Roman Catholic Bishop Anthony Taylor has issued a Pastoral Letter on the Human Rights of Immigrants and published a three-week study guide to help Arkansas Catholics to reflect on the topic during Advent.  I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me is an excellent moral response to the dysfunctional U.S. immigration situation.

Bishop Taylor frames the issue from the perspective of fundamental human rights.  As the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, all human beings have some inherent, inalienable, God-given rights.  Taylor writes, “No government has the authority to deprive us of our God-given rights…”  Immigration is a God-given right, he says, when it is “necessary to protect and provide for one’s family or to escape persecution…  Parents are obligated to protect their children and provide for them.”  When they can’t do that in their home of origin, “there comes a point at which they become morally obligated to pursue other options, including migration…”  Americans know about this.  When British citizens colonized this new world they were exercising that basic human right. 

Taylor further asserts our fundamental human right of “access to the basic necessities of life:  food, clothing, shelter, basic medical care, decent employment that pays enough to provide for one’s family.”  He goes on to say, “With these rights come the obligations to work to meet one’s basic needs, as well as the obligation of all …to remedy the global and local economic, social and political ills that deprive people of the basic necessities of life, making immigration necessary.”

Taylor cites compelling evidence that immigrants are good people overall.  Immigrants display a stronger work ethic and commitment to family life than the average American.  President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors reported in 2007 that “immigrants tend to complement (not substitute for) natives” in the workforce.  Studies show immigrants offer a positive economic impact, and they fill unmet needs for skilled and low-skill labor.  The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation released similar findings for Arkansas in 2007, showing that immigrants positively impact our state’s economy every way you might choose to look at it.

But the immigration system is broken.  Bishop Taylor says it is unjust law.  There are “practically no visas available for ordinary laborers from Mexico who simply want to come to the United States, work hard, and raise their families here,” even though our free-enterprise system effectively absorbs more than 500,000 immigrants who enter the U.S. from Mexico each year.  And it doesn’t work to stand in line for legal entry.  Currently there is a sixteen-year wait for family sponsored immigration. 

If a father who is a legal permanent resident files a petition for his wife and daughter in Mexico to immigrate legally, he will wait seven years before a visa might become available.  During that seven years they can’t visit him in the U.S.  The only way the family can be together is for him to visit them in Mexico.  And if his daughter marries during the seven year wait, her petition is voided because only citizens may petition for their married children.

Minor children often get caught in these delays.  Children who have lived in this country since childhood often reach age 18 before their petition is reviewed.  They may graduate from high school with their classmates from first grade and become illegal, subject to deportation at their eighteenth birthday.  Fourth Preference family petitions from 1995 are just now being examined, over thirteen years after they were first filed.

The Bishop’s solution:  (1) Let law-abiding people move freely across national borders.  (2)  Work to improve the economies and living conditions that force people to leave their homes.  (3)  “Create a system that welcomes immigrants, facilitates their adaptation to life in the United States and provides an easy path to citizenship.” 

Go to the diocesan web site and read the full report itself:  www.dolr.org.  The nineteen Bible references alone are worth the visit.

Well done, Bishop Taylor.  What an appropriate message as we prepare for the holiday when we remember the humble birth of a refugee child who found no place at the inn, whose parents crossed borders into Egypt without permission to flee for safety.  Bishop Taylor asks, “Does Jesus find a warm welcome in our communities?  What changes do we need to make here in Arkansas in order to ensure that today’s Marys and Josephs – today’s Marías and Josés – receive a warm welcome truly worthy of the Savior whose birth we celebrate on Christmas?”