The Words of the Johnson Family
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The Words of the Johnson Family |
In the latest victory, a decision rendered by a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 16, 1982, the judge ruled in favor of three Unification Church members. The court ordered the Immigration Service to grant them immigrant visas and also cancel any deportation proceedings against them.
Yoko Nikkuni entered the U.S. in 1973 on a tourist visa and later was approved for a permanent residence visa as a missionary. However, in 1978, a review board denied her visa.
By 1980 Yoko's case was brought to the central Immigration office in order that they could consider this major case concerning the Unification Church. Much investigation was done, hundreds of papers were filed, and a commission was established to review and to make the strongest case possible against our members.
The Immigration Service regulations contain 13 points which define a church. The United States Code 8, which is the law pertaining to the Immigration Service, states that "a missionary must possess the required skills, education or experience, and also the religious commitment required of a missionary." One pivotal question in Yoko's case concerned her actual qualifications for being a missionary.
For example, the commission was influenced by an earlier case from 1974 where 569 of our members were denied a change of status from tourist to "trainee visa." When a court reviewed that decision in 1978, they determined that there was no bona fide missionary training program, rather, members were spending their full energies fundraising.
Did the Unification Church really train missionaries? The Commissioner decided that the Unification Church (as registered in California) hadn't been established long enough to make it possible to ascertain if this was true or not, so more evidence was called into the proceedings. Information concerning the founding of our church in Korea, Rev. Moon's revelations, and the international aspect of our movement were then entered into the Immigration Service records. The Immigration Service's district director, who had been responsible for denying Yoko's visa, held the opinion that the Unification Church was not a "religious denomination within the contemplation of these regulations" because:
"There is no formal international structure; members of (the Church) may belong to other religious denominations; the officers ministering to its congregations are not ordained and may not legally perform marriages; all of the functions normally associated with a minister or priest may be performed only by one person... Reverend Moon."
Yoko's own testimony indicated that the Unification Church differed in several essential respects from the determining criteria.
The conclusion of the Immigration Service Commission's review was another denial of Yoko's visa as a missionary.
Meanwhile, in another state, applications for new visa status as missionaries were filed separately by our brothers Akio Misono and Jean Henri Vanalderwert. They described their occupations as "Church workers" on their application forms. An Immigration Service director denied their applications based on his interpretation of the requirements defined within the regulations.
In Misono's and Jean Henri's case, the Immigration Service had made their argument on the grounds that the director did not find them to have the necessary "religious commitment required of a missionary."
The Immigration Service officials also did not consider work for our church as "missionary work" since the witnessing and proselytizing done is no different from the activities of all Unification Church members and could therefore be done by American members.
Mr. Marty Moran, our brother with Immigration Office at World Mission Center in New York, spent long hours with these brothers and sisters preparing their legal papers and their testimonies. He worked carefully with the lawyers and read laws and regulations, in order to fight this battle in the courts if necessary.
There is one strong point in the American system of law, that the governmental agencies must obey the laws, too. Citizens and non-citizens can bring lawsuit against the Immigration Service so that the U.S. Courts can decide in a dispute.
It was time for a showdown: Marty Moran, attorneys David Carliner from Washington, D.C., and Barry Fisher and Larry Roberts from Los Angeles on one side, for the Unification Church. On the other side was the Immigration Service. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the middle was the one who would finally decide about the visas of the three members.
The judge reviewed only the legal papers to make his decision. No witnesses were called; Yoko, Misono and Jean Henri were out of the action.
When is a religion bona fide? (or authentic and therefore subject to the same laws as other religions.)
Who decides if one is qualified, or if he has enough commitment?
Under Judge Jackson's eagle eye, it became clear that the definitions of words within the Immigration Service regulations were emphasized, and that the cases were built strongly upon the opinions of the Immigration Service officials. Being very objective, the Judge looked strongly for the facts in all the cases.
The Immigration Service staunchly pointed to "the right of governmental bodies to determine the rules for admission and exclusion of aliens, even such rules that might be constitutionally repugnant if applied to U.S. citizens."
In response, the judge reasoned that if rules are to be enforced, then it is necessary to look to the sovereign's (USA) purpose in making the rules. The Immigration Service acknowledged that in this case, the "exclusive and unequivocal purpose is to protect workers in the United States from job competition or adverse effects on their wages or working conditions."
In answering to the problem of whether or not the Unification Church was a bona fide religious organization, Judge Jackson concluded that it wasn't for the courts to decide. He said,
"Immigration Service officials, no more than judges, are equipped to be oracles of theological verity and it is unlikely that either Congress or the Founders ever intended for them to be declarants of religious orthodoxy, even for aliens."
"The task of distinguishing a religion from something else (a delusion, a personal credo, or a fraud) is a recurring and perplexing problem, and the outer limits of what is `religious' may ultimately be unascertainable."
"It is unnecessary to search for those limits in Nikkuni's case, however, because upon the administrative record, by any historical analogy, philosophical analysis, or judicial precedent (indeed, by Immigration Service's own criteria) the Unification Church must be regarded as a bona fide religion,"
Judge Jackson concluded.
The Court also commented upon the problem of determining "religious conviction."
Judge Jackson said, "The court has similar misgivings about the Immigration Service's statutory authority to prescribe a particular quantum of faith and the manner in which it must be evinced to satisfy the Service. More portentous consequences, for a U.S. citizen, depend merely upon whether his beliefs are sincerely held and if they are, in his own scheme of things, religious."
The Immigration Service suggested, during the proceedings, that if the court concluded the Unification Church is a religion, then Yoko's case should be sent back for more proceedings against her in order to determine if she had enough religious commitment. But Judge Jackson responded that "such a remand would be superfluous because, if anything, her record demonstrates a devotion more intense than that of Misono and Vanalderwert."
The Immigration Service had expressed skepticism concerning Misono's and Vanalderwert's commitment and the possibility that as soon as they got their visas secured, they might forsake their religious calling immediately in order to compete in the coveted labor market.
But the judge found no evidence to support this accusation; instead, the court declared that the "records are devoid of any evidence whatsoever from which to find or infer that they are not the most devout of people who will continue to serve the Unification Church as they have since 1973, for an annual remuneration of about $1800, posing little threat to aspiring U.S. laborers."