Welcoming The Stranger - New Evangelizers

The current immigration crisis of thousands of unaccompanied children crossing the border is constantly on my mind these days. I can’t imagine what these children have gone through, in their home countries and on what must have been a terrifying journey. Nor can I imagine the agony of parents forced to send their children on such a trip to safeguard them from gangs, crime and a life of poverty. To send a child into the unknown like that must be the most horrifying decision they will ever make.

It started me wondering how these children are any different than the children fleeing war in Syria and Iraq and across Africa. Those unfortunate children have been given refugee status, but somehow we can’t find it in our hearts to give the same status to the children fleeing the undeclared, but no less real, war to the south.

It reminds me of my high school days, when the war in Vietnam was just ending. Thousands of people were fleeing then too, singles, small groups, and whole families, only to find themselves trapped in refugee camps with limited resources. Our national heart seemed to be bigger then, because I remember that people and parishes across the country sponsored some of these families and individuals so they could begin life anew in safety.

Some of these families settled in my area, and the children entered school right away. How much confusion there was as we scrambled to get desks and books out of storage and squeeze them into already full classrooms! We didn’t complain, though, because we knew what they’d left and why they’d come. None of the new students complained either, though they must have been lonely, scared, and disoriented by strange surroundings and customs.

One girl became my friend as she whispered questions from the desk behind me, and I whispered back, grateful that she knew enough English to understand me. We even helped each other pass driver’s ed.

But not all the refugees assimilated so easily. I remember one girl who spoke no English at all. We tried to be friendly and greet her, include her in PE games, and social groups, but she would only shake her head and cry.

One day I was leaving the locker room, having been dismissed from PE early for some reason, and I came across this girl sitting alone on a bench. She was singing softly to herself, tears streaming down. So I sat down next to her. She showed me her composition book-she’d filled it with the lyrics to the songs she had sung at home. Some were in Vietnamese, but some were in French, and it was one of these that she was singing. I tried to sing with her, but I had studied Spanish, not French, and I was pretty bad at it and could not communicate well even in song. All I could do was sit with her and try to sing her language.

The story of my friends from high school is not that much different than the stories of the children now in facilities across the Southwest. All have come as refugees, lonely and afraid. The first group was welcomed and given help to begin their new lives. The second is often met with scorn, hatred, and sign-waving protesters.

The complexities of immigration law, the granting of refugee status, who is even allowed to come here is beyond the scope of this reflection, as worthy as those questions are.

What does matter is how we treat those children while their individual cases are heard. Will we help them with emergency food and shelter while they wait to be sent home to an uncertain future? Or will we continue to treat God’s children as criminals who flaunt our laws to take advantage of us? I hope and pray that we find the strength to open our hearts and help, no matter what the final outcome of their immigration hearings are.

Who knows, some of them might even become our friends, too.

Copyright 2014, Carol Ann Chybowski

Carol Ann Chybowski

Carol Ann Chybowski is a long time member of the Catholic Writers Guild. She has published book reviews at various websites and appears in two volumes of A Community of Voices: An Anthology of Santa Barbara. When not busy about her parish, Carol Ann can be found knitting, gardening, or on horseback.