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PDF versionThe church can make a difference on immigration reform
by Pat Marrin on Sep. 30, 2010
How did over 1,000 Guatemalans ever get to Postville, Iowa? The answer is an eye-opener on the larger crisis going on because of poverty-driven global migration.
Guatemala, one of the poorest nations in Central America, long ago joined bordering countries in sending much of its population north to escape violence and lack of opportunity. The trail of tears up through Mexico, riding on tops of freight trains, subject to drug gangs, corrupt local police and dangerous coyote crossings which is now the Ellis Island legacy of the latest generation of immigrants seeking entry into the United States.
While the need for cheap labor continues to draw them, they have found no Statue of Liberty and no welcome here. Lack of any coherent path to legalization has blunted but not stopped the flow, and hundreds of people have died in the deserts at the border.
The Postville ICE raid story goes back to the late 1980s, when investors opened a kosher meat processing plant that first attracted immigrant workers from Eastern Europe, then Asia and Mexico and more recently Central America. The slaughterhouse jobs were typically shunned by American workers and fell to immigrant groups, documented and undocumented, willing to do the dangerous and bracing work of providing meat for the American table.
Cheap labor and legal accommodation were profitable, and immigrant populations bolstered small town economies across the country. The Guatemalan community disrupted by the ICE raid in 2008 had been in Postville for a decade, and American-born children of undocumented workers filled the local school system. The new immigrants were transforming the Midwest in much the same way German immigrants had transformed the heartland a century before.
U.S. Immigration policy has for decades tried to balance the need to secure our borders and the need for cheap labor. Poverty and instability in other parts of the world, often the result of our own economic policies and trade laws that favored large corporations, kept the flow of undocumented workers coming because there were jobs here. Legal reform was needed but difficult to achieve politically.
The failure of the modest Kennedy/McCain Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill in Congress in 2007 poisoned hopes for a reasonable solution to the growing numbers of undocumented people backed up in the system under more generous immigration bills passed in the 1990s. Post-9/11 fear-mongering by nativist groups aided by shock media made drove millions of people into the shadows, subjecting them to exploitation in a flourishing underground economy, where they paid taxes but were unable to access social services, healthcare or seek legal protection from predators.
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The recent failure in Congress of the “Dream Act,” which would have recognized the potential of some 65,000 immigrant children pursuing college or military service is one more example of how paralyzed the nation has become in addressing real problems with low-cost solutions that work for everyone.
At an NCR-sponsored conference last Spring in Washington, DC, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi begged the churches to jump in and provide leadership on immigration reform The U.S. Catholic Bishops have a chance to apply their deep justice tradition to one of the biggest human-rights issues facing the country today. Failure to achieve immigration reform will doom millions of people eager to contribute to the economy and, by birth and culture, members of the Catholic church, to a limbo of anonymity and unnecessary suffering.
This is why Celebration is convening a conference on the church’s role in immigration reform in San Antonio on Jan. 12-14. One meeting will not solve the immigration crisis nor will it focus the church’s full response. But it will get the issues out on the table and help shape the questions that must be addressed if a solution is to be found and if a Catholic voice will be part of. it.
I invite you to visit the Celebration Web site for more information about the conference. celebrationpublications.org/conference
In my next blog I will tell you more about why we have invited Jesuit Fr. Dean Brackley from El Salvador to be with us in San Antonio to talk about immigration reform and the role of the church. The issue is critical and the timing could not be better.
—By Pat Marrin, Celebration editor
Related blogs by Pat Marrin:
- 'Tell them to come to the church'
- The church can make a difference on immigration reform
- Immigration reform is about 'God’s option for the poor'
Fr. Dean Brackley wrote this essay for NCR earlier this year: Migrants: illegals or God's ambassadors?
"post 9/11 fear mongering by
"post 9/11 fear mongering by nativist groups" is a phrase that defies logic and demeans the rest of the argument. NCR can do better, like examining the legionnaires....On second thought, ncr can not do better. Congrats!
You have put the cart before
You have put the cart before the horse.
The first step any any kind of immigration reform is to secure our borders.
The second step is to install a system to track those who are here legally through a visa and make sure that those who overstay are deported.
The third step is to re-assess current visa requirements and have a discussion on current short comings and take corrective action.
Until these things are done, you will get no support for amnesty for those who broke our laws to enter this country.
This may not fit your agenda, but these are the real pre-conditions for Americans in general to consider the plight you describe.
Please to not put the Catholic Church in a position of supporting law-breakers. It will further dilute it's credibility, and we can't afford that at this time.
Your first step has been done
Your first step has been done as much as is humanly and fiscally possible. The annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol stood at $3 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010—a nine-fold increase since FY 1992. The number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border grew to 17,000 in FY 2010—a nearly five-fold increase since FY 1992.
Your second step is not possible (there are too many people to deport) or humane (millions of immigrant families have individual members with different statuses: one brother overstayed a visa, another is a citizen, a third is lawfully present awaiting adjustment of status, etc.) Deporting all visa-overstayers would waste billions of dollars more and would continue the devastating impact that families, communities, parishes, and workplaces all over the country are experiencing from deportation.
Your third step is part of what is meant by Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
The Church would better serve
The Church would better serve the illegal aliens and our US citizens by working to improve the situation in countries which export human beings. Let’s be intellectually honest! Obama, the Left, thousands of demonstrating Hispanics (legal and illegal) in Phoenix and many who frequent this blog make the argument that the 13 million illegal aliens in the US are useful if not essential to our economy because they do the unskilled and semi-skilled work that “Americans” will not. Such is their stated raison d’être for the illegal alien. Of course, that is disingenuous nonsense in these days of 9.6% and higher unemployment and, in any event, many US employed illegals have construction and other jobs which pay well (in the underground cash tax free economy) and which could be filled by unemployed US citizens who would presumably pay taxes and not add to the social costs of illegals. But let’s humor the Left a bit and assume that the US would come to a grinding halt without the millions of illegals who supposedly only work in the low end niches of our society. If they are so essential in their low end jobs, we should be very careful to keep them and their children, anchor babies or not, in place so that by education or hard work they not elevate themselves to positions which would enable them to compete with US citizens. Further, the cost of providing entitlements, including free medical care, free Spanish language schooling for their children and police and incarceration expenses directly linked to illegals should be weighed against their usefulness as our essential low end workers. Unless you are kidding yourself, you have to admit that we do not NEED our 13 million illegals any more than many other countries who have agricultural, domestic and construction workers composed of their own citizenry. Any particularized need in the US could be handled by a much smaller scale guest worker program, with no citizenship track, for special purpose workers who would not be permitted to advance and compete with US citizens. All non-guest worker aliens should be strongly persuaded to leave by hefty fines on their employers and curtailment of all but true emergency services to them. Of course, the real solution has always been for Latin American countries (which export their surplus poor people just as casually as oil, fruits and vegetables) to get a firm handle on their population growth. Their populations are WAYYYYY too large to be domestically supported and are growing prodigiously. Wonder why? And if you are intellectually honest with yourself, you will know why and what institution is at fault in causing the rampant overpopulation in Latin America. Further, if we are striving for intellectual honesty more broadly, and want to best understand the fuzzy notion of man’s inalienable right to “migration”, then we may ask why there is no token squatter group of African “migrants” in Vatican City or Castel Grandolfo, when Southern Italy is awash with illegal aliens and related problems? NIMBY!! THIMK SHEEP!
I don't see a single
I don't see a single Christian principle or value in your comments. Your concern about what's good for "us" versus what "illegals" get has nothing to do with Gospel values. Why are you involved in this discussion if you do not approach this topic with any moral perspective?
"The Church would better
"The Church would better serve the illegal aliens and our US citizens by working to improve the situation in countries which export human beings."
I agree with the writer's analysis. The Church has not addressed the negative/moral consequences of the U.S. paying for what Mexico immorally is not providing its own people. These are moral issues. Why should the U.S. be the only advocates for the poor? Our economy is in shambles now, and unemployment for Americans is sorely needed---This is a moral imperative. The United States has poured millions of dollars into Mexico.
What are the Mexican bishops doing about this?? I hear or read nothing about their collective efforts on behalf of their own people. All I read about is the U.S. bishops trying to fill their pews with illegal migrants left by vacating Americans. Aid the vulnerable----yes! But even the Good Samaritan would throw up his hands if he had to put up millions. There is a limit.
PLEASE LET THE MEXICAN BISHOPS BE A BEACON OF SPEAKING UP ON THIS ISSUE.
Pat-- This conference sounds
Pat--
This conference sounds terrific and you've engaged some great speakers, but your article makes you sound rather out of touch, or like you're trying to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps Speaker Pelosi didn't realize that the massive rally for immigration reform in DC last March (which, unfortunately, was overwhelmed by the passage of Health Care Reform that weekend) was supported in a very big way by the USCCB. (Busloads of Catholic parishioners attended, contributing many thousands of marchers. Cardinal Mahoney was a keynote speaker, etc. etc.) The US bishops' Justice for Immigrants campaign has been very active for at least five years. Bishops Wester and Kikanas and Cardinal Mahoney have been outspoken on the immigration reform. The JFI coalition includes twenty national Catholic organizations from a pretty wide spectrum of the Church and they meet frequently together, work the Hill, have an active grassroots campaign and educational outreach, etc., etc.
JFI has active campaigns going in many dozens of dioceses and monthly national conference calls with local leadership all over the country to keep diocesan and parish leaders active and involved. JFI also collaborates closely with other religious and non-religious organizations supporting immigration reform. Through efforts of Catholic groups around the country, most funded and supported by the bishops (collectively or locally). Are you really unaware of the Church's work on this???
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