Catholics must help immigrants

Our Catholic faith tells us that work is more than the way to make a living; it is a form of contemporary participation in God's plan of salvation and of being co-creators with God in bringing the world to its fulfillment. It is a means of growing, sharing and enhancing one's own life, and that of one's family and the wider community.

Because work is so essential to the well-being of the individual, the family and society, the dignity of work must be protected, and the basic rights of workers are to be respected: the right to productive work, to a decent and fair wage, to safe working conditions, to organizing and joining unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.

Trouble spots

While Labor Day 2005 finds the condition of workers better than at some periods in our nation's history, there are still some troublesome issues that confront us. Let me cite one: the plight of immigrant workers in the United States.

There has been a tremendous growth of immigration in recent years. Between 1990 and 2000, approximately 14 million immigrants came to our country. That represents the largest number of immigrants in any single decade of U.S. history, exceeding even the "great wave of immigration" between 1890-1910.

Ours is a nation of immigrants. While each new generation faces its own challenges, two factors have combined to make the struggle of today's immigrants more difficult than for previous generations.

Safety nets

In 1996, Congress passed two laws that have had far reaching ramifications for immigrants in the United States. Driven by the politics of restriction and exclusion, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 altered the way immigrants are treated when it comes to reliance on the basic "safety net" that almost all Americans rely upon from time to time.

The law denies immigrants (regardless of their ability to work) nutritional and medical safety-net programs, like Food Stamps, Medicaid and children's health insurance programs.

As a result, for the most part, immigrants do not have access to the very safety-net benefits supported by their taxes, simply because they are not citizens or legal residents.

Border security

Another law enacted in 1996 that has had a detrimental impact on immigrants is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act.

This measure has been characterized as "one of the most sweeping changes in immigration law in American history." Among many things, it contains provisions designed to stiffen penalties for illegal entry, expand border enforcement, authorize removal of aliens without recourse to judicial review and eliminate due process protections.

Locking doors

A second development negatively impacting immigrants has been the post-9/11 security measures, which have unfairly painted immigrants to our nation as would-be terrorists.

We Americans must be justifiably concerned about our safety, but seeing immigrants as people who want to do us harm is to deny reality. The vast majority of today's newcomers value the freedoms and opportunities our nation provides, and are willing to make sacrifices and contributions to our nation, just as previous generations did.

Sadly, however, in this post-9/11 period, our fear of terrorism has colored our traditional hospitality as a nation of immigrants.

Exploitation

As a result of those factors, immigrant workers often find themselves exploited. Many are not paid even the minimum wage, which hardly constitutes a living wage, and are given no health insurance or workman's compensation benefits. Also, they are often asked to do back-breaking work in abysmal conditions.

In a recent review of the condition of immigrants in the U.S., Donald Kirwin, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Incorporated (CLINIC), found chicken workers in rural Mississippi who had to grab chickens, turn them upside down and fasten them on a conveyor belt at the rate of 45 chickens per minute, eight hours a day.

The review also discovered meatpackers in Iowa who were physically disabled by their work before they became eligible for company health benefits and Fijian Province workers in New York who lived in conditions of servitude.

Bishops' stance

In an effort to address the dire situation often experienced by immigrant workers and their families, the bishops of the United States and Mexico issued a joint pastoral letter in 2001, titled "Stranger No Longer, Together on the Journey of Hope."

In this letter, we bishops expressed the concern that while the new world economy requires a more mobile labor pool, the migration of people has become more restricted, and current immigration policies often deny migrants their basic human rights and -- in the case of U.S. border policies -- have led to the deaths of would-be immigrants.

Hence, we call upon our government to develop an immigration reform policy based upon the following principles:

* a broad legalization program for the undocumented in our country who have built up equities and otherwise contributed to U.S. society;

* a temporary worker program with appropriate worker protections;

* a reform of our nation's border confinement policy that would result in more humane treatment for immigrants, and

* restoration of due process protections for immigrants that were eliminated in the 1996 legislation.

Illegal entry

Of course, we bishops recognize the right of a nation to control its borders and do not encourage illegal immigration. Rule-of-law concerns can hardly be dismissed as trivial. In fact, we are in favor of meaningful enforcement of labor, landlord-tenant, workplace and consumer protection laws as they apply to immigrants.

However, as CLINIC director Kirwin notes, "the fact that a person has violated our immigration laws does not end the discussion; it begins it. We see other concepts at work as well: natural rights, the proportionality of punishment, and the distinction between conduct that is bad in itself and conduct that is simply prohibited. We view the participation of newcomers in our civil society -- even the undocumented -- as a right and a responsibility."

We, in other words, must be genuinely concerned about the invisible underground of voiceless immigrants in our midst.

Time for reform

These are very difficult times, politically and economically, to achieve the type of reforms we bishops are calling for. Public attitudes, including those of many Catholics, tend to be anti-immigrant, especially toward the undocumented.

Nevertheless, we bishops have committed ourselves to undertake a Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform, based upon the principles contained in "Strangers No Longer." A large part of this campaign will be aimed at dispelling myths and misconceptions about immigrants.

Some in our nation have the false perception that immigrants take jobs away from Americans, that they are a drain on our economy, that our country is being overrun by immigrants, and that today's immigrants are not becoming part of American society. All of those myths have been dispelled by objective and credible research, yet the misconceptions remain.

In Jesus' path

As followers of Jesus, who came into the world as a migrant, whose family fled Herod into Egyptian exile and who lived His public life as an itinerant, we must have a special concern for immigrants and their plight, and be willing to advocate for public policies which will support and protect these "least among us."

May this Labor Day be a time for us to reflect upon the critical situation facing immigrant workers in light of our Christian heritage and Catholic social teaching. May it also spur us to let our representatives in Congress know of our position on this matter as they seek to address immigration reform immediately following their summer recess.

(On July 19, Bishop Gerald Barnes, chairperson of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration issued a statement in support of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005 -- S.1033, H.R. 2330 -- as the current legislative proposal that "best reflects principles for immigration reform set forth by the United States bishops.")