Illegal hospitality: A church's guide to civil disobedience

by Melissa Bixler
SojoMail 3-29-2006

A few weeks ago I read about my friends Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove being arrested. Clothed in sackcloth, the Old Testament symbols of grief and mourning, pictures in the paper showed the couple on their knees outside the Raleigh-Durham Central Prison protesting the execution of inmate Perrie Simpson. Images of my friends being led away in handcuffs gather in my mind alongside other historic moments of resistance: sit-ins in Greensboro, Buddhists monks torching themselves in protest of the Vietnam War, and the chants and dances of anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa.

Recently I've added a new and unusual image. Abram and Sarai, the mother and father of Israel, are now planted in my imagination as possible protestors and rabble rousers. Their act of potential civil disobedience is found in Genesis. Abram's welcome of three strangers is the quintessential hospitality story in the Bible. It is marked by a flurry of activity as Abram rushes about ordering food, cleaning up the tent and entertaining the mysterious newcomers.

But Abram welcomes the three without knowing where they came from or where they are going. He asks for no identification and requires no answers about the strangers' country of origin. As such, if Abram lived in the U.S. in 2007, these actions would have made him a potential crime suspect. If the strangers turned out to be undocumented workers a bill passed by the House in December would have allowed law enforcement to arrest the holy couple for harboring illegal aliens.

It's already hard enough for American Christians to welcome strangers. In our culture hospitality is seen as an act of intrusion and inconvenience. The church has to fight hard to keep the virtue of hospitality alive. But soon it will be harder than ever to follow the Hebrews 13 injunction to welcome strangers in Abrahamic fashion. In the near future many of these moments of welcome could be illegal. H.R. 4437, introduced as a reform to immigration laws, includes a provision to make it illegal to feed, transport and even temporarily harbor an undocumented worker. Though the Senate judiciary committee passed a bill without the provision Tuesday, the legislation may be changed again before a vote.

Those of in areas with high populations of immigrants, particularly churches in the South - in Florida, along the Mexican border, and around southern California - will feel the affects of the law most acutely. Potlucks in churches in these areas could be raided by the police. Letting your child's Sunday school friend spend the night could get you a court date and social workers advocating for Latino children will be liable to arrest. Even giving your buddies a ride home from a pick-up basketball game might land you in jail.

It was this impending reality that led Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to call for a massive church-wide commitment to acts of civil disobedience in the area of immigrant hospitality. The cardinal encouraged members of the nation's largest diocese to use the forty days of Lent to reflect on their commitments to the Gospel's call to welcoming the alien, the orphan and the widow. Quoting Pope Benedict's first encyclical the Cardinal's Ash Wednesday message reminds us that:

I encourage you to read and reflect on this letter, and then contact your representatives and ask them to work for a true revamping of immigration laws.

Jack Deegan, O.S.A.

Director, Justice and Peace

The Peace and Justice Committee of the Parish also encourages you to contact our Senators, Arlen Specter (202-224-4254) and Rick Santorum (202-224-6324) encouraging them to move our country toward more just immigration laws.

I’ve received a lot of criticism for stating last month that I would instruct the priests of my archdiocese to disobey a proposed law that would subject them, as well as other church and humanitarian workers, to criminal penalties. The proposed Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control bill, which was approved by the House of Representatives in December and is expected to be taken up by the Senate next week, would among other things subject to five years in prison anyone who "assists" an undocumented immigrant "to remain in the United States."

Some supporters of the bill have even accused the church of encouraging illegal immigration and meddling in politics. But I stand by my statement. Part of the mission of the Roman Catholic Church is to help people in need. It is our Gospel mandate, in which Christ instructs us to clothe the naked, feed the poor and welcome the stranger. Indeed, the Catholic Church, through Catholic Charities agencies around the country, is one of the largest nonprofit providers of social services in the nation, serving both citizens and immigrants.

Providing humanitarian assistance to those in need should not be made a crime, as the House bill decrees. As written, the proposed law is so broad that it would criminalize even minor acts of mercy like offering a meal or administering first aid.

Current law does not require social service agencies to obtain evidence of legal status before rendering aid, nor should it. Denying aid to a fellow human being violates a law with a higher authority than Congress – the law of God.

That does not mean that the Catholic Church encourages or supports illegal immigration. Every day in our parishes, social service programs, hospitals and schools, we witness the baleful consequences of illegal immigration. Families are separated, workers are exploited and migrants are left by smugglers to die in the desert. Illegal immigration serves neither the migrant nor the common good.

What the church supports is an overhaul of the immigration system so that legal status and legal channels for migration replace illegal status and illegal immigration. Creating legal structures for migration protects not only those who migrate but also our nation, by giving the government the ability to better identify who is in the country as well as to control who enters it.

Only comprehensive reform of the immigration system, embodied in the principles of another proposal in Congress, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration bill, will help solve our current immigration crisis.

Enforcement-only proposals like the Border Protection act take the country in the opposite direction. Increasing penalties, building more detention centers and erecting walls along our border with Mexico, as the act provides, will not solve the problem.

The legislation will not deter migrants who are desperate to survive and support their families from seeking jobs in the United States. It will only drive them further into the shadows, encourage the creation of more elaborate smuggling networks and cause hardship and suffering. I hope that the Senate will not take the same enforcement-only road as the House.

The unspoken truth of the immigration debate is that at the same time our nation benefits economically from the presence of undocumented workers, we turn a blind eye when they are exploited by employers. They work in industries that are vital to our economy yet they have little legal protection and no opportunity to contribute fully to our nation.

While we gladly accept their taxes and sweat, we do not acknowledge or uphold their basic labor rights. At the same time, we scapegoat them for our social ills and label them as security threats and criminals to justify the passage of anti-immigrant bills.

This situation affects the dignity of millions of our fellow human beings and makes immigration, ultimately, a moral and ethical issue. That is why the church is compelled to take a stand against harmful legislation and to work toward positive change.

It is my hope that our elected officials will understand this and enact immigration reform that respects our common humanity and reflects the values – fairness, compassion and opportunity – upon which our nation, a nation of immigrants, was built.

Roger Mahony, Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles