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A Look at the Immigration Landscape
5 Plays6 months ago
Christina Foor is joined by Dr. Alexia Salvatierra and Angelica Acosta Garnett, long-time friends and practitioners of CCDA, especially in the Immigration space. They take a look at the current immigration landscape and discuss what our call is as CCD practitioners.
Learn more about CCDA’s Immigration Network, including their Lent series, Love Knows No Borders, at ccda.org/immigration.
Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is the Academic Dean of the Centro Latino at Fuller Theological Seminary as well as the Assistant Professor of Integral Mission and Global Transformation. She is available for speaking, training, and workshops in the areas of immigration, faith-rooted organizing, cross-cultural ministry, and building vital holistic Christian community.
Learn more about Dr. Salvatierra on her website alexiasalvatierra.com
Angelica ‘Lica’ Acosta Garnett was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. She immigrated to the United States when she was 17 years old and has firsthand experience of what it is like to be an immigrant in this country.
Lica holds a graduate degree in social studies education and has worked as a US government teacher, Communities in Schools site coordinator, and an immigration law paralegal. She currently works as an interpreter/translator.
Learn more about Lica and her work at abara.org/angelica
Connect with CCDA on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Follow CCDA on YouTube.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Backgrounds
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
My name is Christina Foran.
00:00:13
Speaker
I am the Director of Engagement and Mobilization at CCDA, and I am your host for this episode.
00:00:19
Speaker
And today we're joined by Dr. Alexia Salvatierra and Angelica Acosta-Garnett, longtime friends and practitioners of CCDA, especially in our immigration space.
00:00:30
Speaker
Today we'll be talking with them to get a sense of our current immigration landscape and what our call is now as CCD practitioners.
00:00:39
Speaker
So let's kick it off with hearing a little bit about who you are.
00:00:42
Speaker
Alexia, do you mind sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:00:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:00:48
Speaker
So my current location is that I'm the academic dean of the Centro Latino at Fuller Theological Seminary, which is a 50-year-old Spanish theological education program, which has professional certificates and master's and doctorate of ministry and lots of different Spanish-speaking and bilingual.
00:01:09
Speaker
But my, and I've been a pastor and a community development practitioner for about 45 years.
00:01:18
Speaker
And then what my favorite title comes out of that, which is that young people call me Madrina, which means godmother.
00:01:26
Speaker
And for those of you who are not familiar with the Latino community, that's not just like an accident of, you know, you're at someone's baptism.
00:01:33
Speaker
That's more like the Godfather from the Godfather movies.
00:01:36
Speaker
Only we don't kill people, but we're fierce.
00:01:39
Speaker
So I have a little chain around my neck that says La Madrina.
00:01:43
Speaker
But I've been involved in engaging the church in immigration issues for about 45 years.
00:01:49
Speaker
So I was in the first Central American Sanctuary Movement.
00:01:52
Speaker
I was one of the co-founders of the New Sanctuary Movement of the Evangelical Immigration Table and several other national initiatives.
00:02:01
Speaker
I love that.
00:02:02
Speaker
And I actually have heard your title, Madrina, many times, which is beautiful.
00:02:07
Speaker
I love it.
00:02:08
Speaker
And how about you, Lika?
00:02:09
Speaker
Do you mind sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:02:12
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:12
Speaker
Hi.
00:02:13
Speaker
So my name is Angelika, a Costa Garnet.
00:02:16
Speaker
I go by Lika.
00:02:16
Speaker
I'm originally from Bogota, Colombia.
00:02:19
Speaker
I came to the States 25 years ago when I was not a baby after high school.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I have...
00:02:29
Speaker
Since I really enjoyed the process of getting used to the U.S. and its culture and its complexities, because there are many complexities.
00:02:39
Speaker
And in the realm of immigration, aside from personally having to navigate the system and attempt to survive it,
00:02:46
Speaker
I have worked in immigration law as a paralegal, particularly a story paralegal.
00:02:52
Speaker
So sitting with people in their stories of arrival to the U.S. and kind of figuring out pathways.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I currently work for Apara, the U.S.-Mexico border.
00:03:03
Speaker
I run the Asylum and Narrative Project, interviewing asylum seekers for their legal narrative.
00:03:09
Speaker
And I work for Asania, which is a mental health organization that assists immigrants and refugees in their immigration evaluation so that they can show the court in their final hearing how this whole process of movement has affected kind of their internal systems and their symptoms and all of that.
00:03:33
Speaker
And I want to give both of them a shout out, too, because of their intersection with CCDA and the immigration space, where Alexia was part of kind of the original iteration of our immigration network called the Circle of Friends and helped kind of shape and inform that.
00:03:48
Speaker
And currently, Lika kind of operates as our facilitator for our immigration network.
00:03:53
Speaker
So I'm really glad to bring them both here and here, share their perspectives with us
Key Immigration Terms and Complexities
00:03:57
Speaker
today.
00:03:57
Speaker
Lika, let's start a little bit with shared language because I know that's important.
00:04:01
Speaker
A lot of people kind of conflate different words and things in our immigration space.
00:04:07
Speaker
So when we're talking about the different people groups in our immigration landscape,
00:04:13
Speaker
Do you mind kind of giving us some shared language around that?
00:04:16
Speaker
I will do my best at attempting to narrow some of the main terms that we use all the time.
00:04:23
Speaker
I would like to start with even the most simple term, which is immigrant.
00:04:27
Speaker
But from like a legal standpoint, an immigrant is someone that has
00:04:31
Speaker
plan to stay in the United States.
00:04:33
Speaker
And the government doesn't consider someone an immigrant, a permanent resident until you actually have a green card.
00:04:39
Speaker
And so it's very interesting from like a legal perspective and like our common day-to-day language, we assume that anyone that is immigrating or entering the United States is an immigrant.
00:04:52
Speaker
But from a legal standpoint, that is not true because people that enter the United States on a variety of visas, they're coming on non-immigrant visas.
00:05:01
Speaker
The actual process of becoming an immigrant to the United States is when they adjust to permanent residency.
00:05:07
Speaker
So I just find that that itself is a very interesting term that we use all the time, but we're not even using it properly.
00:05:14
Speaker
So the United States uses two terms that I absolutely despise.
00:05:19
Speaker
You have U.S. citizens and then you have aliens.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so I think off the bat in this call, I would like to say we should probably give that word a proper burial because it creates that divisive language of them and us.
00:05:34
Speaker
I think I was really surprised when I found out when I entered that I had an alien number.
00:05:39
Speaker
I need forever to figure out why the heck I was an alien.
00:05:43
Speaker
So I just absolutely hate that term.
00:05:46
Speaker
When we are talking about people who are in the United States,
00:05:50
Speaker
we usually refer to people who are on the move as migrating people or migrants.
00:05:56
Speaker
And yet within the United States, when we talk about migrants, like migrant workers, we usually tend to think of people who are like working in the fields or are moving from one place to another.
00:06:06
Speaker
So that's another interesting term for our conversation as CCDA-ers, I suppose, that we can just consider that anyone that's on the move is a migrant.
00:06:18
Speaker
because that's actually what it means.
00:06:19
Speaker
But from the legal definition, I guess we always talk about like migrants who are in shelters and be in the common language differentiated between immigrants and migrants.
00:06:30
Speaker
And I've always been really confused by that.
00:06:32
Speaker
Like when you're interviewing people at a shelter in El Paso and they say, oh, you're interviewing migrants.
00:06:39
Speaker
I'm like, am I interviewing migrants or am I interviewing immigrants or who am I interviewing?
00:06:45
Speaker
So even I just love creating issues with language because we can't even agree on a language or a word that we all use.
00:06:53
Speaker
Another word that we use all the time is the word refugee.
00:06:58
Speaker
And so anyone that has been forcefully displaced and that has been made to leave their country because they're afraid for their life or for the safety of their family and they feel like they cannot go back home, that should be considered a refugee, right?
00:07:15
Speaker
So when we talk about asylum seekers, from a humanitarian point of view, they are refugees and they're seeking refuge.
00:07:22
Speaker
Legally speaking, they're not considered refugees, they're considered asylum seekers.
00:07:27
Speaker
So what I love to explain to people is an asylum seeker and a refugee, from a humanitarian standpoint, are the exact same.
00:07:36
Speaker
They present different legally because an asylum seeker, you will find them at a port of entry by land trying to enter the United States through an asylum process, which start you arrive.
00:07:48
Speaker
But you, for all intents and purposes, are seeking refuge.
00:07:52
Speaker
Therefore, you are a refugee.
00:07:55
Speaker
But when we talk inside of the United States about refugees and asylum seekers or asylis, it's a different process that they go through from a legal standpoint.
00:08:05
Speaker
So from a legal standpoint, when you think about refugees, those are people that have been vetted outside of the United States and they process in through an airport.
00:08:16
Speaker
Usually they enter already with their paperwork and they have that refugee category.
00:08:22
Speaker
So when people in the normal day-to-day living, they think of refugees, people tend to equate refugee with people who are from, let's say, the Middle East.
00:08:33
Speaker
A lot of people think, oh yeah, people that came here from Afghanistan or from Syria or from those countries.
00:08:41
Speaker
But that's from a legal standpoint.
00:08:43
Speaker
But from a normal humanitarian standpoint, people who are coming from Venezuela or people that are coming from Central America that are being forced to leave and are seeking refuge from a humanitarian standpoint are also refugees.
00:08:57
Speaker
And so I think that when we mix the language between the humanitarian and the legal people,
00:09:03
Speaker
We get ourselves in difficult situations because we're not providing the same level of care for people who are facing the same circumstances.
00:09:12
Speaker
We just apply a different process to them.
00:09:15
Speaker
Do you mind touching a little bit too on undocumented and mixed status families and what that means?
00:09:21
Speaker
in our day-to-day
Issues with the US Immigration System
00:09:22
Speaker
language?
00:09:22
Speaker
So since I'm saying we're putting to death a couple of terms, we might as well also conduct a funeral for the term illegal.
00:09:30
Speaker
There's no such thing.
00:09:32
Speaker
There are no illegal people.
00:09:34
Speaker
There's also no illegal immigrants because U.S. legal purposes to be an immigrant, you have to have permanent status.
00:09:42
Speaker
So you're the least likely to be illegal, if you will.
00:09:46
Speaker
So an illegal immigrant to me is just an oxymoron.
00:09:50
Speaker
But regardless, we should not be attaching the word illegal to anyone.
00:09:54
Speaker
You could talk about documented versus undocumented, and that has to do with entry.
00:10:00
Speaker
So when people present themselves to the port of entry in the United States, whether by land or by air, they're going to be inspected by Customs and Border Patrol individual.
00:10:12
Speaker
And they're going to be asking for a visa.
00:10:15
Speaker
Because that is the document that we have deemed people need in order to enter the United States.
00:10:20
Speaker
Once you're being inspected and they deem that you have a document that allows you entry, that is a documented entry and you're being allowed into the United States, right?
00:10:32
Speaker
Well, what happens when you come to a port of entry and you don't have a visa?
00:10:37
Speaker
There's two options.
00:10:38
Speaker
The government can let you come in, and that would be through a parole, and we could sit here and talk about a million different options.
00:10:45
Speaker
But basically, the government is allowing you in, but you don't really have a visa, but they have inspected you, and they might have given you a piece of paper that says you're...
00:10:55
Speaker
eligible to enter the United States to process, say, an asylum application.
00:11:00
Speaker
That is a document.
00:11:02
Speaker
So even though you don't have a visa, you're not undocumented.
00:11:06
Speaker
You have been inspected and you have been allowed into the United States by someone at a port of entry.
00:11:12
Speaker
So here's where common people get super tricked.
00:11:14
Speaker
Oh, you don't have a visa?
00:11:15
Speaker
You're an illegal.
00:11:16
Speaker
Absolutely not.
00:11:17
Speaker
You just don't understand the law because there are other categories.
00:11:21
Speaker
The third option is that you entered the United States without inspection.
00:11:26
Speaker
And that means that you were not stopped or you did not turn yourself into Border Patrol or CDP.
00:11:31
Speaker
So they didn't give you a document that allows you to be in the United States.
00:11:36
Speaker
And that is what we could say.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's an infraction because you entered without having a document.
00:11:42
Speaker
So I always tell people, if you find yourself in the desperate need to divide people by whether or not they have an entry document, you could say a person is documented or undocumented.
00:11:54
Speaker
But I also find that those two categories are not expansive enough to understand
00:11:59
Speaker
how a person ends up in the United States.
00:12:01
Speaker
And it doesn't also define or explain thoroughly to you why someone maybe was inspected and was documented, but at the time you're encountering, they might not have legal status.
00:12:14
Speaker
Like you could have entered with a visa.
00:12:17
Speaker
So you had a visa, you were inspected, but you were supposed to leave and you overstayed.
00:12:23
Speaker
Well, then what do you do with that person?
00:12:24
Speaker
Are they documented or undocumented?
00:12:27
Speaker
Well, they were documented, but currently, so do you see where I'm going?
00:12:30
Speaker
Like, we don't have enough
00:12:33
Speaker
clear terminology or appropriate terminology to cover people.
00:12:37
Speaker
And so we take shortcuts with words like illegal immigrants or illegal aliens or undocumented people.
00:12:44
Speaker
And it's just a lack of understanding that there's so many different avenues for people to come, to stay, to overstay.
00:12:52
Speaker
Like it's more complex and it's not as simple as just slapping labels on people.
00:12:56
Speaker
Thank you, Lika, for clarifying and sharing those things with us.
00:12:59
Speaker
And we just tapped a little bit into our brilliance.
00:13:02
Speaker
So make sure you stay tuned because we're going to tell you a little bit more how you can learn about more immigration law and all this later on in the episode.
00:13:12
Speaker
But I appreciate that because I think it's kind of speaks to what we were sharing in our preparation time, that as a result of all these different people groups and even having a terminology that is not even expensive enough to talk about, it makes our immigration landscape pretty complex.
00:13:31
Speaker
Right.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I recognize as I ask you this question, Alexia, that it's putting you in a tight spot of how do you even explain where we're finding ourselves specifically?
00:13:40
Speaker
today.
00:13:40
Speaker
Can you paint a landscape for us?
00:13:43
Speaker
I can.
00:13:44
Speaker
I actually want to add to what Angelico said, though, in a couple of aspects.
00:13:49
Speaker
One traditional differentiation in migration studies is between what they call forced migration and voluntary migration.
00:13:57
Speaker
Forced migration means that you are running from a threat to your life in some form.
00:14:04
Speaker
You're running from violent persecution in your country of origin.
00:14:08
Speaker
Voluntary migration means that you're coming for some other reason.
00:14:13
Speaker
But that category blurs easily, and it particularly blurs nowadays when we're talking about climate change.
00:14:20
Speaker
Because when you're running because all of the land that you've lived on and farmed is now
00:14:26
Speaker
an ocean and you can't live on it or farm it, are you coming voluntarily or are you forced?
00:14:33
Speaker
You're not forced by a government that is persecuting you or by people who are persecuting you when your government can't keep you safe, which are the two definitions of running from persecution.
00:14:44
Speaker
Either the government is persecuting you or the government can't keep you safe.
00:14:47
Speaker
But when it's Mother Nature, what do you call that?
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:51
Speaker
Right?
00:14:52
Speaker
The person doesn't have the option of staying where they are, and yet they're not forced by a government.
00:14:57
Speaker
That's an added level of complexity.
00:14:59
Speaker
And then another added level of complexity is that people are not just individuals, they're parts of families.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
So you can have in the same family people that have different levels and kinds of documentation and people that don't.
00:15:14
Speaker
Often there's not a public awareness that if you send one person away that you impact people who are citizens.
00:15:21
Speaker
And that's how.
00:15:23
Speaker
Just adding to the complexity.
00:15:25
Speaker
We could add to the complexity for hours, but, you know, just, I think those are important things.
00:15:30
Speaker
I think it's powerful and pertinent, too, because a lot of the communities we're working with, the CCDA, it's affecting communities.
00:15:37
Speaker
It's not just.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yes, it is affecting neighborhoods.
00:15:39
Speaker
It is affecting communities.
00:15:41
Speaker
So I want to say that I've been working in one way or another with our immigration system and with people that are impacted by it since 1980.
00:15:48
Speaker
So 45 years.
00:15:52
Speaker
It has always been ineffective, and most people know that.
00:15:57
Speaker
If you get a step closer, you know it's illogical.
00:16:01
Speaker
It makes the DMV and the IRS look positively sane in comparison.
00:16:06
Speaker
And if you get a step closer than that, you know that it's inhumane.
00:16:09
Speaker
So that's what we mean when we talk about a broken immigration system.
00:16:13
Speaker
But there have been better and worse moments over the last 45 years in terms of how humane, effective, or just our system is.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I have never seen anything in my life like what we're seeing now.
00:16:29
Speaker
And I have worked under Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, and I have never seen anything like we're seeing now.
00:16:37
Speaker
That this is a wholesale attack on immigrants, immigrant families, immigrant communities.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:44
Speaker
And both in terms of people who are coming to this country and also in terms of people that are in this country.
00:16:53
Speaker
So I want to give you just a few examples because we really don't have time to go over every detail.
00:17:01
Speaker
Since 1951, the United States has been welcoming refugees and asylum seekers.
00:17:07
Speaker
And I should say that the criteria for refugees and asylum seekers is the same criteria.
00:17:12
Speaker
just so that you have a sense of it.
00:17:13
Speaker
It's just where people ask for assessment about whether or not they meet that criteria.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's the same criteria, right?
00:17:20
Speaker
So we've been welcoming people since 1951.
00:17:22
Speaker
We were one of the leaders in the organizing of the United Nations Conference that produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where refugees are covered, had asylum seekers.
00:17:34
Speaker
In 1980, the Refugee Act passed, which clarified some of our commitments.
00:17:39
Speaker
to welcome refugees.
00:17:40
Speaker
But I just want to make it very clear that in 1951, almost every country in the world signed the agreement.
00:17:45
Speaker
So this is an international agreement, not just a national agreement.
00:17:50
Speaker
We're subject to international law around welcoming refugees.
00:17:53
Speaker
Since 1980, we've welcomed between 100,000 and 60,000 a year until the last Trump administration, where we welcomed, inclusive of asylum seekers and refugees, 17,000 people.
00:18:10
Speaker
So that was a huge drop.
00:18:11
Speaker
And all the other countries in the world were freaking out because we are one of the largest countries and one of the wealthiest countries.
00:18:19
Speaker
So everybody had to figure out where to put the rest of the people who desperately need refuge at a time in history where more people need refuge than have ever needed it before.
00:18:30
Speaker
all over the world.
00:18:32
Speaker
Technology, climate change, they're all creating what we call in migration studies, surplus people.
00:18:37
Speaker
Talk about words that should be killed and buried, right?
00:18:40
Speaker
Surplus people.
00:18:41
Speaker
There are no surplus people in Jesus's eyes.
Deferred Deportation and Temporary Status
00:18:44
Speaker
Everybody is essential.
00:18:46
Speaker
But their surplus, it's a very poignant phrase in that they no longer have a place in the modern world.
00:18:52
Speaker
So we need to figure out how we respond to that as a globe.
00:18:56
Speaker
So we're just one part of that globe.
00:18:59
Speaker
Currently, it's much worse.
00:19:00
Speaker
Not only have they essentially stopped all asylum and refugees.
00:19:06
Speaker
In fact, there are very odd sort of contradictory orders that talk about how to restrict it and that stop it.
00:19:13
Speaker
But overall, we've stopped all asylum and refugee entry.
00:19:17
Speaker
And then it gets worse, that all of the organizations that have historically worked with the government to care for refugees had their funding stopped without warning, which means that there are people here who have been deemed to be refugees who are in an immigrant integration process where the government helps them with rent, basic expenses, learning English, medical care.
00:19:41
Speaker
All of that stopped dead initially as a suspension and as of yesterday permanently.
00:19:47
Speaker
So all those organizations can't care.
00:19:49
Speaker
They have no money for their staff.
00:19:51
Speaker
They have no money for the refugees themselves.
00:19:53
Speaker
It's a level of cold-heartedness that is almost unbelievable.
00:19:57
Speaker
That's one area.
00:19:58
Speaker
That's people coming from outside, the most vulnerable people coming from outside.
00:20:03
Speaker
What happens to people who are inside?
00:20:06
Speaker
So there, because the system is so broken, we have had a mechanism called deferred deportation actually all of my life.
00:20:16
Speaker
It used to be very informal, and it became much more formal in 2010.
00:20:22
Speaker
But deferred deportation basically means that a person has a potential legal case, what we call a qualifying case.
00:20:32
Speaker
They have the potential to become part of our society for one reason or another, but they're facing an aspect of the law that is particularly broken.
00:20:43
Speaker
So all the dreamers, if anybody out there has heard the name dreamer, most people at this point have heard it, have deferred deportation because they were brought here as children.
00:20:53
Speaker
They didn't choose to come here.
00:20:55
Speaker
We've invested in them through our school system.
00:20:58
Speaker
They want to give back.
00:21:00
Speaker
They are giving back, many of them.
00:21:02
Speaker
And yet we have a one line in our immigration system that says, if you've been here more than a year undocumented and it can be proved,
00:21:10
Speaker
You have to go back to your home country for 10 years.
00:21:12
Speaker
It's called the bar before you could be considered for immigration.
00:21:16
Speaker
So people who have what we call the blood, sweat, and tears category.
00:21:20
Speaker
Blood means they have family relationships with a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
00:21:24
Speaker
Sweat means that we need their labor.
00:21:27
Speaker
And tears means refugees or asylum seekers.
00:21:29
Speaker
So they have a qualifying case.
00:21:31
Speaker
They have to go back to their home country.
00:21:33
Speaker
Many of them never have in their conscious memory their home country.
00:21:37
Speaker
because they were bought here as small children.
00:21:39
Speaker
They're supposed to go back to their home country for 10 years.
00:21:42
Speaker
Now, that's something that at various points in the history over the last 20 years, we've had up to 90% support for our DREAM Act that would create a pathway for those young people.
00:21:54
Speaker
We've never been able to pass it, and that's a larger story.
00:21:57
Speaker
But in 2012, President Obama declared deferred action for childhood arrivals, creating this deferred action for a whole class of people at once who are in a situation where anybody would say the system doesn't work for them.
00:22:12
Speaker
So let's allow them to stay while we try to figure it out.
00:22:15
Speaker
Deferred deportation has always been available also to individuals.
00:22:21
Speaker
But like I said, in a very sort of informal sense that each individual case considered separately, it became a little more formalized in 2010 when they instituted a regulation called the prioritization of deportation.
00:22:34
Speaker
where they said that they would prioritize people for deportation who were threats to public safety, and that people who essentially deserve deferred deportation could live their lives, that they were officially not a priority for deportation.
00:22:48
Speaker
They had to show up every year and show that they were contributing to our society, that they hadn't committed any crimes, they weren't a threat to public safety, and then they could stay.
00:22:56
Speaker
Deferred deportation is no more.
00:22:58
Speaker
I had an immigration judge once tell me that to fight a deportation order, even if you have a qualifying case, can be like the 20-year pulling of a wisdom tooth.
00:23:08
Speaker
And he said it can cost a million dollars.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's a broken system.
00:23:11
Speaker
So people have been pursuing their cases going every year.
00:23:14
Speaker
All those people are suddenly not just undocumented, but the executive order says they're criminals now.
00:23:20
Speaker
So when they say they're going to just deport criminals, they have to find everybody who
00:23:26
Speaker
who was not a criminal previously as a criminal.
00:23:29
Speaker
So if you've had deferred deportation, you're in the system, you're a primary target right now to be deported.
00:23:35
Speaker
And they have quotas and they're trying very hard to deport everyone that they can.
00:23:39
Speaker
Another category that we're losing, again, just important for people to have a real sense of this, is temporary protected status.
00:23:46
Speaker
which we won in 1990 after a very long, hard battle of 10 years in the sanctuary movement, along with a number of secular allies.
00:23:55
Speaker
And it allows for the administration to recognize that a particular country is such a hellhole.
00:24:03
Speaker
that people coming from that country need to have the opportunity to stay until the situation calms down.
00:24:09
Speaker
And then they would have to prove individual cases for blood, sweat, or tears.
00:24:13
Speaker
So there are a number of countries that have had temporary protected status.
00:24:17
Speaker
The president has basically said that he will not renew temporary protected status for any of the countries that currently have it, like Venezuela or Nicaragua or Haiti.
00:24:26
Speaker
But he has offered it to white people in South Africa who have not asked for it.
00:24:32
Speaker
They don't have any petitions from white people in South Africa even, but he has offered it to them.
00:24:37
Speaker
So it's not an ending of the category in theory.
00:24:40
Speaker
It's an ending of the category for everybody who currently has it, which suddenly takes people who are in an asylum process and may even have an ankle bracelet or may even be detained and makes them all
00:24:55
Speaker
criminals by the definition of our government at this moment.
00:24:59
Speaker
So these are people who have been judged when they enter to have a legitimate fear.
00:25:05
Speaker
That's the first bar that you have to pass.
00:25:07
Speaker
They have a legitimate fear of persecution.
00:25:10
Speaker
So we've determined that.
00:25:11
Speaker
Many of them are children.
00:25:14
Speaker
And we are turning around right now and saying that when each of these TPS orders expires, that they will be criminals, all of them.
00:25:21
Speaker
The last one that I would just mention, and there are many, many, but just to give people a real sense of what's going on, there are two quick ones.
00:25:27
Speaker
One is expedited removal.
00:25:29
Speaker
Expedited removal means that within 100 miles of the border, this is what it's been traditionally, now it's countrywide.
00:25:35
Speaker
But with 100 miles of the border, if you've been here less than two years and you don't have proper documentation, you don't have to go through a year.
00:25:42
Speaker
They don't have to give you a hearing.
00:25:43
Speaker
They can just deport you.
00:25:45
Speaker
Now, expediting removal is nationwide.
00:25:48
Speaker
And as a result, they've picked up some Native Americans.
00:25:50
Speaker
They've picked up some Puerto Ricans because you don't have to go to a hearing.
00:25:55
Speaker
They go right to the detention center.
00:25:57
Speaker
The last thing that people may have heard about is one of the things that we also formalized, which had been informal before that in 2011, was sensitive locations.
00:26:06
Speaker
Which means that unless they're in hot pursuit of somebody who's a threat to public safety, they don't go into a church or a hospital or a school or a court or a demonstration.
00:26:20
Speaker
There's a long list.
00:26:22
Speaker
But primarily we think about it as churches, hospitals, and schools.
00:26:26
Speaker
And now that's not only officially off the table, but they are not doing a huge amount of this, but they're doing it in a very public way.
00:26:36
Speaker
So, for example, the man in Georgia who was recently picked up under this, he was at church.
00:26:43
Speaker
The church door was locked, so they couldn't come in.
00:26:46
Speaker
But the pastor was in the middle of the sermon.
00:26:49
Speaker
He had an ankle bracelet on because he is in an asylum process.
00:26:55
Speaker
Only he had come to the country undocumented many, many years before and been deported.
00:26:59
Speaker
But now he's in, has been in the asylum process.
00:27:02
Speaker
He's in the asylum process.
00:27:04
Speaker
But they still came to him.
00:27:06
Speaker
They came very intentionally because he had the angle bracelet.
00:27:08
Speaker
They could find him anywhere, anytime.
00:27:10
Speaker
They came very intentionally to church.
00:27:13
Speaker
And he left the service so that his children wouldn't have to watch him get handcuffed.
00:27:18
Speaker
And he was taken away.
00:27:20
Speaker
They did that and they have said this.
00:27:23
Speaker
to make people auto-deport.
00:27:26
Speaker
And so even though there's only been three churches that we have current documentation where this has happened, we've had several other churches where they've come and people have asked them to leave and they've left.
00:27:37
Speaker
But only three churches where we know that they've deported somebody.
00:27:40
Speaker
There are people all over the country who are terrified to go to church, who are terrified to send their children to school, or who are not going to hospitals, and the government is just waiting for them to auto-deport.
00:27:51
Speaker
Just self-deport.
00:27:53
Speaker
So that's the intention of that policy.
00:27:57
Speaker
But we do have a lawsuit going.
00:27:59
Speaker
A number of denominations, Cooperative Baptist Quakers have a lawsuit.
00:28:03
Speaker
And we do have an injunction, but only for those denominations that says that they can't go in currently into a church.
00:28:10
Speaker
But it doesn't say anything about hospitals or schools.
00:28:13
Speaker
So I'm sorry, that was a lot of information, but I think it gives people a real picture of what's going on right now.
00:28:19
Speaker
They've also cut funding to nonprofits.
00:28:23
Speaker
Just as they cut the funding for refugees, they cut the funding for the long-term partnerships with faith institutions to provide low-cost legal services.
00:28:33
Speaker
So they're trying to also make sure that people don't have any kind of legal help.
The Church and Theological Responses
00:28:37
Speaker
Although, honestly, legal help will only avail in certain cases right now.
00:28:43
Speaker
But still, people do need legal help in those cases, and we don't have enough legal help.
00:28:50
Speaker
Thank you so much, Alexa, for sharing.
00:28:52
Speaker
I think I really have been curious.
00:28:54
Speaker
I know this can be a whole podcast episode in itself is when it comes to kind of the church and our interaction with the immigration landscape.
00:29:05
Speaker
But one thing I just actually really wanted to hear your thoughts on specifically is just like what
00:29:12
Speaker
what are we missing in our theology to end up here?
00:29:14
Speaker
I was really struck by what you said, even at the beginning, you're like, you haven't seen it this bad, right?
00:29:19
Speaker
You haven't seen us treat immigrants, silence seekers, refugees, all of them this bad in your 45 years.
00:29:26
Speaker
And it kind of begs the question for Christians and for the church, like, why?
00:29:31
Speaker
What is going on?
00:29:32
Speaker
Why are we giving into this rhetoric or allowing this to continue or not welcoming the stranger as we love to use?
00:29:43
Speaker
So I'd love to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that.
00:29:46
Speaker
So there's a very interesting little book called Taking America Back for God.
00:29:50
Speaker
It's research that was done by, not by Christians, by religion scholars, people that study religion as a phenomenon.
00:30:00
Speaker
And they noticed that the difference between Christian nationalists and evangelicals is the response to immigrants and refugees.
00:30:11
Speaker
And that's helpful, right, for all of us, because we all get painted with the same brush publicly, but we're not actually the same.
00:30:21
Speaker
that a Christian nationalist is someone who believes that God has particularly chosen this country as if we were the state, as if we were the country of the people of Israel, not the current people of Israel, the Old Testament people of Israel, that we are the chosen people and the assumption of that,
00:30:40
Speaker
of who we are as the chosen people is not the original inhabitants of the land, not the people who have been in the land many hundreds of years.
00:30:51
Speaker
Like we have a number of people who are Latino, but they didn't cross the border.
00:30:55
Speaker
The border crossed them because the Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Price of California, we're all part of Mexico until the Mexican American war until 1848.
00:31:07
Speaker
So those people are not included under Christian nationalism as part of the nation.
00:31:13
Speaker
You know, it's a little unclear, but it's essentially the people that came over from England are, you know, the people that God has called and chosen.
00:31:22
Speaker
Some people have more of a constitutional sense of it.
00:31:25
Speaker
I don't want to paint everybody with the same brush.
00:31:27
Speaker
But this real belief that somehow we are a holy people, but we're not a holy people who need to spread our holiness to the rest of the world.
00:31:38
Speaker
That was called manifest destiny.
00:31:40
Speaker
That was a way that people understood Christian nationalism 100 years ago.
00:31:45
Speaker
No, we are holy people and we need to protect ourselves from the rest of the world so that we remain holy.
00:31:51
Speaker
It's really very far away from Jesus and anything to do with the mission of Jesus.
00:31:58
Speaker
But many of the people who are Christian nationalists call themselves evangelicals.
00:32:03
Speaker
Now, there is four evangelicals, and I just need to be clear about this.
00:32:07
Speaker
There's a very complex historic relationship between church and state.
00:32:12
Speaker
Some people believe much more that advocacy is an act of stewardship, that in a democracy that we have certain gifts that allow us to participate in the process of public decision-making, and we need to exercise those gifts.
00:32:26
Speaker
So there's a number of Christians that believe that, who are evangelical or strongly, vibrantly Christian in their faith, whatever denomination they're in.
00:32:35
Speaker
And there are a number of people who believe in a much stronger separation between church and state that say that we should be involved in our communities, but not in the political process, even in the making of public decisions that affect our people.
00:32:47
Speaker
So there's a lot of disagreement within Christianity around the relationship between church and state and public theology and the role of public theology.
00:32:58
Speaker
Christian nationalism is quite a different animal, and Christian nationalism is the major reason right now, while we're seeing the church take certain kinds of positions that have never been taken in the past.
00:33:10
Speaker
Now, I want to be fair and say that...
00:33:16
Speaker
There's a lot of misinformation out there, and there's a lot of fear.
00:33:20
Speaker
And, you know, God does require, Jesus requires that we love our enemies, but not that we sacrifice our children.
00:33:27
Speaker
We believe that there is room for everyone, and sometimes there are competing interests in the world, and that we need to figure out the best way to balance those competing interests.
Narratives and Misinformation in Immigration
00:33:38
Speaker
And every country has an immigration system.
00:33:41
Speaker
Canada has a much better immigration system than we do, and it's not open borders.
00:33:46
Speaker
So it is possible to have a more effective, more sane, more humane, more logical, more just immigration system in this country.
00:33:54
Speaker
And in fact, there have been a couple of bipartisan proposals that polled in the high 70% that really would have made the system much more effective.
00:34:04
Speaker
We couldn't pass them because of this kind of the way that people have drummed up fear.
00:34:12
Speaker
and territorialism.
00:34:15
Speaker
And it's very sad because it is possible to come up with balanced compromises in these areas that would be fair to everyone.
00:34:24
Speaker
I like that you brought up that kind of idea of fear because I think that's definitely like the dominant emotion, or if that is the best way to describe it, in our landscape.
00:34:35
Speaker
And I've been thinking a lot in my kind of devotionals more recently about how, I don't know, it's been coming up regularly is that like, God, my perfect love casts out all fear.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I was thinking about that.
00:34:47
Speaker
Like, obviously, that involves a love for God, but also like a love for neighbor, right?
00:34:52
Speaker
What is that perfect love of neighbor?
00:34:54
Speaker
How can that cast out fear, right?
00:34:57
Speaker
And that's like given to us by creator God, right?
00:35:01
Speaker
To be able to do that well.
00:35:02
Speaker
And so how can we collectively flourish?
00:35:05
Speaker
I actually just want to add one more theological piece very quickly.
00:35:08
Speaker
The prodigal son.
00:35:10
Speaker
This is a very important story about what's happening right now.
00:35:14
Speaker
Remember the older son.
00:35:16
Speaker
The older son feels very much like a number of people in this country feel.
00:35:20
Speaker
Like this isn't fair.
00:35:22
Speaker
Like his younger brother is taking things that don't belong to him, that really should belong to the older son.
00:35:28
Speaker
And I just want to note what the father says to the elders.
00:35:31
Speaker
The older son says, your son.
00:35:33
Speaker
And the father says, your brother.
00:35:38
Speaker
And I just wanted to say that because I really think it underlines what you're just saying about communal flourishing.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, I love that.
00:35:45
Speaker
I was going to say, that's a perfect segue around that of what does it look like to see the immigrants in our neighborhoods in our lives or what does it mean for us to flourish alongside them?
00:35:58
Speaker
I keep thinking, and I'm glad that both Alexi and you brought it up, is that idea of fear.
00:36:03
Speaker
Because the narrative is there is this invasion.
00:36:07
Speaker
So when you ask people and when you look at the policies and the things that were being used during the campaign was this idea that there were people coming to take from you something you have worked so hard to provide for yourself, for your family, to take over your land.
00:36:24
Speaker
And I think
00:36:26
Speaker
the rhetoric and the narrative is really appealing to like a primal instinct of protection and fear but i think alexia did an amazing job explaining the chaos inside you know like these policies are not even about these possible threat from the outside like what threat you know we're talking about
00:36:51
Speaker
people that we have vetted and allowed and welcomed into our country because they were running and we said we will protect you and provide for you and now they don't have money to buy groceries or to provide for their children.
00:37:04
Speaker
How is that an invasion?
00:37:06
Speaker
How is that something that should make you feel afraid?
00:37:10
Speaker
So I think that part of this moment
00:37:13
Speaker
is not even understanding what we're talking about.
00:37:17
Speaker
Because a lot of these draconian policies are affecting people who are already in the United States, number one.
00:37:25
Speaker
Number two, to Alexia's point, are policies that are affecting people who are U.S. citizens.
00:37:33
Speaker
So it's almost like your government is creating policies to hurt your own people.
00:37:38
Speaker
And yet everyone's on this bandwagon.
00:37:41
Speaker
Like, you know, the border is on fire.
00:37:43
Speaker
It's a crisis.
00:37:44
Speaker
We're sending troops and I work at the border.
00:37:48
Speaker
There are no invasions.
00:37:51
Speaker
There is no crazy amount of people trying to jump fences.
00:37:55
Speaker
Like that's not happening.
00:37:57
Speaker
And so this idea of these imminent threats
00:38:01
Speaker
It's not occurring because, as Alexia explained, our asylum process is officially dismantled after January 20th when CVP was killed.
00:38:11
Speaker
And there are 1,200 people stuck in the city of Juarez right now who were coming with their appointments on their CVP app to present themselves to ask for help and to seek asylum.
00:38:23
Speaker
And they lost all of that.
00:38:25
Speaker
And now they're stuck in Juarez and they cannot go back home.
00:38:28
Speaker
So what I'm always curious is to say, what is it that you're so afraid of?
00:38:34
Speaker
It's clearly not people coming because at this particular juncture, the shelters in cities like El Paso and cities like Tijuana and people in cities like McAllen are closing down.
00:38:45
Speaker
So there's clearly not an invasion.
00:38:48
Speaker
So are you really that afraid of your neighbor?
00:38:51
Speaker
Are you really that afraid of that lady in the carpool?
00:38:55
Speaker
Are you that afraid of that lady that sells the yummy tortillas, the restaurant you're so excited to have on your block?
00:39:02
Speaker
Like that to me is the part that is my knowing.
00:39:05
Speaker
It's like, okay, guys, let's feel these back.
00:39:07
Speaker
What is it that you're so afraid of?
00:39:10
Speaker
What do you actually think is going to happen?
00:39:12
Speaker
And because we don't even pause to ask questions, we're not even curious about, you know, quote unquote, the other side.
00:39:20
Speaker
We are not talking.
00:39:22
Speaker
So, B, that's almost the call.
00:39:24
Speaker
Some of us are called to sit at the table with good table manners and not try and kill the person eating in front of us.
00:39:31
Speaker
Others are being called to be advocates.
00:39:33
Speaker
Others are called.
00:39:34
Speaker
I think we all have a call in this particular time.
00:39:38
Speaker
But I'm always just so curious of saying like, look, the theme for now is chaos because there is chaos in the news.
00:39:48
Speaker
Nobody knows what.
00:39:49
Speaker
There's chaos in policy because they contradict each other.
00:39:53
Speaker
There is chaos in terminology.
00:39:56
Speaker
There is chaos in our communities because before at least you knew if you could be deported, there was, as Alexia said, a priority list that you're like, okay, as long as I follow these steps, I'm going to be okay.
00:40:10
Speaker
And I always tell people, don't be fooled because that was also
00:40:14
Speaker
Not okay.
00:40:15
Speaker
Like to have a deferred deportation program for 20 years is not okay.
00:40:21
Speaker
Because these people that are stuck in DACA, these people that are stuck in TPS, these people that are stuck in deferred deportation are our neighbors, are vibrant, viral parts of our communities, and we're giving them second citizen status.
00:40:36
Speaker
They cannot become permanent residents or citizens.
00:40:39
Speaker
They cannot vote.
00:40:41
Speaker
We give them a tiny piece of the pie, not even, we let them lick the icing and say, be happy with that.
00:40:48
Speaker
So for me, it's like, it's so intertwined because we don't,
00:40:53
Speaker
We're not curious enough.
00:40:55
Speaker
We're not bothered enough.
00:40:57
Speaker
We're sometimes, okay, we'd say, well, you know, the dreamers are here.
00:41:01
Speaker
Maybe if we just give them some sort of status so they maybe can work and go to school.
00:41:06
Speaker
I'm like, no, I want them to be able to travel with abandon and then be able to come back in the United States.
00:41:13
Speaker
I want them to be able to vote and have public office.
00:41:16
Speaker
Like I want my brothers and sisters to have full life and full opportunities and full experience.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I think that that's what we're lacking, that sense of urgency that, like Bickner says, there is no joy and there is no peace for me until there is joy and peace for you too.
00:41:34
Speaker
Like I'm not okay with people having, you know, my leftovers.
00:41:39
Speaker
I want them to have the main course.
00:41:41
Speaker
And I think we are not,
00:41:44
Speaker
aggravated enough and we don't expect the same things that we want for ourselves and for our children.
00:41:51
Speaker
We don't expect the same for our neighbors because we're like, well, at least they, I hate at least.
00:41:58
Speaker
At least it should also be, you know, let's have a funeral for at least.
00:42:03
Speaker
I want shalom.
00:42:05
Speaker
I want wholeness.
00:42:07
Speaker
I think that's what's lacking in the conversation.
00:42:09
Speaker
I sit in so many meetings that are like, let's talk about how immigrants are good for the economy.
00:42:14
Speaker
I'm like, I don't care.
00:42:15
Speaker
What if you're not?
00:42:17
Speaker
We should be welcoming them because that's the mandate.
00:42:20
Speaker
I don't care if they're expensive, you know?
00:42:22
Speaker
So anyways, I just get randy, but it's that desire to see wellness for everybody and not accept these lame categories or these scales or these false sense of fear
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, I like what you're sharing, especially around like some of these pieces around, hey, like, let's identify what you're actually fearful of, right?
00:42:48
Speaker
Like, that's probably a good start in your spiritual journey because otherwise you're not able to fully like love people if you're scared of them.
00:42:56
Speaker
If you can't even identify what that is, how can we even flourish together if you're not willing to be a part of that collective flourishing?
00:43:04
Speaker
But then also, how do we embrace this shared humanity?
00:43:09
Speaker
We talk about this all the time at CCDA, and it feels weird that it's like,
00:43:14
Speaker
almost becoming like a revolutionary thought that, oh, I need to see the value and dignity in others as well as myself.
00:43:22
Speaker
You know, it's like, I was like, isn't this just a basic tenant of our faith that everyone has value and dignity?
Community Engagement and Solidarity
00:43:30
Speaker
But it feels like that's like the thing that we need to keep calling people to in this moment as well.
00:43:36
Speaker
Is there anything you would add, Alexia?
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:39
Speaker
I was just thinking about, Christina, about your response right now.
00:43:42
Speaker
I have a friend who's a lapsed Catholic.
00:43:46
Speaker
He's an atheist, and he's relatively conservative.
00:43:49
Speaker
He's quite conservative.
00:43:50
Speaker
And he says, well, I'm just confused because everybody knows about Jesus.
00:43:59
Speaker
He's an atheist.
00:44:01
Speaker
Everybody knows about Jesus.
00:44:02
Speaker
I mean, like he loves everyone.
00:44:04
Speaker
He said, like, but why are these Christians?
00:44:09
Speaker
You know, talking like this.
00:44:10
Speaker
But I think that once people do get, are captive to fear, and that fear is manipulated and increased very intentionally.
00:44:20
Speaker
Stories are told over and over again about the less than 1% of our population that are immigrants who violated the law in some dangerous way.
00:44:30
Speaker
You know, less than 1%.
00:44:32
Speaker
But those stories are told over and over and over again.
00:44:36
Speaker
And so that fear is fomented, right?
00:44:41
Speaker
And we really do have a task when you talk about what is our task as the church.
00:44:45
Speaker
Our task is to build relationships between neighbors that allow us to see that we're all sinners and all saints, right?
00:44:54
Speaker
That we're all children of the same heavenly Father.
00:44:57
Speaker
That that is our task as the church.
00:44:59
Speaker
And our task is to remind people of the call of Jesus.
00:45:02
Speaker
And then beyond that, our task is to remind our leaders.
00:45:06
Speaker
Legislators are human beings also.
00:45:09
Speaker
And I remember one legislator that we went in to see her, and we had a really deep conversation, she was a believer, about who she was and her position and what God was calling her to do.
00:45:21
Speaker
And she said, you know, everybody else who came in here today
00:45:25
Speaker
wanted something from me, that you are the only people who also wanted something for me.
00:45:30
Speaker
You wanted me to obey God and there's no greater blessing.
00:45:34
Speaker
So, you know, we forget that, that our leaders need our ministry as well.
00:45:38
Speaker
And that is the beauty of our faith, is that people who've been hurt and rejected can incarnate the power of the Holy Spirit to change the hearts and minds of people who have hurt them.
00:45:50
Speaker
That's what reconciliation is.
00:45:53
Speaker
It's such a gift when you see it happen.
00:45:56
Speaker
And we see it happen all the time if we need space for it.
00:45:59
Speaker
We live in an absolutely graceless society.
00:46:01
Speaker
There's no room for people to be human.
00:46:04
Speaker
But we as the church have to make room for the people in our communities and for the people who are our leaders.
00:46:12
Speaker
to be human beings and to interact with each other in human ways.
00:46:15
Speaker
And I know that that is traditionally work that everyone in CCDDA has been engaged in, in one way or another.
00:46:22
Speaker
It's very chaotic right now in terms of what people need.
00:46:25
Speaker
And we have to listen really well because I've made several plans, done some national organizing around, oh, people need money to move out of their houses.
00:46:34
Speaker
Oh, people need lawyers.
00:46:35
Speaker
No, actually, one of the things that's consistently true is that the immigrant church has grown up and they are the first responders.
00:46:43
Speaker
And churches that are non-immigrant need to walk with churches that are in the process.
00:46:48
Speaker
But that doesn't mean that there's a one-size-fits-all need that the churches have.
00:46:53
Speaker
I feel like it's a very chaotic time and everyone's still trying to figure it out.
00:46:57
Speaker
So it's walking together and listening for what people need.
00:47:01
Speaker
Which works well with the CCD philosophy of wanting to listen to the community and walk with one another over the long haul, right?
00:47:09
Speaker
It's not just in these reactive moments.
00:47:12
Speaker
It's for the long haul to see our neighbors and to love them.
00:47:17
Speaker
I did want to, it's kind of to your point earlier, Alexia, about how the current climate, we're using a lot of stories to instoke fear.
00:47:27
Speaker
And I kind of want to do for us like a little small act of resistance in how can we instill love?
00:47:33
Speaker
Like, how can we share some stories of people in your lives or neighbors that you know?
00:47:39
Speaker
that can provide like an encouragement to our association.
00:47:43
Speaker
I'd love to hear any stories you have from people in your communities.
00:47:48
Speaker
The one that just came to me, there were a couple that came to me right away.
00:47:52
Speaker
And one of them is, there was a, in our community where we had a lot of experience with fire recently.
00:48:00
Speaker
And there's been just so many acts of heroism around the fire.
00:48:04
Speaker
And a lot of those acts of heroism have been by immigrants.
00:48:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:48:08
Speaker
who have jumped in to save other people.
00:48:11
Speaker
And there's actually a team from our local jornaleros, our day laborers, who's been going around and cleaning up brush from people's houses as volunteers.
00:48:19
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:20
Speaker
Because they work with their hands all the time.
00:48:24
Speaker
And a lot of people who are elderly have all this brush in front of their houses and junk and stuff from the burning.
00:48:31
Speaker
And they've been going around and cleaning it up as volunteers.
00:48:34
Speaker
So that's just something that comes to me.
00:48:36
Speaker
That's beautiful.
00:48:37
Speaker
I love that.
00:48:39
Speaker
And then I'm thinking of Carlos Rincon, Pastor Carlos Rincon, who's been sheltering people, but he just organized a march on Saturday.
00:48:46
Speaker
I'm like, I don't even know.
00:48:47
Speaker
This isn't a way I, you know, pastored.
00:48:50
Speaker
I don't even know what you think this march is going to do.
00:48:51
Speaker
But it's more for the encouragement of the people.
00:48:54
Speaker
They would come out and march together and not be afraid.
00:48:57
Speaker
So I have a lot of respect for what he's doing.
00:49:01
Speaker
So those are just a couple of things that come up.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for sharing.
00:49:05
Speaker
That's neat about Pastor Rencon because he's one of our, in our flourishing congregations initiative.
00:49:10
Speaker
So we love following him and the things he's doing for the community.
00:49:15
Speaker
When you strip the big policies, it's always down to people.
00:49:20
Speaker
And so I would say I was there during inauguration as my own act of rebellion.
00:49:26
Speaker
I wanted to go do work in the shelters for the last people that had just trickled in before CDP closed.
00:49:34
Speaker
And as it was, it was a Colombian family.
00:49:38
Speaker
And it was a mom and dad and three kids.
00:49:42
Speaker
And it was really fun for all of us involved to spend time.
00:49:48
Speaker
And we were like back home.
00:49:50
Speaker
We ended up, the dad made coffee just the way we like to drink it.
00:49:54
Speaker
And we sat around this round table and the kids were teenagers and they were at the table and we were bantering.
00:50:00
Speaker
And it was this sweet moment of just remembering that
00:50:07
Speaker
Even in moments where you feel like there's darkness and it's heavy and you don't know how to move, there are sweet moments of like that shared history, shared humanity.
00:50:18
Speaker
I couldn't believe it.
00:50:18
Speaker
We had a blast, you know, and we were just like hugging and laughing.
00:50:23
Speaker
And the man was like, you know, we hadn't been around Colombians in months.
00:50:28
Speaker
And we don't know when it will be the next time we see one, but this was really incredible.
00:50:33
Speaker
And I had never met a Colombian family working at the border.
00:50:38
Speaker
I met families from many different countries, but I'd never had a Colombian family.
00:50:42
Speaker
And that was one of my favorites.
00:50:44
Speaker
You know, they were able to enter on the 18th.
00:50:48
Speaker
And so it was just before it closed and kind of having the conversation about one of their family members was stuck in Weiss because his appointment was for like the 22nd.
00:51:01
Speaker
And so they were able to cross on the 18th, but the family members were stuck on the 22nd.
00:51:06
Speaker
And so even though there was a lot of grief, a lot of the reasons why they had to come, which were definitely not voluntary, finding those little moments of just
00:51:16
Speaker
joy and laughter in sharing a cup of coffee.
00:51:19
Speaker
Because at the core, it's just, you know, that shared humanity.
Preview of CCDA Immigration Series
00:51:24
Speaker
Thanks for sharing, Lika and Alexia.
00:51:26
Speaker
Those were beautiful notes to end on in our time today.
00:51:31
Speaker
As we mentioned earlier in the episode, we were talking about our immigration network is going to put on an immigration series during Lent called Love Knows No Borders.
00:51:41
Speaker
So I wanted to give Lika a little chance to give us a high-level overview of what we can expect.
00:51:48
Speaker
So just like last year, we're going on with these
00:51:52
Speaker
main idea of wanting to connect, wanting to support one another in the work, and also do a little bit of formation and learning together.
00:52:04
Speaker
So it's a combination of the two.
00:52:05
Speaker
So we're going to go back to our check-ins.
00:52:08
Speaker
There's going to be four separate check-ins during the year.
00:52:11
Speaker
And we're asking people who are in the work in different communities around the country to lead a devotion and kind of share a little bit about what they're seeing in their communities and how we can pray for them.
00:52:23
Speaker
And it's designed to be just a time of coming together in prayer and lament.
00:52:28
Speaker
And so there's nothing of like networking, connecting.
00:52:32
Speaker
It's more like just coming together to groan.
00:52:35
Speaker
collectively and to pray for one another.
00:52:38
Speaker
And then, as you said, Christina, during the Lent season, we do have on Fridays, we'll have different, I would say, webinars where people can select what they want to learn more about.
00:52:52
Speaker
We are hoping to do some basics of immigration law, a panel on knowing your rights and how to mainly help people understand that even if they don't have
00:53:05
Speaker
legal status in the United States, they do have protections and they do have rights.
00:53:09
Speaker
And it's important for people affected to know that, but also for people who are allies walking alongside.
00:53:15
Speaker
So it's important for everyone to be better informed.
00:53:20
Speaker
We also are going to have a panel with some of our practitioners at the border, kind of talking about what their experience is like, what they're seeing and how that affects their day-to-day living.
00:53:33
Speaker
And we're going to hopefully get Bethany Rivera to lead us on the theology of migration, helping us get a little stronger in our theological understanding of how migration and immigration are not just political, and I'm using air quotes, political issues, but they're integral to our faith.
00:53:53
Speaker
And so that's kind of the hope and the offer that we have.
00:53:57
Speaker
Because right now it seems that it's really important to be present for one another, those of us that are immigrants who are directly affected by the policies, but also for people who are in communities desiring to show up for their neighbors.
00:54:13
Speaker
And so we just wanted to have a big offering at the beginning of the year.
00:54:20
Speaker
Awesome.
00:54:20
Speaker
Thanks, Lika.
00:54:21
Speaker
I'm very excited for all the people that we'll be learning from.
00:54:26
Speaker
I think that's one of the beauties of CCDA is we have a lot of experts and we can share that expertise with one another.
00:54:33
Speaker
And there's like a lot of mutuality and encouraging and trying to spur each other on in this work.
00:54:40
Speaker
Thank you, my friends.
00:54:41
Speaker
Alexia, Anika, you all always have been and continue to be an inspiration to me.
00:54:46
Speaker
Thank you for your work in the immigration space.
00:54:50
Speaker
I know you guys love our neighbors very well and very deeply.
00:54:55
Speaker
I wanted to kind of close with the liturgy from Reverend Enoch de Assis, and so that we could close our time together with that.
00:55:05
Speaker
God, teach us to recognize that as we walk with each other, you are present.
00:55:10
Speaker
Teach us to welcome not only the strangers and foreigners in our midst, but the gifts they bring as well, the invitation to conversion, communion, and solidarity.
00:55:20
Speaker
This is the help you have sent.
00:55:22
Speaker
We are not alone.
00:55:23
Speaker
We are together on the journey, and for this we give you thanks.
00:55:27
Speaker
Amen.
00:55:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the CCDA podcast and thank you all for joining us.
00:55:34
Speaker
If you want to learn more about CCDA or get involved and connect with Dr. Alexia Salvatierra or Angelica Acosta-Garnett, check out the show notes of this episode.
00:55:45
Speaker
And don't forget to follow us on our Immigration Lens series, Love Knows No Borders at ccda.org slash immigration.
00:55:54
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:55:59
Speaker
And this episode is also produced by Sarah Callen in association with me, Christina Ford.
00:56:06
Speaker
We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
00:56:14
Speaker
See you then.