‘We Live Here Together’: Immigration Matters

Our small town festival, which happened last week, is one of Newberg’s best traditions, an opportunity to remember that we live here together: and that our neighbors need not be our enemies. Held every summer in the final weekend of July, the Old Fashioned Festival includes a parade, fireworks, a carnival, musical performances, and a craft fair. 

This year, for me, Newberg’s festival also included a rebuke of the troubling anti-immigrant sentiment that is poisoning many communities, including my own. We’ve all seen the news: Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) continues to kidnap people from city streets, including U.S. citizens and others here legally; and our federal government funnels money to concentration camps to imprison those ICE has captured; and some of our neighbors cheer the cruel policies that disproportionately impact brown and black people in the U.S., including taking pictures at “Alligator Alcatraz” and selling merch to celebrate cruelty. 

And still, Newberg’s small-town festival celebrated our community’s diversity, and the important role that immigrants play in making the town “a great place to grow”–our town’s motto. I’m not sure that was the intent of festival planners, but I’m grateful for the reminder that Newberg’s rich culture includes the immigrants who are important contributors to our economy and our community. 

The usual suspects marched in Saturday’s parade: folks on tractors, princesses in convertibles, people promoting their businesses and organizations. Lots and lots of candy was thrown and retrieved (and since I had a grandson nearby, I was a happy recipient of candy as well). 

We Live Together In a Diverse Community

What stood out to me, though, were the many parade entries from our Latino neighbors: mariachi bands, caballos bailadores, girls in ranchera dances. Several Mexican restaurants in town built floats that depicted backyard parties, a reminder that hamburgers are not the only–or the best–food served at an American BBQ. 

As I watched my Newberg neighbors smiling and cheering the parade passing by, I thought about the anti-immigrant rhetoric that often unfolds on our community social media pages, where trolls cheer the ICE presence in town. I thought about Moises Sotelo, a community leader who’d lived in the United States for over thirty years. In June, he was detained by ICE in front of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, and accused of a criminal history–although  Oregon media could not find any criminal records, and his family denies this accusation. Sotelo has since been deported, his family and friends devastated by his disappearance. (The New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof, who has a farm in nearby Yamhill, wrote that Sotelo indeed had a DUI arrest in 1994, but that “one offense decades ago should not define his life.”)

I thought of the many agriculture workers who fuel Newberg’s economy: the ones who tend the vineyards, and have helped make the Newberg area a top tourist destination for its winery and fine dining.  I thought about the folks who pick our crops, and provide food for our tables. 

And I wondered: How can our community’s largest industries–tourism and agriculture–thrive without immigrants?

More importantly, though: I wonder how our communities can thrive if we insist that some members are “illegal” and “aliens,” not worthy of basic human rights. Especially for a town like Newberg, at one time considered the “most churched” city in Oregon, the idea that some folks deserve exile makes no sense whatsoever, and suggests that having a lot of churches does not make a Christian community, nor one where anyone–let alone everyone–can truly thrive.

We Live Together in a Community Built By Immigrants

In Newberg, I’m grateful that some community leaders are advocating for immigrants both because they fuel our economy, but also because immigrants are humans, and thus deserve basic human rights no matter what documents they hold. 

This includes city councilwoman Elise Yarnell Hollaman, who is leading the charge for immigration reform in our community.  “Immigrants make our community,” Elise says. “We need immigration reform now, and need to move forward, and get things done.”

“How do we want to treat people?” she asks, and then answers her own question: with decency and dignity. Elise bases her vision for immigration on her Christian faith, fostered during her time at Eastern University and studying with the evangelical leader Tony Campolo, who advocated for biblically-based social justice and the idea that every person was created in God’s image, including immigrants.

Elise is also part of a billboard campaign put on by the Livability Oregon PAC, one that serves to remind us that immigrants play an important role in making our communities viable. The first billboard has been set with the message that “We Live Here Together: Losing Immigrants Hurts Us All,” a message that will hopefully resonate throughout Oregon–and beyond.

The Old Fashioned Festival was also a good reminder that we live here together, and that our town is at its best when we embrace our diversity and the many cultures that make up our community.  

The festival’s theme for this year was Family Reunion, which seemed especially fitting. We are family, after all, and sending folks away who have built a home here–or cheering their departure through the cruelty of ICE–only hurts us all.