Anyway, one of the "most popular videos" was a story about how several churches across America are giving sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. It's interesting. How do you feel about it? The woman who they profile is a mexican immigrant whose young son was born in America and is a US citizen. She has received a deportation order. She isn't hiding where she is and forwarded her new church address to the immigration authorities, but now she is permanently living in a church with her son, and trying to campaign for legalization of undocumented workers. Part of me, the part who looks at the human situation, loves the story. This is what the Christian church is meant to do, following from the many biblical commands to take care of the alien among you, to give them justice. It's good to see that the church is participating in civil disobedience because it helps to remind people that the church's positions should never be coopted by the political state in which it finds itself.
There's the other side of me too though, the big picture side, that knows this is not a permanent solution, this is temporary relief to a few, from a massive issue. It highlights yet again that the US based church needs to committ itself to helping alleviate poverty in the countries surrounding it, so that people don't feel they have to become uprooted, leave the families, countries and lands that they know and love, and make often dangerous journey's in search of hope, often a false hope. Anyway, I'd appreciate your views if you have any.
It's sort of interesting to compare this situation with a similar one in Dublin last summer where 41 Afghan assylum seekers held themselves up in St. Patrick's Cathedral demanding that the government look at their cases. In this case, it was more the traditional model of sanctuary that the Afghans were using, the church leaders hadn't encouraged them to do this, but protected them none the less and tried to seek for a swift and peaceful resolution. In the American situation, church leaders are actively inviting people into this. This seems like more of a living church model than the traditional because it is active, reaches out to others, like Christ did for us.
Here's the link to the video:
http://www.cnn.com/video
2 comments:
Oh come on, polycythemia vera isn't that bad;) My critique of the CNN website is it seems they do a fair amount of "flash journalism"-which may or may not be an actual term- like having headlines on flashy/odd/scandalous stuff more for the audience-like entertainment or something. I follow it but also BBC cuz it seems to have a more global perspective. anyways tho...
I think what the church is doing is amazing and I whole-heartedly support it. Good for them. It IS what the church is meant to do-help the downtrodden. And it seems this woman is trying to change things, not just hidding away which is cool too. It is a big issue tho, one that I'm not sure can be easily fixed. I was actually talking with some of my classmates (in what may have been the first issue-related conversation this year) about illegal immigrants, and it was interesting to hear the opposite side of the story: one girl's mom grew up with migrant workers living just down the street and her frustration was that, because they had come to earn money so they could send it back to Mexico and ultimately return themselves, they were less stewardly with what they had here, and tended to let things go to pot, rather than caring for them. An isolated case, but interesting to hear. It seems, along with the Church getting involved in a big way, part of what needs to be done is make it easier to become a legal immigrant. It seems a big part of the inhibition of becoming legal is the copious amounts of paperwork and burocracy that has to be gone thru (cynically: especially for those who look Latino), let alone getting to somewhere where this can be done, while working often a 60 hour work week, is a significant deterent. Those are my current two bits on the matter:)
Hey Krissy,
Yeah I agree about the flashy nature of CNN, that's why it's my substitute for TV. I'm also a pretty close reader of BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, IHT, Drudgereport, Oxfam News, Iraqslogger.com, Democracy Now, and a few others (I make sure my new intake is wide ranging to try and get some sort of unbiased or "all-biased" reporting).
Yeah, PV isn't that bad, it's actually quite easy -hence choosing it for my patient study-. Hmm...part of me thinks you must be trying to avoid studying as this is the most blog commenting i've seen you do in a while. Keep working! It's almost over.
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