NLA Immigration Speech, December, 2002

Tim Brown

Good morning!  My name is Tim Brown, and I’m a WISDOM Immigration leader, a member of Racine Interfaith Coalition and a parishioner of St. Richard’s Catholic church, and I am a Canadian immigrant.

Since 1886, Lady Liberty in New York Harbor has welcomed newcomers to the United States with the comforting words of nineteenth century American poet Emma Lazurus:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Do we still believe in this lofty principle?

These words greeted our forebears as they left their homeland due to persecution, discrimination, or desperation to improve their lot in life.  But we know what happened to many of them when they arrived.  They endured more discrimination as “Krauts”, “WOPs”, “Micks”, “Spics”, “Japs”, “Chinks”, and on it went.  Others of your ancestors were forced here in chains on slave ships to endure back-breaking work and soul-bending repression.  Those in power used these newcomers as cheap labor.  But the powerful feared these immigrants; their numbers were a threat to their power; their cultures were different than their own.  And so the newcomers were disdained, cursed, and even hated.

Newcomers today take up back-breaking work as laborers or fill the unwanted low level service and factory jobs, often paid at or below minimum wage with no benefits and long hours.  I ask you, is this what you want the United States to be known for?

And so today, when we talk about the humane treatment of newcomers, are we wiser?  I believe that enlightened people are, but those full of hate and fear continue to spread their poison, like the KKK with the Nazis and World Church of the Creator who demonstrated two weeks ago in Milwaukee with the intention of intimidating minorities, immigrants and politicians. 

I have been asked by many erstwhile kind people why they should care about immigrant civil rights.  Well, I could tell them that immigrants have no voice on issues that affect their lives and livelihood, recalling God’s exhortation in Exodus 23:9, “You must not oppress the stranger; you know how a stranger feels, for you lived as strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Or I could tell them that undocumented young people who have attended and graduated from state schools and whose families have paid income tax, sales tax and, directly or indirectly, property tax are excluded from in-state tuition rates.  Or I could tell them that many immigrants, despite paying taxes, are not allowed the same benefits as received by citizen taxpayers such as prenatal care, child care, job training, Medicaid, food stamps, SSI disability or access to treatment resulting from domestic violence.  Or I could tell them that immigrant detainees have been kicked and beaten, shackled for long periods of time, denied food and water, held in inhumane conditions in various INS detention centers and local jails.  I know, I have visited there.  Or I could tell them that the current immigration law disallows bail for immigration status trials, allows for no judicial review and deports people for offenses that happened ten, twenty or even thirty years before the 1996 law came into effect.  But in truth….. I can tell them nothing; a compassionate heart needs no telling.

I’d like to end with a quote from Nicholas Berdyaev, a philosopher who influenced Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.

My bread may be a material matter,

Another’s bread is a spiritual matter.

Thank you.