CRISPAZ Interview with Dean Brackley, SJ
Reprinted from SALVANET, Winter 2007
Salvanet (SN): Dean, you recently returned from a speaking tour on Immigration in the States. Can you enlighten us on the depth and importance of this topic?
Dean Brackley (DB): The situation here in El Salvador is unbelievably bad. The majority is migrating out of desperation. They leave to feed t h e i r families or as young people in search of work or educational opportunities, and finally, some people leave because of extortion. Here we have the desperation character; people are leaving Central America at a great cost to themselves and their families.
SN: How many people are leaving?
DB: The US ambassador at this time last year in an interview with a paper in Syracuse New York said that according to the US embassy 740 people were leaving a day. Obviously not all of those people are making it to the US each day, because some people were deported two days later or two weeks later from Mexico or the US and are trying their 3rd or 4th time.
The US border patrol two years ago said it was intercepting on the southern border an average of 143 Salvadorans a day, so if they are intercepting 143 a day how many are getting through and how many over stayed their visas? We get some indication of how many it is by deportations from other countries.
The deportations by plane from the US started in 1999. Last year they went up to 55 Salvadorans deported from the US a day by plane. If you include Hondurans and Guatemalans the number jumps to 198 deported a day from the US back to these three sending countries. None the less El Salvador is at the top of the list with 72,409 persons repatriated during 2007.
These numbers tell us that conditions are very poor here. That’s really what’s fueling this. It’s not a matter of upper mobility or trying to get a nest egg. If you were flying over Mexico you have to imagine thousands of people heading north from Central America and if they aren’t paying the coyote top dollar they are risking life and limb.
There is no wall that will stop them because the depth of the e c o n o m i c crisis and the prospects for remedy in the short or even medium term Homes in Mejicanos San Salvador are non existent for those three countries. They are going to keep going because hunger is stronger than fear. My thesis is that within two generations the majority of Salvadorans will be living in the USA.
SN: In the states there is a lot of debate about the benefits undocumented workers bring to the country by fueling the economy but there are also those who argue they are a tax on the country’s social services. In the end many come down to the fact that they are illegal; they have broken the law. How do you respond to this argument?
DB: Well, the first thing you have to acknowledge is that in the English language, illegal modifies behavior and policy, it does not modify people. When we use it that way we should be aware that we’re using it as a demeaning label.
Within US culture there is a profound respect for the law and legality, the Anglo-Saxon majority tradition. The law is sacred. I say well, it is and it isn’t. I would like to give a few examples.
Those who have most undermined the rule of law in the U n i t e d States are in fact George B u s h , A l b e r t o Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney and their friends who have launched an illegal war, an offensive war which was unjustified. And that is the most serious violation of international law that exists.
We all know by now the list: holding prisoners without charges, dismissing the Geneva Convention, signing statements of the president which are acts of explicit and public defiance of duly enacted law.
We know that Congress, the democrats too, has been willing to give a pass to the government on many of these serious violations of human law. They are the ones who have done the most to undermine the rule of law and what they have done is far more serious than crossing a border.
Those who speak most loudly against migrants who have crossed the border and have broken the law in that sense are those who are most willing to give a pass to these outrageous violations of much more serious laws.
People could then say Ok, but why should we be responsible for Central America’s “problems”? Well, we have to review a little history. We need social transformation in Central American countries.
But the United States during the 20th century dedicated itself systematically to preventing that social transformation and to the defense of our allies who preside over societies that excluded the majority of the population from dignified participation and economic life.
Until the 20th century, and much into the 20th century, the safety valve for that historic contradiction was to die before your time or to be killed trying to change it. But there were hopes for reform. The US overthrew the government of Nicaragua and helped to overthrow (the government of) Honduras for the founder of the United Fruit Company a hundred years ago. These were two governments, among others, who were trying to provide a different kind of society for Central America; in fact a capitalist liberal society.
And when social transformation continued to be frustrated, most recently in Guatemala in 1954 when the United States mounted a coup to overthrow the democratic government there, the reformers turned more radical.
The US then had to support governments that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The governments we sponsored practiced state terror and were responsible for scores of thousands of civilian deaths. Its not that the people who read this article are responsible for that but I feel I had to explain the background.
SN: What kind of changes in policy in the United States will there need to be to stop or slow emigration from Central American countries?
DB: The US will have to permit the type of political change that would allow for more people to participate in economic life. That would mean they would have to permit that governments increase social spending, especially on education and health.
Would the United States do that? Will governments who want to redistribute tax revenues and increase tax revenues be considered by the US as part of the axis of evil to be crushed and undermined or will they be permitted to operate? Naturally what is also needed is a US sponsored Marshall Plan for Central America, but that’s really a pipe dream in the current political climate.
SN: As people of faith how should we approach the immigration issue?
DB: The social mandate that is most repeated in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures, is respect for the foreigner, the sojourner.
In the New Testament, as well,I think a better translation of what Jesus says at the last judgment, “I was a foreigner and you took me” is also a mandate to all of us not just Christians to receive the stranger, who is vulnerable and without defenses, but to see in the foreigner not a threat but a blessing and an opportunity.
In the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 13, at the end says “be sure to practice hospitality for the stranger because people who have entertained strangers have discovered that they were actually entertaining Angels”. Ambassadors of God are what Dorothy Day calls the poor in general. So rather than illegal Aliens it’s better to recognize them as God’s ambassadors. I think that’s the perspective of faith.
I will also say this, if the Church does not stand up for the migrants, who will? Some unions will, but only 6% of the labor force is unionized. It’s not enough that the Bishops speak out. Communities, parishes, congregations have to invite them to tell their stories and defend them, not permit them to be arrested after sharing.
The churches are the place where we can put a human face on this migration issue. My experience is that when you do that, you win hearts and mind. All the abstract arguments about whether they are breaking the law or not, what should we do for them, what do we owe them.
Once you put a human face on this it helps people to overcome whatever inner obstacles they have to being hospitable and I think the churches can and should do that.
What about Christians and the law and Christians and migrations? We do take the law seriously and we should respect the law. We shouldn’t be running stop lights, stealing from one another or violating the law. On the other hand, Jesus and Paul both point out that when necessary, mercy must take precedence over law.
When it’s a question of harm, common good or of serious violations of human rights by the law, mercy must take priority over the law. We must remember Jesus was a victim of the law. We have a law and according to that law he must DIE. And Jesus says, for God mercy is much more important.
Now, we should respect the law. As the Bishops have been saying, in the US we must realize that our legal system, our immigration law, is broken, and is breaking people, and that application of that law is simplistic and an immoral response to a much more serious problem.
The Catholic tradition on migration is really quite beautiful. Everyone has a right to the goods of the earth and to maintain their families with basic necessities. They have the right to do that in their own country, and when they are denied that right, they have the explicit right to go elsewhere to find the goods God has created for everyone.
The receiving countries have to accept them and they have the right to remain united as families. Even though it is very true that governments, countries, have a right and a duty to manage migration flows and control their borders, they must do so in a way that balances this right. And so we have this tension.
It was this tension that the original McCain/Kennedy legislation responded to in a rather responsible way in its earlier version and I think we should go back to that and there is a way to manage this, but it requires comprehensive migration reform.
Father Dean Brackley, an American Jesuit priest and professor at the University of Central America, has lived in El Salvador since 1990 when he accepted one of the teaching positions left vacant by the murder of one of the six Jesuits. For more information go to: www.crispaz.org
