Advocacy Update
March 2008

Responding with Hope to the Politics of Fear
By Gregory Z. Chen, LIRS Director for Legislative Affairs

More than six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, our nation is still reeling in fear. The government is spending billions on national security. Our nation’s leaders continue to tell us that we remain unsafe and that terrorists lurk among us.

Those fears have driven our government to target immigrants who pose no threat to us and are, in fact, valued members of our communities. In dragnet style, federal officers are raiding people’s homes at pre-dawn hours and locking away hundreds at worksites raids in search of the undocumented. The raids are tearing apart families—husbands and wives, parents and children—including many who are U.S. citizens.

At skyrocketing rates the government is detaining people including asylum seekers, families with children and other vulnerable groups. In total, over 320,000 people were detained in 2007 at a cost of $1.2 billion. This round-up campaign against immigrants is unprecedented in our nation’s history. And it’s getting worse.

Now immigrant communities themselves are living in fear. People are afraid to leave their homes, go to work, pump gas and patronize immigrant-owned businesses lest they be stopped for looking foreign and suspected of being undocumented.

In November 2007 Bishop Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recounted how a woman in New Jersey hid under the floorboards when federal agents raided the factory where she worked. Everyone but her was hauled away. Terrified, she kept wondering what would have happened to her son if she was taken.

During World War II our government locked up 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, fearing that they threatened our safety and national security. Like then, today our government locks up people in degrading and dehumanizing prison settings. Like then, now entire families, including children, are detained. Like then, those detained now are ethnic and racial minorities. Like then, politicians now justify detention in the name of national security. It took nearly half a century for our country to concede that the perceived terror threat was entirely unfounded and to admit the wrongfulness of detaining thousands of innocents. Can we deny that we are dangerously close to repeating that mistake today?

Like Bishop Riley, communities are asking: Is raiding homes and locking up families making us more secure? Is this how we should treat people living in our communities? Are these approaches strengthening us? Or are they eroding the core of what America stands for?
To these questions Lutherans and other faith communities are responding in various ways: starting dialogues in their congregations, reaching out through ministry, calling upon leaders to stop inhumane practices such as raids or even declaring their churches places of sanctuary for immigrants.

As we listen to these questions, LIRS is receiving a clear message: it is time to turn back the tide of fear and bring strength, unity and hope back to our communities. For too long, politicians and commentators have preyed on the nation’s fear. Only in such an environment of distrust could neighbors watch pre-dawn home raids and wonder what’s the right thing to do. Last year divisive politics derailed efforts to pass immigration reform legislation. Voices of fear continue to dominate political discourse as seen in numerous recent bills that propose more detention facilities, more border agents, and longer, taller fences. But they do nothing to recognize the contributions of immigrants and the interdependence in our communities.

With the support of Lutheran churches and congregations, LIRS is responding with a new initiative that invests in local communities throughout the country. LIRS will train selected communities to respond to raids and will educate local leaders about the immigrant rights and available protections. Within our communities LIRS will foster awareness about immigrants and support local leadership on immigration issues.

As part of LIRS’s nationwide effort, we will call upon local voices to speak out against abusive government practices such as raids and unnecessary detention, and in favor of positive humane reforms that will benefit all who live in our country and treat immigrants and American-born alike.

We look forward to sharing more with you as plans for this new initiative develop. The time has come for Americans to insist upon a more hopeful vision and reclaim our values as a nation that welcomes immigrants.

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