Thread: A True Believer In Illegal Immigrants

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A True Believer In Immigrants
"One day, we will gather for celebration. I believe that this takes time." The Rev. José E. Hoyos

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 20, 2006; B01


José E. Hoyos stood on a stage in front of the U.S. Capitol this month, calling on lawmakers to do what is "morally correct and just" by welcoming illegal immigrants into society. The Catholic priest had dreamed of seeing an ocean of immigrants stretching from his feet to the Washington Monument. Instead, the crowd before him filled a fraction of one block of grass.

When illegal immigrants demanded amnesty at nationwide rallies in the spring, Washington area organizers turned to Hoyos, director of the Arlington Diocese's Spanish Apostolate, to marshal and inspire protesters. Though unfamiliar to many outside the Hispanic community, his magnetic preaching and frequent appearances in Spanish-language media have earned him near-celebrity status among local Latinos and in El Salvador, a nation to which he has dedicated much of his ministry.

But on this September afternoon, it was clear that not even Hoyos could rouse the masses.

"One day, we will gather for celebration," said the Colombia-born Hoyos, 50, taking a break in the shade after his speech, his hazel eyes surveying the paltry gathering. "I believe that this takes time."

The passion of spring seems to have fizzled, leaving leaders such as Hoyos to ponder the smoldering remnants of the spark that drove millions of illegal immigrants to the streets just a few months ago. Has the movement that seemed full of powerful promise in April sputtered out, or will it revive after this month's disappointing rally turnouts?

Hoyos -- believer in miracles, admirer of fictional idealist Don Quixote -- takes a long view, perhaps because a short view never yielded much.

"I'm still looking for answers," he said.

The same week that fewer than 4,000 people turned out for a Sept. 7 rally in Washington, demonstrations in Los Angeles and other cities produced even smaller crowds. Immigration proposals have stalled in Congress, and anti-illegal immigrant backlash is high.

Hoyos said protesters stayed home this month because they had seen no results from earlier demonstrations or because arrests of undocumented workers had made them fearful.

To the priest, who began demonstrating at the Capitol and asking politicians to pardon illegal immigrants in the early 1990s, this year's protests and their youthful organizers injected a shot of energy into an old quest.

Since he first met illegal immigrants while studying in Chicago 20 years ago, Hoyos has believed most are good people who need a break. He sees it like this: Someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night and needs protection. Do you help or close the door?

"I understand they are breaking the law. But what other things can they do?" asked Hoyos, who immigrated legally and became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

Hoyos said his position has elicited frequent e-mails, many from Catholics, telling him he should be ashamed and perhaps arrested. Some within the 67-parish Arlington Diocese grumbled that the flier he made for this month's rally -- which called support of illegal immigrants a "moral obligation" -- was overly histrionic, he said.

"Who will help the poorest of the poor?" Hoyos responded, referring to the Book of Isaiah. "The poorest of the poor are the immigrants."

The Hoyos Phenomenon

His charisma is legendary within the Hispanic community.

When a D.C. Latino Civil Rights Task Force picked board members in 1993, Hoyos received the most votes, without campaigning. When he was transferred from a Falls Church parish to Dale City in 2001, congregants in Falls Church collected 3,000 signatures in protest.

In Dale City, legions of Latinos quickly filled the pews, and a Latino home-buying boom nearby became known among some real estate agents as the "Father Hoyos phenomenon."

"When he walks in the room, he's got it," said Paul Kyle, president of a beer and wine distributor and board member of Marcelino Pan y Vino, the nonprofit organization Hoyos founded in 1992 to help sick immigrants pay for lifesaving treatments.

Hoyos greets everyone -- from reporters to distraught immigrants who stop by his office -- with the warmth of an old friend. He plays pickup soccer. He cracks jokes during sermons. On the eve of the recent rally, he watched "Maid in Manhattan," a Jennifer Lopez movie he enjoyed because it features an Anglo politician who falls for a poor Latina.

Mostly, immigrants adore him because he is a believer -- in their goodness, in their futures.

Hoyos's brother Francisco described the reaction he gets from patients at Providence Hospital in Northeast Washington, where he is a critical care physician: "People from Nicaragua, people from Mexico, people from Guatemala -- everybody is telling me, 'Oh, you are the brother of Father Hoyos. . . . He is the one that is working for us. He is the one that is looking out for us.' "

If Hoyos was undeterred at this month's rally, it was partly because many in attendance sought him out.

"We came for him," said Agustin Fuentes, 43, a Woodbridge truck driver who carried a Bible in his backpack.

In Hoyos's vision of immigration reform, the United States would send a mega-Peace Corps to build toilets and encourage investment in poor nations. All illegal immigrants would get green cards. Everyone who wanted to immigrate would be allowed, with the exception of criminals.

If enough critics hear illegal immigrants' personal stories of struggle, Hoyos said, "they will understand."

When he says that, Hoyos is referring to a chapter in his own biography. In 2002, guerrillas with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia kidnapped one of his brothers, a national politician who remains missing. Hoyos keeps a low profile during infrequent visits to Colombia, fearing he might also be targeted.

"So now you understand why I fight for freedom for immigrants," he said. "Every person has his own bad nights and nightmares that we don't know."

Social Butterfly

The eighth of 12 children born to two school principals, Hoyos grew up in a town near Cali, Colombia, surrounded by sugar cane fields. He said he was a fair student, strong athlete and a social butterfly. His dance moves made him a hit at quinceañeras . But church did not interest him. He was the only one of his brothers who wasn't an altar boy.

Francisco Hoyos said his brother always had deep concern for the needy and a gift for getting things done. As a teenager, he organized parties, parades and beauty contests, producing donations from businesses whose managers he had befriended.

During a religious mountain retreat when Hoyos was 19, a priest told him he had a calling. A year later, he entered the seminary in Bogota.

In 1989, he came to work for one year in the Arlington Diocese and stayed for three. Five years later, after launching several community groups and serving two churches, he moved to Holy Family Catholic Church in Dale City, becoming the first Latino priest to head a parish in the diocese. He was appointed to direct the Spanish Apostolate last summer.

Early on, Hoyos heard horror stories from Salvadoran parishioners, many of them illegal immigrants displaced by brutal warfare in their country. One family invited him to attend the funeral of a relative killed in El Salvador. There, he said, a group of people begged him for help with their postwar sorrows, treating him "like I was a Messiah."

El Salvador became a mission for Hoyos in a way his homeland could not. He contacted El Diario de Hoy, a major San Salvador newspaper, and proposed a column on peace, love and forgiveness. Soon radio and television stations were calling. His writing now appears in two Salvadoran papers and in Washington Hispanic, which publishes 55,000 copies weekly.

"However difficult it is for you, it is important that you smile at life," Hoyos wrote in an April column for Nuevas Raices, a 14,000-circulation newspaper in the Shenandoah Valley and central Virginia. He finished, "Before you see a rainbow, it has to rain!"

Hoyos visits El Salvador several times a year to deliver money and supplies, preach in stadiums and confer with President Elias Antonio Saca. His nonprofit organization has funded community centers and a maternity ward. His fellow Colombians tell him that his Spanish has taken on a Salvadoran accent.

Immigration Activism

Hoyos has been the "most active player in the human aspect to immigration," Salvadoran Ambassador Rene A. Leon said.

But when it comes to illegal immigrants, Hoyos acknowledged that victories have been few. He counts among them subtle attitude shifts toward his ideas by some politicians -- such as Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who backed a strict House immigration proposal but who also recently nominated Hoyos for a Prince of Asturias Concord Award, a Spanish prize given to those who battle poverty and injustice. In a nomination letter, Davis cited Hoyos's quest for immigration reform and his dream of seeing North, South and Central America united into "one America."

Hoyos said another success is temporary protected status for Salvadorans -- a program that gives some immigrants from disaster- or war-torn countries a renewable one-year U.S. work and residency permit, which he lobbied for. But even that is only a partial victory: He has also come to see it as a curse that gives immigrants the chance to stay in the United States long enough to set down roots but not to stay for good.

When a procession in front of the Capitol began at this month's rally, Hoyos took a spot in the middle. He waved a small American flag and licked a coconut popsicle.

During a lull in chanting about halfway through the march, Hoyos started one of his own.

"We want justice!" he said loudly in Spanish, prompting a few marchers to join in. Their voices quickly died down.

Hoyos was unfazed. The faces around him, he noted, were young -- a good sign, he said, for a growing movement.

"I am satisfecho ," he said, using the Spanish word for "satisfied" as he walked down Independence Avenue after the march. "Mission accomplished. For now."

During a lull in chanting about halfway through the march, Hoyos started one of his own.

"We want justice!"

No, it's us that want justice. What you want is charity and forgiveness for intentional law breakers!