Clergy Caucus Immigration Talk
The Document Library of the GNCC
Tim Brown, Wisdom Task Force on Immigration
January  24, 2002

Good afternoon!  My name is Tim Brown and I am a member of WISDOM’s Immigration Committee.  WISDOM is a regional faith based organization in Wisconsin under which fall CUSH in Kenosha, RIC in Racine, and two Milwaukee based groups MICAH and HOSEA.  Beloit is an emerging organization.  Issues of a regional or state-wide scope, such as immigration, education and Alcohol and Other Drug Addiction are addressed by our WISDOM organization.

The immigration law, as you have heard, has ripped families apart!  It has punished people for mistakes made even before the law existed!  It has dehumanized people simply because they were not born here!  We can no longer ignore the devastation this law has wreaked!

Because of the 1996 law, any immigrant, including lawful permanent residents, who ever committed a deportable offense, even non-violent offenses, or an offense committed in the distant past and those for which no sentence was served, can be deported.

Immigration policy reform is more than just talk to me.  My family and I are immigrants from Canada, and our journey to permanent residence status has been at best frustrating, and at worst, humiliating. The INS agent asked our then 5-year old Leeanne if “Mommy and Daddy were bad people”.  My 7 year old, Shawna was asked if Mommy brought men home with her.  We all were then finger-printed. We have had a relatively easy time of it here, but there are many other immigrants out there who are weighing decisions about poverty vs separation of family members, despair in their homeland vs a life of hope in the US, horrendous working conditions vs deportation.  This ought not to be so.  People of justice know that the plight of the vulnerable touches all of society.

Armando Garcia, a Mexican who lived here since 1994 spent years trying to legalize his status.  Immigration officials gave him and his wife permits to continue to work legally, but they were ordered to remove their 2 young daughters, 10 and 12, from the US within 120 days because they were here illegally.  The daughters lived all their lives in the US.  (Twin Cities Star Tribune, “INS agrees to help Spanish-speakers more.”).  Curtis Aljets, an INS director responded that he wasn’t aware of the family’s situation, but that the INS rarely deports children.  Well, I guess we must thank God for small mercies!

Immigration is a key economic factor for many US employers who can’t get citizens to fill positions, especially low-wage positions in service industries and even high-tech industries requiring low-wage production workers.  Even today the demand for undocumented workers is there, although not as strongly since the recession.  The supply of undocumented workers is there.  Why then should undocumented workers be treated like pariah?

It is estimated that are 13,500 INS detainees, most held in local jails housing violent criminals.  The Boston Globe recently reported cases of sexual abuse by guards at an INS detention center in Miami.  The woman was afraid to tell anyone.  “If you say anything about it, they try transferring you or you end up staying in the INS custody longer.”   The prison officer pled guilty. 

Let me provide you with a few quick facts to dispel the common myths about immigrants. 

Myth:  Immigrants take jobs away from Americans.

Fact:   Studies have shown that the opposite is true.  Many immigrants create jobs.  Many immigrants are self-employed and start their own businesses.

Myth:  America is being overrun by immigrants.

Fact:  The percentage of immigrants in the total population is small.  So far, no single decade has topped 1901-1910 for immigration admissions. 

Myth:  Most immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy.

Fact:  Each year immigrants  

 What have we done in WISDOM?

·       Our Wisdom Committee sponsored an educational Immigration Summit in May where over 150 attended.

·         We met with Congressman Ryan, Congressman Klezka, Congressman Barrett, Congressman Gutierrez,  Senator Kohl, Senator Feingold and others to get their backing for the S955 bill that would take the harshest aspects out of the 1996 Immigration Law. 

·       We rallied in front of the Milwaukee Federal Building in September to educate the public on immigration issues.

·       You heard Roy relate Arnoldo Gomez’s story.  Our WISDOM group rallied this past summer in front of jails in both Wisconsin and Illinois to force a decision on his case.  We went to two different states because the INS transferred Arnoldo after our first rally.

The upcoming calendar will be aggressive as usual.  We will:

·       Strategize a Washington DC action on Immigration Sub-Committee members in conjunction with the National Peoples Action group.

·       Meet with INS officials to secure a local asylum hearing officer.  Wisconsonites have to travel all the way to Chicago to have their cases heard, often at great hardship.

·       Conduct a WISDOM Immigration Summit in May to educate the public and create media attention.

·       Present “Immigration” as a National Issue to the Gamaliel National Leadership Assembly in May.

·       Execute the Washington DC action on Immigration Sub-Committee members in June.

·       Carry out a WISDOM Regional event with an immigration component in September.

·       October and November will be devoted to the preparation and presentation of the various Public Meetings.

·       We will have a National Leadership Assembly Action in December.

Some of you may have read Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, or saw the movie.  When I first read the book, I asked myself what I would have done to protest the internment of the Japanese.

The book’s setting is the fictional island of San Piedro off the coast of Washington.  The time is 1954, eight years after the end of World War II.

A gill-netter named Carl Heine has drowned under mysterious circumstances and another fisherman is on trial for his murder, Kabuo Miyamoto, a first-generation Japanese American.  Anglo hostility against Japanese still runs high, even if, like Kabuo, those Japanese were born and raised on the island and fought for the United States during the war. Kabuo's trial, in a sense, is a continuation of the white community's animosity towards its Asian neighbors.

But the Japanese--and particularly Kabuo and his wife, Hatsue--have their own grounds for resentment, stemming from years of bigotry that culminated during World War II, when thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in government relocation camps and Kabuo was effectively robbed of land that his father had worked and paid for.

I was delighted to happen upon some background for “Snow Falling on Cedars”.  The similarities between then and now are startling.

Between 1901 and 1907, almost 110,000 Japanese immigrated to the United States. They were drawn by promises of ready work.  Very quickly the newcomers encountered antagonism.  Although Japanese constituted less than two percent of all immigrants to the U.S., newspapers trumpeted an "invasion”.  Politicians ran for office on anti-Japanese platforms. In 1923, the state of Oregon prohibited first generation Japanese from legally buying land. A year later, Congress passed the National Origins Act, which banned all immigration from Japan.

Following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, hostility turned into paranoia--and paranoia became law. Japanese who had lived in America for thirty years were accused of spying for their native land. The day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Treasury Department ordered all Japanese-owned businesses closed and all issei bank accounts frozen. The U.S. government had already compiled lists of Japanese whose loyalties might be suspect, and more than 1,000 businessmen, community leaders, priests, and educators were arrested up and down the West Coast.

The restrictions escalated. Japanese homes were searched for contraband. Telephone service was cut off. In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which empowered the government to remove "any and all" persons of Japanese ancestry from sensitive military areas in four western states. Japanese residents had only days in which to evacuate. They were compelled to sell their land and businesses for a fraction of their value, or to lease them to neighbors who would later refuse to pay their rent. All told, some 110,000 Japanese Americans were deported from their homes to hastily built camps such as Tule Lake and Manzanar, where they lived behind barbed wire for the duration of the war.

Recently declassified documents reveal that the Japanese population was never considered a serious threat to American security. In all of World War II, no person of Japanese ancestry living in the United States, Alaska, or Hawaii was ever charged with any act of espionage or sabotage.

In 1988, the U.S. government formally apologized to Japanese citizens who had been deprived of their civil liberties during World War II.

This information was gathered from Lauren Kessler, Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese-American Family. New York, Random House, 1993

I see the same attitudes towards immigrants today.  It’s based on fear, ignorance and intolerance of the unfamiliar.

Let the members of your congregation know that you support due process and the right to counsel for all, regardless of place of origin.  Tell them that a law that treats immigrants as less than human is just plain wrong!

Thank you.

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