Faith 2 Faith Cooperation Circle in the UK holds a picnic to welcome asylum seekers
I have a friend named Iza, who is Muslim. I met her nine years ago, not long after she came to the United States from North Africa with her two children. Escaping an abusive marriage, she sought refuge with her sister who was here legally. She was able to get a temporary visa and work permit and found a job with a bio-tech lab in San Francisco. But her work permit expired and she lost the job. Although she has a degree in chemistry, she now cleans houses to make ends meet.
When Iza tried to renew her children’s passports, they were confiscated by the embassy, leaving the children without a legal identity. Iza has spent thousands of dollars on immigration attorneys. She’s had hearings before the immigration authorities year after year, but a final ruling continues to be postponed. Her children are now in college, but like the estimated 65,000 youth in the U.S. without papers, they don’t qualify for federal financial aid or services and cannot work legally to pay for tuition. They feel they are Americans, but face such an uncertain future.
I tell this story not just because it breaks my heart, but also because it illustrates some of the many challenges immigrants face. Immigrants are separated from their families; are discriminated against; lack access to employment, education and basic services; and live in constant fear of deportation. Immigration policies, both on the national and international level, desperately need overhauling.
URI’s sixth principle reads “We give and receive hospitality.” Welcoming the stranger among us is not just a URI concept; it is a core human value that transcends cultures, nationalities, faiths and spiritual expressions. It affects Muslim, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs alike, and underlies much of the economic pressures and interreligious tensions facing our communities today. And as such, immigration needs be made central to the interfaith agenda.
Immigration is a polarizing force in the world today, tied inextricably to geopolitics and environmental shifts. Growing numbers of war and economic refugees move to other countries to escape violence and poverty on every continent. Climate change, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, is forcing migration of people dependent on agriculture for a living. Millions more migrate in search of greater opportunity and political and social freedom.
Too often, though, they face hostility instead of hospitality. Camps and detention centers around the world are filled with asylum seekers, and immigrants are subject to some of the worst human rights violations, including denial of religious freedom, racial and ethnic profiling, human trafficking and involuntary servitude.
Anti-immigrant sentiment and legislation is mushrooming in the United States and Europe. France expelled hundreds of Roma gypsies last year, and recently stirred an outcry across the continent when it turned back a train full of Libyan refugees coming from Italy over what is supposed to be an open border. In Germany, far-right parties are making gains, and public opinion has turned against Muslims, with more than 55 percent believing them a burden on the economy, and 40 percent believing them a threat. Laws have been proposed and passed all over Europe to restrict the wearing of the Islamic veil. And the horrific acts of domestic terrorism in Norway last week were said to be motivated by a perception of Islam as a threat to the nation.
In the United States, incidents of violence and discrimination toward Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims has risen dramatically since September 11, 2001. Among many recent examples is that of a 20-year old Muslim woman who claims she was fired from a popular clothing chain for wearing a hijab. But Muslims are not alone.
Long-discriminated against, Latinos are the primary target of an anti-immigrant backlash in the United States, and have suffered disproportionately from the tightening of immigration laws and enforcement, as well as racial profiling practices that have resulted in many false detentions. The U.S. Congress has repeatedly declined to approve paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a bill recently introduced by Representative Lamar Smith of Texas would authorize their indefinite detention. Like other immigrants, their illegal status also makes them uniquely vulnerable to exploitation. For example authorities uncovered several slavery rings in Florida involving Indigenous tomato pickers from Southern Mexico and Guatemala.
We as an interfaith community can do precious little to influence the forces that propel immigration, that compel people to leave behind friends and family in search of safety, freedom and opportunity, risking everything in the process. Yet we can control how we receive these people into our own lives, and influence how they are received into our neighborhoods, cities and nations.
Interfaith communities are already mobilizing for just immigration reform and immigrant integration around the world. In June, URI’s Middle East North Africa (MENA) region held a conference for young leaders from MENA and Europe on the Role of Interfaith Cooperation in Immigrant Integration and our team in MENA is developing a toolkit for communities to work on the issue at the local level. URI Cooperation Circles (CCs) in Europe, like UNESCO Centre of Catalonia, are mediating conflicts that arise in changing communities and fighting Islamophobia. Interfaith coalitions in the United States are working to stop and/or change legislation that marginalizes vulnerable immigrant communities and breaks up families.
What else can we do? We can add our numbers to the growing interfaith movement of solidarity by advocating locally, nationally and internationally for the human rights of all immigrants and for their integration in the civic and economic fabric of our communities.
For those of us who live in the U.S., we can also support the bipartisan Dream Act, which would provide qualified youth with a conditional six-year path to legal citizenship upon completion of a college degree or two years of military service. And we can continue building bridges at the grassroots by welcoming the strangers among us. Through simple acts of hospitality, we discover our common humanity and shared dreams.
It’s a start. And it would help Iza’s children achieve their aspirations.
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