Comments on: Deporting “Undesirables”

By: Gaikotsujin

Gaikotsujin — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:23:52 +0000

My wife is an immigrant from South America. When we got married and she requested a change in her immigration status from a student visa she was sent a deportation order dated 6 months or so in the future. After her papers were processed making her a legal resident, I’m not sure the deportation order was ever recended. We have friends who are illegal immigrants and some are members of the LDS church. We treat them as friends although we feel they should take actions to square themselves with the law. We have seen people mistreated because of their illegal status and we have seen those who take advantage in spite of their illegal status. I feel the Church is trying to remind us as individuals to be loving and the uphold and sustain the law without telling us how to vote.

By: Marie

Marie — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:48:44 +0000

Ardis,

This was an interesting post! My husband served in South Africa. I will have to show this post to him.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:26:37 +0000

Gotta love the 9th Circuit. If you’re an alien who’s likely to end up in removal proceedings, you better hope you live in California or Washington or Oregon (or Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho or Montana).

And, if you live in the 5th or the 11th Circuit (the Old South, generally), may God have mercy on your soul.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:37:48 +0000

When I served as bishop, I was involved in a situation where an unscrupulous immigration law attorney who has since been disbarred took a large sum of money from some ward members and then missed their court date. The family was from Romania, seeking political asylum from the new government that had come into power following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. As a result the family was under an order of “Voluntary Deportation” which only meant that they could leave voluntarily before a certain date, at which point “voluntary” took on a somewhat different definition.

They finally got an appeal going with a new attorney. I went to the appeal hearing, which turned out to be extremely interesting. All three federal judges took the INS attorney to task, interrupting her opening statement with questions, and finally issuing an ultimatum to the INS to find some way of accommodating this family or face the prospect of the appeals court issuing a ruling that would set an uncomfortable precedent for future INS cases in the 9th Circuit throughout its reach. As one justice put it “Why can’t the INS see its way to just do the right thing for this family rather than blindly pursuing a course of action in direct disregard of the family’s welfare?”

The INS and the family’s attorney were able to work out an agreement that allowed them to stay, and the order of Voluntary Deportation was lifted.

It was nice to see justice served and a court that truly was willing to look at the family instead of the law.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:21:14 +0000

J., the grammar of the reports I’m using, as well as the lag time for getting the word and any funds to and from South Africa, makes me reasonably certain that in this case, at least, the attorney was hired by the local mission. I can’t know whether there might have been reimbursement (I really doubt it), but the funds had to have come initially from people on the spot in South Africa.

By: Howard

Howard — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:05:23 +0000

Interesting post thanks. It’s kind of humorous to see a literacy test for white people although I’m sure the Elders didn’t think so. In 1852 Brigham Young called 106 men to go on missions throughout the world three were assigned to South Africa. In 1972 the Book of Mormon published in Afrikaans. In 1978 the Priesthood ban was lifted. Then African missions congregated near South Africa and the west coast largely ignoring central Africa until the mid 1990′s. Today half of rural Africa lacks clean water and two thirds lack sanitation a rare situation in the world. What could be taking so long?

By: Cliff

Cliff — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:33:54 +0000

Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Emma Lazurus, 1883

But not if they are illiterate or mormon missionaries, apparently. This whole US immigration issue is a gordian knot of bureaucratic mismanagement. I am grateful that the Church has taken the time to carefully instruct the members on how to appropriately deal with our illegal ‘brothers and sisters’ as individuals.

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:27:21 +0000

Ardis, do you happen to know if it was the mission that hired the attorney? I’m still sort of hazy on how this era of mission work functioned financially.

By: ji

ji — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:19:56 +0000

While there was some hysteria in the old days, there was also some sincerity. Some honest people did honestly feel that polygamy was one of the twin pillars of barbarism. It wasn’t all over-hyped and unreasonable anti-Mormon hysteria. As a Latter-day Saint today, I tend to see the actions of the South African officials a hundred years ago as reasonable based on the information available to them. Still, Satan delighted and still does delight in working against the work of the Lord.

By: Clark

Clark — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:56:09 +0000

I assume that the elders received a change in the field of labor, as opposed to going back to Utah? Missionaries being denied entry to a country is still extremely common. Brazil and Switzerland come to mind as recent examples, but the list just in the last 20 years probably runs to the dozens. Ghana is a great recent (1989) example. The reason given was that the Church was seeking the overthrow of the nations sovreignty and disturbing the public order. Those charges make no more sense that the harem-stocking accusations of 100 years ago.