The problems at the southern
border of the United States are complex. Since they involve life and death we
ought to look beyond the economic impact of our policies, actions, motives, and
thinking. The fact that much of the rhetoric surrounding the influx of children
across our borders revolves around money is an indictment of the United States,
and the professing church within the United States. Could it be that Christians
who desire God’s mercy when applying the law of God to their own lives forget
God’s mercy when insisting on applying immigration law to the lives of others?
Which violation of which law deserves the greater punishment?
Frances Robles of the New
York Times, in a July 9, 2014 article writes, “ ‘The first thing we can think
of is to send our children to the United States,’ said a mother of two in La
Pradera [Honduras], who declined to give her name because she feared gang
reprisals. ‘That’s the idea, to leave.’
“Honduran children are
increasingly on the front lines of gang violence. In June, 32 children were
murdered in Honduras, bringing the number of youths under 18 killed since
January of last year to 409, according to data compiled by Covenant House, a
youth shelter in Tegucigalpa, the capital.”
As the US Conference of
Catholic Bishops has pointed out, children from Honduras do not represent a
crisis of illegal immigrants, they represent a refugee crisis – and yet the
United States Government, state governments and, it appears, much of the
professing church, fails to acknowledge that many of these children are, in
fact, refugees from war-torn areas – gang wars are just as lethal as other
wars, just ask parents in our inner cities, just ask parents in Honduras.
