By Rev. Matt Koerber
Week 1: Foundational Thoughts Week 2: Immigration Policy Week 3: Voices of Immigrants (City Reformed) Week 4: Refugees Week 5: Engaging Islam Week 6: Reaching Across Barriers Last week, we discussed immigration policy. This week, we will turn our attention to the voices of the immigrant community in our midst. Because City Reformed is located in the university community of Pittsburgh, we have a large number of international students in our midst. We will be interviewing members of City Reformed to discuss their own experience with immigration. “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) There are a couple of things that we learn from this commandment. First, the command to “not oppress a sojourner” assumes that it would be tempting to do this very thing. A sojourner or an immigrant is a person who works and lives in a foreign country. They do not have extended social networks to help them in times of trouble. They also may have difficulties speaking the language or navigating the culture. They may not have access to all of the legal protections that native born citizens would have. For that reason, it is easy for them to be oppressed. Secondly, this commandment was given by God, through Moses, to an exile community. The tribes of Israel had been recently delivered from bondage in Egypt. They came as guests to live with their brother Joseph, four centuries earlier. But the favorable policy changed. A new pharaoh was on the throne and things were hard. They had been severely oppressed in Egypt. Moses speaks to this experience and reminds them that they know what it is like. As an exile community they knew what it was like to be a sojourner. They could easily relate to the situation because of their own experience. The problem that we have is that our experience is often quite different. Our own individual experience does not allow us to know the “heart of a sojourner” from personal experience. In this matter we are different from the original audience (those who experienced the exodus first-hand), but we are similar to many of the people who have read this text down through the ages. Together with the four other books of Moses, this forms the Pentateuch, which is the foundational law for the nation of Israel. The laws which God gave were given in the context of the Exodus, but they continued to carry weight for all of the following generations. It is clearly not the intention of Moses to suggest that the command would no longer apply once people forgot their own personal exile experience. We are left to conclude that the way in which this command was meant to be applied is through appeal to the “collective experience” of the community and not individual experience. That is, if we want to know about the heart of the sojourner we can either experience exile or immigration… or, we can listen to the experience of others in our community. With that in mind we will spend this week listening to the voices of immigrants in our church. Through that we may be better equipped to understand “the heart of the sojourner.” By David Snoke
MK: We hadn’t scheduled blog posts for Sundays, but in the flurry of activity this week we ended up with an extra post – so we are slotting it in as a “special Sunday edition.” This post addresses the challenges of migratory movements by looking at a classic American novel (and movie), “The Grapes of Wrath.” While the people movements in the story are not strictly “immigration” – the characters are all Americans – it provides a window into the dynamics we have been exploring. The story is a work of fiction, but it reflects real historical events in our country. Sometimes, fiction can offer a window into real world problems. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is one of the great novels of all time, and also one of the great novels of migration and social justice. It tells the story of poor Scotch-Irish farmers from Oklahoma (“Okies”) who migrated westward to California in the 1930s. The mass influx of these people created a social disaster for several years, as wages were extremely depressed, jobs were hard to find, and a wave of starvation and homelessness followed. A main theme is how the family structure that could support people through hard times can be scattered to the wind by the overwhelming pressures of migration. Steinbeck, a socialist, partly used the story to argue for government social services. The people of California are not especially welcoming of the Okies, and don’t take responsibility to help them. A high point of the story occurs when the main characters, the Joads, find an efficiently run government project to help them. This may seems somewhat quaint to modern eyes, but it addresses a real issue, namely what to do when private charity isn’t sufficient. Another theme is the existence of social evils, forces that make it hard for any one person to do what is right. The main social evil in the story starts when farmers in California advertised widely in Oklahoma to attract workers for their fields. Pressed by natural disaster in their home land (the “dustbowl”), the Okies migrated in great numbers. By the economic law of supply and demand, this suppressed the wages in California drastically. Steinbeck makes it clear that part of the social injustice comes from the farmers in California being happy about the vast number of immigrants suppressing the wages. They had incentives to encourage the migration of the Okies, as it gives them cheap labor. What can we apply from this book for today? On one hand, it seems clear that the role of the church and the individual in California at that time was to help the immigrant Okies as much as possible. To allow them to die in the streets and fields, as Steinbeck portrays, is heartless. On the other hand, we could also take a step back to question the structural aspects of the situation. How do we address the incentives that businesses have to attract cheap labor and suppress wages? Were there alternatives to the situation that played out in the Grapes of Wrath? Would a more just society have worked to improve conditions in Oklahoma, rather than encourage the breakup of families and cultural structures that so often occurs in precipitate migrations? Steinbeck’s novel, remote from our present lines of argument, may help us with a different perspective. By Rev. Matt Koerber
For this post, I interviewed two pastor friends in Pittsburgh. Jon Price and Alejandro (Alex) Martinez are pastors at Covenant Community Church (PCA) in Pittsburgh. In addition to being pastors, they are also family – Alex married Jon’s sister, which led to their friendship. Their church has a vibrant ministry to Hispanics in the Northwestern Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry. This ministry provides a window into a the little known (but rapidly increasing) world of Hispanic immigration in Pittsburgh. Alex recently completed seminary and pastoral training. He will be ordained as a minister this coming Sunday evening. I recently conducted a phone interview with them and was thankful for their many insights. I opened the conversation by giving them both some background to the blog and then I asked Alex how long he has been in Pittsburgh and how he came to work at Covenant Community. AM: I have been here for almost 5 years. I grew up in Mexico City, but had a scholarship to study in Texas for high school. I returned to finish my college degree in Mexico and met some missionaries who were working for MTW (Mission to the World, the PCA sending agency). I worked with them helping with ministry, and when a good friend moved to Guadalajara they asked me to join them as a liaison to the Hispanic community. We helped to start a nonprofit organization addressing poverty in the community. This included medical care and literacy classes. Praise God, we helped to establish a church and a daycare and kindergarten were also formed. Alex’s trajectory began to change when his missions team hosted a group from Covenant Seminary. The future dean of Covenant, Mark Dalby, met Alex and recruited him to study at Covenant Seminary – they even had Alex live in their home. Alex was interested in ministry and after two years, he moved to Virginia for a ministry position. It was there that he married Jon’s sister and through that connection became aware of a job opening in Pittsburgh. I asked Jon how this came to happen. JP: I was driving around Cranberry one day and I took a different route, passing through a neighborhood that I didn’t normally see. I noticed 5-6 Hispanic families outside the house as their kids came home from school. This coincided with another visit to a local park where I stopped and watched a very serious soccer game of all Hispanic players. It dawned on me that there were these families and people in our community that I hadn’t noticed before. At the time, we had two part-time ministry positions in our church – Alex came to mind and the church was open to the idea. I can’t honestly say that my initial desire to bring Alex on was part of a goal of establishing a Hispanic ministry in our church. I was trying to meet the needs of our church, but the Lord showed me pretty quickly that was not his ultimate goal. I asked Jon about the Hispanic community in Pittsburgh. It is not as visible as other places where I have lived – Boston or North Carolina. Often, we assume that Pittsburgh has been missed by national trends in Hispanic immigration. JP: I think that we tend to be blind to this. Immigrants in general are on the fringes, and the majority culture doesn’t typically look on the fringes. For example, the neighborhood that I drove through that day is easily missed. But, within 10 minutes of our church, the expected growth of Hispanics is 5% per year. That is the highest increase of any people group in our area. It is a very fast growth rate. One reason that the community is not as noticeable is because it is diversified – with regard to the areas in which people work. By contrast, in other big cities, immigrants may be grouped in one industry. I asked Alex what factors were driving this recent growth rate of Hispanics in Pittsburgh and what we could know about the people. AM: It is very different in each case. Many Hispanics come in the summers to do landscaping. They come with a work permit and stay for the summer. You find different types of people. Some are fleeing poverty or unrest, others are chasing the American dream. It is hard to perceive them, and hard to know when to count them. Generally, we would find people from the higher class have permits and those from the lower class are less likely to have legal status. Generally speaking, but interestingly enough, the lower-income people are more open to the Gospel and coming to Bible studies. Alex told me about some Hispanic men that he knows who have recently come to Pittsburgh to start working in the roofing industry. This caught my ear because of a recent post in which we focused on immigrant workers in the construction industry. Essentially, these men had come here because the wages were better and they could compete more favorably in this market where there was a smaller supply of workers. (In contrast, the California roofing industry was flooded with Hispanics.) I asked the hard question about how we think about the negative impact that this can have on the American workers already here. JP: That is a hard question. There are issues there on both the employer and employee side… the immigrant community gets caught in the middle. They would say, “I need to support my family. I’m willing to do what it takes to do that. If this guy is willing to hire me, I am going to take it.” It strikes me that this history is not new to Pittsburgh. It was played out over the generations as immigrants from Europe flooded the three rivers area. The history of organized labor – we can think particularly of the Homestead strike – was inflamed by these difficult questions. This led us to another challenging and difficult question. What is the legal status of the immigrants who come to Pittsburgh, and how should we think about that? I raised the topic and probed into this challenging area. AM: Most often, workers in white-collar jobs have their paperwork in order. By contrast, those who work in labor intensive jobs are often not documented. JP: Their legal status contributes to them being willing to take less money. The company can save money on benefits and take advantage of the situation. Jon continued to reflect on the challenges of this situation. JP: A lot of undocumented immigrants came here as children, through no choice of their own. They have been in the U.S. for many years, and they need to provide for themselves and their families. That group of immigrants is probably the ones who truly get caught in the middle. They have no legal standing, but have to work, so they may undercut the job market, but what else are they supposed to do? From my understanding it is one of the largest groups of illegal immigrants that we have in our country – perhaps as many as 15-30 million. Our biggest issue is how we respond to that group. I asked Alex about how the political controversies about immigration have been impacting the Hispanic community. He told me that a lot of people are feeling more vulnerable. Public expressions of dislike have become more common and many workers are afraid of the authorities and more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. He relayed two stories to illustrate. AM: One of the guys who is a friend, is a Latino who has lived here for years. Recently, he felt the shifted tone of public opinion even in Pittsburgh. Someone spit on his face and said, “Go back to your country.” He told me, “That never happened here in Pittsburgh, before. We had heard of it in other places, but not here. What is happening?” I think that when people hear immigrants being called names in public and in politics they start to act different. I have another case, from another lady who is attending the church. She was working in a restaurant and her boss wanted to take advantage of her sexually, or he threatened to fire her. She had to quit and leave without pay. She was afraid to go to the authorities. She said, “This never happened before. I know that I’m not legal so I can’t ask for protection from the government because I fear being kicked out.” Knowing that we aren’t going to solve all of these problems in one interview or one blog post I asked about how their church was trying to serve in the midst of this situation. JP: Alex has become a social worker! They both laughed at this and Alex expanded: AM: Praise God, we have some connections to the city of Pittsburgh. Many of the social workers don’t speak Spanish and they found out that we have Spanish speakers at the church, so they ask us to help out. For example, there is a refugee couple from Cuba – they speak no English at all. They came to Pittsburgh while they were still waiting for their visa and they needed many things. For about a year, we have helped them – finding a place to stay, getting their driver’s license, just figuring out how to go to the store. JP: This particular experience with this Cuban couple really had an impact on our church. They saw the real visible needs and began to engage in ways that we had never even thought of before. The congregation is excited to serve. A couple of people have begun to explore ways to help them navigate immigration policies. One is considering a masters in ESL. The deacons are really active. 3-4 years ago we would not have been having these conversations. AM: Many people from the church are coming to take classes on learning Spanish. They want to learn so that they can communicate with our new visitors. I asked them how this changed the Sunday worship service. JP: Some Sundays we are getting close to 20% Hispanic attendance, which many see as a tipping point for how a minority culture feels as it is part of the congregation. Practically speaking, they have many in attendance each Sunday who do not know English. AM: We have headsets for people who don’t speak English. I translate everything, from announcements to the benediction. We introduce one Spanish song each month. Fully in Spanish, with words and Latin music and Latin feeling. Interesting, many of the guys who come here do not have Protestant backgrounds. But, they sense that we care about them and they feel welcome. People are open. Jon told me that several people have expressed faith in Christ at an outreach Bible study that Alex has been leading. He also told me that this ministry is impacting the church as a whole. He believes that because his church is immersed in Hispanic ministry, they are able to navigate the challenging topics with more compassion. In the midst of a hard time, God is working out his purposes. There have been bumps along the road and more challenges lie ahead. But as native English-speakers and native Spanish-speakers gather for worship we get a glimpse of God’s kingdom. The nations are streaming to the mountain of God. Jon concluded this way: JP: This is an actual visible representation of the gospel at work. By Rev. Matt Koerber
For this post, I interviewed Andy Alexander. Andy is an elder at City Reformed Church and the owner of an engineering consulting firm. Andy has been working in the computer/tech industry since the late 1980’s and is able to share about how this industry has been impacted by immigration over time. In this post, we are discussing “legal immigration”, almost exclusively. But as usual – it is complex. MK: What is the impact of immigration to the US in the technical world? AA: There’s been immigrants for decades in the technical world. A large part of the US space program in the 50’s and 60’s, after WW II, was populated by Germans. In the 1990’s, immigration law was changed to increase the number of temporary visas (H1B’s) for people with technical skills. To obtain one, an employer is supposed to justify that an open position could not be filled from people already in the US. Also, H1B’s are a special kind of temporary visa with an intentional path to obtaining a “green-card”, allowing work in the US without a need for repeated renewal of that permission. In my experience, it is typical that people admitted under H1Bs are from India and have less experience in their field. They are also mostly people with a background in software or IT. MK: Are most of these people here legally? AA: Yes. I haven’t heard of anyone in the US working illegally in this area. MK: How has this affected you? AA: The earliest I remember working with people here on an H1B was in the mid to late 1990’s at Union Switch and Signal. This was at a time when demand for software skills was very high – the Y2K crisis was in full swing as was the growth in internet and PC application software. The people I met and worked with at the Switch were good friends, with families. Towards the end of my time there, I did sense the competition from India. The company was always looking for ways that they thought it would be cheaper to get things done. Contractors, on a sponsored H1B, were one way. My career path took me in a direction away from that company where there was less of this kind of competition for a while. Even at this new company, after a while I did see the increased push for more hires along with an unwillingness to spend as much on people as they might have otherwise. Since leaving that position and starting a consulting company, I am acutely aware of the competition. A good part of the work my company does requires access to specialized hardware as part of a product development process. This is one of the ways that we compete against lower cost engineering services. Still, I have a need to explain why the rate a potential client might be paying for someone isn’t always going to lead to the lowest cost for a completed project. MK: How is this different than other professional fields? AA: Unlike lawyers and doctors, engineers have not maintained the same legal protections. At least in Pennsylvania, to advertise yourself as an Engineer, you must have a Professional Engineer’s license. Over time, the need for this license in many fields has diminished. Typically, a licensed engineer is only needed in things such as building design and construction, power distribution and chemical plants. MK: What about outsourcing/offshoring? AA: In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, cultural barriers made it difficult to successfully finish software development work outside of the US. One of the methods used by some companies providing offshored services is to place one of their workers at the client’s site. This person provides the direct interaction with the client and then relays the necessary information to the people working in the primary office of the supplier. MK: Since the availability of labor directly impacts wages (supply/demand) some people would be in favor of protecting the market. How do you think about the role that the government should have in limiting the labor force? AA: I’m not sure, exactly. Clearly, all governments are involved in limiting and regulating trade. Consider the concept of “Free Trade Agreements”. If trade was going to be completely free, a free trade agreement would be a simple one liner: “we won’t have any restrictions or tariffs on goods or services between our two countries.” Differences in taxation and other preferences for certain kinds of businesses within a country make this simplicity impossible. My main point in all of this is the complexity of the issue. Adding people to the available pool is good for employers because it reduces the salary they need to pay. On the other hand, it reduces the opportunities and incentives to enter the field. By Rev. Matt Koerber
I asked John Standridge to tell me about his life in Texas. John is a PCA pastor and a good friend from our time in Boston. He is a native of Texas and returned several years ago to work with a church plant. Although John doesn’t literally live on the U.S.-Mexico border, he lives a couple of hours’ drive away. More importantly, the community that he lives in is a “border crossing culture” with a significant Hispanic population. Many of the issues that seem distant to Pittsburghers are part of his everyday reality. MK: You told me that you live only a few hours from the U.S.-Mexico border. How does immigration affect the makeup of your community? Are most immigrants in your community from Mexico? JS: Yes. We live a little less than 250 miles from the border city of Ciudad Acuna, which is in the state of Coahuila. It's kind of challenging to talk about our community in terms of the usual associations we have with immigration, for the simple reason that we live in a part of the world which was for so long part of another country (most recently Mexico). As someone once told me, "My people never moved. It's the border that moved." This creates quite a different community dynamic from, say, Boston, Houston, or New York, which represent opportunity magnets for peoples all around the world. While the immigrant demographics of Cambridge, MA (where I used to live) was wildly diverse, it was that way because of the attraction of the universities, business opportunity, etc. In the town I live in, which is about one-third Hispanic (almost entirely of Mexican heritage), the connection is ancestral (i.e. they've always been here), familial (they come because they have family here), or economic (they’ve come to earn money to send back home). MK: Do people tend to move back and forth across the border quite a bit or is it hard to do that? Once people arrive in the U.S. do they typically stay for good? JS: People still go back and forth quite a bit. On the one hand, the back and forth is just the normal shopping/visiting family stuff that's always gone on. Any time we go to the mall in San Antonio (about an hour southeast of here), the parking lot has a good number of cars with Mexican license plates from some of the adjacent Mexican states (Coahuila and Tamaulipas mostly). At the same time, crossing is much harder than it used to be. Prior to 9/11 you didn't need a passport to cross the border. It was common to pop across for lunch, shopping, visiting friends and family with barely a nod to immigration authorities on either side. The realities that have come in the wake of 9/11 as well as the ascendence of the drug cartels has changed that immensely. I went across recently into a little town called Nuevo Progresso (south of Welsaco, TX, in Tamaulipas), and it was a breeze going into Mexico, but coming back was pretty onerous. There are not only tightened borders, but Border Patrol/immigration checkpoints at various spots along I-10 within the U.S, this has been pretty controversial but it makes the point that this country is very much vigilant about drug trafficking/illegal immigration. Because of this, illegal immigration is actually way down. My sense is that most people who come, come for stints of time, to earn a little money, with plans to return. There are, however many who have come and stayed, managing to function pretty well. This can get pretty complicated in the course of life. Some are illegal, but have children here. Many work in family businesses or even businesses that they have started. Many of them pay taxes, despite their illegal status. A lot of this stuff is changing in the current climate. There are a few local restaurants I frequent, and I have noticed since the election that they are down in staffing, with many of the regular employees no longer there. The rumor is that they were undocumented, and have now either returned to Mexico or decided to stay out of the public eye. MK: From your perspective how do the lines between documented and undocumented immigrants break down? JS: I have no idea what the percentages are, and I think it would be a hard thing to find out. There is nothing in place that would keep families from enrolling their kids in school, there are job opportunities, there are family connections, all of which make it less obvious who is documented and who is not. MK: In what ways does the presence of immigrants impact the community as a whole? JS: From a cultural standpoint, it certainly makes it richer. In other ways, it creates tension. The Anglo and Mexican-American communities coexist in our town, but there is little evidence of seeking connection. Apart from the school system, which necessitates integration, we are divided in the parts of town we live in, cultural values, where we worship, and in many cases, by language. I don't know if you're familiar with Colin Woodard's book "American Nations," but our little town of Kerrville, TX sits right on the fault line of "Greater Appalachia" and "El Norte." Greater Appalachia is largely born out of a Scots-Irish culture, suspicious of those perceived as outsiders, where identity is rooted in a kind of "warrior ethic" bolstered by a strong sense of personal sovereignty and independence. "El Norte" is the oldest of the American nations, running along the borderlands of the old Spanish colonial empire that took root in the late 16th century. This culture is more community-oriented, but in such a way that it values fierce independence, self-sufficiency, and hard work. While there is certainly tension between these communities, the deeper concern is how readily dismissive they can be of each other. Of course, there is also this deep irony in that those communities that are now cast as unwelcome/illegitimate (the Mexican-American culture) preceded the culture that is now in power. If you were to visit the Alamo in San Antonio, you would see that the defenders of it were an incredibly international group, but it seems to me that they cohered around a common enemy, more than a common interest. MK: How does the Hispanic community relate to the dominant culture? What term do people use to describe the "white American culture"? JS: Not being an insider of that culture, this is a hard one for me to answer. One thing that should be pointed out is that in many places in our region, the Anglo culture is not the dominant culture. In our community, which is about one-third Hispanic, on one level, you could be encouraged by the level of integration. The public life of our city churns with a mix of people going about their day, getting along, commonly contributing to its life in commerce, education, public service. On the other hand, my sense is that there is at best a reluctance to venture past the cultural bounds, and probably a pretty deep suspicion of the Anglo culture. This is lamentable, but to some degree understandable given not only the history, but the current climate especially in politics which are charged with fear-mongering related to immigration related issues. MK: As a pastor, how do you try to interact with these issues in your ministry? JS: In one sense, in my capacity as a minister of word and sacrament I continually unearth inescapable biblical themes that supremely bring to bear reconciliation, of being called together into Christ as "one new people," comprised of "every tribe, tongue, and nation." I see that at the heart of how we think about our relationship with God has immediate and palpable implications for how we relate to our neighbors. As Christians we are urged to remember our former alienation and hostility toward God and others, to the end that we would relish the grace that reconciled us not only to God, but has now related us to those we once despised and were suspicious of. I love Peter's phrase, that we are "elect exiles," called to love the home we've been called to for the time we're here, but to never lose sight of our fundamental loyalty to the Kingdom of God. This is not an easy issue to interact with in our context. I have people in my life who would celebrate a mass-deportation initiative, and I have others who have illegal immigrants in their family and are scared about what might happen to them. It seems to me that God has called me to sit in the tension of that, trusting the power of the gospel to change hearts, patiently pursuing folks even as I have been (and continue to be) patiently pursued by my faithful Savior. |
AuthorMatt Koerber is the senior pastor at City Reformed Presbyterian church. This is his personal blog that he also asks guest writers to participate on. Archives
August 2018
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