It's Time, Mr. President

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It’s Time, Mr. President

Christian leaders unite to call for comprehensive immigration reform b y L inda E spens h ade

leaders of all ethnicities signed the letter. “We are leaders serving a diverse spectrum of churches, but we are united in the belief that every human being is created in the image of God,” the letter read. “We take seriously the Gospel’s call to treat the foreigner with respect and compassion. Acting on this call means raising a public voice for immigration reform as a moral and spiritual issue.” The cries of millions of people are in this letter, says Rev. Gabriel A. Salguero, director of the Latino Leadership Circle and part of the steering committee that drafted the letter. Faith leaders from a wide variety of denominations and ethnicities have heard the cries “of the least of these,” Salguero says, and are compelled to advocate for them now. “We cannot wait a minute longer,” says Lisa Sharon Harper, author of Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican ... or Democrat (New Press, 2008) and cofounder/executive director of NY Faith & Justice, an organization devoted to ending poverty. “Because every minute we wait, another family is broken up, another family is driven into poverty. Real people, real lives are affected every single day.” Motivating the leaders is the firm belief that the Bible calls for Christians to free the oppressed and offer kindness to the alien/immigrant, the orphan and the widow. Salguero translates Jesus’ words of judgment in Matthew 25 into today’s context: “What we do to undocumented immigrants we also do to Jesus.” The problem, several leaders say, is that the immigration system is broken (see “What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?” on page 34). As it exists, the system keeps families apart for years, even those coming legally. Immigrants in detention have no rights to due process, and if they do find a way to appeal their case, they can be detained for years

From the mother who can no longer afford to feed her children because her husband has been deported, to the American citizen whose ready-to-deliver pregnant wife was sent back to Mexico because of a missed filing deadline; from the men sitting in US immigration detention centers with no rights to a lawyer, to the green-card holders forcibly taken from their homes at night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — pastors in the Hispanic community hear stories that make them agonize for the lives torn apart by an immigration system they often describe as “broken.” Under the leadership of Esperanza, one of the largest evangelical, faith-based Hispanic networks in the United States, many of those pastors and faith leaders have called upon President Barack Obama to take action on comprehensive immigration reform by Thanksgiving of this year. Rev. Luis Cortés Jr., president of Esperanza, presented the president with a letter summarizing the leaders’ concerns at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, held on June 19. More than 150

PRISM 2009

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