It’s Good to be Back

March 7, 2020

It had been almost three months since I was at the offices of Voces de la Frontera. Before Christmas, I had been going to Voces on most Wednesday evenings to help teach the citizenship class. After New Year’s, I suddenly got very busy with caring for somebody at home. I stopped going to Voces because my priorities shifted radically. I let the people there know that I would be MIA for a while. I just didn’t know how long I would be unavailable.

Mary Pat, one of the other instructors at Voces, called me this Wednesday. She sounded desperate. The teachers at Voces were overwhelmed with people who needed assistance to prepare for the citizenship test. Mary Pat asked me if I could come back to help. Honestly, I was okay with not going to Voces. I had a built-in excuse to stay at home. I could always claim that I was too busy with my personal shit, and I would have been right to say that.

I told Mary Pat that I would come to help. It was the right time.

It’s always hard to re-enter an environment after you have left it for a while. The people are a bit different, and the place is a bit different. Voces is always Voces. It always has this grungy, working class feel to it. That never changes, and I actually like it. Voces does not have a classroom for the citizenship course. It only has an open space filled with old tables and rickety chairs, and that space fills quickly when the citizenship class starts. The large room becomes indescribably noisy and chaotic. It is difficult, at best, to teach people in that place, especially if English is not their first language.

However, that is where we do it, and we do it well.

I sat down with four people who needed to work on their N-400. The N-400 is the application for U.S. citizenship. It is a twenty-page document of Byzantine complexity. Nobody sends in their application without consulting with a lawyer. Once a person mails in the N-400, along with a rather large check, they wait for the Department of Homeland Security to tell them when their test will be. We, at Voces, prepare the person for the interview with USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). The four people needed a little help.

I was sitting with Adolfo, Tony, Myra, and Ma.

I know Ma. I have worked with her before. Her name was actually Maria, but on her paperwork from Mexico it says, “Ma”, because apparently in that country “Ma”, and “Maria” are interchangeable. This not so in the United States, and this issue has caused the woman no end of problems. Ma is a homemaker. She doesn’t get out much, which means that her understanding of English is not the best. It’s not her fault. However, any lack of English comprehension will cost her during her interview. She needs to learn English, first and foremost. Nothing else during the test really matters.

Adolfo is a truck driver. He is also from Mexico. His English is good. He will do well on the test. Realistically, the USCIS only cares about English comprehension. They will ask civics questions and they will expect to receive the right answers. But the interviewers are mostly concerned that the potential citizen understands English. That is what drives the process. Adolfo will be okay.

Tony is from the Dominican Republic. His English is sketchy. I tried to explain to him that he really needs to be able to express himself in this language. I know that is hard. I would never be able to take a citizenship test in another language, even though I can speak German. I understand that it is hard for him to explain things and to answer questions in English. I get that. He just needs to practice. He is a smart young man. If he keeps coming to classes at Voces, he will get there. He’ll make it.

Myra is Mexican. She also needs to work on English. She is intelligent and quick. She also just needs to take the time to learn a few things. I have no worries about her passing the test.

I look forward to each of these people going to the interview and passing it with flying colors. I look forward to each of them becoming citizens of the United States, and then becoming politically active in their communities.

We need people like these four.

I am glad to be with them.

It’s good to be back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catholic Paths

March 6th, 2020

Karin and I try to go to daily Mass at St. Rita’s. If we plan on attending the liturgy, we usually try to get to the church early in order to participate in morning prayer.

What is morning prayer? It’s a Catholic thing, obviously. Generally, it is a ten-minute-long spiritual exercise that is common to monastic communities, mandatory for priests, and virtually unknown to the laity. Karin and I are familiar with it, partly because we are in the habit of visiting monasteries, and partly because morning prayer was the usual practice at our church when it was run by members of the Augustinian order. The Augustinians have left us, but our new diocesan priest has kept up the practice.

We have very few people show up for morning prayer. When the Augustinians were at our church, there were a few more. Now it’s just a remnant. It is usually just Father Michael, Kathy, Barbara, Karin, and me.

Kathy is our age (older). She has a farm nearby, and she has horses. She shows up in her work clothes. She takes care of her animals prior to coming to pray. That is a very good thing. Kathy tends to get caught up in mystical things. She is big into Padre Pio and his miracles. Kathy has a button on her coat that says, “Pray to end abortions”.

I think about that. What is she actually praying for?

I haven’t asked Kathy, so I can’t really know. I’m not sure that I want to know.

Most people who wear a pin like that are obssessed with banning abortion in all of its aspects. That might be a worthy goal, but it can also a ruthless goal. I have spent some time with anti-abortionists, and they are often a very single-minded and zealous lot. I agree with them for the most part, but I dislike the feel of fanaticism.

Winston Churchill once said, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

I have met a fanatic or two in my time.

I have met Catholics who want to be modern day versions of Martin Luther. They want radical reform in an organization that changes direction as easily as an aircraft carrier. The Church, for better or worse, defaults on the side of Tradition. The true zealots on the left eventually become Protestants.

A friend of mine once asked me mockingly if I was still infatuated with the Catholic Church. I’m not. There are many things I don’t like about the Church. However, it is my family. It is often a family like the Corleones, but it is still my family. I don’t plan on abandoning it. It’s where I belong, although I can’t really explain why.

Yesterday I took a young woman to her various appointments. She has no drivers license, and she needs me for transportation. I dropped her off at an AA meeting in West Allis. That gave me almost an hour to kill before I needed to pick her up. I briefly considered visiting my elderly bachelor uncles, but then I remembered how they threw me out of their house five years ago. So, I decided to wander around the business district on Greenfield Avenue.

Quite close to the Alcoholics Anonymous office is a Catholic bookstore. I went there. There was a sign in the window that said, “Stand up for religious freedom!” That statement suggests many things, but currently it means allowing Christians to be exempt from certain federal laws, especially with regard to abortions, birth control, and LGBTQ issues. Maybe we should be exempt. I don’t know. All I know is that people like to use codewords.

The bookstore itself was not unusual. Religious bookstores appeal to a certain clientele, just like any other kind of bookstore. A person can tell a lot about the customers at a particular Catholic bookstore just by wandering past the shelves. Almost all Catholic bookstores have the classics: works from St. Augustine, Francis of Assisi, G.K. Chesterton. A bookstore affiliated with a certain religious order will have plenty of volumes concerning the history of that community. For instance, in a Carmelite bookstore a person would finds rows of books about St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, and Edith Stein. Catholic stores that cater to a more “progressive” population will have books by or about Dorothy Day, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Thomas Merton, and Pope Francis. The place that I visited was pretty old school. There were many books from Scott Hahn, Fulton Sheen, Saint John Paul II, and especially Pope Benedict. Most everything in the shop was about the good old days, whenever that was.

There were only two other customers in the store; two older women who obviously knew each other well. They were talking together loudly. As I looked at the books, I could hear them in the background like they were on talk radio. I couldn’t tune them out. They discussed priests that they knew, prayer services (“we were singing in Latin“), local Lenten fish fries, Eucharistic adoration vigils, and some other esoteric aspects of traditional Catholicism (American version). Eventually, they got to the part of the conversation where they complained about their adult children who had fallen away from the Faith. Almost all Catholic parents in the U.S. have that kind of lament. It’s standard at this point in history.

“Catholic” means “universal”.  It amazes me at times to see just how diverse the Church is. From the outside, the Catholic Church appears monolithic. From the inside, it’s often utter chaos. It stands to reason that any organization that has existed for two millenia and allegedly has one billion members, is going to be a bit unwieldly. I find it interesting that, at times, I have very little in common with some of my coreligionists, and, at other times, I have everything in common with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Atheist Prayers

March 4th, 2020

A couple weeks ago, I took a young woman to an AA meeting in downtown Racine. It was early on a Sunday morning. I spent an hour sitting in a local coffee shop while the woman attended her meeting.

I picked her up when the AA gathering was over. She was a bit troubled. She was frowning, and her brow was furrowed. Usually, this woman is calm and relaxed after one of her meetings. After a group session, she might not be happy, but she often seems more at ease. This time she appeared to be edgy and tense.

I asked her, “How did it go?”

She replied curtly, “Fine.” That was a non-answer answer.

I drove down a street near the Lake Michigan, and we both remained silent for a minute. Then she said,

“That was weird. They were all atheists.”

That is weird. Atheism and Alcoholics Anonymous are generally incompatible. Six of the twelve steps in AA mention God or a “Higher Power”. A “Higher Power” is basically just a non-sectarian version of God. AA, and the other Twelve Step groups (of which there are many), lean heavily on some sort of theism. A basic concept in Twelve Step groups is that every member is helpless (with regards to their particular addiction) without the assistance of a Higher Power that exists outside of and beyond themselves. That is the program.

So, how do atheists get sober?

From a Christian point of view (and despite all of its non-sectarian pretences, AA is still very Christian), God is paramount. Reliance on God is the only path to salvation (i.e. sobriety). If there is no God, then you’re screwed. That seems to be the message, and that is not a hopeful message for many people who have given up on any kind of deity.

I have spent fifteen years meditating with members of a Zen sangha. This experience has changed my perspective in many ways. I am not a Buddhist. I will never be one. However, for whatever reason, I have been accepted into the fold. I have learned a few things.

For many Buddhists, especially for Zen practitioners, “God is a concept”. John Lennon said those words in a song back in 1970. Does God exist? Maybe. Does it matter? Probably not. Buddhists are not necessarily atheists. They just don’t see the point of having a god, or at least a god outside of themselves. Buddhists (the ones that I know) believe that each person has an inherent Buddha nature. That means that every person has God within themselves. The idea is that we do not need to look for a “Higher Power” somewhere else. That “Higher Power” is inside of us all the time. We just don’t know it. We just aren’t awake to it.

An atheist can accept the idea that he or she already has the higher power to heal. The higher power is internal. We can heal ourselves. If that is the case, then God really is a concept.

Many years ago, back in 2001, I worked with a man named Greg. Greg was a enthusiastic atheist. He was also a wonderful man who loved music and the other arts. Sometimes, Greg and I would argue. However, I always admired him.

I remember quite clearly, right after 9/11, how Greg asked me how he could help our country, even though he wasn’t religious. After the terrorist attacks, Greg felt a longing to be an American, but he also felt that he was excluded due to the overtly religious response to the violence. Greg had the sense that, as an atheist, he couldn’t be accepted as a good citizen. I think that he was right. He was on the outside looking in.

Greg was a good man. I am still amazed that I ever met him. He loved music. He had a pre-dawn radio program on WMSE. I occasionally sat there with him in the studio as he played the songs. Greg’s tastes were eclectic. His music was his prayer. I know that he would bitch at me now for saying that, but I believe it to be true. Greg loved beauty, and in that sense, he loved God.

Our son, Stefan, is also an atheist. However, he embodies all of the Christian virtues. Stefan is loyal, honest, generous, and brave. He is an honorable man. He says that he does not believe in God. I am not sure that this is the case.

I think that Stefan is angry with God. He has good reason to be so. Stefan has been hurt, to the core of his being. If anybody identifies with Job, it is Stefan.

Does Stefan pray?

I don’t know.

I think that he does.

 

 

 

 

 

Immigration Talk

February 29th, 2020

On Monday, three of us (Joanna, Suzanne, and myself) gave a presentation at the Racine Library about our trip to the Mexican border last October. The talk was organized by Linda Boyle of the Racine Interfaith Coalition. A couple dozen people showed for the session, including a reporter from the Racine Journal Times.

The reporter, Adam Rogan, spoke with us after the presentation was finished. He had taken pictures, and he had made notes. He was a pleasant young man.

I thought that was the end of it…until this morning. My wife and I stopped at Mocha Lisa after daily Mass, and I saw the copy of the Racine Journal Times. A story about our talk on immigration was on the front page.

Wow.

 

The article is as follows:

RACINE — “You don’t belong here.”

 

That’s what a group of Wisconsin Catholic immigration advocates visiting the U.S.-Mexico border were told by an American who has sheltered thousands of migrants over the past four decades.

 

That shelter provider, Ruben Garcia of El Paso, Texas, told the Wisconsinites he doesn’t want advocates coming down to the border so much. Garcia wanted them to be focused on advocating to change the divisive policies that have led to massive encampments of migrants now stuck in Mexico after being denied entry to the United States.

 

Monday evening at the Racine Public Library, 75 Seventh St., a panel of those advocates from Milwaukee’s Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees (CCMR) shared what they witnessed during recent visits to both sides of the border.

The panel was heavily critical of the Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP. The intent of MPP is for would-be immigrants to stay in Mexico — rather than the United States — while awaiting court dates that could grant them asylum status.

 

More than 55,000 migrants have been kept in Mexico because of this policy, 95% of whom don’t have lawyers, according to CCMR; fewer than 150 have gained asylum thus far.

 

But on Friday, a state appeals court overturned MPP, in part because of arguments activists made that Remain in Mexico did little to actually protect migrants, considering the rampant gang violence and lack of healthy living conditions south of the border.

One of the arguments the Trump Administration made in defending the policy was that migrants often didn’t show up for their court dates when they were being allowed into the United States to wait.

 

According to a fact-check from The Washington Post, 44% of migrants who were not in custody failed to show up for their court proceedings; that fact-check was published in response to Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that 90% of migrants were not showing up for court dates.

 

Despite the court’s ruling, local Catholic activists are not expecting much real change.

“I think what’s going to happen is … they’re going to deport people even quicker,” said Joanna Boey, a CCMR member who has visited the border multiple times and spoke Monday at the Racine Public Library. “Recently when courts have made decisions … Immigration kind of just ignored it,” such as when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained two individuals inside a courthouse earlier this month without a judicial warrant allowing such an arrest; ICE said a judge’s order shouldn’t supercede their federal directive.

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” stated David Jennings, ICE’s field office director in San Francisco.

Not Stopping

In December 2018, Boey visited a shelter in Texas filled with more than 800 migrants. When she visited earlier this year, that same shelter had only a couple of families staying there, a result of the Remain in Mexico/MPP policy.

 

Letting migrants await asylum court hearings in the United States (while being tracked by ankle bracelets) is better for people, Boey said, considering how U.S. cities tend to be safer than Mexican border towns. And keeping migrants out of detention facilities is good too, according to Boey.

“It’s not just that they get due process,” she said. “It’s that they can be with their families and their kids and not face indefinite detention.”

According to data compiled by Syracuse University, immigration judges denied about 70% of asylum pleas in 2019. That’s a sharp increase from 2012, when around 42% of asylum requests were rejected. From 2002-05, about 60% of asylum requests were denied, before dropping further at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency and the beginning of Barack Obama’s.

While waiting in Mexico, more than 95% of migrants are showing up for court hearings that often occur via video conference with American judges on the other side of the border, according to the Frank Pauc, a military veteran and CCMR member.

Despite the high denial rate, “they still come,” Pauc said.

One of the main reasons Boey thinks Friday’s reversal of MPP won’t make a difference is that the U.S. government has been finding other ways to keep migrants out of the country, such as setting up a partnership with the Guatemalan government that allows the U.S. to deport migrants directly to Guatemala even if the people have never been to that country.

The U.S. has also been deporting people more quickly than it has in years’ past, which Boey thinks is an affront to due process because it doesn’t give enough time for migrants to find legal representation.

The question of deterrence

The primary issue, according to the CCMR, is that the U.S. makes it too difficult for asylum seekers to prove they actually need asylum.

“You have to understand: Just because somebody wants to kill you isn’t enough to prove asylum,” Pauc said, describing U.S. policy.

 

Asylum seekers can only get asylum if they can prove they are being persecuted for one of five reasons: their race; religion; country of origin; social group; or political beliefs. Being specifically targeted by a drug cartel, for example, is not enough, Pauc explained.

 

The CCMR takes issue with the U.S.’s, and primarily the Trump Administration’s, goal of immigration “deterrence” by using tactics such as separating children of migrants from their parents (which has since been partially stopped per court order) to deter would-be migrants from even trying to get to the United States.

CCMR asserted that, by not directly working to address the situation at the border, the U.S. was complicit in human rights violations.

‘What do I do next?’

Conditions are getting better for migrants just south of the border, Boey said, since the Mexican government has erected semipermanent tents, portable toilets and started trying to provide more clean water.

 

Regardless, most of the migrants, according to the CCMR, should be receiving asylum status considering how many of them are fleeing war, hopeless economic conditions and gang violence; the No. 1 fear for many of them is becoming trafficked by drug cartels.

Boey told the story of a Honduran family she met. The father had “sold everything they had” because “he wanted a future for his kids.” When they got to the U.S.-Mexico border and were turned back, the man tried to become a street food vendor while waiting for a court date but was threatened by a gang that forced him to stop trying to earn an income.

 

That father was considering sending two of his children across the border without the rest of the family, hoping they might be afforded a better life in the U.S. than staying with the family in poverty.

“These are people who are constantly thinking: What do I do next?” Boey said. “I was hungry today, and I went to my fridge and was frustrated because there wasn’t very much food … These people they don’t even have that luxury.”

Prayers for a movement

 

The Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees is galvanizing American Catholics to advocate for real change, and to encourage other Christian denominations to do the same.

 

“This movement to make a difference has been taking place in our own community,” said Linda Boyle, co-president of the Racine Interfaith Coalition, which cohosted Monday’s panel.

 

CCMR’s next focus is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That policy said that certain undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children could be eligible for work permits and remain in the U.S., although it does not include a path to citizenship.

DACA was enacted in 2012, but applications were no longer being accepted as of Sept. 5, 2017.

 

President Donald Trump is working to have DACA repealed, saying it is unconstitutional. A U.S. Supreme Court decision is expected this spring or summer on whether those whose American residency had been protected under DACA would lose their protections.

Mark Peters, who is part of the CCMR and works for Priests of the Sacred Heart religious congregation, said, “We need to be out in the streets” if DACA is repealed.

 

The Holy Spirit

February 28th, 2020

“I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God. It’s almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building.” – Bono

“Something wild and evil is about to happen; and it is going to involve you.” – Hunter S. Thompson

This has been an ugly week. It started out on Monday with a young woman having a relapse. The same day, I participated in a presentation on the conditions for migrants on the southern border. That went okay, but I found it to be stressful.

Tuesday was calm.

Wednesday sucked. I got an ugly email from the person who runs a local advocacy group. I have tried to help the leader of this organization over the last seven months, and I have repeatedly received messages from him that were critical of my efforts (perhaps rightly so), and also seemingly (to me) disrespectful. On Wednesday I quit from the group. I was tired of getting bitched at.

The person who runs this coalition has a difficult job. I recognize that. He has a group of volunteers who are smart, independent, and passionate. He is trying to herd cats. I believe that he wants to keep a very tight grip on the words and actions of the members of his organization, but I don’t think that is possible. He is trying to control a movement that is probably beyond control. He can either let things take their course (for the most part), or end up alienating the membership.

I have spent most of my adult life in positions of supervision or management. I know how hard it is to get people to work together for a common goal. I have learned the hard way that browbeating people is usually counter-productive. It took me a while to figure that out, but I eventually realized that I got the best results when I gave people a general goal, and then let them find their own way to it. Often, the folks working for me came up with much better ideas than I had. I am grateful to all of them.

What does this have to do with the Holy Spirit? Well, maybe it has nothing to do with it, or maybe everything.

Christians have this notion of a thing called the Trinity. That is three persons in one God. I am not going to try to explain it, because the concept defies explanation. It is a mystery in the sense that it exists, but nobody can understand it. The three persons within this this deity are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Most Christians have a feel for the Father and the Son, especially the Son. Christians hang on tight to their vision of Jesus. However, few Christians want to get anywhere close to the Holy Spirit. That is because the Spirit is dangerous.

There are various symbols of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. These include a dove, fire, water, and wind. All of these symbols indicate that the Spirit is free and irrepessible. The Holy Spirit cannot be controlled. It cannot be channeled. It cannot be stopped.

I have been caught up in the actions of the Holy Spirit at times, and it has always been a wild ride. The Holy Spirit often takes a person to strange and scary places. These may also be good places, but they are always uncomfortable. The Spirit pushes people hard. It is only after the fact that a person understands how and why things happened. Sometimes, a person never understands.

A person can either flow with the Spirit or resist it.  Going with the Spirit is frightening. Resisting the Spirit is frustrating and pointless.

No matter what you do, you are still going for the ride.

 

 

 

Another Border Story

February 24th, 2020

Over a month ago, I sent an essay to the Catholic Herald (a local Catholic publication) about the conditions of migrants and asylum seekers on the U.S./Mexican border. I did not hear anything back from the paper, so I thought that my article had died a silent death.

Well, it did, sort of.

Karen Mahoney, a reporter from the paper, contacted me a couple weeks ago to do a story about the trip I took to El Paso/Ciudad Juarez last October. I really did not want her to write about me. I had hoped that she would interview more of the people who had participated in the immersion program at Annunciation House. I wanted the focus to be on the migrants. The reporter was not interested in doing that. I guess that she wanted to talk about the border through my experience. Oh well.

I look at it this way: a story that doesn’t match all of my expectations is better than no story at all. The point of me writing to the Herald was to promote awareness of the horrific situation at our border. I think that was accomplished.

The article is as follows:

 

 

Francis Pauc wasn’t sure what to expect when he reached the chilly U.S. border in El Paso, Texas, but reality was worse than he imagined and now he is unable to unsee those living on the other side of the border in impoverished conditions.

Traveling this past October with a group of 14 others from the newly formed Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees group (CCMR), the member of Racine’s St. Rita Parish said he began to see and understand the amount of suffering going on at the border among the men, women and children seeking asylum in the United States.

“These people are living in tents, and many of these migrants and asylum-seekers are from Central America or southern Mexico; places where people have no experience at all with cold weather and many of them are women and children,” he said. “They have fled in terror from their homes and now they are stuck on the wrong side of the US/Mexico border. They can’t go forward and they can’t go back, so they sit and freeze.”

The group stayed for five days at a shelter run by Annunciation House in El Paso and participated in an immersion program that took them to places in El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. He saw the those who were suffering and struggling to survive.

“I tried to keep my eyes and ears open, along with my heart and mind. I became a witness,” Pauc said. “The main thing I learned is that people are suffering on the border unnecessarily. I also learned that we are not stopping the flow of drugs in any effective way. The cartels are still making money. The only people we are stopping are the poor and the desperate.”

According to Pauc, the solution for the immigration issues is for Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package as the current system is not working. A couple of years ago, he took a 40-hour course on immigration law and through the class, he learned the current system is chaotic with more exceptions to the rules than rules themselves.

“Also, enforcement by itself is ineffective. The wall will achieve nothing,” he said. “Why are people walking all the way across Mexico to get out of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador? If citizens of these countries felt safe at home, they would stay where they are.”

While the migrants suffer extreme hardship, Pauc said much of it is beyond our control.

“However, some of the pain that these migrants currently feel is caused by the government of the United States. Our government is keeping these people in Mexico, despite the fact they are seeking asylum in our country,” he said. “Through a variety of ways, the current administration is punishing people who just want to live in safety. Our government is hurting those people who have already been hurt. We, as citizens of the United States, are actively working against the poor and the oppressed. That’s a fact.”

Though Pauc believes in immigration reform, he is not advocating that the United States allows open borders to anyone who wants to move here.

“Every nation has the right and responsibility to control its borders, but the question is how much each country does that. Back in 1980, I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I went to Nogales, Mexico, quite often. The border was open then and there was no problem,” he said. “Why do we have problems now? We can control the flow of people into the United States in a fair and rational way. We don’t have to militarize the whole thing.”

After seeing the wall being built between the U.S. and Mexico, Pauc said he found it physically ugly and morally hideous. When he served in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1982, he visited the Berlin Wall.

“The wall on the southern border brought back some dark memories,” he said. “We are Catholics and our job is to help those in need. These migrants on the border are desperately in need; that’s why CCMR was formed, to raise awareness of their plight and call for a more humane response to these ‘least among us,’ as Christ called them. We can start by looking at immigrants as assets rather than liabilities. We, as a nation, need to be welcoming. We need immigrants to keep the economy going.”

Without immigrants, Pauc said, the United States has a graying population and immigrants are needed to work in many available jobs. He said they are intelligent, work hard and want to contribute to their communities.

“Welcoming them to our country is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do,” he said.

Immigration issues are close to Pauc’s heart, as his wife, Karin, is an immigrant from Germany and is a green card holder. They couple has three adult children, Hans, Hannah and Stefan, and all support his volunteer work with the immigrants.

“All three of them spent time in Germany and understand how it feels to be a stranger in a strange land,” he said. “When I went to the border, my wife was concerned about my safety; but then, so was I.”

To Learn More

Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Catholic-Coalition-for-Migrants-and-Refugees-101884498070378/

For additional information or to get on the mailing list, contact:

CCMR Spokesperson

Mark Peters

Director of Justice, Peace and Reconciliation

Priests of the Sacred Heart, US Province

414-427-4273

Senator Johnson

February 20th, 2020

I can’t remember when I was last in the old Federal Building in downtown Milwaukee. I suspect it was back in 1976, when I was applying to go to West Point. Or maybe I went there back in the ’80s for something to do with Karin’s immigration status. In any case, it was a long time ago.

I went there on Thursday morning. I parked a couple blocks away on Van Buren. I filled the parking meter full of change and walked in the cold breeze to the Federal Building. The structure feels massive. It’s over four stories tall, and is made of large blocks of stone. The edifice loudly annouces its solidity and permanance. In a world where most things are transient, the Federal Building is meant to last.

I had to go through a security check as I entered the building. Emptying my pockets and going through a metal detector to enter a public building have become normal activities for me. They were not before 9/11. Twenty years ago people could go into court houses and other government offices without being scrutinized by rent-a-cops. Now, in the name of safety, public spaces are definitely unwelcoming.

After I successfully passed through the metal detector, a woman with a badge asked me where I was going. I told her that I was going to Senator Ron Johnson’s office.

She gave me a suspicious look, and asked, “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes, I do.”

She relaxed a bit and said, “It’s on the fourth floor, all the way to the left.”

I thanked her, and then I found the elevator.

I got out on the fourth floor, and gazed over the edge of the balcony. I could see all the way down to the main floor. The Federal Building has an enormous open space in its center. It is a hall that extends up five stories to a vast set of skylights. There are balconies on each floor that surround this open area. The government offices are all on the outside facing the balconies. The decor is very old school: lots of heavy wooden doors and dark paneling. Everything looks like it was built in the 1930’s, or earlier.

I met some people on my way to the Senator’s office. They were, like me, from the Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees. We were going to meet together as a group with one of Senator Johnson’s assistants.  At 9:30 we all filed into the office, and entered a tiny room that was barely big enough to hold us all.  We sat around a table. There was Tom, Johnson’s right-hand man, at one end of the table. All around were members of our group: Mark, Suzanne, Sister Reg, Father Tony, Twyla, and myself.

Mark ran things. He likes to come to these meetings prepared for anything. He is not terribly comfortable with surprises. Mark did much of the talking. The rest of us chimed in when we thought that we had something worthwhile to say. Father Tony said very little, but he always listened.

The main topic of our discussion with Tom was the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. The MPP keep asylum seekers lingering in Mexico until their immigration court date in the United States. The MPP are designed to deter migrants. They make it incredibly difficult for asylum seekers to get a fair shake. The MPP encourage migrants to give up and go home, even though they most likely have fled from a country in fear of their lives.

Tom is a good guy. That was my impression anyway. I believe that he has a heart and a conscience. His boss is a rightwing Republican, and a stalwart supporter of Preisdent Trump. Senator Johnson probably has a heart too, but he seems to be totally focused on the enforcement aspect of the immigration issue. He is interested in contolling the borders. Johnson sees that the number of illegal border crossings has diminished under the Trump administration, and therefore concludes that the problem is solved.

It isn’t.

People are still fleeing from violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. People are still fleeing to the United States from the cartels in Mexico. The difference between what is happening now and what occurred under earlier U.S. policies is that now we aren’t giving these migrants any hope at all. Our government is making it abundantly clear to any asylum seeker that their cause is doomed. The suffering is still there. We, as Americans, have simply decided that we don’t care about these people, and we just want them to go away.

They are going away. Some of them are going back to their homes to die.

We tried to express to Tom what we had learned from reports, and from what some of us had seen at the southern border. Tom was sympathetic, but he also made it clear that nothing was going to be changed this year. He told us that Congress had abdicated its duties with regard to immigration reform, and had essentially given Trump permission to do whatever he wants. There would be no action in Congress until after the elections and, even then, maybe there would be no new legislation. He told us that the Senator disliked the President using executive orders to make changes, but Johnson was satisfied with the results of Trump’s actions.

Mark asked Tom flat out, “Why should we keep coming to meet with you when we all know that nothing will get done?’

Tom commented that he had been working for the Senator since 2011, and that people were still meeting with him about issues that they had discussed with him nine years ago. Tom told us that, with the political polarization and the advent of divided government, Washington was broken. This year’s elections might resolve some of the gridlock. Tom suggested that there was still value in meeting with him, because it would be important to have a standing relationship when conditions were finally suitable for bipartisan legislation.

In short, let’s stay in touch, but don’t hold your breath.

Did we waste our time speaking with Tom? I don’t know. We are in this for the long haul. Johnson will continue to one of Wisconsin’s senators until 2023. We have to deal with him. Actually, we have to deal with Tom, because we will probably never meet with the Senator himself. Is it worthwhile to have a positive, yet prehaps utterly fruitless political relationship? Once again, I don’t know.

If we keep in contact with Tom, we probably won’t get any positive answers from the Senator. If we cut Tom off, I know that we won’t get any results.

We might as well keep talking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something in Common

February 20th, 2020

We only talk in the car. I don’t know why that is, but it is. We might casually greet each other at home, but we only have conversations when we are driving somewhere. Actually, we have these conversations when I am driving. The young woman does not currently have a license, so I am her chauffeur. I take her many places: to see her parole officer, to see her therapist, to attend 12 step meetings, to go to the gym. We are together in my old Ford Focus qute often.

Usually, she plays her music. I don’t know many of the bands. It doesn’t really matter. Her tastes tend toward the dark and moody, as do mine. We talked about that.

She was shocked by one of my selections.

She asked me, “When did you start listening to Five Finger Death Punch?”

“You don’t like it?”

“Well, yeah, I do, but…”

“But what?”

“Never mind.”

Then she played the “Bartender Song” by Rehab. It’s a wickedly funny (and disturbing) country song about some redneck who violates his parole.

She said, “I’m pretty sure that this guy has been in prison.”

“Uh yeah, it sounds very authentic.”

She smiled.

I told her, “I always liked John Lennon’s work. He was often angry. I think that he was real. McCartney, well, he was always cotton candy.”

The young woman, dead serious, looked at me and said,

“Sometimes you need to have both.”

I thought for a moment. I told her,

“You’re right. Lennon and McCartney balanced each other out.”

She nodded.

Later, we were driving home from one of her visits with her therapist.

I asked her how it went.

She was evasive and obscure in her answers, as she should be. It’s none of my business to know how her therapist appointments went. That’s totally her thing.

Suddenly she said, “She’s good, but not what I expected. She is short, fat, and has long grey hair. She is not somebody that I would have picked for a therapist. She doesn’t look professional.”

I replied, “Looking professional is overrated.”

She nodded.

I asked her, “Is she smart?”

“Oh yeah, she’s smart. She understands my mother.” The young woman said this with conviction, although she never looked at me.

I was waiting for the light to change. I asked her,

“So, does your therapist understand your father?”

The young woman did not miss a beat.

She said, “He also has signs of borderline personality disorder.”

She left it hanging there.

I made a left hand turn. I laughed softly, and I told her,

“Well,  we have something in common.”

She did not respond.

We both struggle.

We both survive.

We both love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was Worth a Shot

February 14th, 2020

Sometimes I grow weary of writing. Well, I don’t mind the act of writing itself. I have to write. It’s part of who I am. If I stop writing, then I might as well stop breathing.

What bothers me is the need to promote my writing. I hate that. Maybe it is just my stubborn pride. It bothers me to ask somebody to use my words, even when it is for a good cause. I try not to get my written words all wrapped around my ego, but it happens anyway. It is possible that I might reach more readers if I begged somebody to print/post my essays. I won’t/can’t do that. I am not strong enough to beg, even if it might help somebody who has no voice, even when I may be their only voice.

A month ago I sent an essay to our local Catholic news source. I wrote to them about the crisis at the U.S./Mexican border. They have not responded since then. I am not surprised. The Catholic Herald is a creature of the archdiocese, and as such, seldom prints any articles more controversial than reports about upcoming Lenten fish fries. I think that Catholic publications should be prophetic voices, at least some of the time. The Catholic Herald generally is not. It is just a Catholic version of Pravda. It’s all propaganda, and in truth, the Catholic Church invented that term.

CORRECTION: A reporter from the Catholic Herald just sent me an email. She wants to a story about the border experience story. I take back a few of the mean things I said about the newspaper. Somehow, I’m not completely surprised by this latest development. It is the law of karma with a twist. God has a strange sense of humor.

All right. The following is the essay that I sent to the Herald.

Please use it. Somehow. Somewhere. Some time.

If you want.

 

“It’s cold in El Paso. Compared to the weather in Wisconsin, it doesn’t seem that bad, but the temperatures are still hovering around freezing. For the migrants who are stranded right across the border in Ciudad Juarez, this level of cold is a real problem. These people are living in tents, and many of these migrants and asylum-seekers are from Central America or southern Mexico; places where people have no experience at all with cold weather. Many of them are women and children. They have fled in terror from their homes, and now they are stuck on the wrong side of the U.S./Mexico border. They can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So, they sit and freeze.

How do I know all this?

I went to the border. I went there with a group of fourteen people from the Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees, a group that has just formed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in order to find out about the circumstances of these migrants. We learned that their conditions are wretched. I, along with the other people in our little band, slowly came to understand how much suffering goes on at our southern border. It was a worthwhile learning experience, albeit not a pleasant one.

Our group stayed for five days at a shelter run by Annunciation House on El Paso. We participated in a five-day immersion program that took us to places in El Paso, and across the border in Juarez. It was intense. We saw some things that were very ugly, and we also saw things that were hopeful. We were with people who were suffering, and we were with people who were trying their best to alleviate that suffering. We saw injustice. We saw poverty. We saw people struggling just to survive. Those five days changed how we see our world. Those days changed us.

The extreme hardship that we saw has many causes. Much of it is beyond our control. However, some of the pain that these migrants currently feel is caused by the government of the United States. Our government is keeping these people in Mexico, despite the fact they are seeking asylum in our country. Through a variety of ways, the current administration is punishing people who just want to live in safety. Our government is hurting those people who have already been hurt. We, as citizens of the United States, are actively working against the poor and the oppressed. That’s a fact.

The Catholic Church recognizes that nations have the right and responsibility to control their borders. The Church also says that people have the right to migrate. There is a tension between these two rights. Immigration laws need to be both just and compassionate. Our current laws in the United States are neither.

We are Catholics. Our job to help those in need. These migrants on the border are desperately in need. That’s why CCMR was formed, to raise awareness of their plight and call for a more humane response to these “least among us,” as Christ called them.

While we were in El Paso, we met the head of Annunciation House, Ruben Garcia. He told us quite clearly that our ministry was not at the border. Our work is back home in Wisconsin. He told us to take the lessons we had learned and use them in our own neighborhoods. The same fear and anguish that we witnessed on the southern border is here, within a few miles of where we work and live.

We can help migrants already here, right in our midst, but we must also try to help those in Juarez. To do that, we must become advocates, and we can do that more powerfully together than alone. That is what CCMR is about. Please join us. Call 414-427-4273 to learn more.”

Birthday

February 12th, 2020

“Live a life of friction. Let yourself be disturbed as much as possible, but observe.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

Our girl turned twenty-nine on Monday. Karin baked her a cake. It was a German sort of cake: lots of nuts and heavy whipping cream. The three of us sat together at the dining room table to celebrate the girl’s birthday. We actually sang. The young woman tried some of the cake, frowned, and said,

“I don’t like the cream. It kind of tastes like alcohol.”

Karin was a bit flustered by that. She replied,

“I used an Amaretto flavoring, like in the recipe. There is no alcohol in it. None at all.”

The girl slowly finished her slice of cake, perhaps only out of politeness.

Karin asked her gently , “Would you like some more?”

The young woman said nothing, but shook her head.

I looked across the table at the girl. I looked at her hard.

She was wearing a necklace with the AA symbol on it: a triangle encompassed by a circle. For most people the pendant is innocuous and forgettable. For anybody who has at any point in their lives been part of a 12-step group, the symbol is numinous. It means something, and that something may be good or bad, or both.

The woman is both old and young. That is a paradox, and is hard to explain. Our common struggle has lasted for more than ten years. At the beginning, the girl was just a girl. Now, she has the signs of age. She is healthy and fit, and for the most part, she is beautiful. However, I notice things. I see the sharp edges of her cheek bones. I see the dark circles under her dark eyes; the rings that never quite go away. I see her furrowed brow, the sign of her intense concentration on things that she cannot quite remember. The young woman has ADD, and she is always on the edge of remembering, or forgetting. In truth, I am her memory. I am her calendar. I don’t mind this. It has to be this way. It just is.

As we ate our cake, the girl talked about the AA “dance” on Saturday evening. She told us that she “has to be there”. We asked her about this event.

The young woman smiled ironically, and said,

“It’s what AA people do. They have a dance, but nobody actually dances.”

That sounds about right.

Karin and the girl bought her a dress for the ball. It came from the Salvation Army or from Goodwill. It doesn’t matter. It is a red prom dress. Karin, being a seamstress, did some magic so that it fits the girl. It looks good on her. She will be noticed at the dance.

I take the girl to an AA meeting nearly every day. I never go inside. I don’t belong in there, and the young woman would be embarrassed by my presence in any case. I just observe from the fringes.

I notice things. Most of the people who attend these meetings light up a cigarette immediately upon leaving the place. They have given up one addiction while they eagerly embrace others. It is interesting to me that AA meetings there is always coffee and doughnuts. There is always caffeine and a sugar high. It’s like: “We are going to remain sober, but we have no problem killing ourselves in other ways”.

If the young woman’s immersion in AA saves her life, I am good with that. I can be very pragmatic. Do whatever works.

I just want this woman to live, and maybe to prosper. That is good enough.

She has survived for twenty-nine years.

That is amazing.