u2019re not American, Mexican or Chinese as much as we are simply people.\u00a0 We\u2019re not to be divided by our differences but celebrated for them.\u00a0 We are of the same human family, children of God, each person wonderfully and beautifully made.<\/p>\n

I do not expect our nation or any other to be so naive as to throw open their borders.\u00a0 Poverty, discrimination and oppression exist in far too many places around the world thus making us a beacon for would-be immigrants.\u00a0 But, there are practical ways to address immigration problems.\u00a0 Solutions are too complicated to discuss at length.\u00a0 But we can start with empathy and compassion towards those who are here now.\u00a0 We can start by demanding employers pay living wages for low-skilled, physically demanding jobs.\u00a0 That will encourage more native born citizens to seek such work and thus reduce the incentive for employers to hire and lure undocumented workers as a source of cheap labor.\u00a0 This will require sacrifice on everyone\u2019s part.\u00a0 No longer can we expect cheap labor and the resulting cheap product costs.\u00a0 No longer can we expect to pay low prices for agricultural goods.<\/p>\n

Many who have studied this issue propose we establish an effective guest worker program whereby people of other nations can enter the U.S. legally, work legally, pay taxes and enjoy the benefits our nation.\u00a0 The number of guest worker permits can be limited to an amount necessary to fill jobs native born citizens don\u2019t fill.\u00a0 For those guest workers who faithfully work under this program, they can then earn citizenship for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

So too can we help encourage greater development in other nations.\u00a0 Indeed, when Mexico\u2019s economy does well, immigration from that nation dramatically declines.\u00a0 Investment and assistance to other nations must not be seen as charity.\u00a0 Foreign aid offers direct benefits to us.<\/p>\n

Most of all, we might all change our attitudes and thoughts about those who are different from us.\u00a0 We might also change our thoughts about economic resources in our nation and see them not as limited but, instead, as expansive.\u00a0 This leads me to my subject for next Sunday – how by reorienting our thinking about wealth, we can help build our dream of a more just and economically vital nation for everyone.\u00a0 We need not think that if a few are well-off, others must naturally be poor.\u00a0 That is a mindset of limited resources that leads to greed.\u00a0 Instead, we can find ways for everyone to do better – not just a few.\u00a0 That vision of wealth for everyone through cooperation instead of competition is moral imagination at work.\u00a0 When I help you do better, I in turn do better too.\u00a0 This attitude prevents the \u201cus versus them\u201d competitive mindset.\u00a0 It will allow us to open our hearts and our borders to more and more immigrants.<\/p>\n

That, my friends, is a vision we can aspire to realize.\u00a0 We need not fear the other.\u00a0 We need not separate ourselves by our differences.\u00a0 We can, instead, come together in cooperation not just in America but around the world – people who live together in a paradise of our own making, shaped not by fear but by love.\u00a0 I\u2019m an immigrant.\u00a0 You\u2019re an immigrant.\u00a0 Together, let us venture to a new land of tolerance and opportunity for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Message 124, \u201cWhat\u2019s on YOUR Mind? I\u2019m an Immigrant.\u00a0 You\u2019re an Immigrant!\u201d, 3-10-13 (c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved   To listen to this message, please download here:   To listen to a message related song, ‘Rainbow Race’, performed by Ron Jandacek, please download here:       What do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}