Immigration Introduction and Minute 2007
“The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:31
Who is my neighbor?
This was one of the many queries used by our monthly meetings this past year to aid discussion and learn about immigration. The inexpensive food and clothing we eat and wear, the many items and activities that we enjoy each day come at too great a cost to people invisible to many in American society. The same system that allows us to live in abundance and comfort necessitates others be deprived of the ability to care adequately for themselves and their loved ones. We are grieved by these inequities.
The legal and political systems that form the foundation of our country must guarantee fairness and equality for all. Our work calls us to bear witness and advocate when those who have no voice are treated unjustly. This has increasingly come to be the immigrant in our country.
We seek to change the discussion currently happening throughout our country regarding immigrants and immigration. As Friends, this speaks not only to our Testimony of Equality, but to our deeper call to “love one another.”
We ask the yearly meeting to endorse the following minute and that it be referenced in our general epistle to other yearly meetings with a copy of the minute attached.
(Minute:)
There once was a frame of reference in this country that said, “Slavery is a reality. The best we can do is hope to regulate it and work for the just treatment of slaves.”
John Woolman stepped out of that frame of reference and said, “Slavery is wrong.”
His vision was the end of slavery.
Today there is a frame of reference that says, “Illegal immigration is a reality. The best we can do is regulate immigration.”
We step out of that frame of reference to say, “All are worthy of a decent life.”
A discussion of immigration must include a tremendous range of topics. We recognize that our way of life forces the involuntary migration of people from their homelands. Our vision is that life in the United States of America not depend upon the exploiting of others' labor for our own comfort. Our vision is that we insist our country treat all people, both in and outside of its borders, with fairness and justice. Our vision is that our country develop trade policies that do not cause the suffering of other people.
The effect of our country's economic, foreign and military policies on people all over the world are not contained by our borders. It is our vision these policies come to reflect a national will to always consider what constitutes the greater good of all.
Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative urges other yearly meetings to join us in this vision. We open ourselves to discuss God's way of achieving that goal.