Immigrants and Religious Organizations

Immigrants often come from sending countries where their religion has a very important place in their lives. When they arrive in their host countries, they often find a different situation. If the Roman Catholic Church was their home church, the style of worship and the form of church community may differ a great deal from what they experienced in their home country. In a situation of a Latino/a immigrant coming to the US, there are a wide variety of churches and other religious organizations that would offer a different religious experience from that in their home country. In the instance of Brazilian immigrants of Japanese ancestry going back to Japan, they will find very little evidence of Christianity, few church buildlings, and a liturgy offered in their native language very infrequently.

Because governments, in both the US and other advanced industrial countries like Japan, fail to deal adequately with the social, educational, or acculturation problems of immigrants, religious organizations often fill this void. The offer social assistance, language classes, help locating work, and often offer a locale where immigrants can celebrate the holidays of their home countries with fellow immigrants or immigrants who have become permanent residents. In my home town of Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services offers these sorts of much needed services. A number of other religious and non-religious social justice agencies are working in the city.

Since immigrants, particularly in times of economic upheaval in receiving countries like the US, are often discriminated against, treated poorly, and are often the scapegoats for problems that are actually the result of the malfunctioning of the economic system in the receiving country, religious organizations often are key groups in standing up for the rights of immigrants in society. With the enactment of the draconian immigrantion enforcement law in Arizona, many religious groups loudly declaimed that statute. Some include the Roman Catholic cardinal of Los Angeles, Latino clergy groups in Arizona, as well as Arizona Unitarian Universalists and other progressive religious groups. All of these churches and religious groups meet an important need in bringing a religious voice and the imperatives of social justice into the arena of political debate surrounding immigrant and immigration reform. So much of this debate has been highly emotional, nationalistic and one-side. The voices of religious leaders and congregations, who do not need to fear deportation if they speak our loudly and forcefully, give a much needed balance to what is often a hateful, ahistorical, and one-sided debate.