THE CHURCH AND IMMIGRATION
Bishop Paul S. Coakley
The Catholic Church has taken a rather high profile position in the current debate over the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Without going into the specifics in this article over what that reform ought to include we might do well to start with a prior question. Why is the Church concerned about this issue at all?
The Church’s concern for the immigrant and the stranger is nothing new. It is deeply rooted in the soil of our biblical faith. In one of the very early faith statements of the Old Testament the Israelite people, upon taking possession of the Promised Land, professed, “My father was a wandering Aramean” (Dt.26:5). Abraham and the patriarchs of old were nomads. They had no place of their own.
The experience of wandering and exile profoundly shape the biblical consciousness of both the Old and New Testament. On Mount Sinai the Lord delivered his commandments to the people saying, “You must not oppress the stranger; you know how a stranger feels, for you lived as strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex.23:9). Mary and Joseph fled with the infant Jesus to Egypt in order to escape the murderous intent of King Herod (Mt.2:1-15). Throughout his public ministry Jesus was always on the move, an itinerant, “with nowhere to lay His head” (Mt.8:20). Our Lord identifies intimately with the stranger, the immigrant, the “person on the move” when he says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” Mt.25:35.
The American consciousness has been no less profoundly influenced by the experience of migration. We are a nation of immigrants. Our forebears came to this land from every place on earth. They came for many reasons. They came with their families, or for the sake of their families. They came seeking religious and political freedom. They came seeking economic opportunity or refuge from intolerable conditions in their countries of origin. Who would deny that our nation has been enriched beyond measure by this experience?
Migration has certainly shaped the experience of our Catholic consciousness in the United States as well. Like our biblical forebears, we Catholics have not always been received hospitably in this great new land. History reminds us that Catholics have had to suffer not only the customary hardships of all immigrants, but the added hardship of a particular mistrust and prejudice from a dominant culture which felt threatened by our mere presence. Catholics have had to struggle to gain acceptance and equal access to the opportunities enjoyed by many of our fellow citizens.
We cannot forget that this is who we are as Catholics, as Americans and as human beings. Pope John Paul II said, “Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own country. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to migrate to other countries and to take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular state does not deprive him of membership to the human family, nor of citizenship in the universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men.”
We have a long history of welcoming the stranger. As Catholics and as Americans we must honestly reflect upon who we are and what kind of nation we want to be as we embark upon the reform of our immigration policies. There is no doubt that our immigration policies are in need of reform. They are broken. What will those reforms contain? We are rightly concerned about due safeguards for our national security. We are all concerned about jobs. But are we equally concerned about the effects of our immigration policy on those families which remain separated for years because of legal immigration backlogs? Will we recall our common experience as immigrants and afford the same respect and protections to the strangers in our midst today? “If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must count him as one of your own countrymen and love him as yourself—for you were once strangers yourself in Egypt. I am Yahweh your God” (Lev.19:32-34).