Sanctuary

It has been 24 years since I watched in horror as Central American refugees, fleeing barbaric violence, fled toward el norte with nothing but the clothes on their backs and fear in their hearts. Forging jungles, deserts, and mountainous terrain. Facing uncertainty with not even a glimmer of what lay ahead, only knowing deathsquads and horrible violence lay behind.

I was a young Air Force wife, working in the emergency room of a hospital in Tucson. They streamed across my TV screen every night, they streamed into my ER every shift; sick and dying of valley fever, dehydration, snake bite, bacterial and viral infections, encephalitis…

We had been in Tucson less than three months when the reality of the refugees set in, and I decided to take positive, non-violent action. Either that or just swear off sleep, because every time I closed my eyes, I saw them and felt their desperation and misery.

It started with a friend and I, a nurse at Tucson Medical Center, taking her ex-boyfriends old military surplus jeep and bouncing through the desert depositing water jugs and food under mesquite bushes along known migrant trails. And we were not alone. Members of my friend’s Catholic congregation and my synagogue organized themselves and went into the desert to assist the migrants desperately in need of our help.

Then Sanctuary. Reverend John Fife, a Presbyterian minister at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson resurrected the medieval principle and declared his church a Sanctuary, with the support of a handful of dedicated people of conscience, most notably his co-founders Jim Corbett, a Quaker rancher; and Father Ricardo Elford, a Redemptorist priest. Indeed, Jim Corbett was the driving force behind Sanctuary. Because of geography, Tucson became the heart of the Sanctuary Movement of the early 1980’s. A lose group of Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, Jews, atheists, Buddhists, Sikhs, University students caught somewhere between Vietnam and Calvin Klein, itching for their first arrest…We all came together and set aside our personal differences to participate in something bigger and more important than ourselves. We spoke for the downtrodden, hopeless, helpless and terrorized then; with the fervent hope that should such a time come in our own lives, someone would speak up for us.

Now it is 2006. The troubles that Central America faced in the 1980’s have given way to ecotourism and the memories have faded to the point that, as horrific as this sounds to anyone who has an awareness of what happened then, Daniel Ortega may be elected president of Nicaragua once again.

And Sanctuary has a new face. It is no longer a grandmother, stooped and winkled with age in her native scarves and skirts with a look of helplessness on her face and her orphaned grandchildren at her knee.

The face of Sanctuary in 2006 is Elvira Areliano, a single mother and an undocumented Mexican immigrant whose seven-year-old son was born here and is an American citizen. She has taken refuge in the storefront Methodist church in Chicago where she is a member. Rather than report to immigration officials and face deportation, she went to her church, and her congregation offered her refuge.

And I have a feeling in my chest like I have not felt since the days of sanctuary, when we would sneek the refugees out of the hospital and deliver them to one of the churches that was participating in sanctuario. I feel...defiant. Hell, yes! Pastor's start declaring sanctuary and we will soon get a sensible immigration policy that does not punish those who obey all of our laws (except that niggling immigration one) and pay taxes and raise their children and rebuild crumbling inner-city neighborhoods.

I dare anyone whe knew the area of 18th and Central in Kansas City, Kansas ten years ago to go there today and tell me with a straight face that Mexican immigrants are a bad thing. That neighborhood used to be seedy, tough, riddled with gunfire and Central Avenue was home to boarded-up businesses, tote-the-note car dealerships, tattoo parlors, biker bars, crack-houses, flop-houses and hookers. Now it's music stores, taquerias, ice cream shops, candy stores, boutiques and restraunts that draw patrons from all over the metro.

Pick any major city nationwide, and I will bet dollars against dimes that there is a neighborhood just like the one I described in KCK that has turned around a hundred and eighty degrees because Mexican imigrants bought houses and started businesses and made the area safe and clean and vibrant once more.

And now I ask - how far are you willing to go in the quest to deport all illegals - never mind the impact that losing 12 million workers would have on the economy. Are you willing to have immigration agents storm churches with riot gear, gassing nuns and the women of the Ladies Auxilliary? Are you willing to see an elderly priest led out of his church, bleeding and in cuffs on the evening news?

I didn't think so.

And that is why Sanctuary is the answer today, just like it was a quarter century ago when Jim Corbett sat down with Rev. John Fife and Fr. Ricardo Elford.

When Pastor's declare Sanctuary, the public will demand Sanity.