Learn. Pray. Blog.

Says Viola in Lynchburg. She was interviewed as part of our Blank Street Project. She continued, “regardless of our human condition, we are blessed by almighty God.”

Viola from Blank Street on Vimeo.

Viola lives in low-income housing on a single social security check each month. She qualifies for daily deliveries from Meals on Wheels.  She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 17 years ago. For Christmas, she only asks for postage to send handmade cards to everyone she knows.

The Arizona law has reignited the immigration debate and it has special significance for Virginians now that the law will show up at the General Assembly in the upcoming session. An article in the Catholic Virginian eloquently states the need for reform:

A system that causes families to be ripped apart as undocumented workers are placed in detention centers for civil (not criminal) offenses or deported is broken and in need of reform.

A system in which the number of available visas doesn’t match the demand for labor, especially in the agricultural, construction and service industries, is broken and in need of reform.

A system that compels desperate human beings to risk death to enter our country illegally to perform menial work for less than minimum wage is in need of reform. Let’s face it, they are exploited by employers willing to ignore labor laws in exchange for cheap labor.

A system that results in state and local governments, frustrated by the lack of national legislative action, adopting measures directed toward immigrants is broken and in need of reform.

A system that strips individuals of their human dignity is broken and in need of reform.

This article was submitted by Jimmy Culpeper from Chesapeake. Jimmy sheds light on a very crucial point. Too many people are focused on closing the borders. However, this won’t solve because almost half of illegal immigrants in American entered legally.

We need to fix our broken immigration system, not put a band-aid on the rash. We need to reform our borders AND our visa allocation process so that people can actually have an opportunity to come here legally. We need to reform our detention policies so we’re not breaking apart families. We need to make sure illegal immigrants in America earn their way to citizenship instead of living in the shadows.

Mulhi owns a small business in Franklin VA. He was interviewed as part of our Blank Street Project.

Mulhi (Frank) from Blank Street on Vimeo.

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Inscription on the Statue of Liberty

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

‘ With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Read more…

A video from our Blank Street Project:

Frank from Blank Street on Vimeo.

Frank recently lost his job at International Paper when the mill was shut down last fall.

Well we knew it would happen. Despite Gov. Bob McDonnell’s disapproval of Arizona’s un-American & anti-immigrant law, there is a full-fledged campaign to bring this law into our Commonwealth:

Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair, Corey Stewart, today announced the “Virginia Rule of Law Act” on WINA’s The Schilling Show.

Prince William County is also the place infamous for passing an Arizona-like Anti-Immigrant bill of its own that decimated it’s economy.

Doug Madison, the owner of Mailbox Junction and a Stewart supporter, said he believed the immigration issue was just that: an immigration issue. But a whopping 40 percent loss after the first month of the crackdown left Madison with faltering support for the county leadership and scrambling for ways to compensate.

Read more…

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Arizona State Flag

An Explanation of Arizona’s “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”.

On April 23, 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1070, “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” On April 30, 2010, Governor Brewer signed into law House Bill 2162, which amends certain sections of Senate Bill 1070. The act becomes effective 90 days after the last day of the legislative session, which will be July 29, 2010.

Below I’ve broken down what the law actually does, section-by-section. This type of legislation will almost certainly show up at the 2011 General Assembly session in Virginia so it’s is important for us to understand what it will mean for us.

SUMMARY, SB 1070 will:

• Make it a state crime to be in the country illegally
• Require immigrants to have proof of their immigration status
• Require police officers to “make a reasonable attempt” to determine the immigration status of a person if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is an illegal immigrant, unless it would hinder or obstruct an investigation, and race, color and national origin are not to be only factors police officers consider
• Allow lawsuits against local or state government agencies that have policies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws
• Target the hiring of illegal immigrants as day laborers by prohibiting people from stopping a vehicle on a road to offer employment and by prohibiting a person from getting into a stopped vehicle on a street to be hired for work if it impedes traffic

Below is the section-by-section breakdown:

Read more…

Lord God,
We have sinned against you (by allowing others to destroy your creation);
We have done evil in your sight (and now have no idea how to fix the problem).
We are sorry and repent (though it is unlikely we will really deal with our addiction).
Have mercy on us according to your love.
Wash away our wrongdoing and cleanse us from our sin.
(Forgive us).

This is a guest post by Darren Rippy. Darren is a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at the College of William & Mary. He is a summer policy fellow at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Arizona’s controversial immigration law has garnered intense scrutiny — and refocused our attention around the issue of immigration reform and illegal immigrants.

Public discourse concerning the law has been fiery and politically divisive. Critics have labeled it as racist, xenophobic, and possibly unconstitutional. As usual, the media has depicted the issue as a strictly red-blue, left-right divide. The result has been the usual conjuring up of loaded images concerning immigration, which is mainly that undocumented persons are here to do America harm and must be kept out.

During an interview on WTOP, Gov. Bob McDonnell voiced skepticism concerning particular aspects of the Arizona law:

I’m concerned about the whole idea of carrying papers and always having to be able to prove your citizenship. That brings up some shades of some other regimes that weren’t necessarily helpful to democracy.

Prominent faith leaders have called into question the morality of Arizona’s new law, and the enforcement-only strategy in general. Cardinal Joseph Mahony, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, asserts,

The tragedy of the law [Arizona’s new law] is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.

Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners, has called the Arizona law a social and racial sin. He explains in a recent blog post,

We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

Read more…

A great article by Saif Khan, an Iraq War veteran, who served as a combat engineer in Mosul, Iraq, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004–2005. He served in the Virginia Army National Guard for eight years.

As an Iraq War veteran and an immigrant, I’d like you to think about the immigrant troops holding the line in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. The second soldier to die in Iraq was an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant; he was awarded citizenship posthumously.

…

By creating an accountable, fair and realistic path to citizenship, we could potentially add tens of thousands of new service members, thus providing relief to our men and women in uniform and allowing those who consider the United States their home the opportunity to defend its values abroad.

Our leaders have a solemn duty to honor this history of sacrifice by immigrant servicemen and women and their families.