Jonathan Krogh Jonathan Krogh

Dream for a Little Change

Dear Dreaming Ones:

I received a phone call yesterday from an old friend in a near panic because a former neighbor had been picked up by ICE. This wasn’t some landscaper or shelter-abiding, drug-dealing day-labor roofer; this was a homeowner, father of an intact family with high school age kids. He had, until recently, been a dreamer—someone who came to this country as a small child with his parents who entered the country without appropriate documentation. As an adult, he was processing his immigration paperwork with an attorney through the proper channels. His immigration status was pending in a sea

Dear Dreaming Ones:

I received a phone call yesterday from an old friend in a near panic because a former neighbor had been picked up by ICE. This wasn’t some landscaper or shelter-abiding, drug-dealing day-labor roofer; this was a homeowner, father of an intact family with high school age kids. He had, until recently, been a dreamer—someone who came to this country as a small child with his parents who entered the country without appropriate documentation. As an adult, he was processing his immigration paperwork with an attorney through the proper channels. His immigration status was pending in a sea of administrative acronyms.

The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), proposed in 2001, never became law. Instead, a series of executive orders, most recently the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from 2012, did just what it said it would—it deferred action for those who have registered and re-registered every two years. If you’re interested in learning what the process requires, here’s the link to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website guidelines. We are living in the age of new wrinkles, which includes an administration that is proposing to detain lawfully registered DACA recipients until their registration expires. Unable to re-file from detention, they will then be deportable—here’s an article.

Like my friend on the phone, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the unjust absurdity of the situation. It’s tempting to be reduced to a stream of hostile invectives about calculated cruelty and implicit authoritarian tactics, but if name calling and embarrassment worked, the situation would already be resolved. Feelings of helplessness naturally breed expressions of hostility, but the situation is not yet hopeless. The fact is we have passively and actively created this mess, it’s complicated and that’s on purpose.

I’m sharing this today because that is what I told my friend to do. Not firebomb a detention facility or meet violence with violence, but simply tell the story of one good guy with a job, a family and a life who is being treated like a bad guy without options. In a democratic, closely divided nation, the level of persuasion required to bring about change does not lie in transforming the vast base of any party; it lies in that little margin in the middle. Regardless of how someone voted in the previous election, we need to ask if this is what we voted for, because this is what we got.

Praying we can reason and persuade, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

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