More on Rubashkin verdict - from Sister Mary McCauley

I got an e-mail from Sister Mary McCauley this week, thanking me for a recent column about Sholom Rubashkin's acquittal on child labor charges.

McCauley, the pastoral administrator for three parishes, including St. Bridget's in Postville, was on the front lines after immigration officials raided Agriprocessors. Her work earned her last year's Cristine Wilson Medal for Equality and Justice from the Iowa Department of Human Rights.

She told me she was “stunned” by the child labor acquittal but that it, and the fact that federal prosecutors dropped immigration charges against Rubashkin, has only made her more committed than ever to work for immigration reform.

She shared more of her thoughts with me by phone this morning:

“Sholom Rubashkin had to be aware of the fact that he had minors that had falsified papers working in his plant, that he had undocumented workers working in his plant,” she told me today. “I think that most of the people in the town and the school were aware of young people working there.”

McCauley said it wasn't until after the raid that undocumented Agriprocessors employees began talking about their experiences. Before that, she said, they were afraid of losing their job. Even still: “Everyone had a sense of what was happening,” she said. “I don't think they knew exactly how it all was working.”

Since her retirement in 2008, McCauley has been telling Postville's story to anyone who will listen. It's her way of trying to “change people's hearts” and help them understand sometimes devastating effects our current immigration policies can have on families and communities.

She wants people to think about the big picture: how U.S. policies have hurt developing countries and what can be done to ease poverty in those countries so workers don't have to sneak in to the U.S. in order to put food on the table; about the demand for cheap labor that draws them here.

“If all our undocumented people stopped working today throughout the United States, a lot of businesses would be in trouble,” she said.

The answer has got to be through work permits or a path to citizenship, she thinks. She understands some citizens fear that would mean something would be taken away from them, or they're fearful of people of different nationalities or races. That doesn't change the facts, she said: “We have a reality that we need to respond to.”

Until we improve the immigration system, we will continue to have people exploited, she said. That's not what this country is all about: “What happened at Agriprocessors should not happen to any other people.”

“That's the reason I'm telling the story in a small way,” she said. “To keep it a priority.”

“What do we do? We get up and we keep on hoping, and we keep on working, and we continue to hope that things will be changed, will be transformed,” she said.

“I keep working in my small way on the issue of immigration reform for the transformation of hearts and the transformation of law.”