ARTICLES
October 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
I Tell Them to Go Home
The Spiritual, Cultural Dangers of Emigration
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
Over the past several months, illegal immigration from Latin America to the United States has become a burning issue. President George W. Bush's proposal to grant legal status to undocumented workers has stirred up storms of protest from groups that want either a radical curtailment of even legal immigration or a complete halt to it. Protesting what they think are lax border controls, citizens groups in Arizona and now California have taken to policing the border. The claim is that immigrants threaten the safety, culture, and economy of the United States.
Latin American immigration, they say, is harmful to U.S. citizens.
But as a paper published in February 2005 as part of the Global Fellows Seminars of the University of California, Los Angeles, demonstrates, some have made -- and still are making -- the claim that emigration to the United States is harmful to to the emigrants. In "Emigration's Challenge to the 'Nation Church': Mexican Catholic Emigration Policies, 1920-2004," David Fitzgerald of the UCLA department of sociology presents interesting evidence of the Mexican Church's attempts to curtail emigration. Fitzgerald shows that even the Mexican saint Toribio Romo (who died in 1928), despite being invoked today by emigrants for a safe crossing of the border, was a determined foe of emigration. According to Fitzgerald, Saint Toribio, in a 1920 play called "Let's Go North!" "lambasted Mexican emigrants," who, Romo said, "'betrayed the motherland,' become Protestants, are embarrassed to work their fields, and wear such effeminate gringo clothes [that] 'one can't tell whether they crow or lay eggs.'" According to Fitzgerald, in 1920, the archbishop of Guadalajara called for a "holy crusade" against emigration and composed a circular letter to be read at Sunday Masses in which he detailed the dangers to the moral and religious life of emigrants. And, writes Fitzgerald, even today the Mexican Church, though it does not discourage emigration and even aids it, recognizes the same problems.
Fitzgerald says that, according to his study's "centennial view" of Mexican emigration, "in broad strokes, the Church continues to prefer a sedentary population and tries to minimize emigration's disintegrative social effects. The great difference is that while during the 1920s and '30s there was a concerted campaign to dissuade emigration and encourage repatriation, today the Mexican Church has accepted that emigration is a deeply rooted part of the cultures and economies of the source regions. Priests now promote migrants' ties with their source community without necessarily advocating permanent return. Keeping the family unit intact is seen as more important than keeping family members in Mexico."
The preference for a sedentary population, for what might be called cultural stasis, is not a phenomenon of the Mexican Church alone. In his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII notes that one benefit that would result from a reform of the economic and social order is "that men can easily be kept from leaving the country in which they have been born and bred."
In 1963, in Pacem in Terris Pope John XXIII advocated the "policy of bringing the work to workers, wherever possible, rather than bringing workers to the scene of the work," so that they will not be "exposed to the painful necessity of uprooting themselves from their own homes, settling in a strange environment, and forming new social contacts."
In 1981, Pope John Paul II wrote, in Laborem Exercens, that among the "diffi culties" encountered by those who immigrate is the "departure of a person who is also a member of a great community united by history, tradition and culture" who "must begin life in the midst of another society united by a different culture and very often by a different language." Further, emigration causes harm to the source country, which loses one "whose efforts of mind and body could contribute to the common good of his own country." This loss, says Fitzgerald, while causing problems of integration in the countries to which emigrants tend, produces disintegration in their countries of origin.
This disintegration is not only economic and social, but moral as well. According to Fitzgerald, the archbishop of Guadalajara's 1920 circular letter outlined four problems connected with emigration. The first of these problems has to do with emigrationill effects on the economy of the home country. The second is a loss of patriotism on the part of the emi grant. "When the Mexican worker has spent just a year in the North," said the archbishop, "he becomes a panegyrist for everything North American. He is an admirer of that country's customs, of its organization of work, its pastimes, its language, and even its vices, and he looks down on everything about his motherland with a certain sadness because he considers it inferior to that country of gold and liberty...."
But more serious is the disintegration of the family, which the archbishop cited as a result of emigration. When emigrant husbands return to their homes they often find ruin, their "wife or daughter dishonored" and "sons abandoned to their instincts, prepared for crime," since the father has not been at home to discipline them. This has deleterious effects on society, since in effect the family, the foundation of society, is destroyed.
But most serious of all, according to the archbishop, are the dangers to religious faith. Few priests in the United States could effectively minister to emigrants, who were targets of Protestant proselytizers, who took advantage of the emigrants' needy condition to lure them from the Faith. The cosmopolitanism of the United States, too, held dangerous allures for the poor paisanos separated from their more conservative and parochial native traditions. "What can a worker do ... in the United States ... among what is truly a cosmopolitan people?" asked the archbishop. "There he comes unexpectedly in contact with Jews and Protestants. He has to encounter a heap of different tendencies. And we know what is most influential in our lives. It's daily conversations; it's ordinary and trivial contact with the world. And it's clear that this man, upon finding himself in that heterogeneous, dissolvent environment, must feel a great deal of doubt in the middle of that religious apathy."
In the 1920s and '30s, the Mexican Catholic hierarchy actively discouraged emigration for the reasons cited. The bishops even criticized the emigrants themselves as lacking in patriotism and a proper concern for their families and their own souls. Since shortly before the Second Vatican Council, however, the Church has come to accept the necessity of emigration, at least for many. In Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII spoke of a right to emigrate "when there are just reasons in favor of it," since the fact that one "is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, worldwide fellowship of man." In Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II noted that "even if emigration is in some aspects an evil, in certain circumstances it is, as the phrase goes, a necessary evil."
Though still cognizant of the dangers cited by the archbishop of Guadalajara in 1920, a 1986 study commissioned by the diocese of San Juan de los Lagos in Mexico said to emigrants that, despite the dangers (which the study did not minimize), "the determination that you took to find in far away lands and with great sacrifice, the work that permits you to secure your future and the happiness of your families, has been very just and very Christian."
Is the archbishop of Guadalajara's circular letter relevant today? Do the moral and religious dangers he outlined in 1920 still peril emigrants 85 years later? I spoke to three priests -- two in the Los Angeles archdiocese and one in Honduras -- as well with Mark Zwick, who, with his wife Louise, offers hospitality to immigrants at Casa Juan Diego Catholic Worker house in Houston, Texas, to get their thoughts on this. They seem to agree that, for the most part, the dangers cited back in 1920 remain with us today.
Does emigration harm the family? Yes, said one Los Angeles archdiocesan priest, Father Aldana (not his real name). "I deal with it in confession all the time. Young guys who come over here who want to earn a living; they have good motives, they want to send money home because their families are economically disadvantaged. If they've just arrived, they're terribly depressed, crying; they miss their wives and children, they feel terribly guilty -- but that all fades. And eventually a lot of younger ones, especially, have to live in houses and apartments with a whole bunch of other men. They begin drinking, they get into drugs, they get to the women. It's a mess. Before you know it, they've set up another family, and the old family's forgotten. That happens all the time."
Another archdiocesan priest, Father Adams (not his real name), agreed that family disintegration among immigrants' families "is a big concern." Not only men, but women, who leave their children in Mexico, cross the border, said Father Adams, and "they're working here and living alone, and then, of course, all the things that that leads to -- marital infidelity, and all the rest."
And even bigamy, I asked?
"Oh, sure, definitely," said Adams. "Not uncommon." Though they take on another "spouse," said Adams, immigrants do not necessarily abandon their families in Latin America. "It's a double life type of thing," he said. "It' s not uncommon -- you even have men with two wives here [in the United States]."
Father Adams ascribed the problem with bigamy in part to "the machismo thing," but also to moral influences in the United States. "It's a culture shock," he said -- "not to say there are not those things in Mexico, but when you come from a pueblito to the big city and its libertine ways, there's just so much more." But Adams saw a difference from the 1920s, when the archbishop of Guadalajara wrote his letter. "The social situation in Mexico is far different now," said Adams. "I think television has something to do with that, too."
The archbishop claimed that emigrants returning from the United States and infected with its culture were the source of a morally disintegrating influence in their home countries. But as Father Richard Perozich, a missionary with the Maryknoll Fathers in Honduras, pointed out, television and politics more than returning emigrants have been corrupting Latin American cultures. The poor in Honduras, he said, "may not have a telephone or car, but they have cable TV," on which they can see attractive images of U.S. life. "Unfortunately," he said, "the evils of America are down here too -- the Barbara Boxer abortion movement, the practicing homosexual movement. Locals have told me that San Pedro Sula [where Perozich has worked for the past year] is the drug and AIDS capital of Central America."
The televised images of American life, said Father Perozich, lure Hondu rans to the United States. It is a poor country. The poor abandon the countryside (where most of the land is held by corporations) to come to work in maquiladoras, factories, in the city. These maquiladoras, though owned mostly by Hondurans, nevertheless keep wages very low in order to draw the U.S. contracts upon which they depend. Thus the poor seek higher wages and hope to escape dire poverty in the United States. "I see a general lack of hope among the really poor," said Perozich. "There is no social welfare to back up a loss of employment." Medical care is poor. "The teachers in public schools go on strike often. Large numbers of kids are lucky if they get elementary education (grades one through six). This education leaves them with minimal job skills." The middle class, too, come north because of a lack of steady work in Honduras. "We only have seven million people and cannot provide a living for all of them, the U.S. standard of living they see on TV. We produce coffee, cattle, sugar, mine some minerals, but cannot take care of this whole nation which wishes to live a bit more like the rest of the world." Meanwhile the few rich are quite rich, controlling industry, the press, and government -- and they engage in political corruption, often with foreign aid monies.
Father Perozich said the Honduran family is in poor shape, but not simply because of emigration. Both the fact that fathers go north for work and that many unwed women have children ("only 18 percent of all Honduran couples marry either civilly or in the Church," Perozich said) mean that "many families don't have fathers. Without one, the mother and children are vulnerable. She has to work. He may or may not send money back. Enough men begin a second family in the U.S.; thus, the one back home suffers more. Gangs are formed because fathers are not around."
"Immigrants come [to the United States] because they are hungry," said Mark Zwick of the Casa Juan Diego Catholic Worker in Houston. "They are not coming here to become rich." Often foreign owned, maquiladoras have undermined traditional economies in Latin America, which, said Zwick, were "farm communities, with extended families and people working together." Often the poor in Latin America have work in the maquiladoras as their only choice; there they "can get $50 a week," and "food on the Mexican side is more expensive than on the U.S. side," Zwick noted. "The maquiladoras take advantage of desperation. What a way to make a living, to take advantage of people's desperation in order to decrease the costs and raise the prices!"
Zwick agreed that emigration is a major source of family disintegration in Latin America and that it often leads to bigamy. "And this is the reason that we [at Casa Juan Diego] oppose immigration," said Zwick, "even though we've accepted something like 50,000 people in 25 years. We accept them because they are desperate and homeless."
But while some see increased border control as the answer to stem immigration, Zwick said he would "like to see getting beyond the border solution." Rather than "putting millions and millions of dollars into border control and that kind of thing," he said, "we need to rethink a way to inhibit emigration with a simple, very minimal raise of pay" in the maquiladoras. "It would have a great impact on emigration," Zwick said.
Without a solution to emigration, not only family disintegration will continue but the loss of the Catholic faith on the part of many immigrants. Zwick, Father Adams, and Father Aldana all agreed that many Catholic immigrants in the United States become infected with our country's "cosmpolitanism" and are drawn into Protestant sects. Father Aldana saw Protestant proselytizing as less of a threat in California and the Southwest, where priests speak Spanish and so can provide "for the most part" for the immigrants' spiritual needs. But Latin American immigration is moving East, "where there aren't any Spanish-speaking priests." There proselytizing is more of a threat.
Father Adams said that because church life in the United States is so different from that in the mother country, immigrants "lose contact with the Church." The poor who come from the rural regions of the south might not, even at home, have much contact with the Church. "Maybe once a month, the priest may come to their pueblo," so "the idea of Sunday Mass attendance is not deeply ingrained." Despite immigrants' devotional sense and their popular piety, they often suffer from "religious illiteracy," said Adams. "Many of them don't know basic prayers, so they are already very vulnerable to proselytizing by sects." Others find "integrating into a Protestant sect a way of advancing socially," said Adams.
Mark Zwick said immigrants find fundamentalist Protestant churches appealing because they provide "instant community, which is what the immigrants need. It's hard to match that; the campesinos are drawn to that." The Catholic Church does not provide such community, given the way parishes are structured, said Zwick. "The parish is where you go to Mass, and it doesn't include creating community. I must say the bishop here [Houston] has insisted that there be Spanish Masses. In upper middle class parishes we have two Spanish Masses; one I know has three. But it's hard to match the small community of a fundamentalist church. They really reach out and form family churches where there are gatherings in the homes and all that."
Zwick said Casa Juan Diego does its part to minister to immigrants' spiritual needs. Every Wednesday night the house has Spanish Mass, as well as scripture readings twice a week. Seminarians often come to work with Zwick, "and the men who help us run the house are all undocumented immigrants, and they're very conscious of being Catholic Workers, which means trying to imitate Jesus, trying to implement Matthew 25 with all its personalism and voluntary poverty. The environment is obviously spiritual and all is done in the environment of the Faith. I think that talks that are given really express fidelity to the values of the family."
For his part, Father Aldana says, "I welcome whoever comes through the door of my church;" but he also counsels immigrants about the moral and spiritual dangers they face in the United States. "Sometimes, if I get them when they' re just arrived and donhave a job, I tell them to go home. And a lot of them do. I'm very blunt with them. I tell them, look, here are your options. The amount of money you're going to make is barely going to pay for the rent and food that you need. Therefore, if you're going to be sending any money home, it's going to be very little. Eventually you're going to become more distanced from your family; eventually, you will break off from your family. You're going to put your family in jeopardy and your own soul in jeopardy. If your whole family could come over here, that would be great. But don't think earning more money is what's going to help your family; what's going to help them more is for you to be with them."
In the course of our conversation, Mark Zwick told me Casa Juan Diego takes in immigrants who are sick, mentally ill, and paraplegic. The house helps provide for the immigrants' medical needs, which run to about $20,000 a month -- which is in addition to other expenses: electricity, water, and gas, and food. Those who would like to help Casa Juan Diego, may contact the house at P.O. Box 70113, Houston, Texas 77270; or call (713) 869-7376. Web page: www.cjd.org/contacts.html