In her new book Jesus
Was A Migrant, writer Deirdre Cornell says migration is central to
“biblical spirituality” and the chosen people themselves were “displaced,
uprooted, homeless” migrants. Joseph, Mary and Jesus were refugees as well as
migrants when they fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s tyranny.
“Jesus belonged to a people indelibly marked by stories of
Exodus and exile,” Cornell writes. “His life and ministry are framed by these
narratives.”
Moses tells us in the Old Testament’s Deuteronomy our duty
to migrants: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the
land of Egypt.”
(Giotto's depiction of the Holy Family in exile)
I’ve got a feeling that migrants are not going to be feeling
the love in Mississippi in 2015. Gov. Phil Bryant is up for re-election, and
that’s not good news for migrants.
After the bruising 2014 midterm elections that saw veteran
U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., defeat Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel in
the Republican primary, Bryant is going to have to mend some major fences for his
support of Cochran. He boasted his Tea Party credentials when he got elected
governor, but then when push came to shove he supported the well-oiled Country
Club wing of the party.
As deeply bitter as Tea Partyers are about Big Money
Republicans like Cochran and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, they may like
undocumented migrant workers even less. In his role as state senator, Chris
McDaniel “authored scores of anti-immigrant bills,” according to the
Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which anticipates a “backlash of racist,
anti-immigrant proposals (to) come through in the 2015 Legislative Session.”
Bryant built his political career in part on demonizing
undocumented migrant workers. As state auditor in 2006, he issued a report
claiming they cost the state millions of dollars in education, health care, and
other undeserved benefits. Yet a 2013
Immigration Policy Center study shows they also generate nearly $600 million in
economic activity even though they remain excluded from most government
benefits.
Last July Bryant wrote a letter to President Obama declaring
his intention to “prohibit the federal government or its agents from housing large
numbers of new illegal immigrants” in Mississippi. Apparently he has no problem
with housing thousands of them in prison. Mississippi even has a special prison
for immigrants, the for-profit, 2,500-inmate Adams County Correctional Center
in Natchez, one of 13 such facilities in the country.
In his response to the huge crisis of migrant children
seeking shelter in the U.S. from violence and abuse in their native Honduras
and El Salvador, Bryant declared he would no longer accept children in
Mississippi as part of the federal Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program.
Obama told the nation in November that he would offer up to
five million undocumented workers protection against deportation and a pathway
to getting legal work permits, and the Republican outcry was immediate.
Cochran, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and other GOP leaders in the state
blasted Obama for what they considered a power play and abuse of office.
“While the president grants amnesty to countless illegal
immigrants, millions of American citizens are still struggling to find work,”
U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., said in a statement. “It’s time for the
president to stop playing politics and instead put the American people first. I
will do everything within my power to prevent this unconstitutional and
unwelcomed action.”
Coming after years of congressional inaction, Obama’s
executive order—and the president quoted scripture in his message to the
nation--is expected to affect about 45 percent of the nation’s 11 million
undocumented workers. An estimated 9,000 migrant workers in Mississippi will be
eligible for protection and/or work permits under Obama’s order.
Changing demographics that include a fast-growing Latino
population have national Republicans worried that the anti-immigrant politics
of conservative Tea Partyers will hurt the party’s chances in future elections.
Corporate-minded Republicans like Haley Barbour value the cheap labor pool
migrant workers provide. However, those demographics aren’t changing fast
enough in Mississippi to worry Bryant and Tea Partyers like Chris McDaniel
unduly.
Too often missing in the debate are the migrants themselves.
Their voices are rarely heard. Writers Russell King, John Connell and Paul
White eloquently described those voices in their 1995 book Writing Across Worlds:
“The migrant voice tells us what it is like to feel a
stranger and yet at home, to live simultaneously inside and outside one’s
immediate situation, to be permanently on the run, to think of returning but to
realize at the same time the impossibility of doing so … . It tells us what it
is like to live on a frontier that cuts through your language, your religion,
your culture. It tells of long-distance journeys and relocations, of losses,
conflicts, powerlessness, and of infinite sadnesses that severely test the
migrant’s emotional resolve.”
We should listen.
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