COMMENTARY Recent Events Show We Can Do Better

Several things in the news have caught my attention recently. I’d like to offer a few comments on them.

The smearing of Georgia’s USDA rural development director Shirley Sherrod through a doctored video is a reminder that you can’t always believe your eyes in this day of YouTube and Internet. I’ve had several people forward a similarly edited piece that chops together half-sentences and isolated phrases from the President’s speeches to “prove” that Obama is a Muslim. That’s a violation of the 9th Commandment - “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Shame on news outlets that don’t check these things before airing. And shame on Internet userswho hit the “forward” button without doing some simple checks. Snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.

com track the accuracy of Internet spam, and factcheck.org is an excellent nonpartisan resource run by the University of Pennsylvania.

I believe what God does best is bring new life and healing out of the bad stuff. Thanks to her being slandered, more people know the good story of Shirley Sherrod, whose father, a black man in Georgia, was murdered by a white man. There were three eyewitnesses, but no one was ever punished. It used to be like that in the South.

Yet Shirley stayed in the South, working with minority grassroots programs and nonprofits.

In 1987, for the first time, a white family asked her for help. She says that initially she didn’t help them as much as she could have.

But when Roger and Eloise Spooner’s farm was near foreclosure, Shirley drove them 40 miles to a lawyer who helped save their property. The Spooners have maintained contact with Shirley, who “helped us when we really needed help.” The real story is a reconciling story of transcending race-based violence. We wouldn’t have known it without the hateful video that defamed her.

Another “urban legend.” Many of our paper’s letters-to-the-editor that complain of “illegals” and “illegal immigrants” seem to assume that people who are here without government documents could have just immigrated legally. Why didn’t they just get in line and immigrate legally?

But there is no line.

To quote Arkansas’Roman Catholic Bishop Anthony Taylor’s Pastoral Letter on Human Rights and Immigration, there are “practically no visas available for ordinary laborers from Mexico who simply want to come to the United States, work hard, and raise their families here.” There is some chance for family sponsored visas. The wait in that line averages only 16 years.

I recently talked to a 17-year-old whose parents brought her to the U.S. when she was 4. Her application for naturalization is stuck somewhere. Unless something happens soon, on her 18th birthday, she becomes a criminal. She can’t get a driver’s license;

at any moment she can be deported to a country she doesn’t know. She’s an outstanding student with leadership qualities.

She’sone of our kids; she’s not a criminal.

Our immigration system is immoral and dysfunctional. Enforcing a bad law is not the answer. We need a humane and wise reform of the immigration system.

I’ve used this analogy before. If the federal government passed a law that the speed limit on interstate highways is now 15 miles an hour, how fast would you drive? Would you be an “illegal” - a speeder, if you knew I-40 wasn’t patrolled? Would you clamor for more enforcement of the 15-mph limit, or demand that a badlaw be changed?

We can change a bad immigration law. Let’s give honest, hard-working people a real path toward naturalization and citizenship. When the law is just, then we will be justified in enforcing it.

I also read a lot about deficits today. Federal deficits have been around for most of my life. It may come as a surprise to know that deficits tend to escalate during Republican presidencies.

Here are the average yearly deficits recorded by each administration since 1961, courtesy of Ernest Dumas.

(Democrats are in italics.)

Kennedy-Johnson: $8 billion.

Nixon-Ford: $34 billion

Jimmy Carter: $58 billion

Ronald Reagan: $192 billion

George H. W. Bush: $310 billion

Bill Clinton: $92 billion

George W. Bush: $610 billion

Clinton finished his last year with a budget surplus.

Seems like those who are anxious about our deficits need to look at what the Clinton White House did and move more in that direction.

Racial reconciliation, reformed immigration laws, responsible budgets. We can do better. And with God’s help, we will.

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LOWELL GRISHAM IS THE RECTOR AT ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN FAYETTEVILLE.