I sat here and listened to the debates the other day on this one bill that would provide recognition of the need to address from a humanitarian standpoint the great enmasse exodus of Central Americans for the first time in our history. en masse from El Salvador into the United States. and this has created or produced a nucleus of men of God. men of the cloth. who. out of their duties in their vocation. as called for. were crying out to recognize the need to give hospice and hospitality and refuge to some of these unfortunates whom I have seen with my own eyes and who live in pathetic circumstances in our midst. only to be jailed. We have now in our prisons more than one religious American who is either a priest or a layman. We had one lady who was ordered to jail late last year because of her joinder in the socalled refugees or hospitality houses of a church in what we call the Valley of Texas. and she was pregnant. Nevertheless it took us 3Y months before we could persuade the judge and finally make everybody see that it was ridiculous to have a pregnant woman jailed on such a basis. It is really policy. it is nothing else. What else is it? Since when is it right that we in America would allow our agents. our immigration agents and Customs agents. to invade a church as in Arizona and round up the priests and ministers and workers and try them and convict them and jail them because they were giving hospitality to Salvadoran refugees. some of whom had come up through Mexico and some of whom had died in the deserts of Arizona? If we have already given up. and we have. for what. given the American birthright of freedom. of constitutionally based and defined freedom and rights. Even to those most powerless and impoverished. that has been the theory.
Keywords matched
immigration refugees