Two Visits

November 2007

One was a Democrat and the other was a Republican, so you’d expect them to be different.  And they were, for sure.  But they were different in a different way.
    The four of us included one Republican, two Democrats and the fourth I’m not sure, so you’d expect us to be different, but we really weren’t.  In fact, we spoke with a great deal of unanimity.  We saw different aspects of the topics, but we tended to be in agreement.
    The occasion was run of the mill for the two of them, but it was very special for us.  I am talking about visits the four of us made to two of our Congressmen, James Costa and Devin Nunes.

Joe Symkowick from Catholic Relief Services called me from Sacramento asking me to set up the visits and to find some others who might like to participate.  I immediately thought of our Director of Development and our Chancellor, Bill Lucido and Jesse Avilla.  Both of them immediately said yes.  Then came the phone calling.

It was Congress’s Memorial Day recess—only a week long, possibly the result of their new Head Mistress demanding more on-site hours—and I was late in getting to them.  After a few calls with their offices and with Joe in Sacramento, however, we got one appointment for nine thirty and the other for ten thirty.  Unfortunately they were cities apart and we would need a full hour to bridge the gap.  I checked again with Sacramento and we decided that Nunes was the more important since he probably agreed with us less than did Costa, so I called Costa back to see if he could give us another hour.  He could—nine straight up.

I was touched when I found out why they had wanted us at nine thirty—the Congressman had an appointment at that time with the Mexican Deputy Consul and he wanted us to be there with her.  I was even more touched when our hour came and we discovered that he had asked the Consul to change her hour, again to be with us.

The day came, we met together at our Ministries’ office for a short planning sessions, then drove over to Costa’s office on M Street, in downtown Fresno.  It was a nice modern building.  While waiting, I had a chance to talk with the Deputy Consul, encouraging her country to undergo the political reform that would make emigration unnecessary and she agreed.  Then the Congressman joined us and the visit went into high gear.  He was encouraging and optimistic, he speaking his thoughts and listening to ours.  We ended with a nice relationship that of course should be continued.

An hour later we walked into Congressman Nunes’ office in a comfortable old building in downtown Visalia and were shown into his meeting room.  Five minutes later he came in with a staff member and we set to the task of convincing him of our positions.  Amazingly and happily, he was more on our side than we had originally thought, but he was a lot more politically savvy than we and discussed the need to give whatever had to be given to get the necessary votes.  In effect, what he was saying was that the people who make up our great democratic masses cannot be trusted to use their intelligence, but make decisions mainly as emotional responses to words and other symbols.

The two Congressmen had very different personalities, the one a lot easier, the other more intense—but both seemed dedicated to their positions and to their people.  Especially with Mr. Nunes, I tried hard to push the concept of our obligation to those in need, that our reasons for reorganizing a broken immigration situation was not simply our own economic advantage but also a duty to care for those in need.  I said, “The people who come up from Mexico are not here as tourists, but they are willing to leave their home and dare a dangerous crossing to live a shadowy life in an alien world because they need to, to survive.”  I think the Congressman heard me, but he is a politician and commented on the damage done to the immigrants’ cause by the LA demonstration showing hundreds of Mexican flags.

We ended the morning with a meal (coincidentally Mexican) and an evaluation of what we thought was a very good day indeed.