Responses to Our Editorial in the Mercury News

On April 13th 2007, an editorial written by the Rev. Dr. Diana Gibson and Craig Wiesner appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. The topic was immigration. Soon after the editorial was published, we began receiving responses. In this article, I'd like to share some of those responses, and my responses to their comments. My responses are mine (Craig Wiesner) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else at Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice.

The Editorial:

Good People Shouldn't Be Sacrificed to Bad Immigration Policies - San Jose Mercury News

Most people today are somewhat squeamish about the concept of sacrificial lambs, the slaughter of innocents to appease some angry and vengeful god. After Jesus died on the cross over 2,000 years ago such things became unpalatable. But many seem all too comfortable about the idea of sending a scapegoat or two back to Mexico, especially if they don't have names or faces or stories. "Operation Return to Sender," the program initiated recently by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seems benign enough. Take people who are not fully in line with America's slippery immigration regulations, round up nearly 20,000 of them and exile them. Simple enough. No big deal. They weren't "legal" anyway.

Last week, Isabel Aguirre boarded a plane at about the same time as Christians observed Good Friday, remembering Jesus being crucified as a political criminal. At the same time, Jews were completing the celebration of Passover, and thinking about the ensuing 40 years of exile in the desert. Aguirre was going into exile with her four children, heading for Mexico, banned from returning to the United States for 10 years.

After having been hoodwinked by an incompetent and ultimately disbarred attorney who took $9,000 of their money to handle their immigration paperwork, the parents were arrested in an ICE raid in Palo Alto. The father was immediately deported to Mexico. The mother was given a few weeks to make plans for their children, all American-born U.S. citizens, who had to make the choice between being placed in foster care or going with their parents.

Let us assure you that Aguirre and Pedro Ramirez have names and faces and stories. And so do their children. Pedro Jr., 15, has dreams and aspirations for his future in the United States. Adrian, 12, likes to cook dinner for his family, with pasta and enchiladas as his specialties. Yadira, 10, is really good at playing football. Adriana, 6, likes pizza and has a stuffed dog she carries with her. The home where Adriana was raised had many stuffed animals, toys and drawings perched on shelves along the walls, displaying the love and joy with which all children should be raised. Isabel and Pedro had spent nearly 20 years living, working, paying taxes and raising four beautiful children.

Faith leaders in Palo Alto scrambled to save the Ramirez-Aguirre family from being banished to Mexico. Knowing the family, we could not let them be scapegoats of our system. Knowing the family, we realized that we, too, would work hard, take risks and travel far to give our own children good living conditions, good medical care, good schooling. Knowing the family, we saw, as would anyone with a heart, that something is deeply wrong with an immigration policy that is enforced like ICE. Knowing the family, we were shocked at what our nation has come to. Surely if people knew, as we did, they would cry out for compassion.

But despite the names and ages and stories and photos in the media, despite the pleas for mercy from Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and community leaders, a crowd gathered around today's version of Pilate's court - the press and Internet - and jeered loudly that the family be exiled. "Pedro's daddy is at fault for breaking the law." "Let me get my hanky out." "I refuse to be the dumping ground of the world's problems." "If the individual is illegal, they should enforce our laws and turn over the individual to Immigration authorities." These were the messages posted at YouTube.com and sent to the Mercury News when stories about this family were posted. There were also threatening phone calls to the family's home.

While we can understand the honest need to vigorously debate immigration, where is our compassion? Why such hatred? What have people like Ramirez done, other than earning the love and respect of the people he managed and the appreciation of customers he served as a manager at local grocery stores, to cause people to take even a moment of their precious time to post and write mean-spirited messages, or make hateful phone calls? Next time we wonder "why they hate us" we might look at how we treat the sojourners in our midst.

The time has come for our community and nation to address the injustice of our immigration policies. President Bush has just announced his proposal. Whatever you think, we urge you to review your opinions in light of the story of one family - with your heart open and your humanity in place. These are not scapegoats or statistics; these are human beings like you and me. We invite you to join us as we engage with our elected leaders to end the scapegoating, end the sacrifice and begin a new season together as people who recognize that neither sacrificial lambs nor scapegoats are acceptable in the 21st century. Let us make it the century of the human heart.

From Fred in San Francisco (Fred's words are in plain text, my responses in italics).

Apparently, "peace & justice" in the minds of some means forgiveness of law breakers for those people who are otherwise "good people" (at least allegedly).

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

We live in the fairest, most compassionate, most tolerant and most just country on Earth bar none in history.

We live in a great country, but the "bar none in history" demonstrates ignorance or prejudice or both. It is fine to be proud of our country, but to think that no other place on the planet is nearly as compassionate, fair, or tolerant..... please! Have you been to the Netherlands?

This contrasts starkly to any "faith based" government in the history of the world by any measure. There is no such thing as a religious based government that you or I would ever want to live in because no one in their right mind would ever give up what the USA stands for as a bedrock of any just society. That is, of course, separation of Church & State and a country governed by the rule of law determined by a majority represented democracy. Cased closed on that issue.

Case open. I am fully and totally committed to separation of Church and State, but that doesn't mean that people of faith don't have a responsibility and a right to speak out on issues that concern them. Unjust laws must be opposed. Too many of our laws are passed by people who got into office by a few percentage points or because of knee jerk reactions to situations and mob hysteria. No matter what the law is today, real patriots continue the struggle to change those laws if they are unjust.

The illegal alien problem is getting out of hand by any measure for anyone with an IQ above plant life.

I'll have to take some Ginko. (Why the need to deride someone's intelligence, by the way?)

It is draining resources big time net of whatever these law breakers may be paying into the system by a mile. There is no evidence to the contrary or someone would have produced such evidence. It only exists as a fantasy in the minds of those with ulterior motives or with those who are misinformed. Case closed on that issue.

Prosecute those who hire illegals since they are the ones benefiting from the low cost labor and draining our city, county and state budgets...... and then off-shoring their corporations so that they don't have to pay any taxes. Aim your wrath at the real criminals who are making out like bandits, not the poor sots working for them.

Now let's take a closer look at the artful "spin" your article spun to catch the compassion of the ignorant and clueless. Right off the bat, you expose the weakness of your advocacy by equating lamb slaughter with returning people here illegally to their home country. The mother, in this case, has "anchor babies" (citizens born here to illegal aliens), that would never have been born here to begin with (and likely on our nickel) if the illegal aliens had not slithered into this country. It is certainly a tragedy for the kids but the responsibility for their plight rests squarely on the illegal alien parents, not our society or any one else here legally. Obviously, you can not have a reasonable immigration policy if the incentive remains for those who sneak in to "loophole" the law by "anchoring" themselves here with kids born here. That is common sense 1A and for anyone with a heart. Changing the Constitution to fix this problem ain't gonna happen so the only way to fix it is to terminate illegals having anchor babies here. If they have them here, then when the illegal parents are throw out, they either swim here on their own or sink with their illegal parents. Bad judgment must have consequences or adverse behavior goes unchecked. That is the reality and those who struggle with common sense need to get their mind right.

I have never met anyone who came to America to have an anchor baby, have you? While millions do sneak across the border, tempted by jobs and the chance to help their families back home (and who could blame them), there are many others who PLAY COMPLETELY BY THE RULES but still end up getting hurt. Here's just one example of another family that PLAYED BY THE RULES and should never have suffered with our unjust system:

A Salvadoran family came to the United States as refugees to escape death squads. They moved here legally. It took them many years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to get their permanent residency and in the meantime, one of their daughters turned 21. It was too late for her to be included in her parents' residency. The lawyer hired to help her was a scewup and messed up her paperwork. She found herself suddenly "illegal." What would you do with her, a girl who hadn't lived in El Salvador since she was a baby? Send her back? Her parents had done everything right, but the paperwork took too long. When she finally got in front of a judge with a good lawyer, she was granted permanent legal residency. Had ICE gotten away with sending her to Mexico (where they threatened to send her even though she's not Mexican), would that have been just?

The only "injustice" of our immigration policy is the failure to enforce the laws we already have on the books. Amnesty was tried before with disastrous results as it only served as additional incentive to sneak in by even more people. The evidence on this is extensive and overwhelming. Case closed again.

Please! The only injustice????? If you want evidence of the results of our immigration and other policies, just look at all the billionaires in the Forbes 400 (there's no room for millionaires any more, just billionaires). I think they'd have a completely different take on the success of our economy. For middle-class folks, I'm with Lou Dobbs that we've gotten totally demolished by the 'free trade' frenzy - but I don't blame the powerless farmworkers, bathroom cleaners or supermarket managers - I blame the billionaires and the government they pay for.

The bottom line is we (as a nation) can not feed the world, can not provide healthcare to the world or educate the world by any measure period.

More ignorance. We spend twice as much as any other industrialized nation per person on heath care and we live shorter lives and we have higher infant mortality rates than these other nations. So more of our babies die before getting to grow up and weall die earlier than people in places like Japan and Germany. Seems to me we're wasting a lot of that money. And if we weren't spending $500 billion on this war and another $500 billion in other Pentagon spending, we could feed and provide health care to the entire world. The numbers have been crunched and it is the truth. As you like to say, case closed.

Life may not be fair but that is reality whether you like it or not. Personally, I'm had enough of the rest of the world's attitude that the USA is an ATM machine with unlimited funds to draw on.

Ignorance again. We spend less on humanitarian aid per year as a percentage of our budget than any other industrialized country and most of the time when we claim to be writing checks we're actually sending subsidized wheat and corn (agribusiness gets the biggest benefit from that).

Money does not grow on trees. It comes from the pockets of taxpayers who actually pay something significant into the system annually. We pay more in Federal taxes than most people earn per year and we play by the rules and earned everything we have from scratch.

You grew up in a place with a wonderful interstate highway system (built by poor people as part of the WPA after the depression), cross-country railways built by immigrant Chinese laborers (who were treated like dirt and not allowed to become citizens), hospitals (more often than not built by religious organizations and mostly staffed at the lower-level jobs by immigrants), public schools, decent housing, food aplenty, cheap energy, and in the last 30 years an all-volunteer military protecting our nation while fatcats put them into disasters like Iraq. Don't give me that "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps" garbage, sir. You've gotten plenty for your tax dollars and even more from the sweat and blood of generation after generation of the poorest of the poor here and abroad over the last 200 years, and I can almost guarantee that unless you're some kind of saint, you've broken a few rules along the way.

I'm sick and tired of Mexico exporting their poverty to our country.

I'm sick of the wealthy exploiting the poor and the scape-goating that causes us to blame the victims instead of changing the system.

Their poor people are their problem, not ours.

Nope. NAFTA, CAFTA, and other "free trade" agreements are a huge part of the problem. Again, it is another sign of ignorance if people don't recognize how our farm subsidies for agribusiness destroy Mexico's agricultural economy, forcing people off the farms and into the cities to work in factory sweatshops, where they don't earn enough to buy the food we push into Mexico, so they realize after a while that the only way to survive is to come here to work for somewhat higher wages than the slave-labor-wages they got from multinational corporations in Mexico.

We have enough of our own poor to care about without the additional burden of packing the freight of those here illegally. Mexico won't fix their problem unless they are forced to do so. That time has come by any measure. I'm also sick and tired of paying exorbitant healthcare premiums due, in part, to subsidize those on the dole. I'm tired of paying for our kids non-public education since the public school system is being drained of resources to educate illegals who don't speak English and my kids speak better Spanish than most illegal Mexican aliens. On the public education issue here in California, no chance I vote for a single extra nickel until we "clean the swamp" of illegal aliens and their "anchor babies". Once we do, we'll have plenty of money to educate those who should be here.

Sorry - I don't think you really care about our poor, you made your own choice to send your child to private school (lucky you that you can afford it), I can't imagine that you spend enough time around very many Mexican immigrants to know how well they speak English, and I'll bet you haven't voted for a single school bond measure in years.

Unfortunately for you, most voting citizens of this country are much closer to the common sense I have outlined. It's just a matter of time at this point before "justice" prevails. Those that attempt to "spin" the definition of justice with illogical religious mumbo jumbo will be drowned out by common sense of those with or without "heart". I'm not buying into the religious guilt thing that warps common sense and justice. As far as I'm concerned, there is no "credible" religion that advocates for law breakers.

No, fortunately for me the tide is turning and over 80% of the people want to see comprehensive immigration reform, including the ability for the folks who have been here working hard for years to be able to stay here. As for religion, forgiveness is at the heart of all major religions. Read the Torah, the Bible or the Koran for a few examples. And in addition to forgiveness, another major theme is standing up against empire and for compassion and justice. Some laws are unjust and must be fought and sometimes broken. Believing otherwise is foolish and dangerous. Such silly thinking threatens our democracy. Our history is filled with terrible laws that eventually were overturned. True patriots and those who strive to protect our freedom have to remember that and fight against what we see as injustice, whether that sense is based on our religious and spiritual thinking or based on something else. Jews and Christians marched together to end segregation, called to do so by their religious traditions and the messages they heard on Shabbot and Sundays.

"Comprehensive" immigration reform that I have consistently advocated to my elected representatives in Congress is as follows:

- all those here illegally must come forward within a narrow window of time or forfeit any chance to remain in the country period
- all here illegally must pay a significant fine for breaking the law they knew existed if they are to remain here under any circumstances
- all here illegally must prove they have paid the taxes on any income earned here, cash or otherwise, to remain here
- all here illegally must not have broken any other law at the misdemeanor level or higher to remain here (that includes forged documents)
- all here illegally must pay for any free government subsidized healthcare, education, etc they would not be entitled to if illegal
- all here illegally must apply for residence status in the back of the line with all others who played by the rules
- all here illegally or legally must learn English to become a citizen at a level to conduct all affairs here in English including voting ballots
- all future immigrants at the unskilled level get in only in six month increments and if female, can not get in if pregnant upon entry.
- No immigrants get in period if they have a criminal record or a communicable decease and citizenship country must verify as such
- Non-citizens allowed in are precluded from getting in any relative unless they can prove they will cover all financial costs for such relative
- All humans here legally, citizens or otherwise, must each have forge proof ID cards (with finger print & iris scan embedded)
- All non-citizens must have the same forge proof ID's with the addition of DNA embedded
- Pass "draconian", loophole proof laws precluding any employer from hiring or paying illegals for any work (forge proof card verification required)
- Non-citizens never get Social Security and all such paycheck deductions go towards healthcare premium to cover those costs
- An impenetrable fence, electronic or physical, subterranean and aerial, from the Gulf to the Pacific must be completed soon
- Anyone sneaking in to US is permanently barred from being in the country for life after the enactment date of such law

I won't comment on the various elements of your proposal other than to say I'm really glad you do take the time to advocate for change with your representatives. That is what helps keep our democracy alive.

It should be noted that there is an infinite and unending number of unskilled workers worldwide willing to come to this country just to work by any terms we may require. That is the reality and it follows the irrefutable and basic laws of supply & demand. I did not need either of my 2 MBA's to figure that out. Pay them the prevailing minimum wage and if foods costs go up, so be it as it will be more than offset by lower healthcare and public education costs by any measure.

First, why do you feel the need to point out that you have two MBA's? I guess I'd better admit that I only have a BS, and I got that paid for by the United States Air Force (I was too poor to afford a good college without signing up). So - thank you Fred for helping me through college with your taxes!

Now, as far as minimum wage goes.... I'm a bigger fan of "living wages" rather than minimum wage. Actually, my proposal for a "guest worker" program would be that the workers would have to be paid at least triple the minimum wage. If you can't find local citizen workers willing to work for that, then maybe you can hire guest workers. BUT, you have to provide health care and disability insurance too.

We have had a Mexican nanny since the birth of our 15 year old daughter. "Mamamia" is a "good egg" and we consider her a part of the family. She came to this country legally and is now a citizen who has always played by the rules. We pay for her healthcare and she fully complies with our tax laws and any other law. If only all others got here the same way would there be no problem. Unfortunately, that is far from reality.

Most people like their nannies and maids. Wouldn't you be shocked, though, if there were some glitch in her paperwork some day and she suddenly found herself swept up by ICE and facing deportation?

There is also this misconception that if we "relax" the immigration laws, that the flood of these invaders with eventually become voting Democrats. Obviously, they would be much less likely to vote Republican. Unfortunately, it's the middle third of voters, be they independent such as myself or otherwise, that determine elections. The more the immigration problem festers, the more likely I as well as many like me, will vote Republican. Shutter the thought as I feel Bush is the worst President in history. Notwithstanding, no one in the future gets my vote unless they are clearly against illegal immigration without exception no matter what. And there are many, many like me whether they are vocal or not.

Then don't vote for me. In my opinion, if we are going to continue down this road of "Free Trade" agreements with Mexico and Canada, I think we should also have completely open borders so that labor can flow back and forth where the jobs are. I'd rather see us negotiate "Fair Trade" agreements instead, where we don't destroy one country's economy just to make more billionaires here.

It's time to clean the swamp and terminate the financial bleeding that taxpaying voters are irrefutably enduring for the illegal alien problem. Enough is enough by any reasonable measure.
Case closed.

Case open, Fred. Taxpayers are getting a raw deal in this country, but not at the hands of migrants. The saddest thing is that you aim your anger at them and folks like me who speak out against injustice, instead of looking at the huge crime wave happening right before your eyes. Trillions of dollars every year being siphoned out of our pockets and our great-great-great-great grandchildren, and irrefutably, that money is not ending up in the hands of migrant labor. The numbers are clear. The very richest in the world are getting irrefutably richer and the middle class and poor are getting irrefutably poorer. Tossing 20 million folks out of the United States tomorrow morning isn't going to change that. Some of the answers are FAIR TRADE, LIVING WAGES, and an end to off-shoring wealth to avoid taxes.

From Another Reader (no name) (Again, her words in plain text, my responses in italics)

Let me start by giving you my families background, we are (Legal) immigrants from South America. My father came to California in 1962 (Legally with a green card); he worked two and sometimes three jobs to bring the rest of the family from Argentina. He saved enough money and on April 10 1964, we arrive in Los Angeles. My father died on May 13, 1964, exactly 33 days later at the young age of 39 years old. He worked himself to death and illness to bring us to this great country.

Your father must have been an amazing man and I am so sorry that after all that hard work to bring the family together, he didn't get to spend a long and wonderful life with them. Many of the immigrants that I know here in this area work two or three jobs. And, I've known enough native-born people who also have to work two or three jobs and still are always one flat tire away from disaster. That's one of the main reasons I believe in the idea of a "living wage" instead of a minimum wage.

He waited in line for us to get our green card and come here legally because he did not believe in breaking laws. Yes, we do have laws against people entering this country illegally if you have not noticed.

Do you think that by writing about the “Children” of illegal I should have sympathy or compassion for them because they are being deported. Sorry, I do not find that in my heart. What I do find are people who hate this country, who come her to get on welfare because they got pregnant, who never attempt to be part of the American culture or a least try to learn the language to make life better for themselves.

It saddens me when someone says that they have no sympathy or compassion for others. It actually makes me feel sorry for them. How strange is that?

I lived in Los Angeles, San Diego and now in San Jose, and everywhere I go I see these people living in the same conditions as they lived in their our countries. They bring poverty to their neighborhood, they have no intentions to better themselves and continue to have children that they cannot afford to have but for some reason they think I should help raise their kids financially.

I simply do not believe that many people have no intentions to create better lives for themselves or their children. While some people I've known over the years have been self-destructive, most people work as hard as they can to provide for themselves and their families. I've traveled the world and I've met people of every race and culture, and nowhere have I seen what you describe. Perhaps you look out at poverty and see it the way you say, but I look at poverty and I see injustice committed by the very rich and powerful against the very poor and voiceless. Yes, I'll repeat, I've met people who are self-destructive, but they would be but a tiny fraction of humanity and even they deserve help.

Let them go back to their own country and protest in their own streets to their own government that they want changes. You will never see this because their own government does not want them there. Their government wants them to cross the boarder illegally and continue to send dollars back. It is a big business if you have not realized that.

You are truly blessed to have lived here so long. In many of the places I've gone, protesting in the streets gets you killed. The squads come in the middle of the night and take you away, never to be seen again. Yes, sending money back to your native land is big business, but we should all be about the big business of changing things across the board, so that people can earn a decent living where they live.

So all you people that are sympathetic to the illegal immigrants, I would like to see you write in the newspaper about the goverment of these illegal and what are they doing to improve their lives in their own country!

Many governments are corrupt, including, some would say, our own.

For the most part people would rather live in the country that they were born in. So you'd be doing them a great favor by speaking out about these immigrants to the government from were they came from. Sorry no compassion from my heart on this and the phrase “DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN” does not work for me any more. I’ll do it for my own children first.

If your children are hungry or in danger, you'd better take care of them first. That's what most of these parents are doing too. But if you have the luxury of having food on your table, health insurance, a place to live, and kids in a good school, you'd better look around at what's happening all over this world and wake up to the fact the injustices being perpetrated today, by the very wealthiest against the very poorest, will have an impact on your children's future.

From Marianne

Dear Mr. Wiesner and Ms Gibson,

Upon reading your article I was struck by the sadness of all its
aspects. But I'm exceedingly struck by the narrowness of all the
aspects of all the arguments of this sad human issue. Sadly, for all
the goodness that you wish to engender in your readers it seems to me
you have continued to pour gasoline on a blazing fire. This is not
just a simple matter of compassion or lack of it as you would like to
have it believed. I wish that people who write articles like this
one could be somehow forced to READ ALL THE OTHER ARTICLES in this
very paper about all the other aspects that seem to get ignored when
one is writing from one's own individual passion for compassion.

I.E. - If you are truly writing about compassion why are you not
demanding that Mexico shape up and help it's own people - you don't
because that is a social reformation that most compassionists don't
have the guts for because it takes TIME, and PASSION and CONSTANT
vigilance and EDUCATION and COMMITMENT, to say nothing of the MONEY,
by the people for the people - BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE OF
MEXICO. Instead of asking What Would Jesus Do? type of questions why
not try asking "what would George Washington do? What would Ben
Franklin do? What would Thomas Jefferson do? What would any of
America's founding fathers do? They would do exactly what they did
do - THEY STOOD UP TO FIGHT FOR THEIR OWN COUNTRY - using their minds
and bodies and souls to make a new country - using people many times
just as ragtag in earthly possessions as those you now claim we have
no compassion for. Possibly a "follow the money" in Mexican finance
and see where it goes and where it doesn't kind of article is needed.

If you are truly compassionate about these people may I ask how many
you personally support across the board - share your home, your food,
your belongings, your income, that you educate, that you give health
care, for a life time? My husband and I stopped talking the talk,
the talk of compassion without action, and we officially/legally
adopted 2 children from overseas. We are not the most well-off
family in the state either - it's a continuing struggle and we don't
get FREE HEALTH CARE because we have" some" income - but I had to
give up mine to afford it for the kids. We didn't get the FREE
AMERICAN EDUCATION you seem to think your article people deserve - my
kids didn't speak Spanish they spoke Hungarian - and I got ZIP, NADA,
NOTHING from our local school district because all their money was
going to the "poor" Spanish kids whose parents drove big honking
SUV's and trucks.

If you were truly compassionate you'd be working your hands raw
trying to get a scrap of food into Darfur, or any other like place on
the globe. Possibly you don't know that parts of Mexico could feed
the world it's so green - but as usual if there's no money
involved...why would anyone bother? If the American green belt
Central Valley gets hit hard by the (this year's) drought will the
Mexican people so compassionately welcome starving Americans in? and
don't think that isn't that far fetched to think it couldn't happen -
global warming after all is right around the corner isn't it?

If you were truly compassionate you'd be teaching these people "how
to fish" in their own country - do you remember that warm and fuzzy
new age saying about feeding someone a fish vs teaching them to fish
for themselves? It seems that little gem has seen better days. If
you were truly compassionate you'd be banging on the doors of
Congress to let ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE OF THE WORLD who are truly
desperately in need of getting here - those who cannot JUST WALK
ACROSS THE BORDER - you'd be demanding that they get in first because
they are the truly needy - not just the "needy" who are coming here
to make a buck and send it home. The people truly afraid for their
lives because their lives can be truly taken away with the drop of a
hatchet, knife, gun, starvation, disease and true malnutrition.

Possibly a thorough reading of some National Geographics, or even
some Amesty International reports, would give you a more rounded view
of who needs true American compassion in this world. Possibly the
next time you write a "... we wonder "why they hate us"..." question
you might want to look in America's own backyards of America's inner
cities, New Orleans, the Appalachias and demand an answer for EVERY
AMERICAN who fits the bill but who never gets named in these kinds of
articles. It is an interesting topic - why do you want to give
illegal foreigners more than I ever hear, like your article, you want
to give for America's own poor black citizens? I s there possibly
some real racism in that topic that will never hear discussed?

I do hear a true compassion in the voice of your article - but
possibly - reread your own last paragraph and insert some of
America's own into those pleas and see what kind of article you can
come up with next.

Thank you for all of your time - if you actually read this. I've put
a lot of thought into my comments as well as you have into yours.

My Response:

Dear Marianne,

Thank you for taking the time to write.

What hurt me about your message was the assumption that I don't know or care about all the other ills of which you speak, or that I don't walk the talk.

In fact, I'm surrounded by people who dedicate much of their lives to walking the talk and working for peace and social justice around the corner and around the globe. Most of them don't have much themselves, though some are better off than others. I'm not going to give you a litany of the ways I walk the talk, because in my heart I know that I fall short of what God really calls me to do. But I do my best and keep plugging.

Bless you for making a good home for children who otherwise might have been alone. Thank you for being passionate enough to write. Consider joining Multifaith Voices for Peace And Justice (www.multifaithpeace.org) and offering to help us work on issues that you care deeply about. Or, just come to our picnic on Labor Day and say hello, have a hot dog (or veggie dog), and bring the kids. We can share a soft drink and get to know each other beyond words in the Mercury or words in an email.

Peace,
Craig Wiesner