Mormon-Owned Paper Stands With Immigrants

By JEREMY W. PETERS
The New York Times
September 19, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — Joseph A. Cannon is nobody’s liberal. His résumé reads as if it belongs to a delegate to the Republican National Convention, which, incidentally, he was in 2004.

He was an official for the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Utah Republican Party. As editor of The Deseret News, he published editorials condemning deficit spending, same-sex marriage and lenient alcohol laws.

So it was something of a head-scratcher, Mr. Cannon said, when his voice mail and e-mail started filling up with messages from people calling him a “liberal freak” for the sympathetic way his paper often writes about illegal immigrants.

“You have become a dangerous newspaper, one that I am on the verge of discontinuing,” wrote one outraged reader.

The News’s push for a more liberal embrace of undocumented immigrants has led to a collision between its editorial mission and its conservative, mostly Mormon, readers. But if this issue seems to stray from the reliably conservative politics of The News, Utah’s second-largest paper behind The Salt Lake Tribune, that may be in part because it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hispanics are the most populous minority group in the country — and they represent a vast potential constituency for the Mormon church, which has already made considerable efforts to develop strong relations with Hispanic communities. Those efforts include, since February, a Spanish-language paper called El Observador.

“The church’s practice is to say, ‘Look, we’re not immigration agents. We care for the soul,’ ” Mr. Cannon said in an interview from his office in downtown Salt Lake City, where he can look out his window at the towering spires of the Salt Lake Temple.

Both The News and El Observador are owned by the Deseret Media Companies (pronounced DEZ-er-ET; it is named after the provisional state of Deseret founded by Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley in 1849), which also owns Utah’s largest television station, KSL, and its largest news Web site, KSL.com.

Because any editorial that appears under the Deseret Media masthead carries the unofficial imprimatur of the church in many Mormons’ eyes, Deseret editors and executives could indeed help shape opinions in the heavily Mormon state Legislature, where lawmakers are debating a zero-tolerance illegal immigration law similar to the one passed in Arizona this year.

For the time being, church leaders seem uninterested in wading into the debate by taking an official policy position, as they did by declaring support for the referendum to ban same-sex marriage in California. Rather, it has made only a benign public appeal for “careful reflection and civil discourse” on the issue. But that has hardly soothed matters.

That the main sponsor of the Arizona law, Russell Pearce, is a Mormon has not been lost on many Hispanics here. And some active Mormons said they thought that the church, through its media properties, was trying to reassure Hispanics who were suspicious that it condoned anti-immigrant attitudes.

“Some of my Latino friends have said, ‘I’m going to leave the church over this,’ ” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah, a Latino outreach group. “My view is that this is an aggressive way for the L.D.S. church to very effectively use their media power to try to soften up the community. They’re sending a message to their members.”

Both Mr. Cannon and Deseret Media’s chief executive, Mark H. Willes, said they never sought approval from church officials on any editorial or article they ran. They said the church also never asked to see an article before it was printed, though former editors said the practice had been to fax drafts of editorials to church headquarters.

The newsroom at The Deseret News is a mix of practicing and nonpracticing Mormons and people of other religious beliefs. It is not a strictly doctrinaire environment. There is a coffee machine in the break room, despite the church’s discouragement of drinking caffeinated beverages.

But as Mr. Cannon makes clear, The Deseret News is hardly going to run something that would offend its owners.

“No one is going to write an editorial here that we thought was inconsistent with or would poke the church in the eye,” said Mr. Cannon, who this week will move on to become a special adviser to the editorial board. “That’s not going to happen.”

Themes that appear in The Deseret News’s coverage of immigration are often echoed in El Observador. Its editor, Patricia Dark, said the paper now had 7,000 subscribers who received home delivery. Subscribers pay nothing; the three-times-a-week paper is subsidized by the church.

With a staff of three full-time reporters, El Observador typically devotes two or three articles in each edition to immigration-related topics. A major theme is the effect that deportation has on families. “Terror en familias hispanas” read one recent front-page headline.

“The breaking up of families is horrific, so we want to highlight that,” said Ms. Dark. Among Mormons, whose faith teaches that the family bond should be eternally inviolate, the issue of severing families is especially resonant.

Selecting themes and story lines that will appeal to Mormon values has been one way Deseret Media has tried to shift the debate.

Last month, Mr. Willes took the highly unusual step of writing an editorial that simultaneously ran on the front pages of The News and El Observador. The editorial, accompanied in print by an image of the Statue of Liberty with its famous inscription “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” was also read by Mr. Willes on KSL, Salt Lake City’s NBC affiliate, and the KSL radio station.

“We, of all people, should be sensitive to the desire of others to provide more opportunities for themselves and their families,” Mr. Willes wrote, making a direct appeal to Mormons’ sense of their history. Like Mormons, who fled the Midwest in the mid-19th century after failing to assimilate into society, undocumented immigrants know what it is like to be outcasts, Mr. Willes said.

But those who find their positions on immigration criticized by Mr. Willes’s media companies see journalistic bias, not Mormon values, at work.

“Obviously, they’re trying to sway public opinion in a big way,” said Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican state representative who is sponsoring a bill that would create a set of strict immigration laws similar to Arizona’s. Mr. Sandstrom, a Mormon, said he was not deterred. “I do have people in e-mails saying, ‘You’d better not back down or I’ll know the church got to you.’ And I just assure them that the L.D.S. church is not directing me one way or another on this.”

The immigration issue has become intensely personal for Mr. Willes, a former publisher of The Los Angeles Times who was selected by church leaders to run Deseret Media a year and a half ago.

He has consulted lawyers to advise him on the technicalities of immigration law and convened a committee of Deseret Media editors and executives that meets to brainstorm ideas on immigration coverage. “Everywhere we looked, the problem just seemed substantially more complicated than the dialogue,” he said.

Mr. Cannon acknowledged that changing minds would be difficult, but he said he hoped at the very least to challenge readers to reflect on immigration through the teachings of their religion.

“What are the two commandments? Love God and love your neighbor,” he said. “These people are our neighbors — incontestably, by any definition, they are our neighbors.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/media/20deseret.html?_r=1&hp

After Immigration Raid, a Pastor Tries to Calm the Chaos

After Immigration Raid, a Pastor Tries to Calm the Chaos
By Marcelo Ballvé
New America Media
October 30, 2008

LAUREL, Miss. -- After four years building up a bilingual Pentecostal ministry in this diverse, working-class town, Pastor Roberto Velez thought he might rest on his accomplishments.

But Velez's real trial by fire began Aug. 25. That morning, in a raid on a local transformer plant owned by local manufacturer Howard Industries, federal agents arrested 595 immigrants. Perhaps a dozen of them were members of Velez's Peniel
Christian Church.

"It was terrible," he recalls. "I received calls starting at 8:10 a.m. I was having breakfast. They said, 'Pastor! Pastor! Immigration got into Howard.' I rushed over there."

Velez, a relative newcomer to Laurel, was suddenly thrust into a role he never expected to have: crisis management.

Outside the plant's perimeter, Velez waited with anxious immigrant families in a steady rain, comforting workers' children and wives. As blue-jacketed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents milled around, Velez buttonholed them, demanding information on detainees' fates.

From that day forward, he would tend non-stop to his panic-stricken flock-- and to any other families who walked through Peniel's doors, in want after their breadwinners ended up imprisoned.

Velez's role is reminiscent of those assumed by other clergy in towns upended by large-scale ICE raids this year.

In Postville, Iowa, an elderly Catholic nun and retired priest stepped up to the front-lines, after the May arrest of nearly 400 illegal immigrants at a local meatpacking plant created what they described as "a man-made" disaster. In Greenville, South Carolina, Episcopal and Catholic clergy teamed up to create a safety-net for hundreds of affected families, after a raid Oct. 7 at a poultry plant.

http://www.alternet.org/story/105272/

Faith Leaders Demand a Moratorium on ICE Raids at City Hall Rally

Faith Leaders Demand a Moratorium on ICE Raids at City Hall Rally
By Open Media Boston
Created 10/03/2008 - 18:05

BOSTON/Government Center - A coalition of over 30 religious and community organizations held a rally Tuesday calling for an end to raids, mass arrests and deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants around the nation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. About 250 people participated in the event - which was coordinated by members of the Arlington Street Church Unitarian Universalist.

Organizers said the rally was part of a growing faith-based response to series of recent ICE raids on immigrant communities - including Somerville, Lynn, East Boston and Lowell in August - and was 1 of 18 "Tour of the Faithful" [1] events being sponsored by dozens of religious groups in support of immigrants in several cities in October.

Rev. William G. Sinkford, president of the UUA discussed why religious people are becoming increasingly active in the immigrant rights movement, "Many immigrants following the American Dream and striving to give their children a better life are forced to join a permanent underclass. Even as they work hard and contribute to our communities, immigrants without legal status are denied basic rights. To people of conscience, this situation is intolerable."

Sinkford went on to explain the UUA's call for a Moratorium on ICE Raids at its 2007 General Assembly. The Moratorium, in addition to criticizing ICE and demanding an end to raids on immigrant communities, "urges all Unitarian Universalists congregations and their members to create a dialogue with the local business community, politicians, and if possible minority
coalitions to create alternative actions for fair and legal deportations: and, urges all Unitarian Universalist congregations and their members to offer support and solidarity with the millions of immigrants seeking recognition and dignity in United States."

Patricia Montes of the Somerville-based immigrant rights group Centro Presente offered the perspective of many immigrants from El Salvador, "During the civil war in the 80s there were a significant number of people who came here trying to escape from the situation. Today, we do not have a war in Central America but neither do we have peace. We do not have real democracy, we do not have freedom. How can we talk about peace, freedom and democracy when we have people, 'campesinos,' in our countries living on less than a dollar per day? How can we talk about peace, freedom and democracy when we have women working like slaves at the big Canadian and U.S. factories or ‘maquilas’ making clothes that maybe we all buy here."

Montes concluded with a reference to the growing financial crisis, "These are the people that are being forced to migrate. This movement of people is the result of the economic system that the governments and the world bank are selling to us as our salvation."

Shuya Ohno of the Mass. Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition exhorted the crowd to action, and encouraged them to join the pro-immigrant Welcoming Massachusetts [2] initiative led by his organization, "Hate crimes, hate radio, hate speech and hate groups are driving our national conversation about immigrants, and dividing our nation. In this time of uncertainty and fear, we are in desperate need of those who will stand up, who will defend and fight for what is right and what is just. We need those whose courage allows them, and whose conscience compels them to speak up against that which is wrong. We need those willing to raise their voice against bigotry, we need those who will not tolerate hatred, we need those who will not succumb to the demagogues of fear and anger."

Other speakers included Rev. Kim Crawford-Harvie of the Arlington Street Church, Bishop Felipe Texeira of Stain Francis of Assisi Church, and Charlie Clements of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

There were no counter protestors and a light police presence during the rally. A smaller rally called by Jobs with Justice to protest the government response to the financial crisis from the perspective of working families immediately preceded the immigration event.

Open Media Boston is a project of Media Working Groupand a member publication of the New England Press Association

Email us at info@openmediaboston.org

Source URL: http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/351

On Religion: Immigrants Find Solace After Storm of Arrests

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
The New York Times
July 12, 2008

POSTVILLE, Iowa — Back in 2002, before all the trouble, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk retired from St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church here, his last station in 43 years of ministry. He built a home 35 miles away in a town along the Mississippi, and he indulged a passion for family history, tracing his lineage to an ancestor who had arrived in New Amsterdam with the Dutch East India Company.

Once a month or so, Father Ouderkirk drove back to St. Bridget’s to officiate at a wedding or baptize a baby. He savored those rituals, proof that the Hispanic immigrants who had arrived over the past decade to work in Postville’s kosher-meat plant were setting down roots. Some had bought homes. Their children had graduated from high school, even been selected for the National Honor Society.

Then came the morning of May 12, when both satisfaction and retirement ended for the 75-year-old priest. Federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors factory, arresting nearly 400 workers, most of them men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing above the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridget’s Church, the safest place they knew.

It was about that time, with several dozen cowering people inside the church, when Sister Mary McCauley, the pastor administrator at St. Bridget’s, found out that Father Ouderkirk was attending a ceremony for diocesan priests nearly two hours away in Dubuque. Unable to reach him directly, she left a simple, urgent message: “We need to see a collar here.”

By the time Father Ouderkirk extricated himself and reached Postville in the evening, nearly 400 families, some of them not even Catholic, filled the rotunda and social hall of St. Bridget’s. They occupied every pew, every aisle, every folding chair, every inch of floor. Children clutched mothers. One girl shook uncontrollably.

A few volunteers from the old Postville, descendants of the Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled here more than a century ago, set out food. Others took turns standing watch at the church door, as if the sight of an Anglo might somehow dissuade the feared Migra, as the immigrants call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from invading their sanctuary.

Already, members of the church staff and a Spanish teacher from a nearby college were tallying the names of the detained workers. Father Ouderkirk conducted his own version of a census in this predominantly Hispanic parish. Gone were all but two members of the choir he had assembled over the years. Gone were all but one of the eight altar servers. Gone were the husbands from the weddings he had performed, and gone were the fathers of the children he had baptized.

As for the mothers, many of them also worked at Agriprocessors and had been arrested. In a putative show of compassion, federal authorities released them after putting an electronic homing device on each woman’s ankle to monitor her whereabouts. These mothers were, in the new lexicon of Postville, “las personas con brazalete,” the people with a bracelet.

During his earlier tenure at parishes in North Texas and Marshalltown, Iowa, Father Ouderkirk had experienced immigration raids twice before, but never on this scale. By the second day, he had moved back into his bedroom in the rectory.

“It’s like God saying, ‘I gave you a little practice,’ because this is the worst,” Father Ouderkirk said in an interview late last month at St. Bridget’s. “This has happened after 10 years of stable living. These people were in school. They were achieving. It has ripped the heart out of the community and out of the parish. Probably every child I baptized has been affected. To see them stunned is beyond belief.”

The only redemptive thing that can be said, perhaps, is that in the crisis at Postville — with nearly 400 immigrants imprisoned and facing deportation, with 40 mothers under house arrest awaiting their own court dates, with families that had two working parents now forced to survive on handouts from a food pantry — the beacon of the Roman Catholic Church to immigrants has rarely shone more brilliantly.

“I came to the church because I feel safe there, I feel secure,” said Irma López, the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who was arrested along with her husband, Marcelo, after they had worked at Agriprocessors for six years. “I feel protected. I feel at peace. I feel comforted.”

At a practical level, Father Ouderkirk has hired four temporary staff members to help track the court cases and distribute food and financial aid to the affected families. Along with other religious leaders around Iowa, he had been preparing for a march in defense of immigrants’ rights. St. Bridget’s parish, which has only about 350 members, is spending $500,000 in the relief effort, he said.

One month after the raid, St. Bridget’s held a Mass in remembrance of the detainees. The name of every one was recited from the altar, and after every 20 names, a candle was lighted, usually by a persona con brazalete. The candles, half burned, remain in the nave, beneath a wood carving of the Virgin Mother, each one an offering for a miracle.

“I pray to God for the opportunity to stay in this country so my daughter can be educated here,” Mrs. López said. “That was my dream.”

Sitting in the rectory alongside Mrs. López, Rosa Zamora nodded in agreement. “When I pray, I know God is close to me,” said Mrs. Zamora, whose husband, like Mrs. López’s, is now jailed in Louisiana awaiting deportation to Guatemala. “I know there are laws, but God is the judge of everything.”

Judgment of a different sort, though, has been visited on Father Ouderkirk and his aides. One anonymous phone message warned him, “What you’re doing is against the law. Harboring criminals.” Sister Mary received an unsigned letter stating: “You are as far as possible from being the image of Mother Teresa. May you rot in hell.”

It is infuriating in a particular way for Father Ouderkirk and his staff members to hear from such nativists. St. Bridget’s Spanish-speaking lay pastor, Paul Real, has forebears who settled in what is now New Mexico in the 1500s. And Father Ouderkirk’s heritage, of course, goes back to the Dutch colonists.

“I think it’s made me more empathetic,” he said. “I think of the chances my ancestors had. Here are people who’ve been here 10 years, and to get torn up like this, it’s doesn’t make any sense to me. It cuts so deep. Like Sister Mary says, once you’ve cried for two straight weeks, you don’t have any more tears. But it doesn’t mean you stopped feeling.”

E-mail: sgfreedman@nytimes.com

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Religious leaders: Immigrants suffering after raid

WCF Courier
July 2, 2008

ES MOINES (AP) - Religious leaders and immigration reform advocates claim the human suffering caused by a raid on a Postville meatpacking plant continues and officials are ignoring the problem.

The May 12 raid at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, has left dozens of women unable to work and support their children, forcing them to rely on handouts from local churches, several people said Wednesday on a conference call arranged by an immigration reform group.

"These conditions clearly violate core human and religious values of our country," said Gideon Aronoff, CEO of the New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 389 workers at the plant, of which about 300 pleaded guilty and were sentenced on federal charges. Most were charged with using a false identification or incorrect Social Security numbers.

As a humanitarian gesture, authorities released arrested workers who would be the only remaining caretakers for children. Currently, 42 women and two men must remain in the small northeast Iowa town of Postville and wear ankle bracelets that allow federal officials to track their movement. Between them are 80 children.

"It was to make sure someone was there to take care of family members," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the northern district of Iowa.

But those parents can't work because of their immigration status, leaving them with no way to earn money to pay the rent or buy groceries. They are stuck in Postville waiting for deportation, relying solely on volunteer contributions of food and money through local churches.

Immigration reform advocates complained that the current system relies too heavily on raids, detention, criminal prosecution and deportation.

"This enforcement-only approach creates massive human suffering, separation of families and economic dislocation," said Aronoff, of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Brackett said the raid set Postville back 15 years.

When the plant first opened most of its workers were single immigrant men with no intention of settling in Postville. They moved to town to work at the plant just long enough to save some money, then moved on. There were frequent fights and increased crime.

Over the years, however, more workers relocated their families to Postville and bought homes and their children enrolled in schools. Some families uprooted by the raid have lived in town for more than a decade, he said.

The May raid occurred during the plant's first shift, which affected mostly families, Brackett said.

Agriprocessors has turned to rapid recruitment again to fill the vacant jobs, which has meant an influx again of single immigrant men.

"Crime is on the rise again. We've had several bar fights with new workers and at least one drug arrest," Brackett said.

Agriprocessors, started by Aaron Rubashkin, a Hassidic Jew from New York, had been criticized after someone bought ads in Guatemala City newspapers that seek workers. The ads ran just two weeks after immigration agents arrested a third of the plant's workers - most from Guatemala.

Company officials have denied they had anything to do with the ads, which note an "excellent job opportunity in the United States meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa."

Agriprocessors owns the only meatpacking plant in the town of 2,200.

The telephone number in the ads was disconnected shortly after they ran.

The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry said there is no temporary worker program with Iowa or any other locations in the United States. A statement from the Foreign Ministry provided to The Associated Press pointed out that the meatpacking plant is under investigation for crimes, including violating immigration laws.

"For that reason, we cannot recommend or endorse the ads," the statement said.

Requests seeking comment from the company about the ads and issues raised in Wednesday's conference call went unanswered.

With the deportation of the families, Postville schools have lost half of their elementary school students, Brackett said. He said hundreds of people have left the community and many more will be deported.

"This method of enforcement does little to deal with the problem of immigration," he said. "We desperately need to hold employers accountable rather than have undocumented workers bear the brunt of illegal immigration."

Representatives of Jewish groups also criticized work conditions at the Postville plant that were alleged in a federal search warrant.

"Their conditions that were documented were clearly contrary to Jewish values," said Rosalind Spigel, acting director of New York-based Jewish Labor Committee.

After the May raid, the group asked Agriprocessors to adhere to their religious values. The group along with other Jewish organizations has asked consumers to look for alternate kosher meat products.

Rabbi Morris Allen, who leads Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn., a conservative synagogue for more than 400 families near St. Paul, has been critical of the production practices at Agriprocessors since 2006.

Allen, who is leading an effort to create a new kosher ethical certification called Hekhsher Tzedek, said the company could have avoided the May raids had it implemented recommendations made by him and others nearly two years ago.

"It is clear they were aware of serious issues of health, safety, wages being shorted…all sorts of management practices and which they never made an attempt to change," he said.

"Ultimately, for me as a Jew, it's not profits with an "s" that matter, it's being consistent with the voice of the prophets with a "ph" that ultimately is what's going to speak to who we are as a people."

Aronoff, Brackett, Spigel and Allen spoke Wednesday on a telephone conference call arranged by America's Voice, an immigration reform group.

http://wcfcourier.com/news/breaking_news/article_0a9eeb1e-c070-5e55-936a-fd85b5bcaaf0.html?mode=story