Posted on 03/23/2002 5:46:22 AM PST by yoe
The Tucson-born and now historic Sanctuary Movement that in the 1980s provided a haven for Central American refugees continues to influence immigration policy, but its causes have not been won.
"The Sanctuary Movement is over. We're finding new ways and forms to deal with the current crises,'' said the Rev. John Fife, pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church, 317 W. 23rd St., who co-founded the movement and has three criminal convictions for alien smuggling.
"There are human rights violations occurring all along this border. And certainly violations of refugee rights."
Sunday marks 20 years since members of the movement first went public on the steps of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson.
They selected the date of their public announcement to coincide with the second anniversary of the assassination of El Salvador Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor.
Bringing refugees across the border illegally was not popular with everyone. Dan Reno, who prosecuted Sanctuary workers, to this day refers to them as felons whose actions were politically motivated. Indeed, a federal court upheld criminal convictions when the workers filed an appeal. And workers during the 1980s regularly received hate mail and threats from people who disagreed with their actions.
Yet others look at the workers as champions of human rights who continue to inspire grassroots groups to expose conditions in war-torn countries and to advocate for better conditions at the United States' borders.
"We see so many similarities in our time. If you look at Colombia we see very similar conditions existed in El Salvador 20 years ago. Just last week an archbishop in Colombia who spoke out for the poor was murdered,'' said Georgia Vancza, an organizer of this weekend's Sanctuary Anniversary Celebration, referring to the killing of Archbishop Isaias Duarte in Cali last week.
Vancza also is a convener of the Asylum Program of Southern Arizona, which provides free legal services to asylum seekers. The Asylum Program is one of the Sanctuary Movement's legacies.
On March 24, 1982, the Sanctuary Movement's leaders declared to all who would listen that they were illegally bringing into the United States Central Americans who were facing persecution and death squads in their countries. They also increased public awareness that the U.S. government was backing the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala - the countries the refugees were fleeing.
Many did listen. The movement quickly became national with 330 churches across the country, including 13 in Tucson, eventually joining in. It won media attention from Time, Newsweek, "60 Minutes" and The Washington Post. Some people didn't like what they heard. Southside Presbyterian Church regularly received hate mail and bomb threats.
"We didn't realize we were starting a movement. We just thought we were doing the only option we had,'' Fife said. "There's always a conflict when you are at risk for imprisonment. . . . But on the other hand, these refugees' lives were at risk and the risks we were taking were very modest in comparison to their lives."
Fife, 62, was involved with the Sanctuary Movement from beginning to end. It began in 1981 after 13 border crossers from El Salvador died near Organ Pipe National Monument.
Fife and Jim Corbett, a rancher familiar with the border area and a member of the Quaker faith, found out that thousands of Central American refugees were fleeing their countries and trying to come to the United States. They began the movement by finding housing, food and legal aid for the immigrants, only to discover that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was subsequently deporting most of them.
Fife recalled Corbett's saying the only ethical thing to do was to help the refugees get across the border illegally, so they would not face deportation. He began traveling to the border with Corbett, showing the refugees where to cross and where to get help on the other side.
"It's this thing called faith and integrity. If you are going to be pastor of a church, you should practice what you preach," he said.
The Sanctuary workers thought their work was secret until they got a message through an attorney that Fife and Corbett were at risk for indictment.
"The only option we could think of was to go public. At least then if we were indicted we'd have some base of public understanding," said Fife, whose congregation took a secret ballot and overwhelmingly approved the decision to speak out about Sanctuary.
The movement then became extremely public, with workers speaking out against what they said were criminal actions and war crimes by the U.S. government. Fife accused U.S. officials of ignoring the 1949 Geneva Convention, which says people have the duty to protect refugees when governments fail to do so.
The workers developed their own form of underground railroad, bringing the immigrants into homes in the Tucson area. Some slept on the floor at Southside Presbyterian for months at a time. Others at high risk for deportation were smuggled to Canada, which was granting Central Americans political asylum.
Both Fife and Corbett, who died last year, were among 11 Sanctuary workers indicted on federal charges of immigrant smuggling in 1985 after government officials infiltrated their meetings. Fife was of the eight who were convicted after a six-month trial.
Fife showed up to his sentencing July 1, 1986, with a toothbrush, convinced he would be going to prison. But instead he got five years probation. None of the convicted Sanctuary workers ended up serving time behind bars, although they had been prepared for the worst, Fife recalled.
Dan Reno, who prosecuted the Sanctuary workers, maintains that the convictions were justified.
"It was a politically-motivated movement that had little or nothing to do with religion,'' said Reno, now a federal prosecutor in Seattle. "It was a national protest against the Reagan administration's policy in Central America."
Reno said the case has been cited and relied on as legal precedent throughout the country.
"Your motivation for committing a criminal act, particularly in the name of religion, is not a defense," he said. "The case was a very strong precedent supporting the government's enforcement effort against alien smuggling.''
Arthur Mathieson, a 64-year-old building inspector for the city of Tucson, was on the jury panel and said he also does not have second thoughts about the convictions, although he added that convicting well-meaning defendants like Fife was "torturous."
"They were guilty of what they were charged with,'' he said. "As far as we were concerned, most of the people on the jury were very sympathetic toward them. But our hands were tied."
The movement officially ended in 1992 when dialogue began between the United States, Guatemala and El Salvador and led to peace accords.
In spite of what many former Sanctuary workers classify as a surge in anti-immigrant policy and sentiment in the 1990s, that 10-year time period of the movement continues to have influence. For example:
* Church workers in Western Europe adopted the idea to help Third World immigrants seeking refuge there.
* A civil action brought by sympathizers to the movement resulted in a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. The settlement suspended the deportation of many refugees from El Salvador and Guate-mala, granted them work permits and resulted in a series of reforms to the political asylum process.
* Faith-based communities since the Sanctuary Movement have begun pressing the federal government to demilitarize the border and crack down on hate crimes and vigilantism.
"They saved a lot of lives by hiding people as they pressured the government for changes, and eventually the changes were made," said Lynn Marcus, director of the immigration law clinic at the University of Arizona. "That is huge right there.''
* Contact Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.
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