My family knows our great grandfather, John Joseph Dwyer, immigrated here from Limerick, Ireland, in 1840, but only because of his release papers in 1865 from a Union prison on Johnson’s Island, Ohio.
As a teenager, Dwyer had escaped the famine in Ireland, entered this country without papers, and joined Irish laborers laying track for what would become the Illinois-Central Railroad, leaving it in Memphis and joining the Confederate Army at Frayser Station.
He was engaged in battles at Shiloh, Tennessee, and Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, where he and his platoon were captured by Union Forces to spend the remainder of the war in prison.
Emma Lazarus, in her poem The New Colossus, enshrined at the Statue of Liberty, would include persons like him in the “wretched refuse” who came to our shores.
Today, but for his white skin, Dwyer would be rounded up without due process as an illegal alien and shipped to a prison here or in another country.
Our Tennessee representatives and senators who voted for the recent “Big, Beautiful Bill” — which gives large appropriations to deportations and small appropriations to food stamps and health care for the poor — must be attending churches and synagogues that omit the Hebrew Scriptures’ attention to the alien and the Christian Scriptures’ attention to the “least of My brethren”.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalm 146 ends with “The Lord protects strangers.” Exodus 23:9 states, “You shall not oppress an alien: you know well how it feels to be an alien, since you once were aliens yourselves in Egypt.” Leviticus 19: 33-34 says, “When an alien resides with you in your land, do not molest him. You shall treat the alien who lives with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
In the Christian Scriptures, in Mark 12:31, Jesus clearly states, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 7:12 gives the proverbial Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” Matthew 25:40, says, “As you did it for the least of my brothers you did it for Me.”
The sleep of some of our state’s senators and Congress members must be undisturbed by the enormous suffering of the men, women, and children being rounded up and sent to local and off-shore jails and prisons.
They must be undisturbed by the men, women and children in Shelby County who attend church, and afterwards are arrested in the parking lots of those churches.
They must be undisturbed by the numbers of children staying home from school for fear of returning home to find their parents have been taken away.
This is happening daily in Shelby County.
Emma Lazarus’ poem, which includes “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” should be removed from the base of the Statue of Liberty. It is no longer in effect.
According to the results of the last presidential election, a majority of American voters support the monstrous injustices being inflicted on immigrants.
They support the forced removal of men and women in Tennessee who have built our houses and buildings, cared for our landscapes, harvested our crops, cared for our elderly and sick, cleaned our homes and buildings, and prepared our food.
They support service of self over service of neighbor.
As a student Brother in 1965, my Brother Director Lawrence Leonard told our community in a Sunday morning conference, “If your brother is not your first concern, you are living a lie.”
Our country is living a lie. Pray to God that someday we deport that lie and return to loving our neighbor.
