Protecting the flock: Call for census boycott splits religious leaders

McALLEN - The Rev. Ben Piña is a U.S. citizen and views filling out the U.S. census as his civic duty.

But the Edinburg-based minister is among those urging illegal immigrants, in Texas and nationwide, to skip the decennial survey until the federal government takes up meaningful immigration reform.

"We're exploiting these people," Piña said of illegal immigrants Tuesday via phone from Georgia, where he is speaking at several churches. Many parts of the country have an attitude of, "Let's count them, get all the benefits, and the sooner we can get them out of our country the better," he said.

The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, a national evangelical organization of which Piña is an officer, launched its call for a boycott of the 2010 census in April, hoping to put immigration reform back on Congress' front burner.

Local and state governments nationwide hope census data collected next year will show that they have more people and therefore need more federal money. But coalition leaders said holding that money hostage by eschewing the survey forms may be illegal immigrants' only way to pressure the U.S. government for a route to legal residency.

The call has forced local religious leaders who serve illegal immigrant populations to do some soul-searching about the census.

On the one hand, local governments in the Rio Grande Valley rarely withhold services based on immigration status, so filling out the national survey could bring more resources to the region and to cash-strapped families.

But in other regions, the undocumented are shut out of every aspect of civic life, Piña said, and the immigration reform promised by President Barack Obama during a 2008 visit to Brownsville remains low on the national agenda.

Those living in the shadows in the United States need to act in solidarity, he said.

Bishop Raymundo Peña, leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, said Thursday that as long as the census continues to gloss over the issue of immigration status - no question on the form explicitly asks about it, although some organizations interpret a jump in foreign-born Hispanics as a probable rise in the number of illegal immigrants in the country - he generally urges his flock to be counted.

The Valley's population is thought to be as much as 85 percent Catholic, and nationwide the Catholic Church serves a high percentage of the country's undocumented Hispanic immigrants. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said its members will cooperate with the census and hopes an accurate count will clarify immigration issues for the nation's leaders.

"We have always cooperated with the census people," Peña said. "I'm not sure that avoiding the census is going to make any difference in getting legislation."

Still, he said he was attracted to the idea of speeding up immigration reform.

"Everyone has the right to migrate," he said. "Everyone has the right to make a living and to better their condition."

The Rev. Miguel Rivera, the national leader of the clergy coalition, said the Catholic Church's many charitable and healthcare organizations rely on federal funding and implied that its leaders were betraying a segment of their congregation to protect that money.

"So-called Latino leaders ... instead of bringing themselves to the heat of the debate in a positive way, they are just throwing in the towel and saying before any true debate, ‘We cannot risk. We cannot afford to lose federal funding,'" Rivera said.

Piña, for his part, said other religious leaders in the Valley have listened patiently to what Rivera calls "a radical (call for) action."

While many agree Hispanic leaders should make a political push to secure immigration reform, they have politely refused to imperil the accuracy of the federal count, he said.

"They say, ‘We understand what you're saying,'" he said, but they don't agree with the method.

Sister Maria Sanchez, a member of the local advocacy group Valley Interfaith and a Catholic nun, said an accurate census can only help push immigration reform forward.

"I would think that we have to understand the impact of the immigrants in our country," she said. "If the numbers aren't there, how can you move legislation? If the numbers are there and the need is there, I would tend to think that would place more impact on getting legislation or reform passed."

Sanchez is one of two Interfaith members on Hidalgo County's 2010 census committee, which seeks to promote the survey.

"As an organization ... one of the things we try to do is ensure that moneys come down so communities have money for the needs like infrastructure, health care, education," she said.

"The numbers will be the ones that will speak."