A prayer to live without fear—Para no tener miedo

  • The faces of some members of the prayer cannot be shown. [photo by Patric Hedlund]

    The faces of some members of the prayer cannot be shown. [photo by Patric Hedlund]

By Patric Hedlund

At the beginning of the holiday season this winter, a circle of Frazier Park friends met as they do each weekday morning to pray for our community and for each others’ families. The women agreed to speak about their experiences as immigrants in the United States.
Some can use their names and images as they tell their stories. Some cannot.

Their stories vary widely. Some are here legally, but with a spouse who is not. Some are in a limbo created by the immense backlog in the U.S. immigration system.

They agreed to share their stories to help our community understand the human face of the complicated issues behind immigration reform in this country.

In the last segment we met Griselda Carrillo, 25. She was born in Mexico, but is the daughter of legal residents. She grew up here and works as a drilling technologist for a Bakersfield company. She has not yet applied for citizenship. Griselda told us that a U.S. citizen always is the first choice for a job here. Only after a citizen has not taken the job will the noncitizen have a chance at it, she said.

Part Five

Timothy P. Carney, with the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the conservative Washington Examiner on December 29, 2014 that threat of deportation is a tool that farmers have relied on to keep wages down. He quotes an Associated Press story by…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

The faces of some members of the prayer cannot be shown.

The face of immigration reform may be that of your own neighbor

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This is part of the January 23, 2015 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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