Migrants: A Blessing to be Claimed
Dr. Carmelo Santos counts the ways
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to testify before a committee of the US Congress on the ethics of the administration’s policy of separating migrant families that had come to the U.S.A.–Mexico border seeking asylum. A friend reposted my testimony and drew an angry response from one of her friends. His complaint was that many of us were diagnosing the problem but not offering any concrete solutions.
So here goes: The solution to the migration crisis is to realize that migrants are not a problem to be solved but a blessing to be claimed.
Granted, the roots of the migration crisis are very complex. They include socio-political and environmental ills like war, famine, drought, gang violence, and sexual and gendered violence, as well as corruption and episodes of foreign interventions that have destabilized the countries from which many people are fleeing.
However, there is another side to the issue. The way a society responds to waves of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers will determine whether the receiving country will benefit from all that these newcomers have to offer or whether they will be considered a burden to society—which is precisely what will happen without adequate support.
Let me repeat: Migrants are not a problem to be solved.
In fact, we are looking at the issue the wrong way.
The problem is not the migrant but our society’s resistance to receive them as bearers of potential blessings for our communities.
Such resistance has the unintended consequence of turning migrants into burdens instead of letting them become the blessing they could be. Obviously, not all migrants are the same, and to equate “immigrant” or “refugee” or “asylum seeker” with “a problem to be solved” is to set them and us up for failure from the outset. The point of solving a problem is to get rid of it; the point of a solution is to improve a situation.
Pastor and professor Carmelo Santos (far left) testifying before the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee on the effects of the Trump administration’s family separation policy on the U.S.-Mexican border, 27 June 2018.
Source: Living Lutheran, a magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
Imagine a U.S. without Mexican food (taco Tuesdays!) or Chinese restaurants (or Greek, Thai, you name it!). Many features that we love of our modern U.S.A. society would not exist had our migration rules been as stringent in the past as they are now. Google, Yahoo, AT&T, and EBay are but a few examples of the ways in which migrants have helped form the country that we all love and cherish.
Those are business examples. Let’s see hearts and hands at work.
As a pastor, I also see the contributions of migrants to our society in the loving hands that take care of our elderly parents and grandparents in retirement homes and in hospitals. I see such blessing to our country whenever I drive by a construction project and I see people from here and from abroad, in all shades and from all ethnicities, working hand-in-hand to build our roads and buildings.
What made America great in the first place was precisely its ability to harvest the contributions of so many different migrant, ethnic and racial groups and to constantly attract new people and new talent eager to work hard in pursuit of the American Dream. They benefited from the U.S.A., and the U.S.A. benefited from them. Our country is a two-way street, not a one-lane highway divided by a wall.
The Chinese built railroads in the West. Germans and Irish fought for the Union in the American Civil War. Latinxs serve in the highest courts, harvest our produce, and are leaders in STEM fields (see, for example, the story of Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa, who went from undocumented farm worker to leading brain surgeon and cancer researcher at Mayo clinic). Asians are revolutionizing medicine (see, for example, the case of my friend, Shri Lankan “Shanaka” Wijesinghe). And there are the contributions of Jewish and Muslim immigrants and refugees, not to mention the fact that immigrants constitute a quarter of U.S.A. businesses today.
The point is not that all migrants are saints or that there aren’t examples of bad behavior, clearly exceptions to the rule. And yet the current rhetoric makes it seem as if migrants are, by default, dangerous aliens lurking in the shadows like snakes, waiting to rape, kill and maim, or to just drain resources from the government. These characterizations are gross and prejudiced distortions of reality.
The fact is that, without a steady influx of migrants, our Baby Boomer aging society would be in trouble! Even those who publicly engage in distorted rhetoric privately acknowledge this. Who is caring for our elders in nursing homes? Who is cleaning our hotel rooms? Who is transporting our family members and friends from a hospital room to a physical therapy class with kindness and compassion?
What would happen if we did not make it so difficult for migrants to come into our country and not severely constrain their ability to work as productive members of our society? What would happen if we instead see them as assets and facilitate their careers and personal development through initiatives like job trainings, access to mentoring, cultural acclimation, and even microloans? Isn’t it more expensive to keep people in detention centers, where they can’t contribute to society and to the local economy simply through their purchases at local stores and restaurants?
I think such a blessing is worth the try.
Then we might realize that migration was not ever the problem but has been the solution all along.
