When American 'Christians' turn away the Haitian people, they turn away from Jesus Christ

Loving thy neighbor and serving the poor are the foundations of what it means to be a faithful Christian. For more than and 200 years, this "Christian nation" has failed in that calling. Back when Haiti gained independence from the French in 1804, John Adams wanted to recognize Haiti as an independent country. He hoped to open trade with the newly formed government, but Thomas Jefferson refused, out of fear that American slaves would start to see themselves as equal. In the modern era, any new immigration laws created either by Democrats or Republicans over the last 50 years always finds a way to ignore the needs and requests of the Haitian people. Apparently, Haiti is too poor and too Black for America to love and to serve. The church has failed Haiti, the politicians have failed Haiti and America has failed Haiti.


This article first appeared in Salon.

Somewhere along the line in American Christianity, loving thy neighbor became loving ourselves, and serving the poor became the conviction that the poor get what they deserve. I hear it all the time. It is found in every level of our culture, in our books, our movies, in politics and certainly in the church.

"Blessed are the poor." That's the opening phrase of the Sermon on the Mount, and also of the sermon I gave in Cité Soleil, Haiti, in 2001. This was in a tiny church, in an upper-story room, and I had no prior knowledge I would even be preaching. It is a message that everyone in that room completely understood — and one that has remained a complete mystery to the American church. In America, those that have are blessed, and those that are blessed, have. In God's kingdom, however, the first are last, the cursed are rich and the blessed are poor.

The sermon continues with, "blessed are those who mourn," a phrase that was all too familiar for the Haitian people in that room. Death and loss is all around these amazingly resilient people. Their faith never wanes, their smiles never cease and their sense of God's blessing always remains. In America, where we have so much, our faith is limited, our smiles are infrequent and our sense of self-worth is minimal.

"Blessed are the meek"? Seriously, is anyone in the U.S. willing to embrace such a phrase? Those of us who have been put upon and forced to submit understand this phrase well. None of us enjoy the experience, but Christ believed the earth was ours. I can say that the Haitian people in that church that day knew this phrase well and their screams of "Amen" began to get louder. If there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit, then that small upper-room church in the poorest city in the Western Hemisphere was filled with it more powerfully than I have felt at any other moment in my life.

The sermon continues with blessings for those who hunger for justice, for those who show mercy and for the peacemakers. It was as if Jesus spoke these words specifically for the Haitian people. American evangelicals have attempted to reclaim that passage, but in their hearts they know those words are not for them. This is why evangelicals try to focus their attention on words that Christ never spoke — because he never once spoke about the values of current American white evangelicals. But with every phrase I spoke that day in that small upper-room church, the amens grew louder and louder.

And then I got to this phrase: "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness." The man who interpreted my sermon into Creole preached as if we had worked together for years, despite the fact that we had never met before and have never met since then. After I spoke these words from Christ I asked the church, "Have you not been persecuted?" Once my Haitian preaching partner repeated my words, the church exploded with the loudest and most passionate "Amen" I have ever heard. I was surprised the roof hadn't been blown off. That is still the most powerful moment I have experienced in all my years of ministry. The Haitian people knew that Jesus was speaking to them. They were seen and heard and loved, and their reward was to come.

As I watch Haitians being turned away at the Mexican border with such disdain and violence, I remember my time in Haiti. I remember the words of my savior in Christ. I remember the calling upon all Christians and the calling upon what some people try to call a Christian nation. We are lost today in the United States, in desperate need of a better understanding of what it means to be a member of a community. We are selfish, self-obsessed, isolated, hateful, greedy and lacking in empathy for anyone who is not experiencing our own painful path.

The Haitian people have very little but they know what it means to have faith. They understand community, they understand family, sacrifice, suffering, defeat, mercy, grace, love and forgiveness. These are the elements we are missing, and when we turn these people away at the border we turn our backs on what it means to be human. For supposed people of faith, to reject the Haitian people is to reject Christ. This could mean, if you believe in such things, that our lack of mercy will be applied against us when we look for entry into the kingdom of heaven. It certainly means we are lost and unhappy here on earth. The U.S. has so much potential and so much possibility to show love, grace and mercy. If we are to survive this trying time in our nation's history, we must look to those who already have these traits and try to live accordingly.

https://www.rawstory.com/conservative-christians/

 

Wouldn't be an issue if they followed the laws surrounding immigration.
I pray they see that and do it the right way rather than trying to sneak in, or having democrats just allow them in where they oftentimes never show up to their hearings and disappear into the interior.

 

The tried and true method of applying and being vetted isn’t good enough for the left. After all, the process was dreamed up by middle aged Caucasian men. We should just allow them to come in and make themselves at home without any vetting. That way we can have more of the dregs in our society like the Mexican pukes that raped and brutalized my granddaughter.

 

That's disgusting.
Unfortunately, that tale is much more common than any of us would like to admit. God bless her, and I hope she finds peace.

 

good thing white people never rape/

 

That’s been 6-7 years ago now. Her young marriage crumbled under the stress of the thing at the time. She is young, well adjusted, resilient and beautiful and has her hands full choosing between suitors. She has come out the other side alright and I appreciate you saying that……. It is important for the left to recognize that it is real people that pay the price for their ability to readily turn their heads from the root of a problem and implement the easy and quick fix.

 

But that isn’t who we are talking about here, is it?

 

6-7 years still isn't enough.

I was scared your granddaughter would have still been a child. I feel as if that would be the only way the situation could be worse.

 

unrelated
get your mind out of politics and see the issue. Mopar couldn't have made it more clear that there is an issue.

 

I'll bet those Mexicans were christians

back on topic.

seriously though Haiti needs some help or they'll just end up here. look at it that way

 

You're so empathetic, aren't you
You and the president belong together. Match made in heaven! Fake empathetic people only interested in their own image, and will say whatever to improve it.

I find it hard to believe you're a 51+ year old man and not me as a middle school student.

 

I have no problem with anyone making their way to the land of opportunity. Provided that they are vetted and do it the right way.

 

if their country falls apart they'll just overwhelm other countries.

 

Same thing happened with the Cuban refugee crisis of the 70’s. It took time, but all were vetted prior to walking our streets….. Criminally minded people have no scruples and do intermingle with refugees….. Allow them in after being properly vetted. It’s a tried and true solution.

 

Ole Bill was helping them.... oh wait:
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/...ight-legacy-haiti-then-2010-earthquake-struck

 

now you're just lying. either to us or to yourself

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/31/us/cuban-refugee-crime-troubles-police-across-u-s.html

 

I’m not reading the piece. Don’t have time. I was a guard at a Cuban refugee camp for a short period. I was young and didn’t care about the politics of the day. I only knew I was there to guard them until they were vetted.

 

You were brighter as a middle school student than FD ever was.

 

''The deportation is a step, but a very small step,'' said Robert O'Leary, assistant prosecutor in Union County, N.J.

The vast majority of the 8,000 refugees in Elizabeth, the Union County seat, are law-abiding, like most Mariel refugees elsewhere. But Mr. O'Leary and the Elizabeth police say that more than 600 of the group in have been arrested on felony charges.

A third of the 1,700 felony and misdemeanor arrests last year in Union City, N.J., involved ''Marielitos,'' as the refugees are known, although they account for a small proportion of the city's population, according to government and social agency officials.


Many among the refugees concede that their collective record over the last five years has been disappointing. For example, Rene Cifuentes, the editor of Mariel, a Spanish-language literary magazine that ceased publication for lack of funds in February, and one of those who fled in 1980, said: ''The number of crimes traced back to the group is phenomenal. It's sad.''

Mr. Cifuentes speculated that those in trouble with the law were the younger refugees.

''Those who grew up in Castro's Cuba, and many of those in trouble now did, had principles forced into them by a dictatorship,'' he said. ''And suddenly, here they were with feeble values, no family ties, no one looking over their shoulders. They were sure to run into chaos.''

The Federal Government has adopted the attitude that those who fled are ''not our problem,'' said Sergio Pereira, who advised President Carter on Cuban refugee resettlement and is now an assistant manager of Metro Dade County in Florida.

'Situation Was Mishandled'

''The handling of the refugees was not the highlight of the Carter Administration,'' said Stuart E. Eizenstat, the chief domestic policy adviser in the Carter Administration. ''The situation was totally mishandled by the White House.''

Nevertheless, he said, the Administration should not be blamed for criminals who were released to communities throughout the country. ''We could not have known how many criminals were among them,'' he said. ''It's absolutely erroneous to suggest that the Administration somehow deceived the American people by understating the amount of criminals who came through the boatlift.''

Jody Powell, the White House spokesman in the Carter Administration, who said in 1980 that Cuban refugees who had committed crimes ''will not be resettled or relocated in American communities under any circumstances,'' declined to comment recently. ''I was only the spokesman,'' he said.

At the White House, a spokesman referred questions about the refugees to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.


''There's not much we can do,'' said Duke Austin, a spokesman for the agency. ''We detained the ones who other refugees pointed out as having been in jail. Otherwise, there wasn't much we could've done. We were dealing with a government that refused to cooperate, with an influx of people who brought no records and whose names we could not even verify.''

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it does not collect information on the criminals among the Mariel refugees and so has no position on whether the figures cited by local officials are correct, according to Manuel Marquez, a spokesman for the bureau. ''It's just not our problem,'' Mr. Marquez said.

25 Refugees Returned Each Month

Mr. Austin of the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Marielitos who committed crimes in the United States would be labeled excludable and eventually deported. Under the agreement reached Dec. 14 between Washington and Havana, the refugees who have committed serious crimes either in Cuba or in the United States are being returned to Cuba in groups of approximately 25 per month.

Mr. Pereira and other local officials said that the criminals among the refugees lack records that would make tracing them easier, are virtually indifferent to arrest and imprisonment, are sometimes extremely violent and are very well organized.

Mr. Pereira said the criminals were in ''completely alien territory'' upon their arrival. ''They didn't know the language, they weren't familiar with the penal system here,'' he said. ''But in no time they've established criminal links across the country - between Florida and California, between Las Vegas and New Jersey.''

A Las Vegas police report reaches the same conclusion. ''Our observations confirm a national conspiracy exists,'' the report says.

A recently released report on criminals among the Mariel refugees compiled by the police department in Harrisburg, Pa., concluded that the criminals' networks were used in pursuing such crimes as airline-ticket fraud, credit-card fraud and cocaine and marijuana trafficking.


Two years ago, 12 refugees were among a group of 31 people convicted of credit-card fraud in Miami. One of the refugees was the leader of the ring, Detective Steve Ellison of the Miami Economic Crime Unit said. What officials found most remarkable about the operation, Mr. Pereira said, ''was that it had been controlled by people who, three years before, had never even seen a credit card. There are no credit cards in Cuba.''

Many Refugees Register

In January the refugees became eligible to register for permanent residency, which police departments hoped would result in a reliable form of identification. But immigration officials say that one-third of the Mariel refugees have not registered.

The report prepared by the Harrisburg Police Department was distributed to law-enforcement officials from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Florida who met in Philadelphia on Oct. 4 to discuss strategies for combating Marielito crime.

In addition to holding gatherings like the one in Harrisburg, law-enforcement agencies in many areas are exchanging information and picturesin an effort to improve their ability to handle criminals among the refugees. Perhaps their greatest source of frustration is the indifference they perceive on the part of the Federal Government.

''Ordinarily,'' said Mr. Pereira, ''a person with a confirmed criminal record trying to enter this country would be considered excludable, not eligible to stay. Most of the Marielitos have proved to be good people, but thousands were criminals, technically excludable. And unfortunately, they were released into communities along with the good people.''

''Who let the criminals into this country?'' Mr. Pereira complained. ''Washington. Now they have to share responsibility, deal with the consequences.''

April 7, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

 

Sounds just like what’s happening Now. Are you suggesting Democrats are incompetent...... Joe is replacing Carter as the most incompetent President.