Faith groups rally support for ‘Dreamers’
Karen Vega’s voice briefly quivered with emotion as she looked out into the crowd at a south Oklahoma City community center.
The 19-year-old said her parents had brought her to the United States from Mexico when she was 3. Despite more than a few challenges, she successfully applied for the temporary provisions and protections of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Now a college freshman, the “Dreamer” shared her story with 300 people who recently gathered at the FaithWorks of the Inner City community center, 1300 S Byers, for a Jan. 22 event called “Who’s My Neighbor?”
She also shared what she’d like to say to federal government leaders.
“I’d like to tell them that I’m not a criminal. I’m not a rapist. I’m not a drug dealer,” Vega said. “I think our government officials should find a way to help us. I don’t think the answer is sending us back to Mexico because we don’t know anything about it. This is our home.”
The Rev. John Mark Hart, pastor of Christ Community Church, a Southern Baptist church at 101 SW 25, said he and Jace Kirk, associate director of FaithWorks, have created a movement called “El Camino,” which is “The Way” in Spanish. He said the goal of El Camino is to rally the Christian faith community’s support for people like Vega.
They coordinated the “Who’s My Neighbor?” gathering as a first step toward bringing local church members face to face with young people who were brought to the U.S. as children by their undocumented parents.
He said he wanted people in the Christian faith
community to meet individuals like Vega so they could see some of the “faces” behind the hot button topic of illegal immigration.
Hart said with the DACA program in jeopardy, there is an urgency behind the new El Camino movement.
Many individuals participating in the DACA program were jarred by the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.
Trump, who became president on Jan. 20, had vowed during his presidential campaign to undo all of former President Barack Obama’s executive orders, including the DACA program enacted in 2012.
“We are in a public crisis right now, and we felt like we needed to come together to have a public conversation about this,” Hart said of the unsure fate of the DACA program participants, often called “Dreamers.”
‘A human issue’
In his brief sermonette, Hart shared several Scriptures For more information about the El Camino movement, contact the Rev. John-Mark Hart at 601-4948 or email johnmarkccc@gmail.com; or Jace Kirk at 601-7600 or email jace@faithworksokc.com. for Christians to consider as they pondered the current situation with DACA participants.
These included Leviticus 19:34: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your nativeborn. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God,” along with the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Book of Luke.
Kirk, associate director of FaithWorks, told the crowd that the issue is personal for him because his family has had problems obtaining citizenship for his legally adopted son, a Dreamer.
He said a Pew Research poll found that only 12 percent of white evangelicals and 20 percent of Protestants look at immigration through the lens of their faith.
“Tonight we ask you to forget about politics and look at this through the lens of your faith,” Kirk said. “Allow your faith, God’s Word, to guide you on your decisions on this issue. This issue is a human issue.”
The Rev. Nathan Hedges is pastor of May Avenue Wesleyan Church, which offers a ministry called Immigration Connection, providing legal help to immigrants in the metro.
“I think what we have seen tonight is that immigration is an issue, but immigrants are people,” Hedges said at the recent gathering.
Chris Brewster, superintendent of Santa Fe South High School and pastor of a church called The Well, said many of his undocumented students walk off the stage on graduation day into a void, an unknown, because their legal status.
“They have no hope of employment and no hope of long-term career opportunities, and that is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “The Church of Jesus Christ has been silent for too long.”
He encouraged the crowd to call their congressional leaders to voice their support for the Bridge Act, which would give DACA program participants a three-year extension of the program’s provisions and protection from deportation.
Brewster also suggested that people become knowledgeable about the facts and laws surrounding immigration and volunteer with local organizations that are working to help immigrants.
“We are here to reconcile our lives and our walk with this very real and present concern,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great to be known in Oklahoma City as the city that truly embraced the immigrant?”
Meanwhile, Hart said he was excited about the large turnout for the Jan. 22 gathering. He and other leaders at the event said an El Camino march through the streets of downtown Oklahoma City is being planned for March 4.
“We just want to continue to follow Jesus and hopefully lock arms with more and more people as we’re walking down this path together,” Hart said.