Latino Ministries Worried About Immigration Bill

At the Spanish Catholic Center, strangers pop in every day. One day in the middle of the week, the Rev. Mario Dorsonville celebrated the noon Mass on the second floor of the Spanish Catholic Center, praying for a young Latina who used a walker for her frail legs.

Downstairs, Sister Deirdre "Dede" Byrne, a physician, sat face to face with two men who gave only their first names, Johnny and Pedro, instructing them on an upcoming colon examination.

"You should take no aspirin or nothing by mouth," Byrne said, green eyes locked on Johnny, a good-natured wisecracker who seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the procedure. The drugs will make you woozy, she said.

Her orders: "You will have to have someone drive you home."

Johnny said, shrugging, "I will drive myself."

Byrne warned: "Well, if you get stopped by the police . . ."

Johnny, suddenly more alert, cut her off: "Don't even think about it," he said, coughing. "I will find someone to drive me."

The exchange was brief, but it provided a small clue as to Johnny's legal status, and some Catholic Charities officials fear that under the proposed law, such clues add up to knowing that he is, in fact, illegal.

Hardly, said Will Adams, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). "The federal government doesn't even go after employers who hire illegal aliens, let alone charities," Adams said. To think that they would "isn't in touch with reality," he said.

Latino civil rights groups and religious aid organizations say they do not trust Tancredo, who recently proposed disallowing automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants.

House members dropped the item from the legislation before it passed. Adams said the existing language should stay, in spite of complaints. "Have they read the language?" he asked.

"The only section that could possibly touch them is one out of seven," he said. That item says culprits can face fines and jail time if they help people in "knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact" that they entered the country illegally.

Otherwise, the proposal is no different from Title 8, Section 1324 of the current U.S. Code, Adams said. "And how many churches have been shut down?"

Byrne said the stakes are too high for legal ambiguity.

"We're one of the few clinics that will take anyone," she said. "In fact, they [immigrants] all get nervous because they're not legal. I don't even ask about their legal status. I just see someone who needs help."

Izquierdo-Porrera sighed in her office. "I'm an immigrant, too," she said with a defiant look. But her H-1B visa can easily be revoked if she is deemed to have broken a law.

"I've done everything the law has told me," she said. "It's easy for politicians to say they don't want immigrants. But I'm not a politician. . . . I took an oath. . . . I can't stop because someone disagrees with what I do."