The phrase “We need to talk” can sound menacing when it comes from a boss or a mate, implying the need for some change the hearer may not want. And it might sound menacing to you when I say it regarding immigration issues. These issues are so longstanding here in the Valley that we think our lives depend on them. They’re part of the status quo, and that’s what I think we need to talk about.
Monday morning’s Fresno Bee carried
yet another front-page story about the trials of people facing deportation who
were brought here as children through no fault of their own. I’m going to call them “importees” from now
on, for the sense of involuntariness is what moves us to care, and it should.
This man, Vanna In, considered
Cambodian but born in Viet Nam in the mid-1970’s when our war on that country
was just ending, leaving rice paddies, roads, villages and towns in ruins, has
become a minister to gang members, having been one himself. He’s not just a productive member of society,
he’s a healer of one of this society’s wounds.
But his early childhood education, so to speak, leaves him extremely
vulnerable in this tragic political moment, when Congress is too hamstrung to
act. He faces deportation to Cambodia,
where he has never lived.
The article, written by Carmen
George, who has been bringing us compelling pieces of beauty from our region
for several years now, tells how we might help this singular man. Rev. Vanna In has petitioned Gov. Jerry Brown
for a pardon, which could lead to citizenship if granted. A petition in support of that request is
available at www.change.org, and has
gathered over 7,000 signatures already.
We need to do more, however, than
help people one at a time. President Trump’s
machete-like action cutting off the DACA program, which provided a measure of
stability to some of these importees, was a rash challenge to Congress, a
wielding of the power of the pen to provoke legislative action toward resolving
our unresolved immigration issues. But
Congress cannot resolve them while we, the people, are so unresolved ourselves.
There are people in this country,
powerful people, who benefit economically from the availability of undocumented
(“illegal”) immigrants. Their political
influence will make it difficult to find a national legislative solution. Meanwhile, the economic costs are borne by
the immigrants themselves and by the communities in which they live. Rev. Vanna In’s story, luckily, shows us the
benefits we also receive at the community level.
Perhaps this story and others will
help us start the conversations we need to be having at the local level about
immigration: about who qualifies as
“American” and how we gain that status, the pathways to citizenship. About what we do, as neighbors and friends,
when ICE comes to the door of the house down the street, supposedly to “fix”
the problem of illegal immigration, but ripping apart families, churches,
neighborhoods, and communities instead.
We need to talk, and we need to talk
now, before ICE comes. Let’s find a way
to do it.
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Trudy
Wischemann is the granddaughter of immigrants before there were laws to prevent
them from entering. You can send her
your immigrant origins c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
