Testimony / ONE PERSON’S STORY ABOUT NEW LATINO ARRIVALS : ‘For Immigrants, California Is Still a New Frontier’

I was speaking with some friends yesterday who brought up the immigration issue. I can’t believe how obsessed everyone is with this issue and so ready to blame the immigrants for so many of the community’s problems right now.

True, there are problems. The immigrant population is a disproportionately young population and brings with it a host of challenges; education, health care and I guess there are a lot of costs associated with that.

Any family realizes that when you have children, the children are going to be a drain on the resources of the family but any wise family will know that is a sound investment. California both with its Hispanic and its Asian population is making an investment in its future.

This is also a contributing population. Studies show that a larger percentage of Hispanics are participating in the work force than any other segment of the population. For the immigrants, California is still a new frontier. They are like the old gold miners in that they still have that vision that somehow there is opportunity here and that there is a chance to make something new.

I get a kick out of visiting our young adult groups in our church, many of whom are newer immigrants who have their faith and are hoping to build a new life for themselves. When I go over there on a Friday evening and speak to them about what they’ve been doing and their jobs--to see some of them making that special effort to try to get into an English class or to try to get into a junior college, I think that is very hopeful.

Unfortunately even though they’re working and they may be paying taxes, if they fail to produce certain papers, they have to pay out-of-state fees. And yet they persevere. I get excited about that.

I find in them an idealism and a hunger that I don’t always see in the young kids wandering around in the malls with money to spend. I go from talking with young kids at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and wander over to South Coast Plaza and what the kids in the parish have seems so much more richer than anything that many of the adolescents wandering that mall will ever find.

They have a sense of their own self worth and the joy that comes from building a new life in a new community for themselves maybe a thousand or two thousand miles away from their homes in Mexico. There is also an ease and joy with which they help each other.

There are problems. I’m aware of the increasing incidences of AIDS in this community. I go every month and celebrate Mass at the jail and I can on certain occasions celebrate the whole Mass in Spanish because that is the population then. There are three to four immigrant men who volunteer their time and they go in there with me and help with the singing, and we read the Scriptures and celebrate Mass. They are not willing to leave behind their brothers.

I think the community oftentimes just feels--like last week when there were those INS raids and then also Clinton’s pronouncements--the immigrants feel that if people only understood why they were here, and how much they are just like anyone else that wants to work and now Clinton want to get rid of us? Why are they being so mean to us?

When I went to see that same youth group on a Friday afternoon, they were gathered around asking me what did I think about that? They were going to go out and maybe get a hamburger afterward and many of them were going to work on Saturday, some were going to sing in the choir on Saturday evening. So many of these kids are trying to live very wholesome lives and yet America perceives them as the enemy.

I have that group on Friday evening and then Saturday night rolls around and there’s the gunfire and God knows what else is going on in the neighborhood. I don’t know why that happens. There are kids out there that for whatever reason give up. They lose their faith in God and they put their faith in a culture that is a very ego-centered culture.

Sometimes I get worried that these kids are going to assimilate and that assimilation, instead of being something positive, is something that is going to kill them. I don’t believe that all of American society is negative or bad. But it does have some very dangerous tendencies. And if they get hooked into these it will destroy them. The ego-centered tendencies. The materialism--the belief that accumulating things will satisfy the hunger of the human heart.

In the midst of what has been the rapid secularization of our society it is the immigrant population who call us back home and remind us of our own religious and spiritual roots. They not only have enriched my life here, but I think that they reinvigorate the whole life of the church here. And I think they can do that for the whole community.

I am proud to be a part of the Diocese of Orange because of who we are, our diversity. We have Korean, Polish, Vietnamese, Hispanic, Anglo and even a deaf congregation. There is no other single voluntary organization that can hold together such a diversity.

In the neighborhood I live in in Santa Ana there is a vibrancy and a sense of saving humanity that you are not going to find in South County. I don’t want to be too pejorative here--but it is very bland with those gated communities. In any Santa Ana neighborhood there is always life on the streets.

My 11 years plus as a priest in Santa Ana have been a great pilgrimage into my own roots--and without denigrating the wonderful things that I have received in this country, to kind of go back into the storehouse of my people’s culture has been worth the price of the ticket and more.