“The people who harvest our crops and clean our offices; who work in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash dishes in the restaurants where we eat and work night shifts in hospitals – they may not have the right papers to be citizens of this country, but the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbours”.
These words come from a clergywoman – Bishop Mariann Budde of Washington, who dared to defend migrants and others targeted by America’s new president, right to his face at an inauguration ceremony, asking him to show mercy (and thus putting her head in the lion’s mouth).
One of our own bishops, the Metropolitan of Paphos, instead of spreading love and understanding, sows hatred: Don’t associate with people who don’t know how to repent, confess, and take communion regularly.
Don’t eat what ungodly people offer you. Don’t accept anything they give you, even if they offer expensive items, and if someone has accepted something, they should take it to their spiritual advisor to be blessed, and we should avoid these people as much as possible.
The misanthropes hear this and take heart. We saw one of them yesterday, assaulting a young delivery rider, snatching his mobile phone and wallet because he decided the cyclist had damaged his car while riding behind him. He assessed the damage at 400 euros and took the law into his own hands, in the middle of the street, with local shopkeepers and passers-by watching the enraged Cypriot without intervening.
So let them all leave, let them go back to their countries. The delivery riders, the builders, the hotel cleaners and cleaners everywhere else, those who care for the elderly, those working on farms and in fields, those in restaurant kitchens, those at petrol stations, supermarkets, cafes…
Let them all leave and leave us to manage on our own. Let us take up the tough jobs they “stole” from us.
Let’s become waiters and shop assistants again, walk our own dogs, take care of our elderly, harvest potatoes from the fields and clean the pig farms, work night shifts in the bakeries…
There’s so much to do and so much we’ve been deprived of.
That should calm down the xenophobes. Or perhaps they’ll just find new targets?