If you walk down Church Street, Burlington’s downtown retail/pedestrian mall, you can see scribed in stone, the names of cities and towns around the world with which Burlington has a relationship. Some are “sister cities,” including Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
It’s nice to walk down Church Street on a summer evening with the vending carts out, with Old Navy on the left and Banana Republic on the right and the names of all those cities underfoot. It can give a person a squishy “one world, one people” kind of feeling, as long as the Nicaraguans stay where they are.
On the first of May, some Burlingtonians marched and rallied on behalf of the rights of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., as did people in cities across the country. Burlington’s newly-elected Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss addressed the rally, saying perhaps we should consider declaring ourselves a “sanctuary city.”
It makes sense that Burlington become a sanctuary city. We are a refugee resettlement community with folks from all over the world beginning new lives here and hey, what about those feel-good paving stones on Church Street?
Some people don’t see it that way. The days after, some media outlets and city councilors were predicting, in harsh tones, that making Burlington a sanctuary city would result in our community being overrun with freeloading illegals, sucking city coffers dry with demands for services.
Does Burlington have to become a sanctuary city? Don’t we do enough already with the sister city program and the resettled refugees? It is necessary to do more?
Being a sanctuary isn’t about doing more; in many ways, it’s about doing less. Making one’s city a sanctuary means civil servants don’t go out of their way to find illegals; if someone runs a red light, she or he is ticketed for a traffic infraction and not given a citizenship shakedown. If someone is a victim of crime, that person should not be afraid that calling police for protection will result in deportation. Being a sanctuary city means not targeting people based on how they look or speak. You’d think we’d have learned that lesson from hosting refugee families, but alas…
Undocumented immigrants are not a drain on government services; study after study shows they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Nor will making Burlington a sanctuary city result in hordes of immigrants arriving. After all, New York, Chicago, Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Diego, California are all sanctuary cities.
Several weeks ago, the University of Vermont asked Mexican writer Gustavo Esteva, to speak at commencement. He chose to speak about hospitality. He said: “If fear, weakness, and hate packed in a set of beliefs are the breeding grounds for terrorism, we need their opposite. Through our hope, strength, and love, we can create the soil for growing neighborliness.
How to be good neighbors? How do we extend hospitality? How do we embrace the other?
The time is ripe for recovering good sense, common sense. And what does it mean to say we need to recover common sense? Looking at its root meaning, we discover that common sense literally means the sense one has in community.”
Maybe some people don’t like foreigners in their community. Maybe they don’t like to hear languages other than English spoken on the streets of their hometown. What about them?
It’s true, welcoming refugees and undocumented immigrants will take some people beyond their comfort zones. There are times when good citizenship requires discomfort. I don’t have a good feeling when I write the check that pays my taxes (federal taxes, particularly), but I do it willingly, because I recognize that I am contributing to the common good (local taxes, particularly).
Declaring our intention not to take extraordinary measures harass people who are earning money to send home to their families is a small deed. It may be a good investment. In times as economically and politically perilous as those ahead, it doesn’t take a leap of imagination to think we may need someone to step outside her or his comfort zone for us.
The Sacred City
If you walk down Church Street, Burlington’s downtown retail/pedestrian mall, you can see scribed in stone, the names of cities and towns around the world with which Burlington has a relationship. Some are “sister cities,” including Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
It’s nice to walk down Church Street on a summer evening with the vending carts out, with Old Navy on the left and Banana Republic on the right and the names of all those cities underfoot. It can give a person a squishy “one world, one people” kind of feeling, as long as the Nicaraguans stay where they are.
On the first of May, some Burlingtonians marched and rallied on behalf of the rights of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., as did people in cities across the country. Burlington’s newly-elected Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss addressed the rally, saying perhaps we should consider declaring ourselves a “sanctuary city.”
It makes sense that Burlington become a sanctuary city. We are a refugee resettlement community with folks from all over the world beginning new lives here and hey, what about those feel-good paving stones on Church Street?
Some people don’t see it that way. The days after, some media outlets and city councilors were predicting, in harsh tones, that making Burlington a sanctuary city would result in our community being overrun with freeloading illegals, sucking city coffers dry with demands for services.
Does Burlington have to become a sanctuary city? Don’t we do enough already with the sister city program and the resettled refugees? It is necessary to do more?
Being a sanctuary isn’t about doing more; in many ways, it’s about doing less. Making one’s city a sanctuary means civil servants don’t go out of their way to find illegals; if someone runs a red light, she or he is ticketed for a traffic infraction and not given a citizenship shakedown. If someone is a victim of crime, that person should not be afraid that calling police for protection will result in deportation. Being a sanctuary city means not targeting people based on how they look or speak. You’d think we’d have learned that lesson from hosting refugee families, but alas…
Undocumented immigrants are not a drain on government services; study after study shows they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Nor will making Burlington a sanctuary city result in hordes of immigrants arriving. After all, New York, Chicago, Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Diego, California are all sanctuary cities.
Several weeks ago, the University of Vermont asked Mexican writer Gustavo Esteva, to speak at commencement. He chose to speak about hospitality. He said: “If fear, weakness, and hate packed in a set of beliefs are the breeding grounds for terrorism, we need their opposite. Through our hope, strength, and love, we can create the soil for growing neighborliness.
How to be good neighbors? How do we extend hospitality? How do we embrace the other?
The time is ripe for recovering good sense, common sense. And what does it mean to say we need to recover common sense? Looking at its root meaning, we discover that common sense literally means the sense one has in community.”
Maybe some people don’t like foreigners in their community. Maybe they don’t like to hear languages other than English spoken on the streets of their hometown. What about them?
It’s true, welcoming refugees and undocumented immigrants will take some people beyond their comfort zones. There are times when good citizenship requires discomfort. I don’t have a good feeling when I write the check that pays my taxes (federal taxes, particularly), but I do it willingly, because I recognize that I am contributing to the common good (local taxes, particularly).
Declaring our intention not to take extraordinary measures harass people who are earning money to send home to their families is a small deed. It may be a good investment. In times as economically and politically perilous as those ahead, it doesn’t take a leap of imagination to think we may need someone to step outside her or his comfort zone for us.
© Mark Floegel, 2006