Immigration

Immigration
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
March 25th 2012.

I’m not one for reality television.

I was actually pretty horrified when Survivor debuted 13 years ago. It seemed to bring out and display only the very characteristics that I disliked in people, and then glorified and rewarded them.

Perhaps it’s because I’m the victim of my progressive education as a child. In my brand new elementary school, where coincidentally my own Dad had poured the concrete for the floors, we played cooperative, not competitive games largely. Sure, there was dodge ball, but it was mostly games like the one where there’s a giant parachute in the gym and a lot of balls get thrown into it, and the object is to keep the balls bouncing in there for as long as possible.

Maybe Survivor, the Bachelor, Bridzillas are just at odds with my undergirding theology of Hope. My belief that people are basically good, looking to do good in the world.

Even though I love to sing, I don’t even watch American Idol or The Voice.

But one show that is based in reality hooked me from it’s first episode. Actually, there are two shows. The first is RuPaul’s Drag Race, but that’s not the one I really want to talk about.

Do you all remember the tv show Friends? Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe (and sometimes her twin sister Ursula.) Like many women who have played dumb blonds on screen, both silver and lcd, Ms. Kudrow is a lot smarter than the women she played.

Lisa Kudrow is one of the executive producers of a show called “Who Do You Think You Are?” Now in it’s third season and I have not missed a single episode.

In this show, celebrities discovered the story of their family history, aided by history nerds and genealogists. What could be more fun than that? There’s no voting off. There’s no “quick challenges.”

There’s a lot of “I didn’t know that!” and “I can’t imagine that!” And also there is a strong sense that each person gets, about their own place in our American history.

Our American story is sort of messy. A lot of people have been exploited and many continue to be exploited to the benefit of few.

One of my favorite moments in each episode of Who Do You Think You Are, is when celebrities reach deep into their family’s story, and find out how they came to this country.

Not-so surprisingly, almost none of their ancestors came to this country because they were wealthy, well-positioned and welcomed in their own land. And obviously in the case of almost all Afro-Americans, the story is quite violent. Sadly, most African Americans looking into the past of their family run into a wall about 1860, because slaves were never listed in census records by name. The most you’d get is “Male, aged 12.” There are exceptions, of course. One celebrity, Blaire Underwood found out that his people were free blacks going back to a woman named Amy Ombles, born about 1760. It was very moving to watch Mr. Underwood learn that there had been free black people in this country prior to the Emancipation.

I keep hoping that Who Do You Think You Are? will start alternating a celebrity and a regular person, because I think it would be awesome for people to begin to see that this story of immigration is, in a very real way, our story.

Every person in this sanctuary owes their existence to someone who left where they came from to seek a better life. Even in the case, the difficult to talk about case, of African Americans, this is true. According to a study from University of Pennsylvania and Cornell:

A median proportion of European ancestry in African-Americans of 18.5 percent, with large variation among individuals. The predominately African origin of X chromosomes of African-Americans. This is consistent with the pattern of gene flow where mothers were mostly of African ancestry while fathers were either of African or European ancestry.

Said another way, the most frequently “hit” percentage of European genes among our African American friends and neighbors is 1/5th white, mostly along the men of their families.

Which means that even, like all of us, the history of our family can be a difficult truth for African Americans to deal with.

Some of our ancestors came to this continent 14,000 years ago, some of us came within our own lifetime.

Like death, it seems that migration, is a universal truth.


My own family has been in this country for less than 100 years. My Polish ancestors arrived here after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Poland has had, at times, very fluid borders, so we’re not sure if we’re actually Russian or Polish by border, but my Busha spoke Polish. My grandparents immigrated through Ellis Island as young people, and met and married in Hamtramack, an island city inside Detroit. (Meaning it’s completely surrounded by Detroit.) There my grandfather changed our last name from Wisniewski to Cherry.

My maternal family came from Mexico. My Great-grandfather was Jose Molina Cortez, for whom I was named. According to his journals, he walked from the jungles of Chihauhua to Mexico City and then into Texas. There he met my Great Grandmother, Celia Castanada. I was blessedly lucky enough to know and love both of my Great Grandparents before they died. Eventually, the family moved to Pittsburg and Detroit.

Which is of course where my parents met and married.

So there, you have the very short version of my family’s immigration to this country.

What is your own story of immigration? I hope that you will share it with others during our social hour.


In 2009 I had an experience that really opened my eyes to what the life of an immigrant might be.

In 2004 I’d had an 8-day vacation abroad, for the first time. My Mom and I went to Germany to celebrate my bachelor’s degree. Mom used all of her sky-miles to get us there, and while we were there we lived very frugally, which made the whole thing possible. But it was an amazing time. But it was only eight days, and nothing much of note happened. It was a touristy dream. Even though we were abroad, it was a country in which I spoke the language passably, and also many, many Germans were happy to practice their English with me and us.

When I went to England for the summer of 2009, it was a slightly different story. It wasn’t just 8 days, with the relative security of my Mom with me. Even if, when we were in Germany, she didn’t speak their language and I had to serve as translator, having the tether of my Mom with me meant something.

In the UK I was alone. I had no family. Even though I had become used to living 400 miles from my family while I lived in Chicago for 15 years, this was very different.

And I wasn’t completely alone. I had gone to serve a church there for the summer, and like Unitarians around the globe, these were my people.

Shortly after my arrival, I was at a café on the High Street in town and someone stole my backpack. The owner of the café was outraged. Her face burned with shame that someone would steal a backpack from within her café, and from someone who was a visitor to her village. She told me that I should call the police and make a report.

And then it occurred to me: I didn’t know how to call the police.

Even in that relatively secure moment in time, where I spoke the language, where I had the telephone number of my supervisor, my host and the president of the congregation programmed into my phone, my heart dropped.

I didn’t even know how to call the police.

When I landed in Manchester, the airport signs said “Welcome to Manchester!” They didn’t say “Welcome to Manchester, and if you need to contact the police, fire or ambulance, dial 999!”

It was in this moment of almost complete security that my heart began feel responsible for helping the immigrants and visitors to my own country in a very real way.

What, I asked myself, would I do if I were back in The States, where I didn’t speak the language, what would I have done? Where my very inability to speak the language clearly and well, could well be met with out-right hostility? What would I have done if my skin were darker, would I help have been offered so readily and sincerely?

It’s moments like that one that stick with you for the rest of your life.


While I did my internship in Vancouver, British Columbia, I spent 11 months living as an immigrant. Again, though, I spoke the language, and my light skin opened almost every door. I could not vote, and I felt that I really had no business commenting on politics. It would’ve taken me 6 months of my one-year stay to get a Canadian credit card, and it took me 3 months to be eligible for their universal health care. There were whole sections of public life that I did not engage in, because I was trying to be a good guest.

And everywhere I went, I had to carry my passport with me. Stapled into my passport was my Guest Worker Visa, allowing me to be there legally.

And I thought, what must it be to be in a country where you’re “illegal”?


Our country is far from a perfect place. Ask just about any of its citizens, and they’ll tell you just how far off from perfect they think we are. Depending on where any citizen stands, there are too many laws about guns, or not enough laws about guns. Too many gay rights, not enough gay rights. Nationalized health care takes away our freedom of choice, or saves us all.

And even though we can be a violent, over-bearing nation, still immigrants flock to our borders, hoping to be allowed in to start a new life.

According to the Office of Immigration Statistics in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, from 1820 to 2010 there have been a whopping 76 million, 399 thousand, 300 and 47 persons who have sought or are seeking legal permanent status here . One or two of them are even with us, among our own little beloved community.

I was unable to find a reliable accounting of the number of African slaves brought here, and no “reliable” number exists of the people who lived here before the Europeans came.

But these seekers of legal status, children aside, most of the 76 million plus of them came here by choice.

And today there are thousands each year who try to reach our shores. They come by boat, by raft, in trucks through the deserts… Some seeking “legal” status, almost all seeking a better life.

What we have here is a better life, obviously. Else why would so many people risk their life’s savings, discovery, dirty dealings and their very lives to come here?



What would it take for you to give some one you don’t know, some one you only know of because they deal in illegal human trafficking, and give him all your money, and then sit in a dark, windowless truck trailer, through the desert?

What would it take for you to do that?

For you to do that to your children?



I have my own personal views about this topic of immigration, and I don’t think that the pulpit is the place for me to talk about them. I feel like one of the minister’s jobs in our faith is to raise awareness, to provide a way for our congregations to consider questions in new ways, and then to step back and let our people, our people, do the work they feel called to do. To answer the calls they feel called to answer.


Here is my question to you: What are you called to do for and with these people who are willing to risk everything they have in order to go to a place that doesn’t want them, where they don’t speak the language well—if at all, knowing their job prospects will be limited to the most menial of tasks?

What might you be called to do to help?