Wrapping Up and Following Up

One of my fellow volunteers for Annunciation House at Mesa Inn was Marjorie Margolis. After spending two weeks in El Paso, she has written an article for a local newspaper in her home region, Keene NH. Because her experience parallels mine, I want to share her entire article with you:

Migrants Face Dubious Fate, by Marjorie Margolis, in the Keene Sentinel, February 10, 2019

Marjorie writes:

There is no illegal immigration crisis at the southern border. However, there is a human crisis of migrants escaping violence and poverty who immediately turn themselves in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service upon reaching the border. Unfortunately, our country is grossly unprepared to process the hundreds of immigrants who turn themselves in each day.

Annunciation House, the residents of El Paso, and the many volunteers who serve there are doing an incredible job of managing, as best they can, this situation that our government is, as Marjorie says, "grossly unprepared" to deal with. People are stepping up to help, as they have been at Annunciation House and in El Paso for four decades now.

Supporting the efforts of these full-timers are the local volunteers and visiting volunteers like myself, many of whom are nuns or active Catholic lay people (got to love that Dorothy Day ethos) who regularly minister to the poor in a variety of settings. Others, like myself, came also to serve at the border as an act of protest against the hateful political discourse that scapegoats the poor and powerless.

Like Marjorie, I feel immense gratitude at having the opportunity to learn about the situation at the border first-hand, and to help in whatever way I could for the three weeks I was there. I'll be sharing some of my experience and reflections on my time in El Paso at the United Methodist Church this Sunday, February 17th. Here's their announcement:

Border Wall or Border Welcome

For three weeks Anne Meyer-Wilber has been serving at Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, as a volunteer to help welcome immigrant families seeking asylum in the US, who are being dropped off by ICE after they have been processed at the border. Anne has been blogging of her experience at Life's Adventures 2019, and she will be coming to share her experience with us and the community on Sunday, February 17th in the fellowship hall of the Penn Yan United Methodist Church. We will begin with an authentic south of the border meal prepared by Estella and Sirene Garcia and others at 5pm, followed by Anne’s presentation at 5:30pm. A free will donation will help to cover meal costs, support for Annunciation House, and for mission scholarships for people who may feel called to go and offer their help in welcoming our neighbors at the border.