Cover story:

Resources

From the ELCA

• Called To Be a Public Church: 2008 ELCA Voting and Civic Participation Guide: "It is my hope that this guide" — which includes nonpartisan briefs on current issues, plus tips for electoral activities — "will be a useful tool as you and your congregation wrestle with faithful responses to difficult issues in this election cycle and those to come," said ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson.
• ELCA Message on Immigration: Written in 1998, with an update to be presented to the ELCA Church Council by the end of 2008, this message represents the official ELCA position on the issue, based on biblical teachings. It is designed to encourage reflection and discussion.
• A Faithful Response: A Study for Churches on Welcoming the Stranger: This four-week study curriculum from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is designed to help adults and older teens understand an immigrant's experience.
• Locking up Family Values: LIRS teamed with the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children to examine conditions in two federal detention centers where immigrant families are in custody.

From other groups
• Center for Immigration Studies: This Washington, D.C., think tank, which "seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted" and opposes illegal immigration, offers a variety of publications.
• Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: An August 2007 report from the Office of Immigration Studies, part of the Department of Homeland Security, gives federal data and definitions about unauthorized residents.
• Immigration and America's Future: A New Chapter: The Migration Policy Institute convened a nonpartisan task force headed by former U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton to analyze economic, social and demographic factors of today's illegal and legal immigration; this September 2006 book offers the group's findings and suggestions for an system overhaul.
• Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children: Large-scale work-site raids have increased; this is a study by the National Council of La Raza and the nonpartisan Urban Institute from October 2007 of three communities where raids had occurred and details their impact on children.
• For You Were Once a Stranger: Interfaith Worker Justice is a "network of people of faith ... that helps give voice to low-wage workers." This 2007 handbook is a study guide of research, suggestions for policy and faith perspectives on immigration.

– Heidi Ernst

'Acrimony' toward illegal workers

Marshalltown, Iowa

Iowa wasn’t where Rick Hernandez thought he would end up crossing illegally from his homeland of Mexico to the U.S.

In fact, when Hernandez at 16 years old accepted an offer to work in Marshalltown he had no idea where it was. He had only been in the country a year, coming in 1986 to harvest crops in California and Washington.

Rick Hernandez belongs to Elim Lutheran Church, Marshalltown, Iowa, the town where he came 20 years ago. As a teenager he entered the U.S. illegally in 1986. In 1990 he got a work visa, and he now owns a painting company.

The work Hernandez was promised in Iowa wound up not paying, leaving him broke and stuck in the middle of the country.

Still, there were options. The Immigration Act of 1990, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, allowed more immigrants into the country and more work visas, one of which went to Hernandez.

That same year in Marshalltown, John Allen, then pastor of Elim, one of three ELCA congregations, celebrated a Spanish-language Christmas liturgy for about a dozen residents—the beginning of a Latino congregation that grew rapidly to 200 families.

But if Hernandez, now a member of Elim, had arrived recently in Marshalltown—a city that due to its meat-packing plants saw a quick rise in Latino immigrants, both legal and not—his life might have gone differently.

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