Monday is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. All around us, somber voices will lift in prayer.
We Jews have always been a wandering people. I am here because my ancestors fled pogroms. Chicago let them in.
Tonight in Chicago, more than 1,600 people will sleep on the floors of police stations; over 400 at O’Hare; 5,000 in park buildings, a closed school and low-budget hotels. They are children and families. They are fleeing danger. They are asking to be let in, too.
Chicago has done a lot wrong, but we’ve also done right. These families are here because we welcomed them when others would not.
Imperfectly, our city is trying — to find shelter, food, medicine. To get children in school.
I am proud of Chicago. I am worried, too.
As this humanitarian crisis drags on, opposition voices are becoming louder. Now is the time for supporters to be loud, too: not just for new asylum-seekers but for all immigrants, including the undocumented.
We are welcoming because families are in danger. Because we are not like the governor of Texas and his allies: people who hear a knock at the door in the night and do not answer.
We are welcoming because immigrants make Chicago great. They create and they build. At the elementary school where I work, many of our most incredible educators are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Our immigrant students and their families are a life force in our community.
And we are welcoming because we need to be. Chicago is shrinking. Our school district has 80,000 fewer students than it did a decade ago. Not because Chicago children enroll elsewhere. Because Chicago is running out of children. Our city needs immigration to have a future. It’s economists who say that, not just advocates.
We also have to be real. The current crisis creates hardship. It’s challenged us — housing and feeding and educating newcomers, just like the Texas governor wanted. It costs money. It takes time. It makes lines longer for people already in need of help.
Growth for city, schools
In schools, the arrival of newcomers means vitality and growth. It means more opportunity to serve wonderful children looking for stability and care. Without new resources, it also means teachers are stretched thinner. It means more need to meet tomorrow, when yesterday’s need is still there.
On Yom Kippur, we acknowledge these thoughts. We all know what it feels like to see a guest at the table and to worry: Will there be enough for me?
These are the same things someone whispered when it was your people knocking on the door.
On Yom Kippur, we commit to do better.
We don’t make need go away by sending needy people somewhere else. We make need go away by meeting people’s needs.
Expanding temporary protective status for some newcomers is a positive step, but the solution is to open work permits for all immigrants, including the undocumented.
We need to make the load lighter by spreading it further. It should be the federal government that leads and drives funding, not cities and states.
And we need to work harder to meet the unmet needs of Chicagoans already here. It’s hard to support asylum seekers if you are an unhoused person watching shelter beds fill up. It’s hard to fight for someone else’s work permit if you are an undocumented person who doesn’t have a work permit either, or a Chicagoan searching for a job. And it’s wrong to lean first on Black neighborhoods for placement of migrants, when most Black Americans’ migration histories start with a forced one.
But the answer to injustice is more justice, not less. We have to keep Chicago a welcoming place.
On Yom Kippur, services end with a song about the Messiah, whom Jews still wait for. “May he come in our time,” we say. “May he yet fulfill our hope: a world redeemed.”
On Passover, our holiday of migration, we act in case he is coming right now.
We open the door.
Seth Lavin is the principal at Brentano Elementary Math & Science Academy in Logan Square.
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