IMMIGRATION – LOCAL CHURCH

April 4, 2017 By

Our congregation on the Westside of Santa Barbara is blessed to be bi-cultural and bi-lingual.  This congregation has resources for all churches during this time of fear and anxiety about immigration.

In a recent report to the conference leadership team, pastor Rich Sander wrote:

 Pueblo FMC partnered with the Trinity Episcopal church to bring a forum to Santa Barbara regarding the Sanctuary movement and practical next steps for congregations. In SB, we’re meeting again this coming Wednesday as we form an inter-faith coalition that stands with the immigrant and refugee. Below is an overview of what we learned at the forum from speaker Alexia Salvatierra. First, I wanted to reiterate that what we have learned is that its more important for us to be in the work of “changing hearts and minds” than going full-steam-ahead on protests, declaring sanctuary, and/or housing immigrants/refugees. While all of the latter are important, chances are that they are much less needed than the former. Our main goal is to lower anxiety. Easy ways to do that are found in the web site. I’ll go over the documents and their usefulness: 1) Rights/Derechos – One of the main ways we can help immigrants and refugees is for them to know their basic human rights as well as the rights that are afforded to them with regard to arrest and/or entrance into their homes. This card is easy to print out and laminate; anyone can use it when they are being questioned, arrested,