For Spanish translation see: “Inmigración a Formando la Consciencia” under Daily Columns, click on “Faithful Citizenship” link
One of a series of articles by a Camden Diocesan Roundtable that seeks to promote the U.S. bishops’ document “Forming Conscience for Faithful Citizenship: A Call for Political Responsibility.”
Seventy-eight Africans set sail from the country of Libya, in North Africa, on Aug. 21, 2008, bound for Europe and work and food and a chance to provide for themselves and their families and loved ones. Americans would describe them as illegal aliens, or undocumented. They had no papers.
Their boat capsized in a storm. Seventy people drowned.
Others leave their countries because they are fleeing war and persecution or the threat of persecution. We call them refugees. Here in the Camden Diocese, Catholic Charities will resettle some 200 refugees in calendar year 2008.
Other people, also without viable employment, are tricked and cajoled and threatened into coming to other countries to work in the sex trade or as migrant workers. These are victims of human trafficking. Some are slaves. Here in the Camden Diocese, Catholic Charities works to help victims of trafficking.
Pope Benedict prayed for our 70 African brothers and sisters who drowned near the coast of Malta. The Holy Father commented, “Migration is a phenomenon that has been present from the dawn of human history, and it has always, for this reason, characterized the relations between peoples and nations.”
He added, “The emergency that migration has become in our times, nevertheless, calls out to us and, while it solicits our solidarity, demands, at the same time, effective political answers.”
Here in the United States, immigration policy has become a highly-charged and emotional issue. Given the large numbers of undocumented, economic migrants entering the United States from Mexico, Central America, and South America, and given that their skin is brown, it is inevitable that this issue would become subject to political, partisan maneuvering.
Politicians have long used emotional issues such as illegal entry into countries as a way of whipping up support for themselves. Such politicians are demagogues, dividing us from one another.
Meanwhile, Americans of good will are legitimately concerned about their own jobs and livelihoods, and know that employers can use undocumented workers as a way of depressing wages. For people at the bottom of the economic ladder, this can be a frightening prospect.
So when the pope encourages Americans (and others) to “develop through consensus initiatives and structures that continue to adapt themselves to the needs of irregular migrants,” he is recognizing the complexities of these issues. We need to educate ourselves. A good place to start is to go the web site Justice for Immigrants (www.justiceforimmigrants.org).
As Catholics, we are summoned to wrestle with these issues — to think and to read and to inform our consciences. Immigration is an excellent example for most of us who are comfortable that the Gospel really does challenge us. And in that spirit, here is an “uncomfortable” quote from Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Diocese of Orlando:
“The so-called ‘illegals’ are so not because they wish to defy the law; but, because the law does not provide them with any channels to regularize their status in our country — which needs their labor: they are not breaking the law, the law is breaking them.”