Health Care, Immigrants, and the Character of Our Country

With an issue like health, deeply personal, but of great public concern, the faith community has a unique and important role to play -- to define and raise the moral issues beneath the policy debate. One major moral issue that has surfaced is how we treat the immigrant in our society as we discuss and debate health-care reform.

Lawmakers have gone above and beyond to ensure that no undocumented immigrant would be covered under the proposed health-care plan, and the White House insists that people unlawfully present in the U.S. will be barred from using the proposed "exchange."

When the now-infamous representative from South Carolina shouted "You lie!" at President Obama, political fact-checkers and the media struck back with force. They have been clear to say that President Obama wasn't lying or misrepresenting the facts about undocumented immigrants in health care reform.

These adamant denials from the fact-checkers and the White House, that the proposed bill will definitely not cover the undocumented, might help its political feasibility, but they don't say much for its moral priorities.

In the faith community, we have a different ethic than political feasibility. For many years, our practice and policy has been that health care for all should mean health care for all. Yes, we believe that reform should also include immigrants, and that all within our shores at least have access to a basic safety net of services. We believe that would be a sign of strength in health-care reform, not weakness, if it included the immigrants among us. Jewish and Christian scriptures alike are more than clear about the moral mandate to take care of "the alien" and "the stranger" in your midst, to treat them as if they were your own. Why? Because at some time we all have been strangers or aliens in a new place. When politicians brag about the fact that immigrants are not included in health care reform, it is a sign that political calculation has won out over moral consideration.

We are well aware that immigration is a tricky issue and an emotionally volatile topic, and best dealt with directly. Attempts to employ the volatile politics of the immigration issue to derail meaningful progress on health care reform are unacceptable. But when outbursts from members of Congress incite a national media frenzy about what kinds of people should not benefit from meaningful health-care reform, we have a moral obligation to speak out.

Three dozen faith groups, including Sojourners, sent a letter to the White House and Congress last week. In the letter, we stated:

It is our strongly-held view that the provision of health care is a shared responsibility grounded in the sacred act of creation and our common humanity. Universal teachings within the scriptural texts of our diverse faith communities call us to welcome strangers and compassionately care for their basic human needs -- including health care.

This means, first, that legal immigrants should be eligible for subsidies that assist them in purchasing health insurance. Second, we should eliminate the five-year bar on legal immigrants being eligible for Medicaid. Third, our concern for life and children must mean the inclusion of pregnant women and children in any health-care plan, regardless of their legal status.

The president has said that our response to health care in this nation is about the character of our country. We believe that is true. Our response to the issue of immigration is also about our character as a country. Do we want to be the sort of country who prides itself in its ability to prove that no immigrant, with or without documentation, is able to secure health coverage on a public exchange or receive financial assistance to obtain coverage when times are tough? After we accomplish that, will we move on to ensure that immigrant children are denied health care at clinics? Hospitals? Emergency rooms? By marginalizing immigrants in health-care reform legislation, we create a shadow health care system to accompany the shadow society in which many immigrants are already forced to live and operate.

As Christians we are instructed to be generous, caring, and welcoming. Why would we support public policy designed to prohibit a needy person from accessing life-giving health care because of his or her immigrant status? And for us, health care reform challenges our commitments as Christians. Let's focus on good public policies, not fear-driven or divisive political games, which reflect our best moral values and the better nature of our country by including all immigrants in heath-care reform.

Jim Wallis is Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and the author of The Great Awakening.

Allison Johnson, campaign coordinator of Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, also contributed to this article. To learn more about immigration reform, visit www.faithandimmigration.org.

 

 

Follow Jim Wallis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimwallis

Comments

[govmed0222]

The issue of health care for immigrants seems to me to be a larger one than the political community versus the faith community. At the beginning of the letter you wrote to the White House and Congress, you used the term “common humanity.” Whether based in faith or not, humanity has been missing in action in the health care debate over the last couple of months. We have lost the human element, turning groups of people—such as immigrants—into labels and assessing whether group A deserves the same treatment as group B, without the slightest nod to compassion.

Stories of horrible medical care for marginalized groups in the United States are not new. The very politicians writing the health care bill have recited them in campaign speeches, and authors like Sered and Fernandopulle (Uninsured in America) have been writing for years about the health care access barriers to populations like immigrants. If President Obama stakes our nation’s character on the outcome of the health care debate, and that outcome is to pass a bill prohibiting aid to certain populations, any victorious cheers should be drowned out by the outcry from every compassionate citizen in our country. The decision by a select few that status should affect access to health care cannot be allowed to pass as the true character of our country.

[brooklynstoic]

What is being lost in this whole discussion whether it's Joe Wilson's impolite outburst or Lou Dobbs' nightly screeds is that we as a country are losing our moral edge. Just as we want to maintain the edge in innovation in all its forms, we should also want to maintain our moral edge. We can't keep throwing the immigrant community to the wolves. It's simply immoral.

-http://www.veteranslaw.com/

[nee]

We don't need to "throw them to the wolves" we need to provide safe passageway for all ILLEGAL ALIENS to go back to their own countries.

[narrowway]

According to Wallis, we Americans have a moral obligation to provide health care for everyone who cannot afford to provide for their own. My question is: Why should that moral obligation stop at the border? "The least of these" are all over the world. Is there a moral justification for limiting affordable health care only to those acutally in America? What about our moral obligation to the World?

[Normanowski]

I agree with the overall tone on here that America has lost its moral edge and is losing its edge in other ways as well. Our health as a society has lost its edge. Our life expectancy has declined in recent decades despite medical advances. Obesity is fast surpassing smoking as the leading cause of avoidable death. Our nation is full of people who are overweight and unhealthy and we have a medical, pharmaceutical, and food system that perpetuates this. Our government is full of politicians who are in bed with these corporate giants, and we are the only industrialized nation that profits from sick people. We need to learn as a collective society to avoid the cheap political trickery like that of Joe Wilson that evades the real issues. If we want real reform in the form of health care, we the American people must take some responsibility for the state of our own health, and this can start with individuals making better informed lifestyle choices that will improve their health. This would be a grass roots health movement starting from the ground up and would be true reform.

[Carl Caroli]

Our religious communities in this country have let us down. They should have been on the forefront of the fight for universal, single payer health care, let alone the public option. Compassion is a mainstay of all religions, yet unfortunately the republicans have them convinced otherwise. Religions have been used by the powerful to control the meek for thousands of years, and now it's being successfully used by the insurance companies to maintain their profits. It's very sad that our religious leaders have succumb to their tactics.

[Hiphopcrates]

Just where the hell have the clergy been? Protecting their own gold plated health insurance coverage, that's where!

[PDH5204]

Sir, what you describe is your and my own personal moral obligation. Problem here is that nothing in the works in question makes any of this a matter of legal coercion. So while you and I have the moral imperative to leave a portion of the field unharvested so as to benefit those who we today might call the "disadvanted", there is no statement that we are to set up some responsible authority and make the affair a matter of legal coercion [i.e., the moral imperative comes with no coercive enforcement mechanism whatsoever]. What does that say?

There's two reasons for no coercion. First, we are a stubborn-rebellious people [expect about as much success as Mao had with forced collectivization]. Second, what was owned was not slave as person. What was owned was the product of the labor of the slave. And so if you claim to own the product of another human's labor such that you compel disposition of the same, then what does that make you?

And render to Caesar those things that are Caesar's and to God those things that are God's. To whom is your "moral mandate" owed? And so why involve the coercive power of the earthly nation-state aka Caesar? So that we might render to Caesar? In sum, you are correct re your and my own personal obligation, but your train jumped the track when you introduced notions of you and I compelling some others to do likewise.

[nee]

ILLEGAL ALIENS could be covered because of their children who were born in US (anchor babies). Pres. Obama knows this.

All ILLEGAL ALIENS should go back to their own countries and receive health care there. We need to spend our tax dollars on our own citizens and LEGAL immigrants.

[DoubtingThomasP]

Hey, nee, here's a question for you. Suppose an undocumented resident has H1N1 and needs care but cannot receive it because of this bill. That person then goes on to infect maybe hundreds of others - - mostly legal residents. Are you ok with that outcome? I'm not. NOT covering all residents (legal or otherwise) creates all kinds of problems that hurt ALL citizens. I'll give you another hypothetical. Suppose you have another undocumented resident who delays needed medical care until it becomes an emergency. That person then heads to the E.R. where he/she will be treated by a doctor. Early intervention would have saved thousands of dollars. Who do you think is going to pick up that tab? It's the SAME system that we have right now - - an expensive, non-rational system that clearly isn't working. Your rage against ILLEGAL ALIENS (tone down the rhetoric, BTW) in denying them access to health care ends up costing YOU and all other American more money. Grow up.

[nee]

I have no "rage" against ILLEGAL ALIENS. I just want them out of our country. We need to send them back, sick or not. THEIR countries need to take care of them not OURS. And NO THANK YOU - I won't "tone down the rhetoric" .

[terramartom]

Thats why this country is not a Theocracy form of Government.
You have empty churches all over the country for the past 75 years that could house the homeless, the foreclosed, the bankrupted, the returning homeless Veterans.
But right now they are still empty.
After all these monuments to religion, the worshipping of false idols are there for the well off, and not the down and out!
But your fight instead is for people that broke the law of the USA?
Get the Pope to sell the the Vatican and give the money to the illegals?
Sell all the Trillion dollars of tax free religious assets in the country, and spread it around.
This is what Jesus would do!
But of course this does not set well with Corporate religion in America. Religion makes a boat load of tax free money for allot of very rich, fake religious con men and women.
Until you get rich Christians to open their wallets first don't ask a bankrupt middle class to pay for the undocumented in America.
But if you leave your back door open tonight you could fill your own house with these needy folks.

[H215]

I respect a lot of what you do, Rev. Wallis, but on this issue I disagree.

Number one, you blur the line between (legal) immigrants and (illegal) invaders, and I am speaking as an immigrant. This is a common tactic, and as irritating as it is disingenous.

Second, I do indeed blame the previous administration, who viewed illegal Mexicans as cheap, docile workers with conservative, traditional Catholic beliefs. What could be better?

We now have an estimated 12 million illegals, with more pouring over the border every day. If you believe in your gentle, liberal, progressive church, why would you want it overwhelmed by a hostile church? Why would you want your congregants outvoted on social issues? Are THEY looking forward to being outvoted? Why not just tell your followers to vote Republican, to vote against reproductive choice, stem-cell research or gay marriage? The effect will be the same.

It is up to the Mexican govt, ruling class and Catholic church to fix their own country, so their people are not driven out. It is not up to us to finance their underclass. We can't even fix New Orleans or Detroit.

[Jannsmoor]

Can someone please explain to me how it makes sense to deny illegal aliens the right to purchase health insurance? We obviously do not have the political will to arrest and deport the over 10 million people who are in this country illegally. Why throw them into emergency rooms for health care, at 10 times the cost to society? What am I missing? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have them buy their own health insurance?

[BizHippy2]

Now you are just showing off!

(I love it!)

[Peleador]

The reason for that is that it was going to be taxpayer subsidized health insurance unfairly competing with regular insurance. It would be like government trying to drive private restaurants out of business by making taxpayer subsidized restaurants available. Which would be stupid. The immigrant thing was mainly a side show because Republicans know that even though people are often okay with government stuff from their tax money, they're not into giving it to non tax payers or people who aren't supposed to be here. The whole thing is unconstitutional anyway. They need to fight it on that, not on whether immigrants would get any of it.

[DanBest]

"It would be like government trying to drive private restaurants out of business by making taxpayer subsidized restaurants available. "

If the only restuarant you could eat at was a McDonalds then I would probably support government run restuarant. Of course your analogy is ridiculous. Eating at a restuarant is a luxury, an option. Having healthcare is not a luxury.
You cannot give one good reason why we need a middleman in the guise of a for-profit corporation to act as trustee over our monthly insurance payments and then deny or play games with pay outs on coverage. At the same time they reward their shareholders and their bloated, absolutely useless executive staff with the money they skim from denying coverage. I guess you would call a government managed program with no profit skimming and no executive take as unfair. I would call it common sense.

[MaxBenavidez]

What we're seeing once again and have seen for so many generations is the scapegoating of immigrants, usually Mexican immigrants. What is being lost in this whole discussion whether it's Joe Wilson's impolite outburst or Lou Dobbs' nightly screeds is that we as a country are losing our moral edge. Just as we want to maintain the edge in innovation in all its forms, we should also want to maintain our moral edge. We can't keep throwing the immigrant community to the wolves. It's simply immoral. These are people who are here for a complex set of reasons. The vast majority are not criminals but people who are working for a better life and overall make a real contribution to our country and the economy.

[Peleador]

I agree with you. My problem with this thing is that it's entirely unconstitutional.

How can we complain about immigrants coming here 'illegally' but then be okay with illegal and unconstitutional governmental programs? We don't want to give an illegal program to an illegal immigrant? But it's okay to give the illegal program to legal residents? Not following the rationale.

[DanBest]

My problem with this thing is that it's entirely unconstitutional.

You haven't pointed out what you THINK is unconstitutional. I would remind you that we have an entire legal system based on those issues. And the constitutionality or unconstitutionality can be argued from now to eternity. You are expressing your opnion. Not fact.

[Lori Bowles]

It would be great if people could get past dehumanizing populations and start caring about humanity.

[Peleador]

Like Democrats dehumanize "Rethugs" here?

[Lori Bowles]

Wow, I didn't realize that republicans were in-effect becoming so dehumanized that people considered them non-citizens and therefore not worthy of any-type of human rights whatsoever.
An overwhelming number of people view illegal immigrants as less then zero, and would rather they receive no food, no shelter and if medical care is needed the general consensus is let them bleed in the street.
Stop thinking about your party and start thinking like a human. This is bigger then politics, religion or your ego.
If your delicate skin is not thick enough to post at this site then toughen up or review your way of thinking because something is not sitting right.

[Donkslayer]

It'd be great if our country stopped doing such outdated things as attempting to uphold the "rule-of-law".

[Peleador]

Good to know. I'm just going to decline Obama's offer for mandatory health insurance. Maybe the generals in Afghanistan can ignore outdated things like following Obama's orders and go out and win.

[weslenforever]

In the first place, the "illegal immigrant" excuse is a ruse! The Republithugs were in charge of both houses of Congress for 12 years straight! They had the presidency for 6 of those! They were COMPLETELY HAPPY AND THRILLED to HAVE those "undocumented aliens" here as a means to "break the unions" and "BRING DOWN THE COST OF LABOR" to their corporate donors. They TOOK AWAY almost ALL of the "safety nets" in their "Contract on ALL Americans of lesser means than themselves" in Welfare Reform based on the completely dishonest but widely BELIEVED notion that some 90 percent of welfare recipients were black welfare queens, driving their Cadillacs living high off the hog on the "taxpayers DIME" and a few white drug addicts thrown in for good measure.
NOW their SCAPEGOAT is the "illegal alien welfare recipient" because they "pride themselves" with the notion that they ELIMINATED the black welfare queens and NOW that the "undocumented workers" JUST MIGHT get health care, all of a sudden, they aren't quite as celebrated in the Republithug circles as they used to be.
The fact IS, the Republithugs have given a TRUE FACE to the neocon version of "Christianity" and it's GOT CLOVEN HOOVES AND HORNS!
And that's JUST THE WAY IT IS!

[alex61]

My, my, my-we are so emotional. Both parties have looked away from enforcing the laws they passed and swore to uphold for a variety of reasons-none of them justified. Part of the Republicans' (I am not one) problem is that every time they even brought up the subject of illegal immigration they were called anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic or racist-always by emotional liberals. At least some Republicans want to enforce our laws; nearly all Democrats are for endless "one-time" amnesties. When they look at millions of illegal aliens, the Dems see millions of future Democrats. The Hispanic Caucus (why does it even exist?) sees more of "their kind." There are plenty of Hispanics (both legal residents and illegal aliens) who believe that if they get millions more they will be able to take over a large part of America. Some of these people are nasty and violent-I have faced them. We have a real problem that must be faced rationally. Turn down the emotions and attitude and get a grip.

[DanBest]

Why do so many people that express conservative opinions these days claim that they are not republican?. My dad who spent his entire life as one recently claimed he wasn't. You can deny your politics until the cock crows the third time, but you will still be a conservative.
After reading your emotional post I think you are the pot calling the kettle black.
Just to give you some perspective:
The issue of illegal immigration (meaning immigration for South and Central America)
is driven by Indo-European immigrants with less than 300 years of history in this country. Who believe they have a right to tell the original anscestors of this continent where they can and cannot go. And you think they have a point, Alex.

[alex61]

Good grief! Illegal immigrants are NOT immigrants-they are trespassers. Those that come here legally are immigrants. Anyone who thinks that illegals are immigrants just like the legal kind obviously advocates the dismantling of out entire immigration machinery. After all, why even have ICE, vetting, tests. etc. if you believe that illegals should be allowed to stay and get health care?
As to our country's character, what are we-stupid? Why does enforceing our generous immigration laws reflect poorly on our nation's character? Those are religious, emotional, and silly views, i.e., liberal.

[Peleador]

Perhaps, but would you deny that our INS system sucks?