Because of my compassion, the sun wanted to be near me all night,
and the earth deeded her fields to me, and all in heaven said,
“We have voted you our governor; tell us your divine mandate.”
And I did, and God will never revoke it:
‘Nothing in existence is turned away.’
- St. Thomas Aquinas
The biggest issue I am coming across for voters who support Trump in Indiana is immigration. At least, that is what they are telling me. When probed further, they say, “They are getting benefits we don’t get. They come over here, and the government gives them money, housing, jobs, everything. My own kids don’t get that.”
Reading St. Thomas Aquinas this morning, I am struck by the need for compassion. I get called a “bleeding heart liberal” often. I guess because my heart always goes towards the powerless. When folks talk about immigration in the abstract, it’s easy to vilify a system of inconsistencies. It can often appear some "follow the rules" while others remain in the shadows as “illegals”? We rarely ask immigrants about their individual journeys or how our inconsistent laws, changing time and time again, cause confusion, separation, exploitation, and endangerment.
Perhaps immigration has become a hot button for too many because we’re asking the wrong questions. If St. Thomas Aquinas is correct, and nothing in existence should be turned away, then the default approach to humanity should always be acceptance. But what happens when we reverse these words? “Everything in existence is denied.” That seems to match our current world a bit better, sadly.
I don’t believe people wish to harm other people. But the pain experienced by a scarcity mindset, by exploitation, by greed, is very real. What changes when we ask these questions:
“What have you been denied? Where have you been denied?”
When I did my own thought experiment on this, at first I internally responded, “I’ve not been denied. Nobody has said I’m denied.” But then I quickly rejected that arrogant thought, as noble as it may have felt. Because here is where I’ve personally been denied in my life:
- Jobs - I’ve been laid off, I’ve been rejected, I’ve been passed over, I’ve been replaced by younger workers
- Housing - I’ve had rental applications denied, mortgage financing denied, house purchase offers denied
- Healthcare - I’ve had claims denied, access denied, treatments denied
- Education - I’ve had class access denied, opportunities denied, funding denied
The truth is that I have been denied opportunity and access over and over and never even realized it. This isn’t a woe-is-me story. This is simply a matter of fact. Some denials are just a “no” in a competitive market. But when I am completely honest with myself, some denials are because we have created systems and structures to profit off the denial rather than to benefit our society.
For those who see the world as a pie that has only so many slices to go around, every denial becomes connected to a slice of pie that went to someone else. For example, I pay my health insurance premium; I need to see a doctor, my doctor recommends treatment, and my insurance company denies pre-authorization. I can certainly pay out of pocket, but I cannot afford that. So I do not get that treatment. If I am then told some immigrant population can "just go see any doctor, get any treatment, and the government pays for it", my anger can easily be directed at the immigrant for receiving the slice of pie I was expecting. It doesn’t matter if there is no immigrant receiving treatment. The mere idea that they COULD more easily receive treatment is enough to reinforce my sense of injustice.
And here’s the thing. It is an injustice. But the injustice is not the immigrant. The injustice is the for-profit health industry, which has determined that a dermatologist on staff with the insurance company can authorize a denial for a chest scan because an AI algorithm has reviewed in less than a minute my claim. Sure, my doctor can re-code and resubmit the request (and pay an entire billing staff for doing just this), but the delay may cost my health. In the meantime, I am acutely aware of any story in the press that talks about immigrants receiving medical care. I post on social media my angst, possibly even creating a GoFundMe to help with out-of-pocket expenses, and those algorithms send me even more stories. It looks like everyone is getting healthcare except me and folks who look like me. Now multiply those feelings by 1000 if I am trying to secure treatment for my child, grandchild or other loved one.
Replace this issue with housing, with education, with employment…and here we are. We are not fighting immigrants, folks. We are fighting a system that knows if it keeps us distracted by the immigrant, the poor, and the marginalized, we will be too exhausted from fighting one another to actually hold anyone accountable. That our state legislators hide behind federal policy to negate their own responsibility in these matters is even worse. Indiana does not have a border crisis unless we consider Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois dangerous foreign entities. But we do have a housing crisis, healthcare crisis, environmental crisis, and an emerging educational crisis (if our public schools get further defunded). We certainly have a quality-of-life crisis. Yes, our federal government must pass comprehensive immigration reform laws, but that is something our Republican Congress has failed to do.
In the meantime, I invite you to be curious. When you talk with someone who brings up immigration as their primary concern, ask why and then listen to understand. There are very real concerns. If we share our own stories of how our families made the US and Indiana home, if we share about the times we have felt denied opportunity, or when we have felt genuine concern around scarcity, perhaps we can connect again as human beings where “nothing in existence is turned away”.
