A Plea to Help Deportees from USG Member Cynthia Claus

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From South of the Border – Cynthia Claus is a third-generation USG member and has lived in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), Mexico, a World Heritage Site, for six years. She still pledges to USG and maintains many of the long-term friendships she made there over the years.

In San Miguel, Cynthia belongs to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel de Allende – UUFSMA, with 120 pledging members and attendance often more than 200 people. It is lay led, with guest ministers from the US, Canada, and Mexico for 26 of the 52 services a year. UUFSMA donates over half its income to improve the access of disadvantaged Mexicans to education, health care, and an improved environment. Cynthia is a member of the Social Action Committee and chairs the Nominating Committee, and is grateful to be welcomed as an ex-pat to live in San Miguel de Allende.

In the U.S., one reads with angst of the Mexicans, many of whom were educated in the U.S., fully employed in the U.S., and with families in the U.S., being deported daily. In San Miguel, rubber is hitting the pavement. The deportees are arriving with nothing: no ID, no jobs, no clothes, no housing, little experience in Mexico, and little knowledge of the Spanish language. At this time there are 400 deportees in just the town of San Miguel with more arriving.

UUFSMA has just been awarded the annual Chalice Lighters’ Call from the UUA’s Southern Region. This gives UUFSMA two months to raise funds through this program for an interfaith NGO being established to provide assistance to Mexican deportees from the U.S.  The membership of UUFSMA is donating an initial $5,000 and many hands and hours of volunteer work for this initiative.

If you are feeling powerless to stop the flow of well-intentioned Mexicans being abruptly and painfully deported from the U.S., you are urged to contribute to this effort to at least help make these lives bearable.  Now is the time.

To donate to this very worthy cause, follow this guidance to contribute electronically (two options):

Thank you very much!

~ Cynthia Claus