ORANGE, NJ — The Oranges-Maplewood NAACP branch hosted an Immigration Workshop at Seventh Day Adventist Church, 270 Reynolds Terrace, Orange, on Saturday, Jan. 27, in conjunction with Karol Ruiz and Cynthia Osorio of Wind of the Spirit, a nonprofit immigration advocacy and legal aid group, with the support of Pastor E.T. Stoddard.
“We’re excited because we had the NAACP and the team come by today to conduct an immigration workshop. You know, immigration is a big discussion now on Capitol Hill and there are many decisions being made and many issues that the government is trying to resolve regarding immigrants and, of course, these are fighters for immigrants’ rights and so we’re glad to have them here,” said Stoddard on Saturday, Jan. 13. “We know that the Orange, East Orange, West Orange and all these communities here in northern New Jersey are filled with immigrants and, of course, you don’t have immigrants without having some in the churches. So we just wanted to educate our people and we are glad that they could come by and do just that.”
Stoddard and Oranges-Maplewood NAACP President Tom Puryear acknowledged that the black church played a prominent role in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. And they agreed that the institution still has a role to play in achieving civil rights for all people.
“It’s the responsibility of the church to set the pace in these kinds of issues, especially knowing that Jesus fought for the rights of every human being; he died for the rights of every human being,” said Stoddard on Saturday, Jan. 27.
While Wind Wind of the Spirit is a faith-based organization, Ruiz and Osorio shared some secular wisdom with those at the workshop about U.S. immigration laws and policies, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status.
Ruiz is an immigration attorney whose family legally immigrated to the United States from Colombia when she was a child.
“We also have God-given rights to food and to shelter, so even those immigrants who come here looking for a better opportunity to be able to feed their children, to be able to go to school; those too are our God-given rights,” she said Saturday, Jan. 27. “The law may say one thing and the law is often wrong. It has been wrong in the past, but even here, the law is clear that we must provide asylum to those needing safety. That has been the case in the United States, supposedly from the beginning.”
Ruiz said there is a reason the Statue of Liberty sits in the middle of the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, at the mouth of the waterway that generations of immigrants from around the world.
“The message is clear that we must welcome the stranger,” said Ruiz. “We stand on the shoulders of giants and the civil rights movement blazed the way for us. Temporary Protected Status was a Band-Aid. It was something that came after Haitians and other people from countries that have majority black folk were denied their rights to asylum. El Salvadorans were denied their right to asylum and so TPS was something that came after that does not allow for citizenship, it does not allow for the vote. So TPS is done for the Haitians. That’s fine, they need the path to citizenship.”
Ruiz, Puryear and Irvington NAACP President Merrick Harris agreed that immigrants to the United States have paid their dues and deserve to participate in the American Dream.
“El Salvadorians, Haitians and many other immigrants in this country have paid their dues, have paid taxes, have worked, have contributed to our churches, our communities, have raised children and it is time that we recognized that and stopped playing games with citizenship,” Ruiz said. “Immigrants have traditionally bowed our heads and we at Wind of the Spirit, we bow our heads to God only and we are no longer afraid. We are, some of us, documented, unashamed and unafraid, and we will continue that fight, respecting that some other folks may not be there yet, but we want to make sure that we fight for all of us, whether people are on the front lines with us, whether they’re praying in the pews, whether they are standing in schools, educating our children, we are all in this together.”
“Marching in the streets is our favorite way,” said Ruiz.
Ruiz and Osorio and Wind of the Spirit can be reached at 973-538-2035, www.windofthespirit.net and at www.facebook.com/windofthespirit. The Irvington NAACP can be reached at 973-634-6513.
NAACP and Wind of the Spirit host Immigration Workshop added by Chris Sykes on
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