Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope, Episode 2

Walking with Migrants and Refugees

Conversations about Finding and Sharing Hope: A video series for the Jubilee Year 2025

Hosted by Fr. Ron Will
Welcome to this Second episode in a series titled, “Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope.” We will post a new video in this series throughout the jubilee year on the last Tuesday of the month.

Introduction to the Series

Our mission statement at Precious Blood Renewal Center says that we are a safe and sacred place offering healing and hope, renewal and reconciliation for all people. So part of our mission is to be a source of hope for all people.

A few months ago, Pope Francis published an apostolic letter declaring the year 2025 as a jubilee year with the theme Pilgrims of Hope. His apostolic letter and this year, 2025, actually overlap with our mission statement at the Renewal Center. In this series of conversations, we are exploring how they — our mission statement and the jubilee — support one another. In his letter, Pope Francis names various groups of people who especially need hope to deal with difficult and challenging situations in their lives, and he asks that the rest of us walk with them in order to gain or to maintain their hope.

Francis says that we must fan the flame of hope that has been given to us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart, and a farsighted vision.

Sometimes, I think, to be a pilgrim of hope, we have to walk against the crowd or walk against the popular opinion at the time. One group of people needing hope that Pope Francis names in his letter are migrants and immigrants. Today I am visiting with Nancy Clisbee, whom I consider a pilgrim of hope because of her longtime ministry with immigrants in St. Joseph, Missouri. For 16 years, Nancy has been teaching citizenship and English language classes to the migrant community. Nancy is a Precious Blood Companion and member of St. Francis Xavier Parish in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Excerpts from the conversation between Fr. Ron Will and Nancy Clisbee follow.

 

Why work with immigrants?

Fr. Ron: Nancy, why would you work with immigrants?

Nancy: What I always say [when asked that question] is, you know what? We are them, and they are us. You know, we really are. Our ancestors came here, probably not speaking the language and certainly outcast. And certainly, unwelcome by the majority of people who already lived here. Put on top of that. [as yourself] what would you yourself do if you knew that you could not protect your children from, criminals and from people that would harm them and from people that would harm you and you couldn’t send your children to school? What would you do?

Most of the immigrants who are here have risked life and limb, and certainly every penny they have in order to get here. They are just deserving souls in my opinion.

That being said, I know that the immigration system certainly needs reform. People say, well, what can we do to reform it? Well, we can’t do anything. Congress has to reform it, and they haven’t. They’ve had years to do it, and they haven’t done it. And so that has resulted in part of the problem that’s going on.

 

What people misunderstand abut immigrants

Fr. Ron: Is there one or two points you think people misunderstand about immigrants living among us?

Nancy: One thing that we can all do is broaden our appreciation of immigrant workers. You know, we need these immigrant workers. The U.S. workforce is dwindling and aging, and all of us older folks who appreciate getting our Social Security [benefits], who do you think is going to be paying into that? It will be our immigrant populations, whether documented or undocumented. Even though undocumented folks maybe don’t have a Social Security number, the U.S. government is very, very happy to give them a payer number and accept their money that they are paying into income tax. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes. And most of those payroll taxes fund programs that they are barred from using. So those folks right now are lending a huge economic hand to America, but folks just don’t realize this.

Fr. Ron: That’s a good point. They are paying taxes for the rest of us, for services that we take for granted.

Nancy: Exactly, exactly. Yes. Immigrants do so many of the jobs that are shunned by the rest of us. We need them to do that kind of work and hopefully move up into other kinds of work. We need their financial support and we need them in our communities. They enrich our communities in, many, many ways.

They are religious folks also. I find them very, very connected to God, whether that is through being a Muslim, a Christian, or some other faith. They are wonderful people. And their motivations sometimes just astound me. I worked for a long time with a family from Burma, and the parents started out working at the pork plant, and in fact, still to this day, both work at the pork plant. That mother, when asked why she came to America, she said, so my children could be educated. And her children over the years have become educated, have been very successful. Yet she and her husband continue to work at the pork plant. It is just pretty amazing, really.

 

Fear is rampant

Fr. Ron: Given that the present government is trying to get rid of immigrants, sending them back to their home country, what’s the mood among the people that you work with?

Nancy: Well, the mood in town, and probably every place in the United States in general is fearful.

Fr. Ron: Fear.

Nancy: Yeah. One immigrant friend in particular, I asked her, what’s everybody feeling? And she said, “Nancy, everyone is afraid.” And I said, well, Miraya, you have your citizenship and your daughter was born here and your husband has his green card. And she said — which I thought was a very Precious Blood answer — she said, yes, but this is my community. Everybody has relatives, everybody has friends. Everybody knows someone who is not perfectly documented and they are afraid. And I would say rightfully so. ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers, for example, once did not come into churches or schools or hospitals. Those rules are gone. It’s pretty frightening.

Fr. Ron: There has to be a lot of family anxiety, both for the parents and for the children that it overnight we could be separated.

Nancy: Very much so. I was in a meeting with one of the counselors from one of our high schools here and somebody asked her, “So how is the mood at your school?” And she said, “Every day, I have students in my office crying because they are afraid their parents are gonna be deported.”

 

Motivated by Jesus and Precious Blood Charism

Fr. Ron: How do you stay motivated?

Nancy: I think that Jesus teaches us to be persistent. When you run across something scary or challenging, I think it’s important to look it in the face and deal with it and see what you can do to assist people. I have heard every kind of story and sadness that you can imagine. And sometimes I’ve had to go out on a limb to see what I could do to help, at least in a small way.  I think that’s what Jesus wants from us.

The Precious Blood charisms of hospitality, reconciliation and outreach to the margins. Well, how, clearer a mandate could there be? I feel completely blessed and lucky to have the opportunity to be involved with people, that I can assist in at least a small way. And sometimes that is during times of trouble.

Sometimes it’s times of great joy. I get invited to baptisms and house blessings and immigrants call me and say, let’s go have coffee. Once, I went to an immigrant’s home and she said, “I’m going to fix Ethiopian coffee for you.” And I thought, well, great. Into her carpeted living room, she brought a brazier and started this [fire] <laugh> smoking <laugh>. And I’m like, where are the smoke alarms? But anyway, I mean, she actually had the beans on a pan, and she is roasting the beans right in front of me. Then she’s got the mortar and pestle going. It was absolutely delicious coffee. And it was the height, the height of hospitality to me. A gift. And I have had that kind of gift many, many, many times over. And the things that I may have given to immigrants in the way of help, I have received [back] thousand times over. It truly is a gift to be able to work with this population.

Fr. Ron: Oh, good. So you have these [experiences] that motivate you, I’m sure, to keep your hope up, even though it’s difficult work at times, having those positive relationships is motivational and gives you hope to keep going.

Nancy: Yes. The people of the world are magnificently interesting and valuable. And I think that’s part of what is missing from the understanding of the immigrant problem in America.

 All of the videos in this series can be found here: Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope

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[Fr. Ron Will, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union and Creighton University’s School of Christian Spirituality. He has a special interest in helping form intentional disciples of Jesus, encouraging others to go spiritually deep-sea diving to explore a deeper relationship with God, and walking with people as they dive into the ocean of God’s mystery actually experiencing God rather than simply dipping one’s toe into the water.]

Photo Credit: ID 154206780 © Victoriia Zoteva | Dreamstime.com

Music Credit: “We Are Marching” (Siyahamba). Performed by First Christian Church of Tacoma. Text: South African. Tune: South African. © 1984, Utryck, Walton Music Corporation, agent. Used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

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