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2004 file photo / Union-Tribune
Activists fear immigration reform legislation could make them vulnerable to criminal punishment for such assistance as giving clothes to migrant workers.

Immigrant services could be curtailed
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 13, 2006

In North County, church parishioners provide food and blankets, and host worship services on Sundays for homeless immigrants who camp in the canyons.

In the Imperial Valley desert, volunteers set up water stations for lost illegal border crossers who otherwise might die of thirst.

In San Ysidro, a community center gives away food to needy neighborhood residents, checking ZIP codes to ensure they live locally, but not their citizenship status.

This past week, the churches, charities and other groups that provide services to immigrants have been keeping a close eye on Washington, D.C., where the Senate Judiciary Committee is evaluating immigration reform legislation that many organizations fear could affect their efforts, making them vulnerable to criminal penalties.

Their concern has been mounting since December, when the House of Representatives passed a controversial enforcement bill that, among other things, expands the definition of alien smuggling. Anyone who assists undocumented immigrants to reside or remain in the United States, transports or harbors them knowingly or in “reckless disregard” of their legal status, could be subject to penalties including fines and imprisonment.

Late last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., released the Senate's immigration-reform proposal. Unlike the House bill, there are provisions for a guest-worker program and for legalization of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the country, albeit without a path to citizenship. Its initial language on smuggling is similar to that in the House bill, which is troubling to religious and nondenominational service organizations.

“If we give them a ride home from church, that is helping them,” said the Rev. John Auther, associate pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Barrio Logan. “If we recommend someone for a job without checking legal status, that is helping them. It is so unclear. Especially at a parish like ours, where 90 percent of the people are immigrants or children of immigrants, that is a special concern to us.”

Proponents of more restrictive immigration policies say these worries are overblown.

“The priest does not have to turn them in to the law,” said Caroline Espinosa, a spokeswoman for Numbers USA, an Arlington, Va.-based group that advocates limits on immigration.

“Doing the right thing would be encouraging them to go back home rather than enabling them to stay here, but it doesn't mean they don't feed them or give them a place to sleep for the night.”

The legislation's smuggling language is intended to pin down real smugglers, Espinosa said, not good Samaritans.

But the language in the final House bill, and in the early versions of the Senate bill, is too broad to make that distinction, said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“If I can be shown to have some reason to have suspected that a person was undocumented, that makes me vulnerable,” Butterfield said. “The other side will say nobody is going to prosecute these groups, but why do you need this in the law? The (existing) aiding and abetting statute is already very thorough if you're trying to go after smugglers.”

During the past week, there has been discussion in the Judiciary Committee of softening the language pertaining to churches and others providing aid to the undocumented, but these changes have not been voted on. The committee is expected to resume discussion Wednesday of the proposed Senate legislation, which eventually could be combined with the House measure in a compromise bill including elements of both.

National religious organizations have spoken against the expanded smuggling language, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church.

“The church is here to serve all of God's people, and that includes undocumented neighbors,” said Scott Richardson, dean of St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego. “We have (Spanish language Mass) every Sunday, and we don't ask what their documented status is when they come to church.”

Speaking on Ash Wednesday, Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles said he would tell priests and lay Catholics to defy any law making it a crime to offer support to undocumented immigrants, a move that was cheered by local Catholic organizations.

“We are very, very heartened that Cardinal Mahony's statement on Ash Wednesday was so explicit,” said Dede Hollowell, director of immigrant services for Catholic Charities in San Diego, which among other things processes immigration paperwork and runs two homeless shelters, including one for farmworkers and day laborers in Carlsbad.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, like others throughout the country, is participating in a churchwide campaign called Justice for Immigrants, lobbying for immigration reform that the Conference of Catholic Bishops considers more comprehensive and less punitive.

While some fear there could be a chilling effect if the expanded smuggling language becomes law, various faith-based and nondenominational groups have vowed to continue their outreach work.

“In that case, we would go ahead and violate the law, because sometimes the law is wrong,” said John Hunter, a San Diego physicist who heads one of a few local groups that set up water stations in the desert. “These poor guys are dying out there, and women, and no one is helping them.”

Hunter – whose lawmaker brother, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, is a staunch supporter of increased border enforcement – questioned just how far such language could stretch.

“If that is taken literally, they are going to have to lock up the Border Patrol for saving lives,” he said. “If they find a guy who is about to die, they pour water down his throat.”

In North County, where a large number of working homeless immigrants hold jobs in local nurseries, farms and landscaping businesses, Terri Trujillo of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Rancho Peñasquitos expressed similar commitment.

“We have always ministered to the migrants, with or without legislation,” said Trujillo, coordinator of a migrant outreach ministry that for years has held Sunday worship services in a canyon where many of the homeless live, and served hot meals.

“If they are hungry, we feed them,” she said.

Not everyone is worried about the language in the proposed legislation becoming law, but they find its mere discussion is troublesome enough.

“I don't know that a lot of us are terrified that it would be signed, but what does concern us is that we have reached this state in the discussion about immigration where that would even be considered,” said Auther at Our Lady of Guadalupe. “It is just such an ugly atmosphere.”