News

Priest shares insights on illegal immigration

By Sam Lucero
Compass Staff

GREEN BAY -- Fr. John Rueter, a priest of the Green Bay Diocese who has been serving in southern Mexico for 38 years, sees the effects of illegal immigration from another perspective. His young parish members are among those who travel north to escape poverty and find work to support their families.

The strain it can put on parish families is evident, he said, when wives and mothers come to him, asking what to do when months, even years, pass and they do not hear from husbands or sons.

"Pray," he tells them. "What else can you say?"

Fr. Rueter is pastor of Santa Maria Yucuhiti Parish, located in the Archdiocese of Oaxaca. His parish consists of between 25,000-30,000 people living in 23 communities.

"My people are all Indian people," he told The Compass in an interview July 25 while on summer vacation. "In all, about seven major Indian cultures live in the state of Oaxaca." Members of his parish speak four different Indian dialects of Mixteco, the indigenous language of the region. Spanish is the common language.

While he celebrates most Masses in Spanish, Fr. Rueter also celebrates major feast day liturgies in Mixteco.

Coffee bean harvesting is the main industry in the mountainous region that makes up part of Fr. Rueter's parish. "You can get 60 to 100 pesos a day, roughly about $6 to $10 a day," picking coffee beans, he said. "They have a family and to try to make ends meet. It's pretty tight, so there's not much of a future for the young people."

People watch television and "they see other people having things," said Fr. Rueter. "Young people, right after schooling, they will head up north. That causes a lot of problems here, too."

He explained that community building projects, called "tequios," rely on men to repair roads, homes and other projects. "Where men would work on roads or some building project, now they don't have that many men to work," he said. "A lot of women are taking over jobs."

Fr. Rueter believes that illegal immigration must be addressed as a human services issue and not a criminal act. "You can build fences as high and as long as you want, but they will still get through," he said.

"Their goal is not to become Americans," the priest explained. "They just want to work. They're not into drugs, they're not into anything else. They just want to have a job, get some money to go back home."

This desire is captured in popular Spanish ballads heard on the radio, he said.

"There's a Mexican song. ... Some of words are like, 'If I die, far away from here, send my body to my homeland to be buried,'" said Fr. Rueter. Another song talks about "how far I am from the land where I was born."

"The nostalgia for being home is there," he said.

The priest also sees the disintegration of families in Mexico due to men migrating north.

"They might have more money but they lose out on everything else," he said. "Some, when they come up here, they get into drinking, and finding other women."

Before making judgments about illegal immigrants, Fr. Rueter urges Catholics to put themselves in their shoes.

"Maybe you're losing some jobs here, but they have no opportunity," he said. "They just want an opportunity. I would say 99.9 percent don't want to become Americans. They want to be Mexicans and have a future. The whole (employment) situation in Mexico is bad from the start because they put all the industry around Mexico City. Around other places, there is not much industry or anything. Most people who have skills go out to bigger cities or to the states.

"Hopefully you can understand what they are going through. I think they are good workers. They are human, too," Fr. Rueter added.

Fr. Rueter, who returns to Wisconsin every summer to visit his mother, Gen Rueter of Kaukauna, was scheduled to fly back to Mexico July 31. "I'm happy to be a priest of our diocese and I am serving in the name of all of you good people here in Green Bay," he said.