Whenever possible, I plan my Saturday errands such that I’ll be able catch part of “This American Life” on public radio as I drive and I’ve often found myself sitting in the grocery store parking lot to hear the end of a story. 

Old radio, adobe wall. Image via Wylio http://bit.ly/zFgPqk

(Photo credit: Krsna)

The center of a Christian moral framework is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In order to maintain just legal structures it is necessary for policy makers to ask themselves how they would want to be treated by the law. This is why it is always disturbing when you here of politicians who create laws that don’t apply to themselves or start wars that their children won’t be fighting in.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR, the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization) released a report today on anti-immigration legislation passed or considered by states. The 41-page report focuses primarily on Arizona’s SB 1070, and similar laws, and the effects these had on issues other than immigration.

Those who follow me on Twitter know that over the holidays I discovered my adoptive dad’s African ancestor on Ancestry.com! It was an absolutely amazing moment — a rare one for most African-American families who usually can’t trace their families beyond the civil war. In the Antebellum South, our families weren’t considered families; they were chattel — property counted as estate holdings in pre-Civil War Census Records.

I noticed this Christmas season, for the first time, that not only were Mary and Joseph forced to migrate under Rome’s census; not only was the Incarnate God born into a humiliating space — but, as they fled to Egypt, they never registered in Bethlehem with the census. A dream, an angel, told the migrant father to gather his family and run from the authorities. Unaccounted for in the empire, baby Jesus’ first movement in this world was a government-evading trek through the desert by night.

Amidst much frustration with immigration system in this country, we need not look further than Iowa for some light. No, I’m not talking about the upcoming primary election. Rather, we should be inspired by the Catholic Sisters of the Upper Mississippi River Valley—twelve communities of Catholic Sisters in Iowa and Wisconsin. With their recently released billboard campaign, they state: