Migration and Immigration

Migration is the human face of globalization. Defined as the movement of peoples across national borders, migration has increased with cheaper transportation and increasingly interdependent national economies. According to the UN, nearly 191 million people (3% of the world’s population) were migrants in 2005; 154 million of those chose to move voluntarily. Migration is especially pronounced between the US and Mexico, as the two countries experience the greatest wealth disparity of any two contiguous countries in the world. The free movement of goods and services across the southern US border since NAFTA’s promulgation in 1994 has also significantly increased the movement of labor.

The United States immigration system has yet to account for these economic and technological changes; in fact, legislators on both sides of the political aisle agree that the US immigration system is broken. Each year, 1.5 million newcomers (500,000 of which are undocumented) enter the US. And although our country has not experienced an unemployment rate higher than 6% since 1994, we offer only 5,000 permanent low-skilled visas and 66,000 seasonal visas annually. This bureaucratic failure, along with the caps on family-based visas, has created a humanitarian disaster on the United States’ southern border: more than 3,000 people have died trying to cross the desert in intolerable heat since 1998.

Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, border security has become a top priority for the US government. Fear of more attacks has provoked xenophobic voices in our country, despite the presence of millions of contributing migrants throughout all 50 states and our immigrant history. 

The Bush Administration made immigration reform a priority, but Congressional stalemates in 2006 and 2007 resulted only in the passage of a border wall and more enforcement measures. Since then, the Administration has significantly increased the detention, deportation and raids of undocumented immigrants. These raids separate families and destroy communities. Additionally, the administration has increased funding to state and local police forces to enforce federal immigration law, creating an atmosphere of mistrust in the small communities that rely upon police for their safety and protection.

For more information on the Church and Immigration, please see our Winter 2006-2007 issue of In All Things on immigration.

In response to the need to reform the US immigration system, the Jesuit Conference joins the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in the Justice for Immigrants campaign; calling for comprehensive immigration reform that would:

•    provide a path to legalization for the undocumented;
•    provide a path to legal work for future immigrants (by increasing the number of employment visas available); 
•    expedite family reunification (by increasing the number of family-based visas available);
•    restoring due process rights (important for the protection of refugees and others);
•    focus on the development of migration sending countries.

These policy recommendations are consistent with Catholic Social Teaching’s call for dignified treatment of migrants and the authentic development of all people.  They derive from basic principles of Catholic migration teaching, including that 1) all people have the right to migrate; 2) all people have the right not to migrate; 3) government’s have a right to control their own borders; 4) refugees and asylum seekers should be protected.  The pastoral letter Exsul Familia (1952) states:

Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for in adequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.”  (n.30)

The prescriptions for policy change proposed by the Justice for Immigrants campaign would serve the common good, human dignity, and the national interest. 

Download Immigration education and reflection toolkit

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