Count immigration among issues for Respect Life Month

During October, Catholics in the United States observe Respect Life Month, when we are asked to be mindful of the frightening erosion of respect for the sanctity of human life in our nation, as evidenced by:

* 48 million abortions since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973;

* the proliferation of embryonic stem-cell research;

* the legalization of physician-assisted suicide; and

* resorting to the death penalty as a bogus solution to the vicious cycle of violence.

Those are just a few of the grave assaults on human life and human dignity swirling around us. Those social ills remind us that we have strayed far from our country's founding principles of promoting and protecting the inalienable rights of all, and from our shared belief in what the public ethicist Stephen Carter calls "the American moral code, that clear understanding between right and wrong which sparked the Civil Rights Movement and won the Cold War."

Immigration

This year, my own thoughts focus on another respect life concern: the hot-button issue of immigration in our nation. This interest flows from four recent experiences:

1. I attended an interfaith prayer service at St. Ambrose Church in Latham, during which the assembly prayed for and stood in solidarity with two immigrant families whose parents were being deported because of their undocumented status.

It was heart-wrenching to witness the pain of separation that deportation was creating both for these hard-working immigrant parents and for their children who were being left behind to be cared for by relatives.

2. In the spring, agents from the government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency raided workplaces in Rensselaer and Guilderland in our Diocese to round up undocumented workers and to punish employers who were violating the law. A similar raid at a U.S. military contractor's factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, detained 361 workers, leaving some 100 children separated from their families.

3. While in Tucson, Arizona, last month to give a presentation to the diaconate community of that diocese, I heard the distressing stories of immigrants dying in the desert of hunger, dehydration and heat exhaustion in their failed attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexican border.

Research indicates that migrant crossings occur at the obscene rate of one per day and at far higher rates in summer months. Still other immigrants are being incinerated in overcrowded and ill-equipped vehicles operated by unscrupulous smugglers.

4. Lastly, there have been the poisonous and prejudicial rants about immigrants that have polluted some radio and TV talk shows, tainted the pages of some newspapers and magazines, and been given a field day on the internet.

Slogans -- like "What part of illegal don't you understand?" "Round them up and deport them" or "Send them home where they belong; all they do is take our jobs and drain our resources" -- have become commonplace.

Such anti-immigrant sentiment has been fueled both by the aftermath of 9/11, as the fear of terrorism and concern for national security have colored our traditional hospitality as a nation of immigrants, and by economic globalization wherein U.S. employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition.

Reform needed

There is no question that our immigration system is broken. As we bishops pointed out in our annual Labor Day statement, "We need far-reaching and comprehensive reform. There is no fence long enough or high enough that can wall out the human and economic factors that drive immigration."

What is required to resolve this complex problem, however, is not heated rhetoric, scapegoating or stereotyping, but civil and rational discussion that takes into account our nation's history and needs, and the insights of the social teaching of our Church.

Commenting about the failed attempts earlier this year by the President and Congress to bring about immigration reform, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, chairperson of the bishops' Domestic Policy Committee, said, "In my view, sometimes anger trumped wisdom, myths overwhelmed facts, slogans replaced solutions. Therefore, we have to restart the discussion, to reengage the hard issues, to search for practical and realistic solutions."

Some facts

As Bishop DiMarzio suggests, we must look at the facts:

* Currently, there are some 12 million undocumented people in our country, most of them workers.

* Our economy and communities depend upon them. They bus our dishes, pick our vegetables, clean our offices and homes, work in our poultry and meat processing plants, care for our children, and landscape our lawns, among other jobs.

* To think that we can just deport these workers is untenable. The Department of Homeland Security insists that such mass deportation is impossible logistically; financially, it is estimated that deporting everyone who is undocumented would cost $210 billion to $230 billion within five years. The annual cost of such a policy will be more than double what is spent each year on border control and transportation security, and more than half of what is being spent on the war in Iraq.

Across borders

Immigration reform cannot start or stop at our borders. Rather, we must seek to understand and overcome the pervasive poverty, deprivation, violence and oppression that push people to leave their homelands, risk their own lives and cope with the constant fear of living in the shadows or at the margins of their newfound home.

Basically, immigrants come to our nation to seek work that allows them to find hope and dignity for themselves and their families.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson captured this reality well when he described an encounter he had with a large number of young migrants who were waiting at a church in his neighboring diocese of Sonora, Mexico, for the right opportunity to cross the border.

Bishop Kicanas observed: "I looked at their faces. They seemed scared, determined, desperate. They sought God's help. I wish that those who look upon these immigrants as 'illegals,' criminals,' even 'terrorists' could see that they are just the poor wanting a decent way of life, a job, some way to support their family. Work drives them north. Love for their families drives them north. A decent human life drives them north."

Church teaching

Our Church has long taught that to migrate is a right for individuals and families "when they are unable to achieve a life of dignity in their own land," as Pope Pius XII wrote in his classic 1952 document, "Exsul Familia," which took its name from the Holy Family's fleeing into Egypt.

Catholic social teaching also recognizes that nations have the right to control their borders and to regulate immigration. "Exsul Familia" states that the need of the immigrants must be measured against the needs of receiving countries, and that the rights of these nations must not be exaggerated to the point of denying access to needy people from their countries.

In welcoming the stranger, then, we should not distinguish between "legal" and "illegal" migrants. Illegal immigration is not something the Church can approve of or condone. But our Gospel mandate is to assist strangers, wherever they are, and to urge that the rights of undocumented workers be respected.

In this regard, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has noted that "the unspoken truth of the immigration debate is that, at the same time our nation benefits economically from the presence of undocumented workers, we turn a blind eye when they are exploited by their employers."

Conflicting ideas

As we bishops noted in this year's Labor Day statement, "Advocates for immigration reform must take seriously legitimate concerns about protecting our borders, curbing the flow of unlawful immigration, the potential displacement of workers and the possibility of exploitation within guest worker programs. These issues cannot be ignored, exaggerated, dismissed or used as political weapons."

However, we must always remember that, for us as Catholics, immigration is not primarily a political issue but a fundamental human and moral one.

It is first and foremost about respecting human dignity, welcoming the stranger, and making it demonstrably clear that natives and foreigners are not rivals, but brothers and sisters in Christ.

Trying again

As Catholic bishops, therefore, we are pleading for our nation to recommit ourselves to reviving the recent failed attempt to find a viable solution to our present immigration challenge. We must not wait until after the national elections of 2008 to address this pressing issue.

Specifically, we urge that this renewed debate not be used "for partisan advantage, a ratings boost or a fundraising tactic," but that it be guided by "the fundamental rights to work, decent wages, safe working conditions and to have a voice in decisions. [For] human dignity and human rights are not commodities to be allocated according to where you come from, when you get here or what documents you possess."

Rather, they are gifts from God, which must always be cherished, respected and protected.

Catholic input

During our annual Respect Life Month observance, I hope that all of us in the Catholic community will join the debate about immigration reform, bringing to the table our belief in the sacredness of human life, the inherent dignity of the human person and the value of work.

As citizens and as people of faith, we must seek to build bridges between the native-born and the newcomer, between legitimate concerns about national security and domestic economic instability, and our nation's tradition of welcome.

We must help move from fear and frustration to hope for a better tomorrow by promoting a new immigration policy that should include a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, a moratorium on the raids that pull families apart, temporary worker programs with appropriate worker protections and due process protections for immigrants, and a rational and effective system for bringing immigrants to our land of promise and opportunity.

May we always remember that, except for our Native Americans, we all have immigrant roots. We must treat all new immigrants as we would have wanted our beloved ancestors treated.

(10/4/07)