I used to think I loved and understood immigrants. I taught ESL in the States to immigrant and refugee children during the day and helped with free ESL classes for their parents at night. I volunteered with refugee youth groups and activities and lived in a neighborhood with a high immigrant population. I had taken […]Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: This blog is the second part of a series, “Migration, Trade and Brutality: A Journey through Mexico and Central America”, written by David Schmidt regarding his travels in Summer 2012. To read his first entry click here. The goal of this series is to educate and inform readers about the reasons why immigrants come […]Continue Reading →
Last Wednesday morning, on the way to a meeting, my car stopped accelerating. Then the engine died altogether. I was able to direct the car into the central turn-lane of Roosevelt Road, the major thoroughfare on which I was driving, but I was stuck. My gasoline gauge had been near empty for several days, […]Continue Reading →
Two weekends ago, I had the privilege of participating in the Cumbre Global de Liderazgo, the Spanish language version of the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit. While I was there to lead a session explaining the Department of Homeland Security’s new “Deferred Action” policy for the many leaders in Spanish-speaking […]Continue Reading →
The lenses that we wear certainly affect the way we see the world. The fifteen years that my wife Kim and I lived in Latin America have greatly affected my vision. Today I love to get acquainted with immigrants, especially with those that have only recently arrived in our country. Often I imagine myself […]Continue Reading →
There were 22 of us the other night gathered in the upper room of a church. Many of us had never met before. A common desire for justice and action drew us together. There were teenagers, young professionals, and mothers with babies. We were there for a training to get out the vote in […]Continue Reading →
Many of the moms in my community feel like there is not much they can contribute in this foreign land that they now call home. As undocumented immigrants, they are ineligible to get a driver’s license or a job. As Spanish speakers with limited English and in many cases only an elementary level of […]Continue Reading →
