Where welcome waits
Smith, Karen Sue
control . . . . Families broken by divorce, death, abuse, or incest should no longer be invisible in the faith community but should be supported by the church"; 9 that "single women and men have...
...KAREN SUE SMITH (Karen Sue Smith is an assistant editor of Commonweal...
...Upon their return to Georgia, they approached a possible sponsor -- the Canadian government...
...But when several refugees were arrested in the INS office as they requested the papers, Jubilee decided never to try this procedure again...
...The meeting's participants certainly weren't representative of Catholic women generally, or perhaps even of the St...
...This approval would be a primary factor in enlisting the cooperation of the INS, without which the likely consequences for the refugees would be arrest, detention, and/or deportation...
...Jubilee recently completed its nineteenth trip, accommodating in three years over five hundred Central: Americans headed for Canada...
...somewhere in the process, they lost the spontaneous ring and freshness of new voices in the discussion...
...Indeed, the two authors are scrupulous in warning against overgeneralizing from the meeting's results...
...rape at the hands of military (whether army or rebel...
...a sparse population in proportion to its land...
...a carbon copy is all that can be shown at the checkpoints if trouble arises...
...Here we were, sitting in a house with no windows in it," said co-founder Mary Ruth Weir, "talking about what we could do to help the boat people...
...The situation changed in 1982...
...They discussed what role Jubilee might play to facilitate immigration to Canada for Salvadorans and Guatemalans...
...Since these refugees had wound their way north through other countries, notably Mexico, en route to the U.S., INS chose to assume that economic opportunity rather than political necessity had motivated their migration...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) required more than it had of the "boat peoples...
...Even so, the demand for permanent sanctuary for Salvadorans and Guatemalans exceeds the supply of available places...
...In the case of religion, what better way of respecting another's privacy than by a strict curtailtuent of extra-denominational curiosity...
...3000 in' 1985...
...Since Texas INS refuses to process applications for asylum filed by Jubilee's hand-picked families, the applications must be mailed to the Atlanta office...
...At this juncture, Jubilee, now supported by growing numbers of local townspeople, might have joined the newlyformed "sanctuary movement" in order to grant privately the asylum denied to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees by the U.S...
...They took the newcomers on field trips: to the local police station where officers were friendly enough to help them overcome deep fears of armed police...
...Undocumented aliens WHERE WELCOME WAITS JUBILEE'S NIGHT RIDE TO CANADA ~ e THE trial drags on in Tucson, Arizona -- for en persons accused of providing sanctuary to unmented Central American aliens -- a Christian community in Comer, Georgia offers safe haven to a lucky few...
...9 that "single women and men have been ignored, neglected, and alienated.., and need an equal place within the church...
...Stories of tortured or murdered relatives and neighbors...
...Partners taught English, grocery shopping, and money exchanging skills...
...evidence of bodily injury...
...Indeed, if there is a complaint to be made of the symposium results as recorded in this report, it is that they often come expressed in "fairly routine" feminist phrasing...
...The immediate task facing Jubilee was to ensure, as much as was possible, that the Canadian consul would approve the refugees once they arrived at the community in Georgia...
...2000 in 1983...
...Congress were to pass the Moakley-DeConcini Bill which calls for voluntary departure status to end the deportation of Salvadoran refugees (Guatemalans are not mentioned), to give one example of legislation now pending, Jubilee could curtail its international taxi service and devote itself to teaching and finding American sponsors just as it did in the past for the "boat people...
...and to the health clinic...
...slightly higher in 1986...
...Jubilee pledged itself to find sponsors...
...Although the INS officials in Atlanta approve of Jubilee's efforts, agents ha Texas show less regard...
...no persons with strong activist or political involvements...
...The result came to be known as the Aho de Jubileo program...
...In retrospect, it was an obvious choice: a shared border with the U.S...
...But Jubilee's successful two-year pattern of extending to refugees hospitality, education, and sponsors no longer seemed plausible...
...Canada's quota of immigrants from Latin America is limited, despite recent trends: 1000-person ceiling in 1982...
...Yet, despite their whole-hearted support of that movement, Jubilee conceived a different plan, one resembling the Underground Railroad devised during the Civil War period to help runaway slaves from the South reach free states in the North...
...That the sentiments expressed by these alumnae were so surprising, even to their tried and true leaders, may show how far the church still has to go...
...Predictably, as tensions over the political instability of E1 Salvador and Guatemala have mounted in the U.S., relations with immigration officials have increased in complexity...
...In a process going-on since 1983, every two months a large repalnted school bus from Jubilee heads for the Texas valley to pick up a load of refugees who will ride the thirty hours to Comer, Georgia...
...Mary's graduates of that time...
...no one convicted of criminal acts...
...This polite incuriosity spills over from the man and woman in the pew to the academic world, where, despite the obvious fact that it is virtually impossible to understand America without understanding the vital role that religion has played and still does play in American life, the sociology and the history of religion are disciplines which have attracted only very middling amounts of prestige and attention...
...Mosley and Drewry met with the Canadian consul in Atlanta...
...At that time the U.S...
...Spain and the Netherlands are the most promising prospects to date...
...I ETIQUETTE OF IGNORANCE SECTARIANS & FOREIGN POLICY O NE OF THE odd by-products of the attachment we Americans have to the principle of separation of church and state is a widespread ignorance of the content of one another's religion...
...and humanitarian concern...
...Don Mosley, a co-founder of Jubilee Partners, and Eric Drewry, a partner and specialist in immigration law, visited 14 February 1986:69the Rio Grande Valley in 1982 to assess the refugee situation...
...Eventually, each of these refugees found a permanent home, and most found employment as well...
...This assumption accounts for over forty thousand Salvadoran deportees since 1980...
...In the case of refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador, the U.S...
...Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Prospective refugees for the Aho de Jubileo program would have to be screened in Texas with the Canadian criteria in mind: families preferred...
...Such views may be "fairly routine" among Christian feminists, write Schwoyer and Haughton in their report on the symposium, but, given these participants, were of a "radical nature...
...Still, out of nineteen bus trips, only two buses have ever been stopped for questioning...
...Jubilee raised the necessary bail money to obtain the release of the arrested group members, and established the "Paul and Silas Revolving Fund" -- a fund that can be used over and over because bail money is returned to Jubilee once the refugees reach Canada...
...The partners would even provide transportation there...
...It's as though we feel that inquiries into our neighbors' religious beliefs and practices are as unseemly as opening their mail, both the one and the other, after all, being none of our business...
...In the future, the Jubilee program may become a victim of its own success...
...Meanwhile, Jubilee is trying to secure sponsors in other countries besides Canada...
...2500 in 1984...
...If the U.S...
...Even as Jubilee Partners hammered away to construct a welcome center of residential cottages, classrooms, and a thrift store, refugees from Central America -- particularly from El Salvador and Guatemala -flooded across the Rio Grande River into Texas...
...That these statements were made by this particular, loosely formed group of women also shows how far the church has come...
...As refugee groups of up to twenty-five persons at a time arrived on the twenty-sixacre site graced with woods and lakes, the "partners" developed a flexible program of education to ease the transition to a new culture...
...Nonetheless, the general veracity of the report cannot be doubted...
...Jubilee Partners, Inc., founded in 1979 by three couples and their six children, welcomed its first group of refugees even before the founders' had finished building their own modest homes...
...and episodes recounted of personal danger could not, in most cases, be documented to the satisfaction of the INS...
...to nearby farms and small businesses...
...9 that "widows [and] elderly women, particularly the poor, single parents without family resources, and immigrants" deserve our particular attention...
...a high enough standard of living to absorb immigrants in the long run, despite the currently high rate of unemployment...
...And in the world of journalistic social commentators, virtually no one (except George F. Will, when the high Anglican mood is upon him) would Commonweal: 70...
...Before each of the first three trips, the Central Americans asked the Texas agents for "travel papers," as a precaution for getting through the checkpoints stationed along the road leading away from the Rio Grande Valley...
...Legality itself posed no obstacle at this time...
...dians all the way to Toronto...
...But they did come from backgrounds not usually associated with outspoken Catholic feminism...
...government was permitting large numbers of Cuban refugees and "boat people" from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to settle here on condition that American citizens volunteer to sponsor them...
...This more roundabout process provides a paper-thin shield against deportation...
...Then the bus takes these future Cana...
...government...
...The last leg of the emigrants' long journey takes place two months after their arrival at Jubilee...
...After being screened again, this time by the Canadian consul, the refugees wait for clearance from Canada...
...Now, to obtain political asylum, each refugee had to prove the precise political nature of his or her reasons for departure...
...Under this agreement, Jubilee agreed to find, prepare, and recommend Central American refugees for citizenship in Canada...
Vol. 113 • February 1986 • No. 3
