Recently I had the opportunity to hear Father Dan Groody, immigration scholar and professor at the University of Notre Dame. Dan has spent the last 20 years or so of his life researching, writing, and speaking about the global phenomenon of immigration. He has worked with the Vatican, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the World Council of Churches, he has been an adviser and has given briefings to the US Congress. He can dazzle folks with his knowledge about the intricacies and details of policy and procedure of immigration and he can break your heart in recalling the countless face to face encounters and interviews he has had with migrants in the field. However, the most powerful story he tells about immigration is the story of going on a family vacation as a boy and having someone leave a religious tract on the car window. He recalls that the tract said something to the effect that the distance between your head and your heart is just 18 inches. The implied meaning was that those 18 inches are the distance between heaven and hell---accepting Christ or not. Dan goes on to reflect that those 18 inches of immigration are the most important in the volatile conversation about immigration. Do we have the courage to immigrate from our head to our heart and back again, for that is really what Jesus was asking? It wasn’t just about belief(a head thing)---it was about following and living out Jesus call to love the neighbor(a heart thing).
Clearly that is the struggle when it comes to the issues of immigration in Arizona or for that matter the United States. It isn’t hard to see once you wade very far into the conversation that the anti-immigrant position and the accompanied heated rhetoric has a heart of stone and has no rhythm of compassion. From a head perspective you might be able to contort yourself into agreeing that the United States is a nation of laws and that we have the right to secure borders, but once you hear the stories of struggle, poverty, the push/pull effect of economics and the life and death situation of those who are forced to migrate, you begin to make that journey. Only the hardest of hearts and heads can’t make that 18 inch immigration journey.
There is no doubt that we have an immigration crisis on our hands in Arizona, but it isn’t about more fence along the border, more checkpoints on our roads, or more Border Patrol agents in the field. No our crisis is a spiritual one that only involves a simple 18 inch immigration journey. And the question is: Do our political leaders and the people that elect them have the faith and courage to immigrate those 18 inches?
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