Immigrants Are Faring Well In My Home Town

Welcoming America cities are springing up all over the country, and we are the better for it.

In response to a recent blog which cited scriptures in support of welcoming immigrants and strangers I got a flood of comments on Facebook defending our nation's recent reduction in the numbers of foreign born individuals allowed into the country. Strenuous action needs to be taken, many said, due to lax and "chaotic" immigration policies that allow really bad people into our communities. 

Judging from our own area's experience with new Americans I'm not sure what is meant by "immigration chaos". According to a report just issued here in our community, local immigrants contributed some $780 million to our area's economy in 2016, representing 10% of the region's GDP. I hear few voices in our business community calling for a tourniquet to stem this tide in Harrisonburg, where there are several dozen language groups represented in the City's high school, where our grandchildren are blessed by being in one of City's amazing dual language programs, and where Harrisonburg officially became a Welcoming America City in 2017,  due to an initiative by Faith in Action, a coalition of 26 local congregations. 

We've just learned that our granddaughter at Skyline Middle School has earned three high school Spanish language credits this year as a 7th grader. This kind of opportunity, far from representing chaos, is all about America at its best.We're blessed with a vibrant and diverse immigrant community here in the heartland, thanks to people of all kinds of political persuasions and to the support of many of the faith communities in our area. 

I did just hear my friend Jim Hershberger, who heads the local Church World Service refugee resettlement program, lament that it looks like they will be serving only a third of the usual number of displaced families this year due to tightened immigration policies. Neither he nor I are interested in demonizing the president or his party for this, but many of us want our local DACA friends to have a path to citizenship and our immigrant neighbors in general to continue to feel welcomed and appreciated.

PBS's American Experience just ran a documentary on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1872, a racist policy that resulted in hardworking Chinese in the US suffering severe hardships and discrimination for the next half century based on their ethnic origin alone.

We can only look back on this dark period in our nation's history with a sense of shame. And today Oriental students in our schools and universities are generally seen as among the brightest and the best.

What can we learn from our immigrant nation's history?