“Walls don’t work” is a theme we heard many times during our time in the Rio Grande Valley. Laredo Community College sits in a bend of the Rio Grande near a point where migrants often cross from Nuevo Laredo. At a cost of close to 1 million dollars in Homeland Security funds, the college erected a ten-foot-high wrought iron fence all the way across the southern edge of its campus. This has not stopped the people from coming. An art teacher at the college who lives in faculty housing just inside the fence told us that once the fence was built, migrants began prying the bars apart to make it through. The college welded a crosspiece to the bars to hold them together; people began to use this piece as a step to make it over the top. Others have tunnelled underneath. The teacher told us that when it first was put up, he thought the fence was a good idea, but he’s since seen its ineffectiveness. People will always find a way over, under, or through.
Walls don’t work—a Cameron County judge speaking at a rally in Brownsville echoes the refrain. Judge Cascos is typical of many in this majority Mexican-American community: a son of immigrants who has worked hard and is committed to his community. He is also typical of most public officials in the Rio Grande Valley in his opposition to a wall that would separate the U.S. and Mexico along the river. He has just returned from a visit to Washington, D.C., where he advocated with federal officials for alternatives to the wall.
There are, however, walls in the borderlands that are far more effective than any physical structures that the U.S. government might seek to erect. Many young people growing up in the Rio Grande Valley find their opportunities severely limited because their undocumented status prevents them from obtaining financial aid for college. One community leader says, “There are so many talented youths who want to go to school, but their education is truncated.” Graduating from high school is like hitting a wall for many here. Others are walled in by fear of being detained by the Border Patrol and losing everything—family members, community, homes—that they have worked so hard for over so many years.
And within the hearts of those of us who do not have to live these borderland realities,
there are also walls, walls built of fear and indifference. May God grant us grace to make it over, under, or through these walls, that we might see more clearly the faces of our sisters and brothers struggling in the Rio Grande Valley, and that we might join their struggle for a humane immigration policy.
1 comment:
I'm writing this from behind the walls of a seminary in Guatemala. Being inside this walled church-related institution has actually caused me to do a good bit of introspection and reflection on the notion of "walls".
Should the seminary tear down its literal wall? Should I take the locks off the doors of my home? What is a reasonable amount of "security"?
It is this notion of "security" that gives the anti-immigrant community the sense of legitimacy as they call for more and more walls (in every sense of the word).
But, as Christians, are walls good theology? How do borders change our orthodoxy and, thus, our orthopraxis?
Last year I was sitting in the worship service of a church here in the highlands of Guatemala and the pastor of this relatively conservative church preached a truth that needs to be heard. The pastor got to preaching about the proposed wall that many Americans want built along the US-Mexico border. His prophetic comment (which needs to be preached in more US churches) was that "this land is God's land, if God wants God’s people to migrate there will never be a wall too high to get over, too deep to go under nor too wide to go around."
"Remember," he cried, in only a way a true charismatic preacher can, "the walls of Jericho could not hold back the will of God!"
The issue America must face is not a fear-based need for more security; it's a question of hospitality to the stranger.
The question for me isn't “should the seminary where I'm writing this essay have a wall?”; the question should be “how can it provide just wages for its lowest paid employees and be a catalyst for holistic transformation?”
The question for me isn't “should I remove the locks on my doors?”; the question for me should be “how do I actively seek out the stranger and the oppressed and invite them into my home and into the extravagant banquet of God?”
The question for America isn't “should we build a wall?”; the question should be “how can America tear down the walls that lead migrants to wander so far away from their homes in search of dignity, an inherent gift of a God whose reign has no borders?”
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