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Copies of the letter were also sent to County Chairman Gerry Connolly (and congressional candidate), Congressional candidate Keith Fimian, Governor Jim Gilmore (candidate for U.S. Senate), Supervisor Penny Gross (who responded verbally in full support to Fr. Grinnell), and Governor Mark Warner (candidate for U.S. Senate). As any other replies are received, we will post them.
Fr. Grinnell's letter to the Virginia Commission on Immigration on May 21, 2008:Virginia Commission on Immigration
c/o Matt Gross
7 North 8th Street, 6th Floor
Richmond, VA 23219
Dear Mr. Chairman and Commissioners:
As the pastor of a large Catholic Church in a community that is home to many immigrants from all over the world, I am obviously concerned about the impact of the Commission’s work on this community and on the immigrant population throughout our state. As a native Virginian, I hope that the Commission’s work demonstrates Virginia’s leadership for our nation on this vital issue that impacts so many people so directly.
In the Commission’s charter it mentions that it will “study, report, and make recommendations to address the costs and benefits of immigration...including the impact on education, health care, law enforcement, local demands for services and the economy, and the effect on the Commonwealth of federal immigration and funding policies.” I would like to comment on these points from my own experience as well as that of our parish ministries that provide food, financial assistance, health care, and counseling services to the people in our community.
From what we experience here at Saint Anthony of Padua, the benefits of immigration are obvious and substantial:
· We gain young, hard-working, faith-filled families who are seeking to improve their lives and those of the children by becoming productive residents and citizens of the United States.
· As is often noted, we gain a workforce willing to take many jobs that would otherwise be hard to fill. However, perhaps less obvious is that we are also gaining a very entrepreneurial group of small businessmen and women creating jobs for others and providing needed services to the community.
· We gain a second generation of the children of immigrants who continue to be hard-working and, I see, become youth leaders in our schools and communities.
· Finally, and certainly not least, we gain diversity and the new ideas and inputs to our culture that diversity brings. In a global economy, diversity provides a tremendous advantage.
By contrast, I see the costs of immigration as being primarily the “upfront costs” for new immigrants to find a job, become acculturated, learn English, and advance their skills. As a parish, we try to assist these new immigrants with our financial, counseling, and health ministries, as well as programs in ESL, computer technology, and interviewing and resume writing. Once settled, like most families, immigrants become net contributors to our society, using community resources in relation to their age more than their ethnicity. While we can attempt to quantify these costs, I think it would take a true prophet to foresee the similarly quantified benefits.
There will, of course, be those who speak of resources spent on gang issues, use of hospital emergency rooms, special classes in schools, or simply the fear of unknown people with different foods and customs. These are all real issues, but they are more issues that cut across our society. Gangs have existed all my life and certainly well before this recently immigration; use of emergency rooms is a problem of our transitional health care system as it moves from employer-based to a yet undefined model; special classes, individual learning plans, and remedial training span schools across the spectrum of economic statuses and ethnicities. To solely attribute them to immigration is to simplify much larger problems.
Finally, I would offer a comment about the impact of federal immigration policies from having seen first hand how these policies DO create additional costs for the Commonwealth and our communities while inflicting real hardships disproportionate to any “crime” that may have been committed wittingly or not. As pastor, I have seen the honest, hard-working breadwinner of a family swept up and literally disappear from his family leaving them with tremendous needs that we all then have to try to fill. I have known of those breadwinners being moved from confinement facility to confinement facility as though allowing any contact with their family would cause some calamity. Try to explain to a ten year old child who is a U. S. citizen by birth that this is how his country operates.
Illegal immigration is an issue, but that does not mean we have to behave with bureaucratic indifference bordering sometimes on cruelty or not treat any human being who committed no other “crime” with such a lack of basic Judeo-Christian charity.
Thank you for your consideration of my comments. I wish the work of the Commission well and certainly would offer to amplify on my experiences here at Saint Anthony. Regrettably, we only received the information about your hearings at George Mason University in the last few days.
Sincerely yours,
Rev. Horace H. Grinnell
Pastor
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