Pages tagged "Immigration"

Child Refugees from Central America

• Authored by:
• Holly Anderson

Dear Editor: I met Lynnette Arnold last year at Pacific Yearly Meeting when she called for interested Friends to meet to discuss the problems of the overwhelming numbers of children fleeing to the U.S. from Central America. For Lynette, this concern has evolved into serving as the convener of a sub-committee of the PYM Latin American Concerns Committee (with monthly conference calls), two trips to a detention center for families in Karnes, Texas, and fasting recently in solidarity with a hunger strike by detained mothers. Lynnette is a member of the Santa Barbara Meeting and is currently completing a PhD in Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. We met at the Santa Barbara Meetinghouse where she was fasting, and I am sending you my record of my interview. Please share this with “Friends Everywhere.”

On Difference (July 2015)

Epistle on Immigration (unabridged)

Greeting Cards for You, Perhaps

• Authored by:
• Sarah Malone

Dear Friends: Albuquerque Meeting supported our friend Emma in sanctuary for twenty-one months. [See the July/August 2017 issue of Western Friend.]

On Puzzles (May 2019)

Haregewoin’s Wail

• Authored by:
• john heid

For a single moment, time collapsed in the Tucson International Airport. Heads turned abruptly. Passersby stopped dead in their hurried tracks. A soul-deep wail erupted from the throat of a sturdy woman with a mighty set of lungs. Haregewoin’s cry shattered the hubbub and echoed off the sterile walls, like thunder. All throughout the terminal, from baggage claim to the Homeland Security screening lines, a haunting stillness presided. Haregewoin’s two children and her husband had just arrived by plane from Africa, just stepped into view, and stood there atop the arrival ramp escalator, fifty yards away from her. [pullquote]Haregewoin had not laid eyes on her family in years, had not been sure that she ever would. Her wail was a wail of anguish and ecstasy, like the prophets of old.[/pullquote]

On Separation (November 2019)

Hella Undocumented

• Authored by:
• Pablo Paredes

An interview with Pablo Paredes

On Superiority (July 2013)

Look into their Faces

• Authored by:
• David Poundstone

Surely life is more than waiting at the center of a wheel of fortune that spins and stops repeatedly to point out countless causes and concerns. Finish one task and then hang on as the wheel spins and points out the next one. Will it be immigration, prison reform, nuclear disarmament, climate change, indigenous rights, racism and white privilege, or . . . ? This inner image of a spinning wheel reflects how my life can feel these days – juggling and shuttling among various tasks and commitments.

On Balance (May 2017)

Love Always Protects

• Authored by:
• Alvaro Alvarado,
• Donna Higgins Smith,
• Lynnette Arnold

Friends who gathered at Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM) in July 2014 were moved by a refugee crisis unfolding on the US-Mexico border. Thousands of children continue to escape violence in Central America and seek reunification with family members working in the US. The crisis has many causes that require thoughtful analysis to discern long-term solutions, but for us the causes do not matter. As members of PYM’s Latin American Concerns Committee, we seek not to ascribe blame, but rather to follow God’s will. We are led to show love to these children.

On Family (September 2014)

Love the Prisoner

• Authored by:
• Karen Vance

Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) is the branch of Homeland Security that runs immigration detention centers in jails and prisons across our nation.  Because most detainees are not charged with “crimes,” they are held in “civil” detention. This particular fact is at the heart of my story. Men and women held in immigration detention have none of the “rights” we associate with our criminal justice system: no right to an attorney, no right to a speedy trial, no right to a phone call, no right to have visitors.  ICE often shuffles detainees among different facilities around the country.  This means that for families and friends, their loved ones can suddenly disappear to places too far away to visit. 

On Love (September 2013)

Minute on Immigration

• Authored by:
• Santa Fe Monthly Meeting

Equality, community and integrity are foundations of Quaker belief. Therefore, as immigrants and refugees in our community encounter trials such as family separation, incarceration, internment and deportation, Santa Fe Monthly Meeting is called to put these beliefs into action. We will support these neighbors in their daily lives, providing aid, companionship, friendship and safety in whatever ways we are able.

On Weapons (January 2019)

Recovering Innocents

• Authored by:
• Kathy French

Saturday morning, I reach the border at Nogales, Arizona. From near and far, the fence rises. From a distance, it appears as a blade that slices apart both the wholeness of the natural world and the wholeness of a human community. Up close, the twenty-foot barrier imprisons and excludes, looming like a nightmare. The huge, vertical, rust-colored metal slats nearly overlap. I peer through them, looking down a cliff at a street below, and at the sidewalk across that street, in front of a little store. On that spot, sixteen-year-old Josè Antonio Elena Rodrìguez was killed, shot repeatedly by a jumpy American border guard.

On Competition (January 2017)