CHAPTER 1

Immigration

A Bishop's Perspective

Minverva G. Carcaño

Every summer since becoming a bishop I have taken a road trip from my home inScottsdale, Arizona, to my birthplace in South Texas. The 1,100 miles betweenScottsdale and Edinburg, Texas, give me much time to ponder life and ministry. Ialways take the route closest to the border between the United States andMexico. Family and friends encourage me to take the route through El Paso andthen on through San Antonio, Texas, but the border always beckons to me. As Itravel through Arizona, then across New Mexico, and then finally down the longstretch of Texas that leads me home, I remember.

I have spent most of my life and ministry on this border. It has shaped andnurtured me as well as given me a lens through which I see life. I am thedaughter of a father who came to the United States under the Bracero Program, alabor agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed men to comeand work in the United States. As a bracero, a term referring to the arms heprovided the U.S. economy, my father labored in the cotton and vegetable fieldsof South Texas. It was there that he met my mother, the daughter of a Mexicanimmigrant mother and a father born and reared in Texas.

Born into this border family, I have always known myself as a daughter of theborder; that place that joins people, cultures, and languages in a way thatmakes one a citizen of one country with roots deep enough to also tap thesprings of life of the country just beyond. Such roots do not easily allow oneto side with the prejudices of one or the other country, for to do so is toviolate a part of one's own personhood. Such an identity comes with its ownvulnerability. The vulnerability of being a daughter of the border was put onfull display on the very first few days of my episcopacy.

Assigned to an episcopal area that covers most of Arizona, southern Nevada, andthe California communities that rest on the western edge of the Colorado River,I came to the Phoenix Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church on September1, 2004. At that moment the Arizona state legislature was considering ArizonaProposition 200, causing much heated debate. One of the first things requestedof me as I assumed my responsibilities as a bishop was to write what wouldbecome my regular monthly epistles to the faithful. A great believer in ministrythat is contextual and socially relevant, I decided to comment on ArizonaProposition 200. Besides, I thought, it would give me an opportunity to share abit about myself.

I shared with my new constituency that being faced by Arizona Proposition 200had taken me back to the days of my childhood when, as the daughter of animmigrant, I would sit with my father at our kitchen table and hear withtroubled heart the stories of how he had come to this country. My father hadcome across the U.S./Mexico border as a strong young man to work in theagricultural fields of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, fields that havefed this country through times of war and peace. He was one of thousands ofMexican laborers who have toiled on that land for the sake of U.S. families, hisown family benefitting along the way as well. He worked long, hard days untilthe day he was told that his labor was no longer needed; the Bracero Program wasover for him. Returning to his village in the mountains of north-central Mexico,he found a community whose own agricultural economy had been devastated throughthe absence of their young men who had gone north. Soon he found himself with nooptions but to return to Texas. The preference of his heart would have been toremain in his beloved community and country.

When my father attempted to return to Texas, he was told that there was nolonger room for him; it mattered not that he had given long hard years ofservice to this country. Yes, he had been compensated for his work but at thebottom of the pay scale, with no labor rights to speak of, and often cheated bycorrupt middle men. Far from home and with no resources, my father joined themany others who yearly, to this day, swim across the Rio Grande River in searchof sustenance and hope. It was not an easy journey. On one occasion he had beenpulled out of the waters of the great river by U.S. border officials, accused oftransporting drugs, and threatened with death.

At that point in his life, my father did not even know what constituted a drugand had with him only a change of clothes in a plastic bag and a few pesos inhis pocket. He remembered how the border officials had placed him in aninterrogation room with glaring lights and told him he would not leave that roomalive if he didn't confess that he was involved in smuggling drugs or told themwho he worked for. My father had no dealings with the drug world. He simplywanted to provide food and care for his family in Mexico. Weary, and convincedthat his life would end in that place, he told the border officials that theywould have to just kill him because he had nothing to confess. A day later,exhausted from the terrifying experience, he was released and sent back toMexico. My father would never again fully trust the U.S. legal system even afterbecoming a U.S. citizen.

In spite of his ordeal at the border, my father continued to cross into thiscountry. It was not an act of defiance, but the simple human struggle forsurvival. Eventually, through marriage, he was able to become a U.S. citizen. Iwas in the third grade when my father prepared for and took his U.S. citizenshiptest. I helped him study for the test and no one was prouder of my father whenhe became a U.S. citizen than I. My father's story is the story of men andwomen, children and young people who today risk their lives as they cross theborder. I would venture to say that the majority of them would prefer to remainin their native land but come to this country out of great human need anddespair.

It was against this backdrop of life that I read Proposition 200, the ArizonaTaxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. My research and study of its components ledme to determine that it was a costly proposition not only in taxpayer dollars,but in the potentially negative impact it could have on communities across thestate. From the perspective of Christian faith, Proposition 200 would createunjust law. I do not oppose immigration laws per se. Immigration laws arenecessary for civil society to organize its life and care for its people, butimmigration laws must be just and fair. Proposition 200, however, did nothing tohelp achieve such a level of law. It did nothing to address true immigrationconcerns, but it did carry the potential of undermining the civil liberties andhuman rights of persons and further aggravating the hostility that alreadyexisted between documented and undocumented...