Sojourners

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we.

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of a war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."

Exodus 1: 8-10

I guess growing up in an area where migrant workers were a pretty normal part of life, I had early exposure to immigrants.  My experience of the Mexican men who worked in the mushroom houses and farms of my little corner of the world was that they were people who worked hard and mostly tried to stay as invisible as they could.  Mostly what you heard about were incidents where there would be a car crash and wounded people would actually hide from EMS and police because they were not in the country legally.  Crime among their population was mostly between themselves, and usually involved the pretty mundane, alcohol related stuff that any 20 something man/boy away from home for the first time might get into.  Breaking laws that would draw the attention of the gringos was just too dangerous for these young men who didn't speak the language and who were far away from home.  Personally I always felt a certain sympathy for them, they never seemed dangerous and mostly just seemed afraid of getting noticed.

My first real job was working as a clerk at the Acme (supermarket), and there I got my first glimpse of what living among the migrant population is like.  They would pool their resources into a rather sizable wad of twenty dollar bills and go the store in a group.  They would buy the cheapest things they could, chipped steak, beans, tripe, rice, canned stuff, flour, really basic stuff, by the cart load.They didn't always know how much things cost, or how to ask questions about their bill in English.  They would just hand you the whole wad of cash that they had, and it was usually quite a bit more than was required. I often had to count out the money for them and assure them that the twenties I was handing them were not necessary to pay for their tab.  I know for a fact that not everyone who dealt with them in life was as honest as I was.

I know they were vulnerable and often advantage was taken.  I also know that many of my peers would make fun of them.  I also know that at least a few people I know really hated them, I don't exactly know why. I still don't quite understand how a nation of immigrants can be so hostile to immigrants and migrants, but it's an old problem.  This is in the Washington Post this morning. And I think I actually agree that the fear of immigrants might very well be a major impulse driving the move towards authoritarian populism around the world.  I read and watched Frank Bruni at the NY Times interview Ann Coulter, who is super agitated with her former BFF about his inability to build the wall on the southern border. It occurs to me that, somehow or other, people have come to see immigrants as a major threat to our well being.  Last year in the much publicized Virginia Gubernatorial race, Ed Gillespie ran ads about the Latin American super-gang MS-13 that made it sound like anyone who supports the rights of immigrants was dooming Northern Virginia to become the next Bogota.  This fear does not really jive well with reality, so he lost.  But the fear can still play a powerful role in shaping our behavior in concrete and abstract ways.

Liberal religious types (mea culpa) will often cite the numerous passages in the Hebrew Scriptures where God directly instructs his chosen people to deal justly with aliens and sojourners in their midst.  I'm guessing the reason this gets repeated prominently and often, is because that is not something that comes naturally to anyone.  Even a people who had been oppressed, as say the various waves of European immigrants to America have been, tend to conveniently forget how that feels when the new kid moves onto the block.  The Galston piece linked above warns us not to simply ignore this tendency.  Blaming people who look different from you for all your problems is a quick off ramp for most of us, whether we admit it or not.  We need to admit it more readily.  There were many times that I would participate in telling stories and talking about the big vans of Mexicans that came to the store.  Even if I treated them justly, I could still alienate them in my mind and heart.  Encouraging people to really embrace the sojourner is no easy task.

It's easier to believe that building the wall or slapping on tariffs is going to help us get back to "winning," whatever that means. It would be so much simpler to do those things, even if they make little sense and hold little actual hope of improving things.  Dealing with the slow and complicated process of creating a just society that offers security as well as opportunity for all?  Well that idea is having a little trouble getting traction these days.  As Trump has found over the past six months it's a lot easier to break DACA than it is to find a better solution. And that is sort of where we are with regard to this, and various other crises, we see, like Pharaoh did, something that very well could be something to fear, and we react poorly. In hindsight Pharaoh's fears seem irrational, and his mistreatment of the Israelites, far from saving the day, actually spells his doom, maybe we should pay attention to that story.

Here's a thing I keep in mind, when I was 16 years old, I had a union job at that Acme Market, I had benefits and security that those Mexican workers did not have.  I could get that job because I had transportation, citizenship, proper clothing and a place to call home. They had none of that, and had to do the dark and dirty jobs that very few of my fellow Chester County folk had any intention of doing. I feel kind of good that I just didn't flat rob them at the checkout counter, but that is literally the least I could do.  We should do better by the sojourners in our midst, not worse.  The large majority of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, come here to find a better life than they had.

Fear will drive us to do horrible things, justice and mercy will lead us in the right direction.  Fear seems like the obvious and easy path, justice and mercy seem more dangerous and difficult, but one way leads to destruction and the other to life, I guess we need to make a decision soon.  Hope we make the right one, because I'm not okay with plagues.