Sanctuary
By Albert B. Kelly
According to Merriam-Webster, a sanctuary is a place of
refuge and protection. The word gets used in many ways and speaks of very
different settings. When it comes to wildlife, it’s a place where animals are
monitored and controlled and hunting is generally illegal.
When it comes to worship, a sanctuary denotes a consecrated
space or more generally a place of worship and we use it in talking about local
houses of worship. Back in the day, fugitives could find protection in churches;
they could find “sanctuary”.
If history is a guide, that sanctuary was limited and back
during England’s history, churches provided a limited timeframe of immunity (weeks
or months) and neither constables nor soldiers would enter to seize a person
during that time. Over generations, this concept of “sanctuary” was eliminated
from common law.
Here in the U.S, during the 80’s, it wasn’t unheard of for
churches to give sanctuary to refugees from Central America and if memory
serves, the Feds didn’t intervene in any major way. Today, we’re not talking
specifically about churches as much as we’re talking about cities.
The discussion these days is about “sanctuary cities” and the
point of the spear is the federal government. These days, it’s about dusting
off Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) - tweeked by
the Homeland Security Act of 2002- Public Law 107-296.
287(g) lets the Department of Homeland Security do
agreements with counties or municipalities that basically allow “qualified
personnel”, aka police and law enforcement, to perform the functions of an
immigration officer.
In New Jersey, Salem County signed such an agreement as did
Monmouth County and Hudson County. It’s
basically asking local law enforcement to be the boots on the ground for
immigration. That’s a heavy lift.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Some cities have come out
proactively and declared that they are sanctuary cities. With such a
declaration, these cities are basically saying that they will not serve as
boots on the ground and will work to protect undocumented individuals and
families from deportation.
The hammer the Feds intend to use against any sanctuary city
is the denial of federal grants. These amounts vary depending on the size of
the community we’re talking about. It’s not a decision to be made lightly
because these funds touch almost every segment of the community.
For Bridgeton, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of
dollars in a given year; everything from block grant funds to transportation
funds. Over the course of four years (2011-2014) it was over $3 million…nothing
to sneeze at.
What I know is that sanctuary or not, what Bridgeton will
always strive to be is a place that respects the individuals and families in
our community, their struggles and aspirations, no matter where they came from
or how they got here.
If a discussion of our undocumented population is just about
dollars, I recall the 2006 study done by Drew Frederick in collaboration with
Rowan professor Luis Brunstein on behalf of the Farmworker Support Committee of
South Jersey (CATA) that pegged their economic contribution in Bridgeton at
between $25.7 million and $29.6 million a year.
If it’s a discussion about people, for me it starts with
treating people with basic human decency and compassion. The easy thing is to
demonize, the harder thing is to empathize with people- especially if they’re
fleeing violence, crushing poverty and everything that sort of chaos implies. I’m
guessing that’s mostly why they come.
When talking about our undocumented population and
deportation, it also helps to remember that we’re talking about children born
here whose parents are undocumented or children brought here as infants and
toddlers so that this community is all they’ve ever known- kids whose parents
work hard and stay out of trouble.
If the new administration wants to be consistent in their
efforts, they should be tightening up the H-2 Visa program that employers use
to bring over foreign workers- some of the abuses are staggering; everything
from sexual assault and withholding wages to avoiding hiring US citizens
because they’re not so easy to exploit. But that’s another story for another
time.
Some weeks back in this same space, I contrasted the new
administration’s use of scripture in the context of walls and aliens. Back
then, I found it ironic that they missed the words of Deuteronomy 24; “you
shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan…” that still sounds
right to me.