Few issues in recent years have received more time and attention from liberal religious activists in the United States than the sanctuary movement. Although the movement remains very small in relation to the total number of churches and synagogues in the country, it exercises disproportionate influence because of two factors: (a) the apparently apolitical motivations of the religious figures in the movement, who take pains to present themselves only as humanitarians with a special interest in the people of Central America, and (b) the extreme gravity of the allegations they make as to what is happening in El Salvador and Guatemala, the two countries the sanctuary movement focuses on. Astonishingly, the major allegations of the sanctuary movement are for all practical purposes false. Distortion, deception, and emotional appeals all play at least as large a part in the public rhetoric of sanctuary advocates as they do in the rhetoric of their nemesis, the Reagan administration. Because the problem, as defined by the sanctuary movement, is in fact largely a false problem, the policies proposed to "solve" it are themselves of dubious merit. That Congress recognizes this is evidenced by the fact that after more than four ars of intensive agitation in communities around the country, accompanied by favorable and copious press coverage, the sanctuary movement is no closer to its goal for suspending immigration controls for Salvadorans and Guatemalans than nit was in 1982, when conditions in those countries might have provided some basis for such a policy.
Sanctuary advocates generally refuse to acknowledge the substantial reduction in political violence that has occurred in El Salvador and Guatemala since the early 1980s. In deed, their preference for describing both countries in terms of conditions prevailing in them four to six years ago-regardless of improvements that have taken place since then-is one of the features of the movement that prompts outsiders to question its professedly humanitarian motivations. In general, the effect of the misinformation and confusion the sanctuary movement stops ahs been primarily to divide and polarize the American public in communities around the nation, not to educate it and a bring it to a deeper understanding of either the problems of Central America or the problems of regulated immigration. Ironically, by focusing so exclusively on the immigration issues posed by citizens of El Salvador and Guatemala, and by doing so in such a one-sided and politicized way, the sanctuary movement has not only failed to accomplish its own purposes, but it may also have succeeded in diverting public attention immigration reform legislation that has been languishing in Congress for several years now.
Sanctuary advocates would have the public believe
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