Speech #980256053

I insert the attached article which appeared in the August 4 Washington Post and details the activities of the sanctuary movement in the REcoRw. SANcTuAR. CRcH.s Am ILLEGAL ALIENS (By Caryle Murphy) Tucso.--Southside United Presbyterian church sits In a scruffy. heatbleached neighborhood next to part of the city dump. Inside. a 10foot cross hewn from worn out railroad ties looms over a simple meeting room equipped with only an organ and wooden chairs. Here. on March 24. 1982. the Rev. John M. Fife and his congregation invoked a centuriesold Christian tradition and declared their church a "sanctuary" for illegal Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants. It was a solitary. symbolic gesture in defiance of federal laws that forbid helping undocumented aliens flee immigration authorities. Two years later. more than 150 parishes and congregations from Massachusetts to California--including seven in the Washington areahave Joined Southside In what has become an increasingly popular form of grassroots protest of U.S. policies in Central America and the federal governments treatment of civilians caught up in the conflicts there. Organizers say that 50.000 people have participated in the sanctuary movement in one way or another. and that several hundred Central Americans have sought refuge through Its network of churches. This figure represents only a fraction of the estimated 500.000 illegal aliens in the United States. but total numbers are not the major concern of a movement whose power is meant to lie mostly in its symbolism. What makes the sanctuary movement different from past protests is that It is challenging Reagan administration policies in Central America through an unusual forum: U.S. immigration law. The movements close ties with the church pose a dilemma for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. which by law is required to apprehend illegal aliens. Wishing to avoid a public clash with churches and hoping to minimize media attention to the movement. INS has studiously ignored Its activities for the past two years. including a widely publicized caravan of cars that transported an undocumented