On Nov. 12, 2009, Greg Wagland stood vigil near a pile of trash in the Sonoran Desert, one of the largest and hottest deserts in North America. He was one of almost a dozen participants in a 2009 mission trip who stopped for a moment of silence beside the piles of discarded backpacks and clothing, the forlorn remains of Mexican peoples’ journeys toward the U.S. border.
“Migrants dump things as they approach the border so they look less like they’ve spent days in the desert,” he explained to staff at national offices during a December presentation. He called it “holy trash” because it represented “people leaving behind memories to embark on a new life.”
Wagland, of Glenview, Toronto, was one of five Presbyterian delegates on a nine-day study tour that exposed participants to the plight of refugees in Canada through a visit to Action Réfugiés Montreal, and then to the journey of Mexican migrants through a tour led by Border Links, a bi-national non-profit organization. The group spent five days in various towns along the Mexico-Arizona border learning about the work of churches and organizations that are providing assistance to those who seek to migrate to the United States, or who have been deported back to Mexico. The tour ran Nov. 6 to 14, 2009.
There were about 11.6 million Mexican immigrants in the U.S. in 2006, making them the largest single immigrant group in the country, accounting for 30.7 per cent of all immigrants. According to the Office of Immigration Statistics, about 6.6 million were in the country illegally.
During the trip, the delegation met with former E. H. Johnson award-winner Rev. John Fife, a retired PC(USA) minister who co-founded No More Deaths, a migrant rights group that provides food, water and medical aid to undocumented or deported immigrants. They also visited Café Justo (“Just Coffee”), a coffee co-operative created by PC(USA) minister and author Rev. Mark Adams to help local farmers profit from their Mexico farms, thereby addressing one of the root causes of labour migration — an inability to make a living in one’s home country.
But Wagland said the group was especially inspired by Jose Ramirez, a man who plans to teach trade skills to Mexicans to encourage them to stay in Mexico. The delegation “had mixed reactions” as they left DouglaPrieta Works, Ramirez’s shabby teaching centre. “Some of us said, ‘He had great idealism, but all he has is a shack and some sewing machines.’ But one of the delegates crackled to himself and said, ‘Don’t you get it? He’s a crazy person with 12 followers! Doesn’t that remind you of someone?’ We all came out of that thinking, let’s not count Jose out just yet.”
The trip taught Wagland that migration issues are always more complex than they seem. “All of those interests and viewpoints crystallized for me,” he told the staff. “You can’t see any borders from space. It’s just land; it’s just earth. I think I’m getting closer to seeing the world the way God sees the world — full of people who are equal who may be struggling against each other.” — with files from the Migration Policy Institute
