| In this edition of Viewpoints, Stephen Kent writes that the church has made its position on immigration clear: the dignity of the human person must be protected. At the same time, Tom Sheridan says that immigrants benefit our country economically.
The dignity of the human person
The fact that we, as Catholics, hold human rights and the dignity of the human person as a fundamental belief imposes the moral obligation upon us to insist that a national immigration policy be built upon the principles of fairness, opportunity, justice and compassion.
 The need is for a strategic plan: a comprehensive, systematic immigration policy which respects the balance between national sovereignty and human dignity.
The issue obviously is not how to plan for immigration as a future event; it is how to deal with the massive inflow of people to the United States as a matter of fact.
There can --- and should --- be a balance of safeguarding national borders and respecting rights of people to migrate.
Catholics are blessed to have a strong faith-based philosophy to address the problem. It is no last minute reaction to a political problem, but continuation of a prophetic stance that is rooted in the Old Testament.
Pope Benedict recently said nations must develop policies to regulate migration in a way that respects the rights of each person, promotes family unity, safeguards women and children while at the same time engaging an orderly and legal movement of peoples.
The Second Vatican Council addressed this in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church: "The local people, moreover, especially public authorities, should all treat immigrants not as mere tools of production, but as persons, and must help them to arrange for their families to live with them and to provide themselves with decent living quarters."
The immigration bill is stalled in Congress in the backrooms. Let the arguments about visas and quotas and residency remain the subject of the political process. Anything dealing with justice and the human person is a higher province.
The U.S. bishops set forth their criteria for acceptable legislation:
--- A program allowing undocumented persons to earn permanent residency.
--- A worker program that protects foreign born workers and safeguards U.S. workers against displacement.
--- Reducing the waiting time for reunification of immigrant families.
--- Due process protections for immigrants.
--- Policies to address the root cause of migration.
The bishops are not newcomers but go back to the Old Testament foundations to find covenant justice.
The Old Testament prophets were the social conscience of their people and called for interhuman justice. The covenant between God and his people is for the purpose of, among other things, creating justice in human society.
With the understanding that justice between peoples is the central theme of salvation history, the ministry of the church today is based upon that prophetic tradition.
Catholic social teaching holds that the person is both sacred and social with dignity and rights realized in relationship with one another in community.
This phenomenon of migration is a sign of the times, the bishops of the U.S. and Mexico said in the joint pastoral statement "Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope" issued in January, 2003:
"Such a sign is a call to transform national and international social, economic and political structures so that they may provide the conditions required for the development of all, without exclusion and discrimination against any person in any circumstance."
The question of justice is two-pronged. The root causes of migration --- poverty, injustice, religious intolerance and armed conflicts must be addressed so people can remain in their homeland and support their families.
Having failed this test, the countries that the migrants choose to enter must treat them with dignity and respect.
Our faith demands a policy that respects those who may not have documents but do possess inalienable human dignity and human rights.
Stephen Kent is a freelance writer from Seattle who has been editor of the newspapers of the archdioceses of Seattle and Omaha, Neb.
It's all about the jobs
By Tom Sheridan
It's becoming a familiar and unfortunate scene: federal agents raiding a plant and hauling away workers suspected of illegally entering the United States.
In Denver last December immigration agents swept through a Swift & Co. meatpacking plant to arrest scores of undocumented workers. The raid was part of a larger sweep targeting Swift plants in the West and upper Midwest.
Federal officials had warned Swift of the raids. Its response, according to news reports, was to ask a federal judge for a delay, maintaining that removing that many workers would cause substantial injury to its business. Company officials said they check applicants' identities, but the system is flawed.
Nearly 1,300 workers --- about 10 percent of Swift's workforce --- were arrested. News reports said plant operations were halted, temporarily, but later resumed, at "reduced output levels."
Despite such statistics, foes of immigration reform refuse to recognize the necessary contribution such workers make to the U.S. economy.
There was no indication that the "illegal" Swift meatpackers were being paid less than those American citizens and legal residents they were working alongside. Rather, there were jobs to fill and no one else willing to take them.
Employment continues to be the heart of our current immigration debate.
Yes, the church supports compassionate reform because of concerns about human dignity and family unification. But there is another reason: Such reform ultimately will benefit our economy and our nation.
We will surely change as a result of immigration. But we have always been shaped by those who come to our shores to labor in our fields and cities.
The debate is rancorous. Angry words spew from conservative talk radio about an "invasion" of foreign workers taking Americans' jobs. More reasoned voices maintain that, in large measure, there are "jobs American won't take."
Statistics support that view.
Nearly two-thirds of Latin American non-citizens --- documented and undocumented --- work in the bottom half of occupations ranked by pay. It's even worse for undocumented Hispanics, reports the Urban Institute: two-thirds earn less than twice the minimum wage, compared to one-third of all workers.
The institute's research lists the low-wage occupations Hispanic and African immigrants take. Yes, these are the jobs American won't take.
Why? Because it's not the American Dream.
The institute says the jobs don't pay enough for a family to live on. Immigrants, legal and illegal, gravitate to such work because they usually don't anticipate an ordinary family life in the U.S.
But it's always been that way for immigrant classes --- German, Irish, Italian, even Chinese. These are jobs which have always been taken by waves of immigrants who have built America, believing in the welcome offered by Lady Liberty. It's called starting at the bottom and working your way up.
Ah, but those were the days when immigration was simpler, free of a weighty bureaucratic system and labor was welcomed. But even then, there were irrational fears of the changes in culture that have always come with migration. Sadly, today that fear too often morphs into discrimination against "legal" Hispanics, as it did other cultures.
Some charge that immigrants, legal or not, are depressing wages by being willing to work for lower wages. "Market forces," something conservatives usually praise, will ultimately resolve that. 
U.S. bishops support legislative reform because undocumented immigration is not a good thing, whether for society or for the individual.
At a June immigration rally in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George put it this way: "We gather today because the unity we seek is violated and threatened by civil policies that ignore the God-given human rights of immigrants. The legislation before Congress is far from perfect, but it does provide a framework to move forward."
Tom Sheridan is editor emeritus of The Catholic New World, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and writes from Ocala, Fla. |
