JON KRIEG is a senior administrative associate of the American Friends Service Committee, Des Moines. Contact: JKrieg@afsc.org
If you're old enough, think back 22 years ago. If my memory serves, I was in Brethren Volunteer Service in Washington, D.C., where I'd often ride my bike to Ethiopian restaurants. Where were you? What were you doing?Michael Madit doesn't have any trouble remembering 1987. Then 7, Michael left his family and fled the violence of his homeland in Sudan for Kenya, eventually ending up in Iowa. It was the last time he'd seen his mother. Five weeks ago, at the airport in Des Moines, Michael saw her once again.
The Iowa office of the American Friends Service Committee has been aiding Michael's lengthy efforts to reunite with his mother. A seemingly endless list of immigration obstacles - including multi-country DNA testing - delayed the process for years.Finally, on June 1, Michael and his wife, Elizabeth, their three children, Reech, Mayen and Abuk, and a host of other Sudanese-Iowans waited patiently for the very last person to get off a plane from Houston (via Dubai and Uganda). After years of letters, phone calls and red tape, Michael and his mother, also named Abuk, were finally reunited. A grandmother embraced her daughter-in-law and her three grandchildren for the first time.
During a recent visit with the Madits, Grandma Abuk show
ed us the Bible she brought with her from home. She shared family pictures and told us how good it was to be here. Grandkids scrambled across her lap, eager to have their picture taken. Elizabeth recalled that people asked her what surprise she'd have in store for her mother-in-law. Elizabeth's response? "Me!"Jody Mashek, who currently directs American Friends Service Committee's legal services effort, is quick to credit her predecessor, Ann Naffier, for the bulk of the legal assistance work needed to reunite the Madit family. But some version of the Madits' story is played out every day in the lobby of the committee's home, Friends House, at 42nd and Grand in Des Moines.
Each year, American Friends Service Committee's Iowa office helps more than 1,000 immigrants and refugees from dozens of countries. Many people are escaping dire poverty - as my grandparents did when they emigrated from Sweden 100 years ago. Others are lucky to be alive and, like Michael, are eager to reunite the family they still have left. Nine of Michael's 12 siblings are no longer alive.It's easy to lose our moral balance in this nation's debate over immigration reform. Shrill voices scream about legality and economics. Politicians and the blogosphere can be quick to judge and stereotype, but slow to understand. Bureaucrats push paper, but not reform.
Standing in the Madits' living room on a warm June day in Iowa, the questions seem more basic. Don't all people have a right to live? Shouldn't all families be allowed to be together? The details may be complicated, but the truth is as simple as a child in her grandma's lap. It's an image not hard to remember.
published July 11, 2009 http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090711/OPINION01/907110314/1035/archive
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
AFSC Guest Column in Des Moines Register: Reunited family is a blessing of immigration
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Play in Fort Collins and Boulder this week
FORT COLLINS:NOW
Remembering Edgar Chocoy
Play serves as a reminder of the sometimes fatal flaws in the U.S. immigration
By Greg Campbell
gcampbell@fortcollinsnow.com
1:05 a.m. MT Mar 27, 2008
Four years ago this Thursday, a 16-year-old boy was gunned down in the streets of Villanueva, Guatemala, by members of a notoriously violent gang from which he tried heroically to free himself. The regularity with which such murders occurred in places like Villanueva made the death of Edgar Chocoy at the tattooed hands of Mara Salvatrucha wholly unremarkable. But the circumstances of his being on the streets in the first place made those gunshots echo around the world.
They will be heard in Fort Collins as a play based on Edgar’s struggle to save his own life comes to the Lory Student Center at Colorado State University. It’s a documentary look at how a troubled boy who was trying desperately to change his life was sentenced to death by a flawed U.S. immigration system.
Chocoy’s story begins and ends in the slums of Guatemala, but his fate was sealed in a Denver courtroom. His Fort Collins lawyer, who hasn’t yet seen the play, said knowing his story will be told on stage brings back a flood of emotions, including anger and sadness. But there’s also hope and opportunity.
“There was a lesson to learn in Edgar’s death and we haven’t learned it,” said immigration attorney Kim Baker Medina. “I’m very glad that they did the play because we shouldn’t forget about Edgar Chocoy as a person and for what he represents. The system failed him terribly, and we need to learn about why that happened and we need to work to see that it doesn’t continue to happen.”
READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE
STORY IN THE DENVER POST
ORIGINAL STORY FROM 2004
DETAILS
Du Novo, Part 1: Lil’ Silent will be performed in
Fort Collins
Date: Monday, March 31
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Lory Student Center as part of CSU’s week-long celebration of Cesar Chavez.
Spanish translation will be available on a limited basis.
A second performance will be held:
Boulder
Date: Wednesday, April 2
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: the University of Colorado Law School in the Wolf Law Building’s Wittemyer Courtroom.
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