Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: My name is Christina Foran.
Speaker: I am the Director of Engagement and Mobilization at CCDA, and I am your host for this episode.
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.
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.
Speaker: So let's kick it off with hearing a little bit about who you are.
Speaker: Alexia, do you mind sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Speaker: Sure.
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.
Speaker: But my, and I've been a pastor and a community development practitioner for about 45 years.
Speaker: And then what my favorite title comes out of that, which is that young people call me Madrina, which means godmother.
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.
Speaker: That's more like the Godfather from the Godfather movies.
Speaker: Only we don't kill people, but we're fierce.
Speaker: So I have a little chain around my neck that says La Madrina.
Speaker: But I've been involved in engaging the church in immigration issues for about 45 years.
Speaker: So I was in the first Central American Sanctuary Movement.
Speaker: I was one of the co-founders of the New Sanctuary Movement of the Evangelical Immigration Table and several other national initiatives.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: And I actually have heard your title, Madrina, many times, which is beautiful.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And how about you, Lika?
Speaker: Do you mind sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Hi.
Speaker: So my name is Angelika, a Costa Garnet.
Speaker: I go by Lika.
Speaker: I'm originally from Bogota, Colombia.
Speaker: I came to the States 25 years ago when I was not a baby after high school.
Speaker: And I have...
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.
Speaker: And in the realm of immigration, aside from personally having to navigate the system and attempt to survive it,
Speaker: I have worked in immigration law as a paralegal, particularly a story paralegal.
Speaker: So sitting with people in their stories of arrival to the U.S. and kind of figuring out pathways.
Speaker: And I currently work for Apara, the U.S.-Mexico border.
Speaker: I run the Asylum and Narrative Project, interviewing asylum seekers for their legal narrative.
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.
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.
Speaker: And currently, Lika kind of operates as our facilitator for our immigration network.
Speaker: So I'm really glad to bring them both here and here, share their perspectives with us today.
Speaker: Lika, let's start a little bit with shared language because I know that's important.
Speaker: A lot of people kind of conflate different words and things in our immigration space.
Speaker: So when we're talking about the different people groups in our immigration landscape,
Speaker: Do you mind kind of giving us some shared language around that?
Speaker: I will do my best at attempting to narrow some of the main terms that we use all the time.
Speaker: I would like to start with even the most simple term, which is immigrant.
Speaker: But from like a legal standpoint, an immigrant is someone that has
Speaker: plan to stay in the United States.
Speaker: And the government doesn't consider someone an immigrant, a permanent resident until you actually have a green card.
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.
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.
Speaker: The actual process of becoming an immigrant to the United States is when they adjust to permanent residency.
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.
Speaker: So the United States uses two terms that I absolutely despise.
Speaker: You have U.S. citizens and then you have aliens.
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.
Speaker: I think I was really surprised when I found out when I entered that I had an alien number.
Speaker: I need forever to figure out why the heck I was an alien.
Speaker: So I just absolutely hate that term.
Speaker: When we are talking about people who are in the United States,
Speaker: we usually refer to people who are on the move as migrating people or migrants.
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.
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.
Speaker: because that's actually what it means.
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.
Speaker: And I've always been really confused by that.
Speaker: Like when you're interviewing people at a shelter in El Paso and they say, oh, you're interviewing migrants.
Speaker: I'm like, am I interviewing migrants or am I interviewing immigrants or who am I interviewing?
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.
Speaker: Another word that we use all the time is the word refugee.
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?
Speaker: So when we talk about asylum seekers, from a humanitarian point of view, they are refugees and they're seeking refuge.
Speaker: Legally speaking, they're not considered refugees, they're considered asylum seekers.
Speaker: So what I love to explain to people is an asylum seeker and a refugee, from a humanitarian standpoint, are the exact same.
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.
Speaker: But you, for all intents and purposes, are seeking refuge.
Speaker: Therefore, you are a refugee.
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.
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.
Speaker: Usually they enter already with their paperwork and they have that refugee category.
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.
Speaker: A lot of people think, oh yeah, people that came here from Afghanistan or from Syria or from those countries.
Speaker: But that's from a legal standpoint.
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.
Speaker: And so I think that when we mix the language between the humanitarian and the legal people,
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.
Speaker: We just apply a different process to them.
Speaker: Do you mind touching a little bit too on undocumented and mixed status families and what that means?
Speaker: in our day-to-day language?
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.
Speaker: There's no such thing.
Speaker: There are no illegal people.
Speaker: There's also no illegal immigrants because U.S. legal purposes to be an immigrant, you have to have permanent status.
Speaker: So you're the least likely to be illegal, if you will.
Speaker: So an illegal immigrant to me is just an oxymoron.
Speaker: But regardless, we should not be attaching the word illegal to anyone.
Speaker: You could talk about documented versus undocumented, and that has to do with entry.
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.
Speaker: And they're going to be asking for a visa.
Speaker: Because that is the document that we have deemed people need in order to enter the United States.
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?
Speaker: Well, what happens when you come to a port of entry and you don't have a visa?
Speaker: There's two options.
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.
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...
Speaker: eligible to enter the United States to process, say, an asylum application.
Speaker: That is a document.
Speaker: So even though you don't have a visa, you're not undocumented.
Speaker: You have been inspected and you have been allowed into the United States by someone at a port of entry.
Speaker: So here's where common people get super tricked.
Speaker: Oh, you don't have a visa?
Speaker: You're an illegal.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: You just don't understand the law because there are other categories.
Speaker: The third option is that you entered the United States without inspection.
Speaker: And that means that you were not stopped or you did not turn yourself into Border Patrol or CDP.
Speaker: So they didn't give you a document that allows you to be in the United States.
Speaker: And that is what we could say.
Speaker: It's an infraction because you entered without having a document.
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.
Speaker: But I also find that those two categories are not expansive enough to understand
Speaker: how a person ends up in the United States.
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.
Speaker: Like you could have entered with a visa.
Speaker: So you had a visa, you were inspected, but you were supposed to leave and you overstayed.
Speaker: Well, then what do you do with that person?
Speaker: Are they documented or undocumented?
Speaker: Well, they were documented, but currently, so do you see where I'm going?
Speaker: Like, we don't have enough
Speaker: clear terminology or appropriate terminology to cover people.
Speaker: And so we take shortcuts with words like illegal immigrants or illegal aliens or undocumented people.
Speaker: And it's just a lack of understanding that there's so many different avenues for people to come, to stay, to overstay.
Speaker: Like it's more complex and it's not as simple as just slapping labels on people.
Speaker: Thank you, Lika, for clarifying and sharing those things with us.
Speaker: And we just tapped a little bit into our brilliance.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
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?
Speaker: today.
Speaker: Can you paint a landscape for us?
Speaker: I can.
Speaker: I actually want to add to what Angelico said, though, in a couple of aspects.
Speaker: One traditional differentiation in migration studies is between what they call forced migration and voluntary migration.
Speaker: Forced migration means that you are running from a threat to your life in some form.
Speaker: You're running from violent persecution in your country of origin.
Speaker: Voluntary migration means that you're coming for some other reason.
Speaker: But that category blurs easily, and it particularly blurs nowadays when we're talking about climate change.
Speaker: Because when you're running because all of the land that you've lived on and farmed is now
Speaker: an ocean and you can't live on it or farm it, are you coming voluntarily or are you forced?
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.
Speaker: Either the government is persecuting you or the government can't keep you safe.
Speaker: But when it's Mother Nature, what do you call that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: The person doesn't have the option of staying where they are, and yet they're not forced by a government.
Speaker: That's an added level of complexity.
Speaker: And then another added level of complexity is that people are not just individuals, they're parts of families.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you can have in the same family people that have different levels and kinds of documentation and people that don't.
Speaker: Often there's not a public awareness that if you send one person away that you impact people who are citizens.
Speaker: And that's how.
Speaker: Just adding to the complexity.
Speaker: We could add to the complexity for hours, but, you know, just, I think those are important things.
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.
Speaker: It's not just.
Speaker: Yes, it is affecting neighborhoods.
Speaker: It is affecting communities.
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.
Speaker: So 45 years.
Speaker: It has always been ineffective, and most people know that.
Speaker: If you get a step closer, you know it's illogical.
Speaker: It makes the DMV and the IRS look positively sane in comparison.
Speaker: And if you get a step closer than that, you know that it's inhumane.
Speaker: So that's what we mean when we talk about a broken immigration system.
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.
Speaker: And I have never seen anything in my life like what we're seeing now.
Speaker: And I have worked under Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, and I have never seen anything like we're seeing now.
Speaker: That this is a wholesale attack on immigrants, immigrant families, immigrant communities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And both in terms of people who are coming to this country and also in terms of people that are in this country.
Speaker: So I want to give you just a few examples because we really don't have time to go over every detail.
Speaker: Since 1951, the United States has been welcoming refugees and asylum seekers.
Speaker: And I should say that the criteria for refugees and asylum seekers is the same criteria.
Speaker: just so that you have a sense of it.
Speaker: It's just where people ask for assessment about whether or not they meet that criteria.
Speaker: It's the same criteria, right?
Speaker: So we've been welcoming people since 1951.
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.
Speaker: In 1980, the Refugee Act passed, which clarified some of our commitments.
Speaker: to welcome refugees.
Speaker: But I just want to make it very clear that in 1951, almost every country in the world signed the agreement.
Speaker: So this is an international agreement, not just a national agreement.
Speaker: We're subject to international law around welcoming refugees.
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.
Speaker: So that was a huge drop.
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.
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.
Speaker: all over the world.
Speaker: Technology, climate change, they're all creating what we call in migration studies, surplus people.
Speaker: Talk about words that should be killed and buried, right?
Speaker: Surplus people.
Speaker: There are no surplus people in Jesus's eyes.
Speaker: Everybody is essential.
Speaker: But their surplus, it's a very poignant phrase in that they no longer have a place in the modern world.
Speaker: So we need to figure out how we respond to that as a globe.
Speaker: So we're just one part of that globe.
Speaker: Currently, it's much worse.
Speaker: Not only have they essentially stopped all asylum and refugees.
Speaker: In fact, there are very odd sort of contradictory orders that talk about how to restrict it and that stop it.
Speaker: But overall, we've stopped all asylum and refugee entry.
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.
Speaker: All of that stopped dead initially as a suspension and as of yesterday permanently.
Speaker: So all those organizations can't care.
Speaker: They have no money for their staff.
Speaker: They have no money for the refugees themselves.
Speaker: It's a level of cold-heartedness that is almost unbelievable.
Speaker: That's one area.
Speaker: That's people coming from outside, the most vulnerable people coming from outside.
Speaker: What happens to people who are inside?
Speaker: So there, because the system is so broken, we have had a mechanism called deferred deportation actually all of my life.
Speaker: It used to be very informal, and it became much more formal in 2010.
Speaker: But deferred deportation basically means that a person has a potential legal case, what we call a qualifying case.
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.
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.
Speaker: They didn't choose to come here.
Speaker: We've invested in them through our school system.
Speaker: They want to give back.
Speaker: They are giving back, many of them.
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,
Speaker: You have to go back to your home country for 10 years.
Speaker: It's called the bar before you could be considered for immigration.
Speaker: So people who have what we call the blood, sweat, and tears category.
Speaker: Blood means they have family relationships with a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
Speaker: Sweat means that we need their labor.
Speaker: And tears means refugees or asylum seekers.
Speaker: So they have a qualifying case.
Speaker: They have to go back to their home country.
Speaker: Many of them never have in their conscious memory their home country.
Speaker: because they were bought here as small children.
Speaker: They're supposed to go back to their home country for 10 years.
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.
Speaker: We've never been able to pass it, and that's a larger story.
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.
Speaker: So let's allow them to stay while we try to figure it out.
Speaker: Deferred deportation has always been available also to individuals.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: Deferred deportation is no more.
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.
Speaker: And he said it can cost a million dollars.
Speaker: That's a broken system.
Speaker: So people have been pursuing their cases going every year.
Speaker: All those people are suddenly not just undocumented, but the executive order says they're criminals now.
Speaker: So when they say they're going to just deport criminals, they have to find everybody who
Speaker: who was not a criminal previously as a criminal.
Speaker: So if you've had deferred deportation, you're in the system, you're a primary target right now to be deported.
Speaker: And they have quotas and they're trying very hard to deport everyone that they can.
Speaker: Another category that we're losing, again, just important for people to have a real sense of this, is temporary protected status.
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.
Speaker: And it allows for the administration to recognize that a particular country is such a hellhole.
Speaker: that people coming from that country need to have the opportunity to stay until the situation calms down.
Speaker: And then they would have to prove individual cases for blood, sweat, or tears.
Speaker: So there are a number of countries that have had temporary protected status.
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.
Speaker: But he has offered it to white people in South Africa who have not asked for it.
Speaker: They don't have any petitions from white people in South Africa even, but he has offered it to them.
Speaker: So it's not an ending of the category in theory.
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
Speaker: criminals by the definition of our government at this moment.
Speaker: So these are people who have been judged when they enter to have a legitimate fear.
Speaker: That's the first bar that you have to pass.
Speaker: They have a legitimate fear of persecution.
Speaker: So we've determined that.
Speaker: Many of them are children.
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.
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.
Speaker: One is expedited removal.
Speaker: Expedited removal means that within 100 miles of the border, this is what it's been traditionally, now it's countrywide.
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.
Speaker: They don't have to give you a hearing.
Speaker: They can just deport you.
Speaker: Now, expediting removal is nationwide.
Speaker: And as a result, they've picked up some Native Americans.
Speaker: They've picked up some Puerto Ricans because you don't have to go to a hearing.
Speaker: They go right to the detention center.
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.
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.
Speaker: There's a long list.
Speaker: But primarily we think about it as churches, hospitals, and schools.
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.
Speaker: So, for example, the man in Georgia who was recently picked up under this, he was at church.
Speaker: The church door was locked, so they couldn't come in.
Speaker: But the pastor was in the middle of the sermon.
Speaker: He had an ankle bracelet on because he is in an asylum process.
Speaker: Only he had come to the country undocumented many, many years before and been deported.
Speaker: But now he's in, has been in the asylum process.
Speaker: He's in the asylum process.
Speaker: But they still came to him.
Speaker: They came very intentionally because he had the angle bracelet.
Speaker: They could find him anywhere, anytime.
Speaker: They came very intentionally to church.
Speaker: And he left the service so that his children wouldn't have to watch him get handcuffed.
Speaker: And he was taken away.
Speaker: They did that and they have said this.
Speaker: to make people auto-deport.
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.
Speaker: But only three churches where we know that they've deported somebody.
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.
Speaker: Just self-deport.
Speaker: So that's the intention of that policy.
Speaker: But we do have a lawsuit going.
Speaker: A number of denominations, Cooperative Baptist Quakers have a lawsuit.
Speaker: And we do have an injunction, but only for those denominations that says that they can't go in currently into a church.
Speaker: But it doesn't say anything about hospitals or schools.
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.
Speaker: They've also cut funding to nonprofits.
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.
Speaker: So they're trying to also make sure that people don't have any kind of legal help.
Speaker: Although, honestly, legal help will only avail in certain cases right now.
Speaker: But still, people do need legal help in those cases, and we don't have enough legal help.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Alexa, for sharing.
Speaker: I think I really have been curious.
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.
Speaker: But one thing I just actually really wanted to hear your thoughts on specifically is just like what
Speaker: what are we missing in our theology to end up here?
Speaker: I was really struck by what you said, even at the beginning, you're like, you haven't seen it this bad, right?
Speaker: You haven't seen us treat immigrants, silence seekers, refugees, all of them this bad in your 45 years.
Speaker: And it kind of begs the question for Christians and for the church, like, why?
Speaker: What is going on?
Speaker: Why are we giving into this rhetoric or allowing this to continue or not welcoming the stranger as we love to use?
Speaker: So I'd love to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that.
Speaker: So there's a very interesting little book called Taking America Back for God.
Speaker: It's research that was done by, not by Christians, by religion scholars, people that study religion as a phenomenon.
Speaker: And they noticed that the difference between Christian nationalists and evangelicals is the response to immigrants and refugees.
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.
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,
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.
Speaker: Like we have a number of people who are Latino, but they didn't cross the border.
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.
Speaker: So those people are not included under Christian nationalism as part of the nation.
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.
Speaker: Some people have more of a constitutional sense of it.
Speaker: I don't want to paint everybody with the same brush.
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.
Speaker: That was called manifest destiny.
Speaker: That was a way that people understood Christian nationalism 100 years ago.
Speaker: No, we are holy people and we need to protect ourselves from the rest of the world so that we remain holy.
Speaker: It's really very far away from Jesus and anything to do with the mission of Jesus.
Speaker: But many of the people who are Christian nationalists call themselves evangelicals.
Speaker: Now, there is four evangelicals, and I just need to be clear about this.
Speaker: There's a very complex historic relationship between church and state.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: Now, I want to be fair and say that...
Speaker: There's a lot of misinformation out there, and there's a lot of fear.
Speaker: And, you know, God does require, Jesus requires that we love our enemies, but not that we sacrifice our children.
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.
Speaker: And every country has an immigration system.
Speaker: Canada has a much better immigration system than we do, and it's not open borders.
Speaker: So it is possible to have a more effective, more sane, more humane, more logical, more just immigration system in this country.
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.
Speaker: We couldn't pass them because of this kind of the way that people have drummed up fear.
Speaker: and territorialism.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: And I was thinking about that.
Speaker: Like, obviously, that involves a love for God, but also like a love for neighbor, right?
Speaker: What is that perfect love of neighbor?
Speaker: How can that cast out fear, right?
Speaker: And that's like given to us by creator God, right?
Speaker: To be able to do that well.
Speaker: And so how can we collectively flourish?
Speaker: I actually just want to add one more theological piece very quickly.
Speaker: The prodigal son.
Speaker: This is a very important story about what's happening right now.
Speaker: Remember the older son.
Speaker: The older son feels very much like a number of people in this country feel.
Speaker: Like this isn't fair.
Speaker: Like his younger brother is taking things that don't belong to him, that really should belong to the older son.
Speaker: And I just want to note what the father says to the elders.
Speaker: The older son says, your son.
Speaker: And the father says, your brother.
Speaker: And I just wanted to say that because I really think it underlines what you're just saying about communal flourishing.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
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?
Speaker: I keep thinking, and I'm glad that both Alexi and you brought it up, is that idea of fear.
Speaker: Because the narrative is there is this invasion.
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.
Speaker: And I think
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
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.
Speaker: How is that an invasion?
Speaker: How is that something that should make you feel afraid?
Speaker: So I think that part of this moment
Speaker: is not even understanding what we're talking about.
Speaker: Because a lot of these draconian policies are affecting people who are already in the United States, number one.
Speaker: Number two, to Alexia's point, are policies that are affecting people who are U.S. citizens.
Speaker: So it's almost like your government is creating policies to hurt your own people.
Speaker: And yet everyone's on this bandwagon.
Speaker: Like, you know, the border is on fire.
Speaker: It's a crisis.
Speaker: We're sending troops and I work at the border.
Speaker: There are no invasions.
Speaker: There is no crazy amount of people trying to jump fences.
Speaker: Like that's not happening.
Speaker: And so this idea of these imminent threats
Speaker: It's not occurring because, as Alexia explained, our asylum process is officially dismantled after January 20th when CVP was killed.
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.
Speaker: And they lost all of that.
Speaker: And now they're stuck in Juarez and they cannot go back home.
Speaker: So what I'm always curious is to say, what is it that you're so afraid of?
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.
Speaker: So there's clearly not an invasion.
Speaker: So are you really that afraid of your neighbor?
Speaker: Are you really that afraid of that lady in the carpool?
Speaker: Are you that afraid of that lady that sells the yummy tortillas, the restaurant you're so excited to have on your block?
Speaker: Like that to me is the part that is my knowing.
Speaker: It's like, okay, guys, let's feel these back.
Speaker: What is it that you're so afraid of?
Speaker: What do you actually think is going to happen?
Speaker: And because we don't even pause to ask questions, we're not even curious about, you know, quote unquote, the other side.
Speaker: We are not talking.
Speaker: So, B, that's almost the call.
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.
Speaker: Others are being called to be advocates.
Speaker: Others are called.
Speaker: I think we all have a call in this particular time.
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.
Speaker: Nobody knows what.
Speaker: There's chaos in policy because they contradict each other.
Speaker: There is chaos in terminology.
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.
Speaker: And I always tell people, don't be fooled because that was also
Speaker: Not okay.
Speaker: Like to have a deferred deportation program for 20 years is not okay.
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.
Speaker: They cannot become permanent residents or citizens.
Speaker: They cannot vote.
Speaker: We give them a tiny piece of the pie, not even, we let them lick the icing and say, be happy with that.
Speaker: So for me, it's like, it's so intertwined because we don't,
Speaker: We're not curious enough.
Speaker: We're not bothered enough.
Speaker: We're sometimes, okay, we'd say, well, you know, the dreamers are here.
Speaker: Maybe if we just give them some sort of status so they maybe can work and go to school.
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.
Speaker: I want them to be able to vote and have public office.
Speaker: Like I want my brothers and sisters to have full life and full opportunities and full experience.
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.
Speaker: Like I'm not okay with people having, you know, my leftovers.
Speaker: I want them to have the main course.
Speaker: And I think we are not,
Speaker: aggravated enough and we don't expect the same things that we want for ourselves and for our children.
Speaker: We don't expect the same for our neighbors because we're like, well, at least they, I hate at least.
Speaker: At least it should also be, you know, let's have a funeral for at least.
Speaker: I want shalom.
Speaker: I want wholeness.
Speaker: I think that's what's lacking in the conversation.
Speaker: I sit in so many meetings that are like, let's talk about how immigrants are good for the economy.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't care.
Speaker: What if you're not?
Speaker: We should be welcoming them because that's the mandate.
Speaker: I don't care if they're expensive, you know?
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
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?
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.
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?
Speaker: But then also, how do we embrace this shared humanity?
Speaker: We talk about this all the time at CCDA, and it feels weird that it's like,
Speaker: almost becoming like a revolutionary thought that, oh, I need to see the value and dignity in others as well as myself.
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?
Speaker: But it feels like that's like the thing that we need to keep calling people to in this moment as well.
Speaker: Is there anything you would add, Alexia?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was just thinking about, Christina, about your response right now.
Speaker: I have a friend who's a lapsed Catholic.
Speaker: He's an atheist, and he's relatively conservative.
Speaker: He's quite conservative.
Speaker: And he says, well, I'm just confused because everybody knows about Jesus.
Speaker: He's an atheist.
Speaker: Everybody knows about Jesus.
Speaker: I mean, like he loves everyone.
Speaker: He said, like, but why are these Christians?
Speaker: You know, talking like this.
Speaker: But I think that once people do get, are captive to fear, and that fear is manipulated and increased very intentionally.
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.
Speaker: You know, less than 1%.
Speaker: But those stories are told over and over and over again.
Speaker: And so that fear is fomented, right?
Speaker: And we really do have a task when you talk about what is our task as the church.
Speaker: Our task is to build relationships between neighbors that allow us to see that we're all sinners and all saints, right?
Speaker: That we're all children of the same heavenly Father.
Speaker: That that is our task as the church.
Speaker: And our task is to remind people of the call of Jesus.
Speaker: And then beyond that, our task is to remind our leaders.
Speaker: Legislators are human beings also.
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.
Speaker: And she said, you know, everybody else who came in here today
Speaker: wanted something from me, that you are the only people who also wanted something for me.
Speaker: You wanted me to obey God and there's no greater blessing.
Speaker: So, you know, we forget that, that our leaders need our ministry as well.
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.
Speaker: That's what reconciliation is.
Speaker: It's such a gift when you see it happen.
Speaker: And we see it happen all the time if we need space for it.
Speaker: We live in an absolutely graceless society.
Speaker: There's no room for people to be human.
Speaker: But we as the church have to make room for the people in our communities and for the people who are our leaders.
Speaker: to be human beings and to interact with each other in human ways.
Speaker: And I know that that is traditionally work that everyone in CCDDA has been engaged in, in one way or another.
Speaker: It's very chaotic right now in terms of what people need.
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.
Speaker: Oh, people need lawyers.
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.
Speaker: And churches that are non-immigrant need to walk with churches that are in the process.
Speaker: But that doesn't mean that there's a one-size-fits-all need that the churches have.
Speaker: I feel like it's a very chaotic time and everyone's still trying to figure it out.
Speaker: So it's walking together and listening for what people need.
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?
Speaker: It's not just in these reactive moments.
Speaker: It's for the long haul to see our neighbors and to love them.
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.
Speaker: And I kind of want to do for us like a little small act of resistance in how can we instill love?
Speaker: Like, how can we share some stories of people in your lives or neighbors that you know?
Speaker: that can provide like an encouragement to our association.
Speaker: I'd love to hear any stories you have from people in your communities.
Speaker: The one that just came to me, there were a couple that came to me right away.
Speaker: And one of them is, there was a, in our community where we had a lot of experience with fire recently.
Speaker: And there's been just so many acts of heroism around the fire.
Speaker: And a lot of those acts of heroism have been by immigrants.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: who have jumped in to save other people.
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.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Because they work with their hands all the time.
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.
Speaker: And they've been going around and cleaning it up as volunteers.
Speaker: So that's just something that comes to me.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: I love that.
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.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't even know.
Speaker: This isn't a way I, you know, pastored.
Speaker: I don't even know what you think this march is going to do.
Speaker: But it's more for the encouragement of the people.
Speaker: They would come out and march together and not be afraid.
Speaker: So I have a lot of respect for what he's doing.
Speaker: So those are just a couple of things that come up.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for sharing.
Speaker: That's neat about Pastor Rencon because he's one of our, in our flourishing congregations initiative.
Speaker: So we love following him and the things he's doing for the community.
Speaker: When you strip the big policies, it's always down to people.
Speaker: And so I would say I was there during inauguration as my own act of rebellion.
Speaker: I wanted to go do work in the shelters for the last people that had just trickled in before CDP closed.
Speaker: And as it was, it was a Colombian family.
Speaker: And it was a mom and dad and three kids.
Speaker: And it was really fun for all of us involved to spend time.
Speaker: And we were like back home.
Speaker: We ended up, the dad made coffee just the way we like to drink it.
Speaker: And we sat around this round table and the kids were teenagers and they were at the table and we were bantering.
Speaker: And it was this sweet moment of just remembering that
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.
Speaker: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker: We had a blast, you know, and we were just like hugging and laughing.
Speaker: And the man was like, you know, we hadn't been around Colombians in months.
Speaker: And we don't know when it will be the next time we see one, but this was really incredible.
Speaker: And I had never met a Colombian family working at the border.
Speaker: I met families from many different countries, but I'd never had a Colombian family.
Speaker: And that was one of my favorites.
Speaker: You know, they were able to enter on the 18th.
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.
Speaker: And so they were able to cross on the 18th, but the family members were stuck on the 22nd.
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
Speaker: joy and laughter in sharing a cup of coffee.
Speaker: Because at the core, it's just, you know, that shared humanity.
Speaker: Thanks for sharing, Lika and Alexia.
Speaker: Those were beautiful notes to end on in our time today.
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.
Speaker: So I wanted to give Lika a little chance to give us a high-level overview of what we can expect.
Speaker: So just like last year, we're going on with these
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.
Speaker: So it's a combination of the two.
Speaker: So we're going to go back to our check-ins.
Speaker: There's going to be four separate check-ins during the year.
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.
Speaker: And it's designed to be just a time of coming together in prayer and lament.
Speaker: And so there's nothing of like networking, connecting.
Speaker: It's more like just coming together to groan.
Speaker: collectively and to pray for one another.
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.
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
Speaker: legal status in the United States, they do have protections and they do have rights.
Speaker: And it's important for people affected to know that, but also for people who are allies walking alongside.
Speaker: So it's important for everyone to be better informed.
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.
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.
Speaker: And so that's kind of the hope and the offer that we have.
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.
Speaker: And so we just wanted to have a big offering at the beginning of the year.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Thanks, Lika.
Speaker: I'm very excited for all the people that we'll be learning from.
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.
Speaker: And there's like a lot of mutuality and encouraging and trying to spur each other on in this work.
Speaker: Thank you, my friends.
Speaker: Alexia, Anika, you all always have been and continue to be an inspiration to me.
Speaker: Thank you for your work in the immigration space.
Speaker: I know you guys love our neighbors very well and very deeply.
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.
Speaker: God, teach us to recognize that as we walk with each other, you are present.
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.
Speaker: This is the help you have sent.
Speaker: We are not alone.
Speaker: We are together on the journey, and for this we give you thanks.
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to the CCDA podcast and thank you all for joining us.
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.
Speaker: And don't forget to follow us on our Immigration Lens series, Love Knows No Borders at ccda.org slash immigration.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: And this episode is also produced by Sarah Callen in association with me, Christina Ford.
Speaker: We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
Speaker: See you then.
